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Cox Considers Offering TiVo DVRs

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

May 8, 2006, 3:41 PM

Cable provider Cox may be considering replacing its own digital video recorders with a TiVo-branded service, as at least one subscriber has reported receiving surveys that focused on the topic of DVRs. A poster to the TiVo Community forum who goes by the name "BrettStah" first mentioned the survey in a posting Thursday,

The survey, which has been confirmed by BetaNews, asks several questions of the user regarding their current survey, as well as a potential offering including the TiVo service.

In the survey, Cox writes "while Cox currently offers its own DVR service, the Cox DVR may soon be powered by TiVo, and include the features that TiVo owners have come to expect."

The poster got this message after responding that he subscribed to satellite TV, and the survey asked the probability of switching to Cox if such a service was made available.

"There were a lot of other TiVo-related questions... how important certain features are, would I be willing to have one of their current DVRs if the price was $3 cheaper than what I'm paying now, etc.," the poster wrote Thursday.

If the survey is indeed an indication of Cox's future plans, it would be a huge win for TiVo. The service signed on number one cable provider Comcast last year, gaining access to 21.4 million cable subscribers. Cox is the third largest cable provider nationwide, with 6.7 million customers.

Cox could not be reached for comment as of press time.

Add a Comment (6 Comments)

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By The Man

edited May 9, 2006 - 11:00 AM

why would you name your company that?

"Cox could not be reached for comment as of press time."

really now!
they should have called the people at MS or Sony, heard they have lots of them there

Score: 0

By wheel4hummer

posted May 8, 2006 - 7:52 PM

Just allow me compatibility with MythTV, and ill be happy.

Score: 0

By damndj

posted May 9, 2006 - 1:15 AM

Thank god. Cox's current offering of DVRs is horrible. Their interface is crud and can't come close to the greatness that is the TiVo interface.

They couldn't switch soon enough.

Score: 0

By proxy

posted May 9, 2006 - 11:23 AM

i second that, I was a happy tivo customer, and eventually got an HD TV, so i figured that I'd just use the COX DVR since it supports HD and recording two shows at once.

Well these two features are not enough to compensate for the junk that is the COX DVR. A few things I simply can't stand:

#1 No concept of a season pass, instead you have to locate your show in the guide and say "record all new episodes in this time slot", if i happen to not know when or where it is shown, out of luck.

#2 No audio feedback on input, like every device, the input occasionally lags. But since there is no audio feedback, I can sometimes not tell if it is simply ignoring my command or if it is simply lagged.

#3 No jump to begining/end of show you are watching.

#4 if you start to watch a show currently being recorded, it doesn't default to begining of show, instead it defaults to live TV (which sucks cause of #3)

#5 If you are watching something currently being recorded but are behind live TV, when the show ends (and thus it stops recording) you are booted out of watching the recording. And this time, it defaults to the start of the show!

and that's just what i can think of off hand!