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The Gist: Microsoft Answers Tivo With Dual Tuners, Net Access
$399
Microsoft's UltimateTV personal video recorder packs in more features than all of its competitors combined - without charging a dime more than TiVo, the leader in the PVR world. So, naturally, I was curious how the newcomer stacked up against my beloved TiVo box. For the same $400, UltimateTV provides similar recording capability, plus an embedded WebTV system for dialup Internet access and twin USB ports for broadband expandability. It also has picture-in-picture, and its dual tuners allow you to record two shows simultaneously. You can watch a prerecorded program while capturing two more in the background. Both UltimateTV and the TiVo unit for DirecTV feature a recording capacity of 35 hours and charge $10 per month for access to a directory service, though TiVo also offers a $200 lifetime subscription.
To use UltimateTV, you need to subscribe to DirecTV and connect the recorder box to your dual-armed dish. Then, you'll pull in hundreds of digital channels. Also, UltimateTV can download interactive Web content, allowing you to play along with Jeopardy! or purchase product-placed schwag with the touch of a button. As with other PVRs, you can pause live TV, stage your own instant replays, and fast-forward and rewind stored shows. And like the Lakota using every part of the buffalo, UltimateTV's receivers let you beat the station battles of time-slot programming and consume the whole spectrum of terrific shows. You can watch The PJs on one channel while recording King of the Hill on another for later.
UltimateTV has it all, but doesn't put it together well. The promise of the PVR is MeTV - television without channels or time slots, just hours of the stuff you love on tap, continually refreshed. While TiVo helpfully indexes shows by subject or alphabetically, UltimateTV provides nothing but channel/time-slot programming guides. Its interface acts more like an overheated VCR than a PVR.
To set up your retinue of favorite shows, UltimateTV makes you laboriously browse the terribly slow and redundant grids, or type keywords into a search engine. And because the shows you pick on the system are tied to a specific time slot, forget late-breaking schedule changes or grabbing additional shows if they run at other times during the week. Finally, UltimateTV does not suggest material based on your previous choices, as a TiVo does; this is a feature I sorely missed in my new setup. UltimateTV may have myriad features, but the less powerful TiVo reigns for sheer simplicity.
UltimateTV: www.ultimatetv.com.
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