New IceTV branded PVR

Started by Mantorok, July 17, 2013, 01:13:43 PM

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Mantorok

Just found this PVR on Engadget.  It's sounds a lot like the new IceBox in terms of its features.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/16/tablo-hands-on/

Could the IceBox be a rebranded Tablo for the Aussie market? I wouldn't be upset if it was as it sounds pretty good.

And +1 for Plex support!

tonybenk

Having just lost all recordings from our Wiz DP-P2 for the 3rd time  >:( (our DP-S1 never had a problem in over 5 years of use).

I would like the ability to set automatic backups to external drives or over the network to a NAS device  :).

Ian Spencer @ Home

Having just had windows 8 opportunistic tuner issues on a monthly basis despite following the pcmediacenter.com.au guide I hope this PVR will be as user friendly as WMC but have great tuner options / reliability.

Will it be able to record multiple channels off the single MUX allowing more than 4 recordings at once. Mostly this is to allow for decent hard padding.

Vortical

Quote from: Heinz on July 23, 2013, 08:26:02 PM
At this stage, we are working through a few supplier options. As much as we'd like to tap into the Christmas business, our "Icebox" is likely going to hit the market in early next year.
Any rough ETA for the release month in the new year?

Heinz

We've changed chipsets and are now realistically looking at July. Given that it's more of a media centre than a PVR, we're also likely to change its name from IceBox to IceCube  8)

Paul55

Quote from: Heinz on December 02, 2013, 10:33:51 AM
Given that it's more of a media centre than a PVR

I think you may have dashed the interest of a lot of potential buyers with that statement. Great PVRs are currently like hen's teeth - looks like that won't change.

Heinz

It is going to be the best PVR in the market. That you can bet on!

Four tuners, super powerful chipset, MPEG4 conversion to preserve memory use, IceTV natively built into the box, graphic user i/f with animated icons and some very powerful media centre features, which allow you to cluster several additional PVR's together to a virtual "super PVR".

Typically, other PVR's have weak media centre features and vice versa. Our unit will be a PVR on media centre steroids! And in February, we'll tweak our ad-skipping concept, based on user ratings of the performance of various algorithms. I believe we'll have a real winner in the making. We're going to bring it out in good quality, without haste and without being driven by the competition.

We're a company that turns PVR's into TiVo-type of services, based on our patented smart recording software. To take it to the next level, we need to have control of the hardware. Our game is about IceTV sitting native inside a super-PVR/media centre (or whatever is in a name) -- our game is not about delivering yet another PVR.

8)

IanL-S

Clustering sound useful. Do the other PVRs have to be IceTV enabled?

The big question is: Will I be allowed to buy one. I already have 4 Topfield PVRs.

Ian
IceTV: IceBox + BYOB IceBox + 2xTRF-2400 + 2xTF7100HDPVRtPlus + SKIPPA [RIP] + T2 + U4 + V2
No IceTV: a few Toppys and T2
Synology NAS
Check out the oztoppy wiki and oztoppy Forum for Toppy help

Heinz

So you're a power user aye  ;) Excellent!

With four Toppies, you'll just LOVE our IceCube (which is just our internal project name at this stage, "IceBox" didn't quite capture the energy we're putting into this project.

Yes, the other PVR's need to be IceTV enabled. Our IceCube will then combine all your Topfields' tuners and add its own four tuners. Impossible to have any collisions!

When we get closer to the release date, we will be looking for beta users  :o

Paul55

Quote from: Heinz on December 02, 2013, 02:30:17 PM
It is going to be the best PVR in the market. That you can bet on!

Well, that's what I wanted to hear. Despite comments about it being a "media centre" it sounds like the core priority will be recording FTA TV - which is exactly what many of us want.
Since Topfield (via Toppro) has started making poor marketing decisions and Beyonwiz appears to be stagnant at best, the PVR market is a fair way from the heights and potential of a few years back. We need something to raise the bar.
I'm a bit concerned about the "controlling the hardware" comment. Smacks of the TiVo/Apple business model as well as having overtures of "FreeView".  Surely IceTV isn't going down that track!! I hope you only mean having an input into its capabilities.

prl

Quote from: IanL-S on December 02, 2013, 05:19:42 PM
Clustering sound useful. Do the other PVRs have to be IceTV enabled?
...
Two parts of clustering were talked about at the meeting.

One was the ability to have series recordings automatically managed across several PVRs so you don't need to reschedule because of conflicts that arise on one machine through a schedule change or a new series starting, rather than having to juggle things automatically. I don't think there's any reason why that can't be done on any IceTV-capable machine (and it obviously can't work for machines without IceTV).

The other part was "play anything from anywhere". I can't recall the implementation details of that being discussed at the meeting, but I'd guess it would be DLNA based. It's unclear whether proprietary protocols like Beyonwiz WizPnP would be supported, even though many of the details of that protocol have been published.
Peter
Beyonwiz T4 in-use
Beyonwiz T2, T3, T4, U4 & V2 for testing

IanL-S

Quote from: Heinz on December 02, 2013, 05:58:56 PM
So you're a power user aye  ;) Excellent!

<<<snip>>>

When we get closer to the release date, we will be looking for beta users  :o

Heinz, that sounds like my sort of adventure ;D

Ian
IceTV: IceBox + BYOB IceBox + 2xTRF-2400 + 2xTF7100HDPVRtPlus + SKIPPA [RIP] + T2 + U4 + V2
No IceTV: a few Toppys and T2
Synology NAS
Check out the oztoppy wiki and oztoppy Forum for Toppy help

prl

Quote from: Heinz on December 02, 2013, 05:58:56 PM
...  "IceBox" didn't quite capture the energy we're putting into this project. ...
And it's the name of a now no longer available IceTV product that did something completely different. Here's some (non-official) information about the original IceBox.
Peter
Beyonwiz T4 in-use
Beyonwiz T2, T3, T4, U4 & V2 for testing

Heinz

Indeed!

Thanks to everyone for sharing our passion in bringing a PVR to the market that has been designed with consumer benefits in mind, not the manufacturer's coffers  :)

IanL-S

One drawback of the current IceTV implementation is that it does not cover all services. I appreciate it would be a major task to create the EPG data for another 6 or so services. It would be possible for the new PVR to get EPG data for these services from transmission data and then integrate it with the IceTV data.

Not that I have a great desire to watch those services, but I would remove the need to remove them each time I do a service scan (with 5 IceTV enable PVRs this is regular task for me).

Ian
IceTV: IceBox + BYOB IceBox + 2xTRF-2400 + 2xTF7100HDPVRtPlus + SKIPPA [RIP] + T2 + U4 + V2
No IceTV: a few Toppys and T2
Synology NAS
Check out the oztoppy wiki and oztoppy Forum for Toppy help