Comments on: Panasonic Plans Tru2Way Sets

By: Glenn

Glenn — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:31:56 +0000

Even a 1GB card would give you about 1.5 hours of HD storage, which you’d think would be enough most of the time for simple pause/fast-forward/rewind within a show. 2GB of storage would probably be sufficient for any reasonable use, including full movies, sports, etc.

I thought somebody had already done this on a TV set, though only for a short 10-30 second time frame, i.e. a reply of that last play or whatever. Don’t remember where I heard about it though.

Of course all the cable cos will soon be offering the equivalent of Time Warner’s StartOver service, which will do this without any local flash storage. But you won’t be able to fast-forward thru the ads with that so the feature might still be worth something…

By: MegaZone

MegaZone — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:22:11 +0000

Dave – Instead of including flash in the TV they should just include an SD slot, like many TVs have anyway for picture viewing, and allow the set to use an SD card as a buffer. Then users who want it can just stick in an SD card – and those get bigger all the time, what are we at now, 32GB? (Not cheap, sure, but for just a buffer a 2GB card is probably enough, and those are pretty cheap now.)

But it would mean including an encoder chip to handle analog channels, unless they only allowed buffering of digital channels. Once cable goes all digital things like buffers and DVRs will get much easier – all the encoding requirements go away.

By: Terry

Terry — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:19:43 +0000

What I’m curious about is whether Panny will offer a blade for their Pro line that includes CC w/ Tru2Way. I’m hoping to get a 50″ Panny Pro w/ upgradeable slots. It would be nice to know if this would work. I’d rather rent another CC in addition to my TiVo HD than get a Comcast box.

By: Ben Drawbaugh

Ben Drawbaugh — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:59:13 +0000

Spent some time with both Panasonic and TV Guide at CES talking about tru2way.

These will be available this year and are currently being tested. No extra devices will be necessary and you’ll have the exact same functionality as a normal cable issued STB. So this includes the same guide, VOD and access to SDV channels. It’ll use the same CableCARDs that are currently deployed.

DVR’s could be built into the TV, but Panasonic doesn’t have one planned.

Ohh, and tru2way TV remotes will have extra buttons for the cable co’s UI, like a triangle etc.

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:58:21 +0000

Good point. Man, I guess I needed another shot of espresso in my frap today. And maybe this is why Google News dropped me.

By: Terry

Terry — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:55:26 +0000

No need for a tuning resolver. The SDV will be taken care of because, as CableLabs is happy to tell us, it’s Tru2Way The downstream communication for tuning will be handled in the same way existing cable boxes work (along w/ VoD and PPV).

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:51:58 +0000

I was brainstorming with Ben D and came up with the idea that manufacturers should install some flash memory to give me a small buffer allowing basic pause, ffw, rw without a full-on DVR experience. Enough to use the restroom, answer the phone, or queue up content to fast forward past all the commercials.