Macopinion

Tivo versus DirecTV HDDVR, Part 2

by Marc Zeedar macopinion@designwrite.com

On-Screen Graphics
The two systems have obvious philosophical differences in how they handle on-screen graphics. Tivo's approach is more modal: that is, there's a "Tivo mode" where you're not watching TV and you're solely operating the Tivo. Thus most of Tivo's screens take over the entire display. At any time you can press the "Live TV" button to return to live television, but to do almost all functions -- view programming schedules, search for programs, look through recorded shows, etc. -- you must be in TV mode. The only exception for this is the Guide which is displayed as a translucent overlay on top of the playing video.

Tivo's "Now Playing" screen shows you programs you've recorded.

The DirecTV DVR takes a more interactive approach: most of the time menus display as overlays on top of video and in some modes the video is shrunk to a smaller screen in the upper right corner so you can continue to see the video while searching the guide or scheduling recordings.

DirecTV DVR's shows you live video while you browse your recordings.

Which approach is better? I've always liked Tivo's method and never had a complaint. But I'm a tweaker and spend a lot of time managing my recordings and schedules. I never realized how nice it would be to be able to continue to watch TV while I did those things. With the DirecTV unit I can do that and I now think that's a better way and Tivo's full-screen, modal approach seems dated.

Another aspect of graphics that's significant is the quality of the displays: the menus, text, etc. Here I give the slight edge to Tivo -- that could be simply because I'm more comfortable with them -- but the DirecTV's graphics are not bad at all (certainly nothing as poor as I feared). Graphics are important because you spend a lot of time interacting with a DVR, reading text on the screen, browsing information. If text is hard to read or ugly, it makes the experience unpleasant and frustrating. DirecTV uses subtle transparency and generally things look great, though displays are bare and functional and not exactly imaginative.

You'll notice with most things that they look extremely similar. For instance here's what the "progress bar" of a show while you are playing it looks like on both systems:

Tivo's progress bar. Note the three green triangles mean that we're fast-forwarding at 60x.

The DirecTV DVR's progress bar. The "3" at the end means we're fast-forwarding a higher speed. Note how much more space the DTV progress bar takes up on the screen -- but it is translucent, so it's not quite as obnoxious as it could be.

The one negative of the DirecTV system that stands out is the huge, ugly, and pointless DirecTV logo. Why is it there? Presumably I'm already a customer and have paid for this -- I don't need to be reminded of that constantly. A small logo deep in the corner might be okay. As it is, it's way too big and prominent and wastes space that could be used for something practical.

Another important aspect of on-screen graphics is icons. Tivo's are far superior, using simple large shapes differing mostly in color. For instance, a show marked with a large red circle means the show is currently recording. A green circle is a show you've marked to never be deleted. A yellow circle is a show that is going to expire soon, and a yellow with an exclamation point inside it means the show will be available for deletion in less than twenty-four hours.

Inside a folder of Tivo shows with shows marked to be automatically deleted if disk space is needed for new recordings.

DirecTV's icons are not terrible and I like certain aspects of them. For instance, a single red circle with an "R" in it stands for a single episode of a show to be recorded. Several red circles overlaying each other indicates you are recording all the episodes of a series. However, one aspect of this that confuses me is that when a show is currently recording it has the same red-circle "R" in it -- I have to look at the time to tell that it's recording that show already as it looks the same as a show it's going to record.

But where the DirecTV DVR moves ahead is in showing you the space free on the device. Tivo, idiotically, still has no indicator of how much disk space is free on the drive! The information's just not available to you (you can't even find it buried in menus). The only way you can tell your drive is getting full is when old shows start deleting or if you do the math yourself. You can inspect an individual show and see how much space it is using, both in gigabytes and as a percentage of the whole drive, so it is possible to calculate this, by why should you have to?

DirecTV's DVR, on the other hand, has nice graph at the bottom of your recorded programs listings window showing you the percentage of fullness (or emptiness, if you're an optimist). A darker color shows what percentage of the used space is for shows you've set to never be deleted.

Ironically, DirecTV won't tell you how much space a single show uses. This latter is annoying since HD programs use so much more space than SD -- if you know you're running low on space you might like to choose to delete an old HD show instead of letting the unit decide what to delete. (This is exacerbated by SD shows that air on HD channels -- and thus take up the same space as HD, but aren't indicated as "HD" since the show isn't HD quality.)

(I still can't fathom why Tivo won't tell you disk space free. Though in the early days with tiny hard drives I can see why they wanted to de-emphasize you managing recordings and let the machine do it, for that was a radical concept, but it makes zero sense today.)

I certainly prefer DirecTV's method and that swings my vote in favor of that device.

Winner: DirecTV DVR

Next Time: Program Guides and Show Info

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