Comcast & TiVo Collaboration Confusion

This month there were two TiVo/Comcast announcements that are a bit confusing when you put them together. The first is that there is going to be a special Comcast-TiVo box, which was announced at CES. Nothing all too surprising about that. The second item is a little more odd, that being that existing Comcast DVR users (those of us renting the Motorola set-top box) will be able to download TiVo software to run on their existing box.

Put together, this seems like kind of a scattered strategy. It also seems like a bit of a management nightmare for Comcast with two different classes of TiVo users out there. But mostly, I can't see that downloading TiVo onto an existing box will go well. It just seems like a recipe for disaster and many, many tech support calls. Does your existing content get wiped during this process? Most DVR power-users are not going to like the sound of that. Plus they want to charge a higher monthly fee just to have the TiVo software option. Is TiVo that much better than the Moto SW?

I have had the Motorola DVR for 2+ years. I have had my issues (one box died, another one spontaneously wiped its memory during a power surge) and annoyances (the SW freaking out and needing to get tech support to send a "pulse", remote control responsiveness issues, not handling those pesky shows that run to 10:01 very well). But overall, my only real complaints are the lack of memory, no way to put content onto permanent storage and no multi-room solution. Downloading TiVo doesn't fix any of those issues, so I don't see why it's worth extra money and hassle just to get recommendations and a cool sound when I pick stuff on the menu.