Remember that big to do about the tru2way
memorandum of understanding that Sony and
the rest of the Consumer Electronics manufacturers signed earlier last year. You know, the one that said every cable operator in the US would be tru2way capable by July 1st 2009? Well that date has come and gone and while
the providers insist it is no big deal, no HDTV manufactures seem very excited about tru2way at the moment. According to Comcast's EVP David Cohen, more than just three markets will be ready to go by the end of the year. At this point we'll believe it when we see it, because supposedly tru2way HDTVs have been available to Comcast subscribers in Chicago, Denver and Atlanta for some time, yet not even a single review or hands-on has appeared online, in fact we haven't even gotten a single tip or comment that anyone even has one of these tru2way TVs. Every provider in world could be ready but if there aren't plenty of tru2way TVs announced at CES in a few months, it's all for naught.
posted Oct 27th 2009 2:39PM
How about tuners? Is the Ceton tuner supposed to support tru2way?
nope
Is the Ceton tuner supposed to support tru2way?
No, it's not going to support tru2way.
Read this posting
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/p/78488/388832.aspx
The answer doesn't seem to be there in so many words but the answer is no.
The fellow who installed my last cable card from
comcast said he and many others in the Denver area are running tru2way at home as beta testers. It's not broadly available and he did not give an eta, just talked about how great it was. So apparently they're letting at least some employees preview the system.
I have seen a single Panasonic 42in plasma on sale in Boulder, Co at the Ultimate Electronics and I can vouch with first hand knowledge that Comcast is tru2way ready in Denver. It's pretty cool but I have to say, there is slim to no support from manufacturers and the lack of a DVR poses a problem.
I forgot to add that the Panasonic was tru2way ready.
Doesn't matter any more. They missed the date they promised, and now its just how much of a liar they are, not whether they're liars or not.
Honestly, what content can't you get via your PC at this point that having Video On Demand will get you access to? Food Network? Discovery Channel? I assume those will be part of Comcast's "TV Anywhere" project, allowing you to access their VOD library over the internet. That'll be here sooner than this technological backwater.
TV vendors should focus on adding internet streaming to their TVs. No cable cards or rental fees from the cable co required. And decent UIs too rather than those stupid blue bubbles and ridiculously nested menus in Comcast's UI. Over the top Comcast will have to compete with the other sites offering streaming shows. And if their interface isn't good enough they'll lose. In that environment maybe you'll get something you can live with.
If you look around you can find an occasional review of one of the Panasonic sets that are available and support tru2way. The only one I found that appeared to have tru2way installed and working though was here:
http://www.abt.com/product/37817/Panasonic-TH42PZ80Q.html?utm_source=scfroogle&utm_medium=sc&utm_campaign=froogle
Under reviews there's ONE GUY who called Comcast to get them to enable tru2way on his 42" Panasonic box and had trouble (Comcast didn't understand the request), but apparently eventually got it working. He does list tru2way support under CONS rather than PROS though.
Oh and its out of stock at abt of course.
At my suggestion, my mother-in-law installed a Tru-2-Way enabled TV in the Chicago suburb where we live. Unfortunately she has been dragging her feet in getting more than basic cable to go with it! Hopefully in a couple of weeks that will happen. When it does I'd be happy to do a review.
Tru2way is interesting, but I use cablecards to get away from the Cable Co hardware and GUI..
Where can we find data on specific MSOs in specific markets that do or do not support (personally, I only care about TWC in NYC, but others need such info)?
Seems to me it's DVR users who may get a lot more benefit from this standard, yet do we know ANYTHING even vaguely concrete about TiVo and a DVR?
Currently there is no 3rd party tru2way DVR software. This doesn't mean that TiVo couldn't run the VOD part of tru2way, but TiVo has not announced such a device.
Time Warner Cable is using tru2way across most of their system.