- Dual-tuner design lets you watch a show while recording another
- Access the Internet via your TV
- Watch 2 shows at once with picture-in-picture
- Record up to 35 hours of programs onto built-in hard drive
- Pause or view instant replays of live TV shows; for sale and use only in the 48 contiguous United States
Don't buy this box for the WebTV capability. The browser is too clumsy and slow to do anything useful. You can forget the idea of playing streaming audio and video on your home theater equipment as it doesn't support most of the popular browser plugins you'll need and the modem is too slow.
The digital video recording features are great, in theory, but I've seen a few quirks. I've been unable to record more than about eight hours of programming before it starts erasing the earlier programs to record new ones. If anyone has recorded 35 hours worth of material I'd like to know how. It also gets completely thrown if a program that is to be recorded each time it appears has its start time shifted by the broadcaster. It simply gives up on that program forever. It may even skip other programs too, but I'm still trying to figure out exactly what's going on. Having said that, when it works it's superb. The fast scan and skip features become a way of life. You'll know what I mean when you try to fast forward a live broadcast to skip the ads! We've practically stopped watching live TV.
The technical support is almost non-existent. I've tried to reach both RCA and UltimateTV to find out how to use the video/audio input jacks on the front panel (there's nothing about them in the manuals, help screens or online) with absolutely no luck to date. Email requests remain unanswered after several weeks and multiple attempts.
So, in summary, it works OK but it has some strange quirks, a few incomplete features, a slow user interface and poor technical support. I'm hoping that they will eventually download fixes for most of the technical problems because it's an extremely useful product.
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UltimateTVs single biggest problem is a slow and clumsy interface. Tasks that should require one well-designed screen use 2 or 3 clumsier ones. Response on some button presses and moving from one screen to another can take several seconds making many simple tasks painfully slow. I've come to hate deleting shows after watching them because it take so long, about 15 seconds to Tivos 5 thanks to UltimateTVs slow response and excessive screens (the last one simply has one button and text that tells you to press it). OTOH other screens are cluttered with buttons, text fields and checkboxes often arranged in a pretty-looking but functionally haphazard order that makes it unclear which combinations of up/down/left/right arrows will take you from point A to point B. Search screens contain text boxes at the bottom that you have to schlep through other widgets to select, then schlep back through to reach the "done" or equivalent button. By comparison Tivo screens are quick, clean, intuitively laid out, and the "done" action on a screen can be preformed with one or two button presses no matter where on the screen you happen to be.The user interface is UltimateTVs primary failing, and a sufficient reason to avoid it even if it did everything Tivo did. It doesn't though. It only allows category searches or text searches of the title or description (which can find actors but only the handful listed in the description) no ability to save searches beyond recalling one of the last 6-8 you did, and no ability to automatically record shows that match searches. Tivo can search for actors that aren't listed in show descriptions, directors, finer-grained categories, can filter text/actor/director searches by show category, save as many searches as you want, optionally automatically record shows that match whichever searches you want, and list shows matching all saved searches with one command.
UltimateTV does a serviceable job letting you manage upcoming recordings, but it's not as good as Tivo. Both list upcoming recordings, and shows that won't be recorded because of a conflict. But for repeating recordings UltimateTVs list is incomplete, only listing the next episode of each series. Tivos to-do list shows all the episodes in it's guide it will record and it's recording history lists shows what won't be recorded for any reason (someone cancelled it, you changed it's priority, etc). Tivo also keeps a 2-week history of past shows that weren't recorded or were deleted and why. UltimateTV only shows upcoming recordings cancelled due to conflicts, and doesn't keep any history of deletions or cancelled past recordings.
Tivo will let you cancel an upcoming episode of a series or force a conflict-losing episode to be recorded without changing the priority of the whole series. UltimateTVs "resolve this conflict" can only rearrange the priority of a whole series, not individual showings of a series.
