TiVo to unveil 'Elite' DVR with four tuners

TiVo (Nasdaq: TIVO) plans to take the wraps off of a high-end retail DVR containing four tuners and the capability to record up to 300 hours of high-definition programming, or double the capacity of its Premiere DVR.

Tivo's Premiere Elite DVR, announced today, will be on display Thursday at CEDIA 2011.

The Premiere Elite DVR, which TiVo is expected to unveil tomorrow at a convention for home theater installers in Indianapolis, features a hard drive that can store 2 terabytes of data. The DVR is a retail version of the Premiere Q home gateway set-top that TiVo announced in June. RCN (Nasdaq: RCNI) is the first TiVo cable customer that has said it will deploy the Premiere Q box to its subscribers. While RCN subscribers who lease an Elite DVR from the cable overbuilder will be able to watch video-on-demand programming through the set-tops, consumers who buy an Elite box at a retail outlet won't be able to view VOD programming, a TiVo spokesman said.

TiVo plans to charge $499 for the Premiere Elite DVR when it goes on sale later this year. At that price, the high-end TiVo DVR could compete well against the $599 Moxi DVR from Arris (Nasdaq: ARRS), which contains three tuners.

Elite is the first TiVo DVR that is only compatible with digital cable platforms, and won't record analog programming or content delivered via over-the-air antennas. Word that TiVo was building the Elite DVR first surfaced in June, when the company asked the FCC for a waiver that would allow it to sell a DVR that wouldn't support analog programming.

Tivo's Elite DVR is a high-end box targeted at home theater owners and heavy TV users that want the ability to record four programs simultaneously, while watching a fifth program.

Most pay TV subscribers with DVRs have set-tops from Motorola (NYSE: MMI) or Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) containing two tuners that customers lease from their local cable operator. While most subscribers are content with two tuners, cable operators and set-top vendors could feel pressured to increase the memory and number of tuners offered in their DVRs if TiVo's Elite DVR gains popularity.

For more:
- see the news release

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