Summary of DirectTiVo
DirecTV is a direct-broadcast satellite TV programming provider operating in the United States. It uses smallish, externally building-mounted dishes and proprietary receivers (with cryptographic access cards to enforce payment for programming) to supply TV programs to millions of customers in the U.S. TiVo is a separate company which developed consumer-friendly DVRs, which normally receive an input signal from any analog audio/video source that would ordinarily be sent directly to the television monitor, e.g., analog cable TV service, or the output of a cable tuner/descrambler box supplied by a local cable TV provider. It’s perfectly possible to send the output of a traditional DirecTV satellite receiver to a traditional TiVo recorder, in which case the TiVo controls the tuning of the DirecTV unit via an infrared “blaster” (remote control-simulating transmitter) or serial port connection, but there is otherwise no real integration between the two units. But DirecTV has partnered with TiVo to produce, in one consumer product, the functional combination of the two units. It integrates the satellite tuner (actually, in recent units, two independent tuners), the on-screen programming guide, and the hard drive and recording/playback technology. This has distinct technical advantages for the consumer, as well as some disadvantages.