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Long live UltimateTV?

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  • Long live UltimateTV?

    People who have UltimateTV really love it. This was a partnership between DirecTV and Microsoft, back in the day. It actually was available when DirecTV and TiVo started their partnership. DirecTV sold both interfaces - imagine that. It seems that they've taken a few steps backward here.

    The UltimateTV had two features that aren't in TiVos, and one that I haven't really seen since outside of a Windows Media Center. The first is Picture-in-Picture, and the second is the QWERTY keyboard.

    The R15 has the P-in-P, but QWERTY (something plenty of DVR users would love) hasn't really resurfaced.

    Anyway, we're doing our part to keep these units running. We have kits to replace failed hard drives here.
    Been here a long time . . .

  • #2
    Replacement hard drive

    Someone not technically very savvy told me that a friend of his had an Ultimate TV, the hard drive failed, he went to Fry's and got a new bare hard drive, replaced it in the UT unit, turned it on and the unit automatically booted up from the bios, connected to the satellite service, downloaded the software and started working ...

    Is this true or was it one of those stories getting changed and embellished as they are passed along? Just curious.

    RB

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    • #3
      The Ultimate can, in some circumstances, use a blank drive, then connect to Microsoft, and download the OS. It takes quite a while for the download, and for some reason it only seems to work very rarely, but in concept, that's what's going on.
      Been here a long time . . .

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      • #4
        Still have mine (sony) and it still works. Upgrade the HDD several years back. But to be honest, it really just a backup because I switched to digital cable and use a HDTiVo with external HD.

        I work for MS and had several email exchanges about UTV with the UTV team when it was in development. Of course now the product team is long gone. They had some cool things planned before the product was cancelled.

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        • #5
          So you keep DTV as a backup, but you generally use cable?
          Been here a long time . . .

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          • #6
            Mines been used 4 a door stop since day one

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