After a few years of being available only to cable providers and passing through several ownership changes (Rearden Steel, Digeo, and now Arris), Moxi finally made its way to the home in late 2008. This is a serious DVR that competes well with TiVo for the high-definition market.
Moxi is a cable-based DVR with an emphasis on networking capabilities. Besides its standard features of watching TV, recording programs, and browsing network media files, it has a few unique ones. For instance, it can pull down weather, sports, business, and entertainment news from the Web and flash it across the screen during live or recorded shows. It also has a SuperTicker that's similar to what you'd find on the bottom of a news channel.
Aside from the network capabilities, Moxi has dual channel buffers that let you swap between stations without losing the ability to rewind or fast-forward — something the average cable company DVR lacks. It can even record one channel while you're watching another, so you can get up to three hours of recordings.
For networking functionality, Moxi has a built-in Ethernet port and supports add-on eSATA hard drives that can be used for expansion. You can share the hard drive with other Moxi units, called Moxi Mates, so you can access Internet video from any room in your house. This is a nice feature that will help you cut down on expensive rental fees from Netflix or Blockbuster.
