TiVo is announcing the TiVo Mega, quite literally its biggest product yet. The 24 terabyte server-like appliance can record more than 26,000 hours (or about three years’ worth) of SD TV shows, or 4,000 hours of HD content before any deleting is necessary. In other words, it’s a DVR hoarder’s dream.
“Size matters,” says Ira Bahr, CMO at TiVo. “People hate being forced to delete cool stuff from their DVR before they want to. Now, with TiVo Mega they don’t have to.”
Related: The cheapest TiVo yet caters to cord cutters by recording over-the-air TV
The company declares that the TiVo Mega’s capacity is more than 12 times the storage available on cable or satellite DVRs, and dwarfs the 3,000 hours of SD, or 450 hours of HD recording offered by the company’s premium Roamio Pro DVR. The uber-DVR is rack-mountable, features swappable drives to protect users from data loss, and six tuners so users can record multiple programs at the same time. It also streams live and recorded TV programs to smartphones and tablets, with offline playback as an option.
Other features include multi-room functionality, a personalized dashboard with recommendations on what to watch, editorial collections of programming, a remote equipped with a QWERTY slide-out keyboard, and Ethernet or MoCA (Multimedia over Coax Alliance) network connectivity. Like the aforementioned Roamio, users will also get access to basic streaming apps like Netflix and YouTube, and advanced universal searching across multiple VOD platforms.
The TiVo Mega is expected to make its retail debut in the first quarter of 2015. Final pricing will be determined in the coming months, but the company expects the price to be about $5,000. There’s no doubt that’s a kings ransom for a machine that’s predicated around digital recording. But TiVo has always been all about delivering the best pay-TV experience, targeted at those who are willing and able to pay for that experience. The Mega embodies that notion at an unprecedented level.
For a sneak peak, attendees at this week’s CEDIA EXPO 2014 can visit TiVo’s booth (570) for more details and a demo of the TiVo Mega.
