Retail Moxi HD set-top box coming (in 2007)

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

There is no doubt that TiVo is the big brand in the DVR market. However after recent issues like the initial limited availability of the Series3 or the possible conflicts between the IR signals of the Series 3 TiVo and plasma televisions you may be tempted to look elsewhere for alternative.

If you were thinking about a Moxi set-top box and your cable operator doesn’t offer it I am sorry to inform you that the wait will be very long. According to the Twice magazine Digeo, the company that provides the Moxi models, announced that a retail Moxi HD set-top box will be available during next year and precisely in the fall season.

The device will be shown in January at the International CES in Las Vegas but some details started to emerge this month. The HD cable box will incorporate a multi-stream CableCard slot to access multiple simultaneous feeds.

This will be one of the main advantages of this box on the Series3 because the latter requires multiple slots to offer the same feature. Digeo executives also added that the user will be able to use interactive services like PPV or Video on Demand but for this to happen the CableCard 2.0 technology must be available (maybe it will be in 2007).

Moxi has also revamped the graphical user interface satisfying the requests of its consumers and may eventually include a Blu-ray or HD-DVD drive to reproduce HD DVDs.

In addition, the box will allow to stream videos to the other televisions in another room (using a coaxial cable content) but the signal transferred will be downgraded to SD.

It will be priced at around $1000 and since it is a hefty price we hope a rebate is not excluded before it hits the market next year. It is too early to forecast what will happen within twelve months but the TiVo Series3 will certainly be will positioned and that price does not seem a good incentive to switch system.