New combo units on the way

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From today's Wall Street Journal . . .
GADGETS

Couch Potato's Crisis:
Is It Time to Get TiVo?
By NICK WINGFIELD
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Digital videorecorders -- the cult gadgets that let you automatically record an entire season of "The Sopranos" or pause live TV -- are now coming packaged inside other popular home electronics.
In a step in that direction, TiVo Inc. -- one of the best-known makers of digital videorecorders -- Wednesday announced that Toshiba Corp.'s U.S. unit will likely incorporate the technology in a DVD player or other devices. The new "combination box" is set for release next year. Other similar combo gadgets are also beginning to hit the market.
TiVo works by recording TV shows onto a hard drive, like those found on a PC, which gives users the flexibility to halt a live broadcast for a bathroom break and then pick up the show when they return. While sales of digital videorecorders have already changed the viewing habits of couch potatoes, the customer base at this point mostly consists of the TV-obsessed. Manufacturers hope that by piggybacking on the growing popularity of DVD players, they can tap into a broader audience. The new combo devices will both record TV shows and play rented or purchased movie DVDs.
"The problem right now is that people who use TiVo love it. The rest of them have no idea what it is," says Greg Ireland, a research analyst at International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass.
No wonder: Digital videorecorders like TiVo and ReplayTV, the stand-alone option offered by SonicBlue Inc., sound daunting to the average user, who may be perfectly happy with his videocassette recorder. DVRs are also still pricey, and that's not including the additional catch of a monthly service fee, which turns many people off. Salespeople in retail stores often struggle when describing DVRs, calling them "digital VCRs."
The benefits of these slick new gadgets go way beyond what VCRs can do, though. By taping programs onto a hard disk instead of videotapes, users can do their recording in the background even as they channel surf. When they return from that bathroom break, they can simply go to the hard drive to pick up where they left off. They can also skip through commercials with the click of a remote control button that advances recorded television at 30-second intervals.
Recording Made Easier
Perhaps most importantly, most DVRs make simple something that has befuddled VCRs owners for several decades: programming their devices to record TV shows. Using electronic programming guides similar to those on digital cable or satellite television, DVRs let users easily schedule shows for recording using a remote control. Want to record an entire season of "West Wing"? Requires punching only a few buttons.
If there has been a barrier to bigger sales of DVRs it is that the devices are hard for many consumers to get their heads around. Manufacturers hope that inserting the technology into more conventional consumer electronics will rectify that. "I don't know if it will be bigger than DVDs or VCRs, but [digital videorecorders] will be a very important core technology in boxes" of all kinds, says Yoshi Uchiyama, vice president of strategic business development at Toshiba America Consumer Products, part of Toshiba's U.S. unit.
TiVo, which expects to have as many as 600,000 users by the end of the year, is also banking on the success of the combo idea. With prices on stand-alone DVD players having plummeted below $100, the DVD-DVR products are most likely to appeal to people who place a premium on uncluttering the shelves of their home theaters. The other big target is first-time DVD buyers willing to pay for some extra features.
Other consumer-electronics companies are pushing their own combination products. In late September, Thomson Multimedia SA introduced a $599 device, the RCA Scenium Digital Media Recorder, that plays DVD movies and has recording space for more than 30 hours of video. It also copies digital pictures and songs from a CD, which turns a DVD player into a jukebox, a TV into a photo album.
One thing the RCA product doesn't do is let consumers copy DVD movies onto the hard disk. That would require breaking the copy-protection features on DVDs, which would almost certainly invite the legal wrath of movie studios. Toshiba says consumers won't have that copying option with its new devices either, for the same legal reasons.
Also on the market: Products that blend DVR capabilities with satellite-television tuners.
Each of the different combo alternatives has pros and cons. The RCA device, for example, has no monthly service fees, but lacks some of TiVo's smart features, like the ability to remember a user's viewing preferences.
Hughes Electronics Corp. offers an option that combines its DirecTV satellite service with the basic features of TiVo. It is priced at $199, several hundred dollars lower than the RCA model, and has space for 35 hours of video.
The drawback: DirecTV charges a subscription fee, of $4.99 a month. (See accompanying chart for more information.) That is on top of the monthly fee subscribers pay for satellite television, which starts at $31.99.
EchoStar Communications Corp., another satellite provider, sells a $299 combo device with 60 hours of recording time or a $549 device with 90 hours of recording time. One big selling point: EchoStar doesn't charge a separate subscription fee for the service that powers the devices. The company says it has more than 500,000 subscribers who are using its combined DVR and tuner for its Dish Network satellite television service.
Because of their strong base of TV-junkie subscribers, satellite companies are the top source of DVRs for consumers. But Forrester Research estimates that in five years, that honor will shift to the cable-television operators, which so far have been slow to adopt the technology.

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Topic - New combo units on the way - Dalancroft 15:22:18 11/13/02 (0)

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