I’ve been wanting to get a “real” TiVo box for some time, but was locked into a two-year contract with DirecTV. Until now, we’ve been using a DirecTV TiVo box, which is still supported, but these boxes only possess the base TiVo DVR features and don’t have any of the cool features of a “true” TiVo box (the DirecTV TiVo boxes are technically capable of having this functionality, but DirecTV chooses not to activate them). DirecTV has also made the questionable decision to drop TiVo and focus on their own generic DVR. This means that the existing DirecTV TiVo boxes are unlikely to get any new features, and perhaps more importantly, there is likely no path to a high-def DirecTV TiVo.

So I jumped ship to Comcast once my DirecTV contract expired. Moving to Comcast also enabled me to replace our telephone line and DSL with cable internet. I knew cable was faster, but wow, it totally blows DSL out of the water! Check out this speed test:

My DSL speeds were a paltry 1.2 Mbs down and 384 Kbs up. Comcast has a feature called PowerBoost which gives a big boost to your download speed when you’re downloading a big file. Thus, these speeds are almost certainly not sustained transfer speeds. Nevertheless, it’s wicked fast speed when you need it. Now, even the biggest video files from RohJuh.com play instantly - no more waiting while the video buffers!

My entire cable install went smoothly, even the CableCARD part of it (I was able to get a single MCard instead of dual SCards). I’m still playing with all the TiVo features, but I’ve already downloaded and watched my first Amazon movie (Live Free or Die Hard for only $0.99!) as well as a bunch of free videos from MusicWatch. So far, everything’s been working well for several days now - knock on wood!

Posted by Roger at 8:38 am.