TiVo HD XL Unveiled - 1TB of Storage

Hot on the heels of their renewed DirecTV relations, TiVo unveils a new stand-alone unit for cable (or OTA antenna) customers. The $600 TiVo HD XL will be available from TiVo.com today, followed by appearances at Amazon.com and Magnolia stores in the coming weeks.

I recently spent some time with a production TiVo HD XL unit and, as you can see, it looks quite similar to the existing TiVo HD. The obvious differences are the inclusion of the Glo Remote and a significantly higher capacity 1 terabyte drive - over 150 hours of HD recording, versus 20 provided by a standard TiVo HD. The XL’s $300 premium also gets you THX certification - something previously seen on the TiVo Series3 (RIP) and perhaps a draw for the higher-end consumer (think CEDIA) they’re targeting with this model.

The internals appear pretty much the same, although I did notice some model number and chip manufacturer variations. And despite the larger (”GreenPower“) drive, power consumption (with TiVo-branded WiFi adapter) matches my TiVo HD: The Kill A Watt has both weighing in at about 38 watts.

Now the bad news… I’ll go ahead and surmise from the co-branded TiVo HD + TiVo HD XL documentation that a Tru2Way Series4 is still some time off. The optimist in me says next spring. But given recent state of the union comments and the power of holiday shopping, next fall is more realistic.












 

Connect With Techlore