Our friends at TiVo are quietly rolling out a new model — the Series 2 TiVo DT. This is not the new, improved Series 3 model that's been announced for later this year and which will shock everyone if we actually see it before New Year's Eve. The Series 3 will handle HD-TV. The big difference in the new Series 2 model is that "DT" stands for dual tuner. That means you can theoretically record two shows at once.
Here's why that may not be as wonderful as it sounds. To record two shows, you need two video sources and with this machine, neither one can be a plain, old-fashioned roof antenna and one must be analog cable without a cable box or descrambler. You could have a satellite feed or a digital (or analog) cable signal with premium channels for one…but the other would have to be basic analog cable, meaning you can't record HBO and Cinemax at the same time.
The new model comes initially in an 80-hour configuration with a 180-hour version to follow at some unspecified time. The first ones are supposed to be available already over at the TiVo website but I sure couldn't find them there. If you can't either, they're supposed to be at your local retailers on May 1. List price is $249 but there seem to be some $150 rebate deals available. Alas, that's not the main expenditure. Since lifetime service is no longer available for standalone TiVos, you'll have to pay as you go, which is $12.95 a month if you own one TiVo and an additional $6.95 per month for every other one you own. In addition, most people will probably have to shell out extra to their local cable company to get an analog cable signal as their second input and that will run them at least another ten bucks a month.
None of this sounds all that useful to me, though I suppose it will brighten the television experience for some folks. Overall, it's a disappointment. Most of the time, TiVo is wonderful but it does tend to let us down once in a while.