You don’t need to have HD cable television in order to record high def content with an HD TiVO. The Series 3 HD TiVO is capable of recording local HD broadcasts picked up from an antenna. In fact, local over-the-air HD might be the only HD version of some television shows or sporting events available to viewers. This can be the case when the local cable provider has not upgraded their infrastructure to supply the channel in HD. Many people could not watch the last Super Bowl in HD for this reason.
The wide availability and abundance of over-the-air HD content , and the fact that it’s free, is one reason for the recent surge in antenna sales, as noted in a recent Newsweek article. Over-the-air HD broadcasts also have less compression than cable HD content, which can be important when suffering the double whammy of the broadcaster’s compression and the TiVO’s compression.
If you don’t have cable television but receive enough local digital broadcast channels, the Series 3 TiVO is still a great purchase. It can increase the amount of HD content available to you whenever you want it. If you compare the long-term savings of dropping cable television against the cost of an HD TiVO along with a Blu-ray player and Netflix and an XBOX 360 or Apple TV, you’ll save money by going for a pay-per-content model rather than cable television’s subscription model. The HD TiVo also allows you to download some digital content as well when combined with an Internet connection.