Audio Video News

TiVo is one of the most recognizable brands in all of consumer electronics—so much so that the name of the company has become a verb in the popular lexicon, much like Xerox. After years of anticipation, TiVo today announced the next generation of its DVR platform—Premiere and Premiere XL.

Based on TiVo's Series4 architecture, the Premiere provides a 320GB hard drive that can hold 45 hours of HD or 400 hours of SD programming; the Premiere XL ups that to 1TB of hard-drive storage that can hold 150 hours of HD or 1350 hours of SD, and both have E-SATA interfaces for additional hard drives. In addition, the XL is THX-certified and is the first HD product to include THX Optimizer, which provides a series of test patterns and a pair of blue-filter glasses that let you set up your TV's basic picture controls for the box.

In addition to over-the-air ATSC, digital cable (with CableCard), and Verizon FiOS programming, both boxes can access a variety of online content—including Netflix, Blockbuster, Amazon Video On Demand, and Pandora Internet radio (new to Premiere)—via Ethernet or 802.11n/g. Finding what you want within this almost infinite universe of choices is made much easier with an updated user interface, which now lets you specify a 2- or 3-column layout, significantly reducing the number of screens you must navigate. As with previous generations, you can search for content that conforms to many different criteria, such as actor, genre, even Oscar- or Emmy-winning titles. New to the Premiere line is an inset window that displays the current program while navigating the menu system and an indicator that shows the amount of available disk space.

Later this year, consumers can get a new Bluetooth remote with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, which is sure to make searches much faster than clicking on letters in an onscreen matrix. The remote is also programmable and backlit.

TiVo Premiere and Premiere XL will be available at retail in April for $300 and $500, respectively. As with all TiVo DVRs, a subscription to the TiVo service is required and sold separately; cable and Netflix subscriptions are necessary to receive their programming and are not included with the TiVo service subscription.