section from Mercury news recap
Personal video recorders
Last year's CES marked the debut for TiVo Inc. and Replay
Networks, two Silicon Valley companies making personal TV
recorders that use a hard disk to pause and replay live TV, as well as
recording shows automatically based on the viewer's preferences.
This year, more manufacturers announced plans for such devices, with
prices dropping and features expanding. The recorders are also
showing signs of evolving into storage devices for all manner of home
entertainment -- TV, music, home videos, photographs and anything
else that can be digitized, including information from the Web.
Sony announced its first TiVo unit will be due this spring, priced just
under $400. That's $100 less than the basic Philips models sell for
today, and the Sony units will have more than twice the recording
capacity. Future Sony models will be able to connect to other home
electronics devices, such as CD and DVD players, once
copyright-protection issues are resolved.
Panasonic said it would begin selling its version of the Replay
recorder in April, with price and storage capacity yet to be
announced.
Philips announced it would add a competing model to its TiVo line: a
personal TV recorder from Microsoft's WebTV subsidiary in
Mountain View. That unit would incorporate the WebTV Plus
service, which allows viewers to see enhanced versions of TV shows
and, for an extra fee, to browse the Internet on their TV. Company
officials declined to say when the WebTV unit would be available, or
how much it would cost.
WebTV already makes a similar unit in cooperation with satellite TV
provider EchoStar Communications Corp., which sells for $299 and
can tune in satellite broadcasts from EchoStar's Dish Network.
DirecTV announced that its version of personal TV -- a receiver with
TiVo technology -- would be available in the second quarter of this
year for an undisclosed price. Those receivers won't be able to
browse the Internet but will perform some simple interactive TV
functions, using technology from Wink of Alameda.
TiVo also has announced efforts to develop interactive TV services
with America Online and Liberate Technologies of San Carlos.
Officials from Thomson, which owns the RCA, GE and ProScan
brands, indicated they, too, planned to enter the personal TV realm,
most likely with Microsoft. |