In fact UltimateTV gives you little control over priorities at all. Though "resolve this conflict" seems to change the priorities among the three shows involved in the conflict, there is nowhere to see what a shows priority is in relation to all other shows, nor is there any way to specifically change a shows priority. Tivo allows you to see the priorities of all season passes and automatically recorded searches, and give every show the specific priority you want it to have. Combined with Tivos ability to recognize and not repeatedly record most duplicate shows (something UltimateTV doesn't do) this is a big advantage with shows that are on several times a week. Giving them lower priorities lets Tivo automatically schedule them around other shows they might conflict with.
UltimateTVs only unique bragging right, WebTV, isn't worth bragging about. Connecting to the web is slow, the TVs low resolution can't display as much information as even a basic 15 inch monitor, and navigating web pages with only a short-range infrared keyboard and no mouse is a painful experience. UltimateTV ads mention "hundreds of hours" of interactive shows (though you only get 3 hours/month of internat access to play with unless you pay for more) but I've found only a few shows I watch offer any interactive features and of those none have content worth looking at at all, and certainly not worth suffering through UltimateTVs cumbersome navigation and low resolution web display. Microsoft has been trying to push internet-on-TV for years with WebTV, and it hasn't caught on. There's a reason for that.
UltimateTVs other one-time advantage over Tivo, dual tuners, is gone. Tivos latest software update activates the second tuner so it too can record two shows at once. UltimateTV offers built in PIP, something Tivo doesn't, but that advantage is questionable. Tivo can switch between tuners with one button (UTV requires 2-4), and there's not much need to watch two things at once when you can record them both then watch them sequentially, or pause one show then switch to the other and give it your full attention (and pause, rewind, fastforward, etc as much as you like) without having it obscured by, and trying to keep your eye on, a PIP window. PIP may be invaluable for watching two live shows with regular TV, but on a dual-tuner PVR it's little more than a techno-novelty. I much prefer being able to pause and quickly switch between two shows, full-screen, something Tivo does much better.
UltimateTV has a few less significant advantages over Tivo that IMO aren't worth mentioning here as I don't feel they outweigh the downsides (and Tivo has additional advantages over UltimateTV that I haven't mentioned either). There's more detailed information elsewhere on the web. Avsforum.com and pvrcompare.com might be good starting points.
UltimateTV is a decent first attempt at a PVR, but shows the flaws you'd expect in a product from a company that's only been at this for less than a year (and often has trouble realizing that not every electronic appliance is well suited to the goals they have and the design approaches they'd prefer to take). Tivo has been doing it since 1999 and is one of the founders of the PVR market. The difference in experience shows.
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I thought I would weigh in on UltimateTV debate. There seems to be a couple Tivo devotees who wrote reviews on here and I wanted to clear the air.First of all, I think that this is a wonderful product and all my friends are insanely jealous. The pausing of live TV is awesome. You will find that you become annoyed when TV is live because you cannot forward through commericals (which takes 2 seconds and 3-4 presses of the "Forward Jump" button).
Let me respond to come complaints:
1) Slow response time. I agree. It takes a second to respond when you press a button when using menus or (to a lesser degree) when switching between channels. I would disagree that erasing shows takes 15 seconds. I would was it takes me 3-4 seconds, although I agree that the last screen is utterly useless. At first it may be annoying if you are used to controlling your cable TV, but you become used to it and I no longer notice.
2) Ability to record 35 hours of programming. I recently put this to the test during the winter olympics. I was recording all the Olympic coverage on MSNBC, CNBC, and NBC every day. This was 15+ hours of coverage a day. I did lose an episode of AliaS I had been saving after I was not able to watch (of fast forward through) my recordings one day. I didn't add it up, but it was at least 30+ when it began erasing previous recordings.
3) Recording. I am still not sure what I think of the recording system. Once shows are recorded it is great. Playback is easy. I have a couple complaints with the planning to record system. The recurring record feature is too broad. If you recvord a show like the Simpsons which is in synidcation, you end up getting the Simpsons every day, rather than just the Sunday first run episodes. Which I find annoying.
I think those were the main compaints. The control you have or live TV or recorded tv is wonderful. When you are fast forwarding, when you press stop becuase you saw where you wanted to be in the show ... it jumps back 2-3 seconds to match you reaction time.
