US satellite TV provider, DirecTV, says that its long-awaited DirecTV Plus DVR is now available at retail locations across the country, including 1,300 Best Buy and Circuit City stores. The device, which can also be purchased directly from DirecTV via its Web site or a toll-free number, is being offered free-of-charge to new and existing DirecTV customers after a $100 rebate. It is based on the XTV platform of DirecTV's News Corp.-stablemate, NDS, and offers up to 100 hours of recording capacity and the ability to pause and rewind programming for up to 90 minutes. Until now, DirecTV has offered its customers TiVo-based DVR service; it will continue to do so, but says that it will not actively market that service.
Features offered by the new DVR include:
- Series Link: allows viewers to schedule recordings of entire seasons of their favorite shows, and automatically tracks changes to the programming schedule.
- Record Now/Pay Later: allows viewers to record all the pay-per-view movies they might be interested in, and only pay for the shows they actually watch.
- Bookmarks: allow viewers to bookmark their favorite scenes in a recorded program and jump directly to them.
- Support for DirecTV's interactive TV offerings. Those offerings include "NFL Sunday Ticket Interactive" (allows viewers to watch up to eight live NFL games on a single screen, and use their remote to turn up the audio on or tune directly to each channel on the multiscreen display); three DirecTV "Mix" Channels, "Sports Mix," "News Mix" and "Kids Mix" (consist of multiscreen displays of up to six live channels from different networks, and allow viewers to use their remotes to tune directly to each channel or listen to its audio); and DirecTV Active (provides a range of interactive services, including daily and extended weather forecasts, financial market summaries, daily horoscopes, lottery results, and promotional services).
- One-Touch Recording: allows viewers to record shows by pressing one button on their remote.
- Picture-in-Guide: allows viewers to browse through various features of DirecTV's user interface, while watching linear TV in a video window.
- Playlist: displays all recorded content in an organized list that includes groupings of series recordings and DirecTV extras.
- Advanced Search: allows viewers to search on upcoming and previously recorded shows by genre, actors, directors, channels or keywords, and also allows viewers to return to previous searches.
- Dual Tuners: allow viewers to watch one live program while recording another, or to record two live programs while watching a previously recorded program. (Note: TiVo does not offer dual-tuner capacity.)
- Standard DVR trick-play features, such as pause, instant replay, rewind, fast-forward, slow motion, and frame-by-frame viewing.
- AutoRecord: allows viewers to set their DVR to record all programs matching a keyword or other criteria.
- Onscreen Caller ID: allows viewers who have a caller ID service through their phone company to view caller information on the TV screen.
- Dolby Digital 5.1 optical outputs and USB ports.
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