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Cox finally coming out with multi-room DVR
October 23rd, 2009, 3:11 am · 19 Comments · posted by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress
Update, 1:11 p.m.: Added a few more details about Cox’s upcoming service.
Cox Communications has confirmed that the elusive multi-room DVR is on target for an end-of-the-year launch. That’s right, in two months, Cox cable TV subscribers should have the option of a DVR that can be accessed from other rooms in your house.
“At this time we can’t talk about specifics yet, but our plans are still on target,” said Lana Ong, the local Cox spokeswoman who told me about the DVR’s 2009 launch.
I first heard about this device from Cox in March 2007 during a visit to its Rancho Santa Margarita headquarters. At the time, Cox officials were just exploring new cable TV technologies. See my earlier story, “New TV tricks from your cable company.”
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Now, 2.5 years later, Cox could be the first Orange County cable company to offer the multi-room DVR. (Sorry, Time Warner customers — no updates are available on when we will get ours although the company had said it plans to have one this year.) Nationwide, Cox did announce earlier this year that it will offer a multi-room DVR, but no updates have been offered. The news today is specifically for customers in Orange County.
A multi-room DVR becomes the only DVR a home needs. Instead of having multiple DVRs at home with each recording different and sometimes duplicate TV shows, you only need one, presumably for the living room. Other rooms of the house just need a receiver that will be able to access any show stored on the main DVR in the living room.
Why would you want this? If you start watching a TV show in the living room then feel like watching the rest in bed, you can pause it, move to the bedroom and hit play on the bedroom TV. Also, you won’t take up valuable storage space by recording the same show on separate DVRs. And if people in different rooms are watching the same show, it won’t be interrupted if one person pauses the recording.
Unfortunately, Cox won’t reveal details. So, I’ve tracked down the competition’s offering for clues. Cox corporate, however, did say earlier this year that a multi-room DVR won’t replace existing DVR services.
In Orange County, both Verizon FiOS and AT&T’s U-verse offer multi-room DVRs.
Verizon’s FiOS TV Home Media DVR is $19.99/month. Up to 3 TVs can access shows at the same time. Looks like you can only record two shows at the same time.
The AT&T Total Home DVR allows all connected boxes in the house to manage and schedule DVR recordings. Users can record up to four shows simultaneously and up to eight TVs can access recorded programs on the multi-room DVR. The best part is that the feature is built in to all U-verse DVRs so there’s no extra cost. More comparisons of U-verse vs. everyone else are HERE.
TiVo offers a multi-room DVR, which works with any paid-TV service.
In other parts of the nation, Time Warner has played around with the multi-room DVR. In 2005, it offered one to residents in Minnesota reportedly for $8. That region has since switched over to Comcast.
Previous stories about DVRs:
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Tamara - Any word on the TIVO adapter from COX?
Hi Lori — The last update — from Sept. 25 — was that the planned September launch of the TiVo adapter was delayed till end of the year. Let me check to see if anything has changed.
What is this TIVO adapter?
Cable companies must provide an adapter to their TiVo/CableCARD users if they want those customers to get all the channels. Here’s the last story on it: “Cox fix for TiVo users delayed“
How much more is Cox going to charge us?
COX COMMUNICATIONS SUCKS!!! DONT EVER CONSIDER GETTING COX! THEY ARE THE WORST!!!
Unless you’re retired, go AT&T U-Verse, DishNetwork, DirecTV or if you are out of position for all of that, then just buy a Slingbox and SlingCatcher or run a cable to a neighbor’s house and split their bill with them –or just use Hulu.com
Many people think COX is a horrible company. There are court records online that show they sue people and are sued. They are known to wreck people’s credit over a final month’s bill after 10 or 20 years of steady payments from a customer and refuse to fix the credit even when they’re paid. Try to return your equipment and pay your final bill in person and get a statement showing $0 –forget it –they’ll take the equipment and cash but you won’t leave with anything that says you owe $0 and your account is closed. They’re known not to turn the encryption settings on between the cable modems and their head-end equipment (meaning someone in your neighborhood could be monitoring where you go and what you do on the Internet). They’re known to repeatedly hammer away at your checking account even after getting an NSF or two or three –and even knowing you’re charged $40 each time, they’ll hit you with an NSF fee of their own. Invite their cable people into your home to help clear up “reception issue” and they might tear your home entertainment center apart and only reassemble enough to receive TV before saying “I couldn’t find anything wrong” and leaving. Go into the lobby and wait long enough and witness young couples coming in to demand an explanation for charges they did not authorize only to be given the run around. If you complain in their lobby, they might send someone down who is like a DMV worker and most of their phone and lobby people are trained to create artificial documentation about customers they feel are going to be potential litigation risks. The company they bought out to get into OC, Dimension Cable, used to auto-dial people at work and demand payment of their cable bill –we’d sit in the office and watch the phone roll over from desk to desk as it would go around in the pools. Then there is the whole wisdom of running your phone service over their cable tv network which does not work when the power fails (like after an Earthquake or transformer explosion) or when some guy is screwing around in the neighborhood’s head-end. For all of this BS what benefit do they give you that you can’t get from a dish or U-Verse?
Instead of granting “right of way” to companies like COX, the cities need to start mandating installation of fiber to every dwelling run back to common-access cabinets that any provider can run backhaul to. Then the dwelling inhabitants can place an order with any company (AT&T, Verizon, CenturyTel, XO, whoever) to go out and patch their fiber to that company’s backhaul. The whole concept of coper-wires and coaxial cable is obsolete –and its tim for the idea of making the neighborhood cabinets into common-access naps. The cities just need to setup an office to tax all the carriers that want to participate in the cabinets to pay into a general fund that runs the fiber from those cabinets to each dwelling.
Too right!
Cox needs to run fiber to homes and unblock the ports on their DVRs.
This could be great - but - I tried the ATT uVerse version and it had a major disadvantage over multiple TIVOs (iike I have now): you can only pause TV in the room with the actual DVR even though you can watch recorded shows in any room.
cable blows
Is it going to be silver that wont match my other black components again?
Ok, so I now see clearly, why DISH is scrambling to up the cost of their features, etc. The TiVo infringement deal must have cost them a bundle!
Will Cox’s multi room DVR allow you to schedule a recording from your cell phone or your computer like AT&T’s U-Verse whole home DVR??
No details yet as to whether Cox’s DVR will offer this feature. But the AT&T, Verizon, Dish and DirecTV offers remote scheduling from your phone.
Tamara - Any word on if cox is finally going to enable the ESATA port on the DVR to allow for more storage.
Now if Cox could only fix the loud commercials on their cable.
I’m waiting for a Verison, or AT & T TV. Then trashing cox. I’m sick of them.
AVGuy says:
October 24, 2009 at 7:16 am
Tamara - Any word on if cox is finally going to enable the ESATA port on the DVR to allow for more storage.
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Yes, Tamara, can we get an online petition started to get Cox to unblock these ports?