Admittedly, I have not tried Tivo ... but I am in love with UltimateTV and it is helping convince some of my friend's wives that they should get satellite TV too, just to have UltimateTV.
One note, we all call it Tivo cause it's easier to say. UlitmateTV is too long and a stupid name. Funny.
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I live off the grid: no cables connect my house to the street--no power, no telephone, no cable, etc.--I have solar panels and a cell phone, and now a satellite dish. So my comments won't be applicable to most people. But, to people in similar situations, information like this can be hard to find so I thought I'd post it here.DirecTV: I was able to activate the DirecTV service by calling on the cell phone. They must be able to activate access cards through the satellite signal. Don't try to activate your receiver on someone's else's landline and then move the receiver to your house--apparently it will then expect to be able to check on your billing over the landline and deactivate if it can't make a connection--but if you activate it without the landline it'll just keep going (I hope!). One significant disappointment was that apparently there are no national feeds for UPN and the WB (Ack! Buffy!). Unless you live in one of the cities with local satellite feeds you're limited to CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, and PBS national feeds (however you can get both east and west coast feeds which makes resolving conflicts easier with the three hour time difference).
Tivo: I first tried a Philips DirecTV/Tivo receiver and (expectedly) it wasn't much use without a telephone connection. I could pause live TV but couldn't record. And Tivo required that telephone connection to get its programming information. Even though I could see the programming information DirecTV had downloaded from the satellite, Tivo couldn't use it. So I disconnected it and got the DirecTV/UltimateTV receiver. (for the record I had thought I'd be getting a landline this summer and comments about Tivo's interface advantages had convinced me to try Tivo first--but I want to record NOW!)
UltimateTV: UltTV gets its programming information off of the satellite, rather than a telephone landline, so now I can record. In the literature and on the web you'll see comments about having to install a telephone line, but I talked to the people at UltTV and they said the only things you needed a landline for were to get pay-per-view, access WebTV, and rarely there might be a major problem with the receiver which required them to force a system update down a telephone line (usually system upgrades come down the satellite signal)--and in that rare event you could take your receiver to somewhere else with a dish and a landline (like a local dealer) and get it upgraded/fixed there.
Power: The RCA DirecTV/UltimateTV receiver has been drawing a near constant 36 watts--about 0.9 KWhrs/day if I leave it on all day (about 26 KWhrs per month). I usually don't--even though I have enough energy from my panels to run it all day this time of year (April)--it's right near my bed and although it's pretty quiet (about the same as a desktop computer hard drive, natch), it's enough that I don't want it on when I'm sleeping. I'm probably going to move it to the basement and control it with an IR repeater. Then I might leave it on all day, except in December and January when there isn't a lot of sun here in Vermont (it's not a waste of electricity when you have solar panels!). For the record, the Philips DirecTV/Tivo receiver used 40 watts. Not a whole lot more. A big difference though was cold start time: The Philips took four minutes from power on to watchable picture, live or recorded. The RCA takes only fifty seconds to get a live picture up (large inset in the Home screen), or only thirty seconds to get a recorded show. Both receivers/systems have a power/standby button but neither affects power use in the slightest--they just affect what's being sent to the TV (standby screen for Tivo, static for UltTV). If you leave the power connected there's no wait from standby for either receiver.
I haven't confirmed this but it seems the receiver needs to be on (connected to power) for a couple days before it has downloaded programming information for the upcoming two weeks (which is what they advertise it has access to)--and even then there are significant gaps. I don't know if that's because I disconnect the power and it loses info, or if there are just gaps in the information it downloads. If I just turn it on for a few hours each evening I usually only have programming info for the next day or two. Just means I have to stay on top of planning recordings and resolving conflicts.
I'm still getting used to the UltTV interface and didn't really have enough time to fully learn the Tivo interface so I won't compare them--others have done so. I will say that the UltTV series recording definately still needs work (yes, Simpsons up the wazoo!).
Hope this is helpful to some folks!
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