Saturday 19 February 2011

Poll Results: 1TB Hard Drive is most desired feature of Virgin Media's TiVo

Voting for the first poll on this blog ended on Thursday after 157 votes (apologies for the crappy display of the poll), and to recap the results:

Which feature of Virgin Media's TiVo are you looking forward to the most?

1TB Hard Drive for recording more content, especially HD
  84 (53%)
Wishlists
  18 (11%)
TiVo Suggestions
  10 (6%)
Search & Browse for Content and related actors
  8 (5%)
Rating shows and movies
  0 (0%)
Extended EPG (including 7 day catch-up)
  13 (8%)
TiVo Apps (including YouTube & other IPTV apps)
  10 (6%)
Mobile & online recordings
  6 (3%)
Better looking user interface
  8 (5%)

That 1TB Hard Drive should be enough to contain 500 hours of standard definition recordings, or around 125 hours of high definition recordings - more if Virgin ever decide to use the more bandwidth efficient MPEG 4 codec for their HD channels instead of MPEG 2.

By comparsion, the 160Gb hard drive in the V+ HD boxes only has enough space for 80 hours of standard definition recordings, and a measly 20 hours of high definition recordings. With 17 HD channels on Virgin's XL pack, that really isn't enough.

Wishlists, TiVo Suggestions, extended EPG and TiVo apps were also highlighted as the most worthwhile features. As for rating shows and movies, I guess people will more interested in watching the content than rating it.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's one expensive hard drive

Simon Middleton said...

Interesting, the things I most missed on Sky+ was the ability to search for programmes to record and series links that didn't auto delete themselves.

Of course if you've never had them then you don't realise that that's what you really need.

Bofrok said...

Might be interesting to run a modifed version of the poll a bit later on when more people have used TiVo.

Perhaps "Which feature of Virgin Media's TiVo impressed you the most?

Jason (Admin) said...

Bofrok, sure I can do that, probably at some point after April to give more existing customers (and new customers) a chance to get TiVoed.

Richard said...

problem with the question is most people in the uk don't get what TIVO is. So the only thing they are interested in is a rival to the SKY+ HD 1TB.
Guess what, VM could have done a V+ 1TB box and thankfully they didn't. They thought better than that and worked with Tivo.

Do the same pole on the tivo uk forum and see the difference. These people know Tivo and will give a better perspective of it.

As Bofrok says, re do the poll in 6, 9 and 12 months and watch the difference when people use it.

Tivo is not about the storage. Its about the way we select what we watch. And it can totally change viewing behaviour. BUT people see SKY+ 1TB boxes and they want that for VM because they cant see beyond what they can do today.

Jason (Admin) said...

Richard: That's up to VM and how they advertise TiVo in future months. Do a good enough job and people will see the benefit of Wishlists and other features.

Sure, some people over at other forums would vote differently, but the vast majority of VM's TiVo customers are going to be new to TiVo anyway so its up to VM to educate them and make them realise that there's more to TiVo then more recording space.

And the 1TB drive really is needed at this point, regardless of what box its in. I have 5 series links on BBC HD alone and I'm having to watch recorded content sooner than I would like just to clear enough space for future recordings the following week.

Keep those poll suggestions coming people, I'm making a list. :-)

Mypcmag said...

nice information on hard drive.....


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