| TiVo in New Zealand? |  |
Kia Ora, I was supposed to have written this blog entry last week as now this is slightly old news. But "FreeView On Steroids" aka TiVo is coming to New Zealand. TiVo in New Zealand will finally give Sky some competition, and since analogue TV broadcasts will be stitched off some time after 2011 now is the time to prepare for the all-digital TV age.
But what exactly is TiVo... Well apart from the basics (What I have Learnt from TV) I'm not entirely sure, so I have had a look around on the internet to see if I can answer some of my questions.
Apparently the TiVo device will technically work as a FreeView satellite receiver in New Zealand, so you will be able to receive all of the Free to air channels such as TV One, TV2, TV3, C4, Maori Television, TVNZ6, TVNZ7, TVNZ Sport Extra, Parliament TV, tvCentral, Chinese TV 8, Radio New Zealand National, Radio New Zealand Concert, BASE FM and all new Freeview HD channels. Except with TiVo you will be able to record and store your favourite TV shows, automatically by series, time and it even offers the option of automatically recording shows or movies with your favourite actor or director involved.
In other countries the option to skip advertisements on your recorded programs is available, however in New Zealand this feature will be removed and only an extremely fast "fast forward" will be available, which I believe they have done as they are expecting advertisers to foot a lot of the costs involved with getting started here in New Zealand.
Another function of TiVo is the ability to watch movies on demand via a broadband connection, which sounds awesome but broadband plans in New Zealand aren't that great. Can you imagine streaming a movie watching your 2gig limit disappear. I'm not entirely sure how the broadband side of TiVo works (Might look into this a bit more) but from what I have read so far they do not supply it.
Apparently they are going to be quite expensive to buy initially, but this was the same with FreeView and the cost should come down, personally I have FreeView and I think with TiVo coming this will push more channels onto FreeView so hopefully us FreeViewers will benefit from this! I will keep an eye on this and maybe update in the future...
 |
