Though it has already been spotted before, the Tivo Elite is out from hiding, and will let you record an ungodly four shows at once, with room to let you watch a fifth. I feel overwhelmed already.
Having all of this archival power through a lone multi-stream CableCard is great. But there’s a twist! Pending FCC approval, the Tivo elite won’t record from analogue or over-the-air sources. Instead, it will pull from Digital Cable and Verizon FIOS only, which is peculiar.
The THX-certified box uses the Tivo Series4 guts, has a 2TB hard drive (approximately 300 hours of recording space) and spits out video at up to 1080p resolution. Plus, it has the standard array of outputs for connecting your TV (HDMI, Component, Composite, Optical audio, RCA audio). And of course, services such as YouTube are also available.
But technical wizardry aside, I can’t even think of any time in my life where I wanted to record four things at once. Maaaaaybe there was a time on a Sunday night when HBO, Showtime and AMC all had must watch shows. But that’s it. And if you say sports, tsk tsk. Sports are meant to be watched live. Price and availability have yet to be firmed up, but rumours suggest it will be somewhere around $US600. [Tivo]