Well then, that’s not my fault, your fault, Tivo’s fault or Scientific Atlanta’s fault. I was just at my sister’s house in Atlanta for the Christmas holiday and was shocked at how craptacular the UI was for her Charter digital cable (and all the ads therein). Here’s what my UI looks like. Note that there’s no ad underneath the cut-out of the remote and that the picture of the two girls is actually a smaller PIP-type rendition of the channel you’re watching when you press the GUIDE button. Other pictures of the TW UI are available here .
Well then, what we have here is a Mexican standoff. You like analog cable because it’s cheaper. I like digital cable because it has the programming I want. I don’t know how we could reconcile those two issues.
But why even have a VCR? Oh yeah, I have one, but it’s not hooked up to anything, nor is it even plugged in. I have a few “personal” videotapes - my skydiving experience, my college graduation, etc. - that I’m going to put on DVD one of these days; once that’s done, my VCR is out the door.
I only fully understood the idiocy of only having one tuner when I was at a friend’s house a couple of years ago. She was into Buffy and Angel and all that. We were hanging out outside smoking cigarettes and talking and didn’t come back inside until Buffy was 5 minutes into a new episode. She couldn’t change the channel (as Tivo only has one tuner), so we could only watch Buffy (which she didn’t want to do, as she’d missed the first few minutes) and I didn’t want to watch anything she had already recorded. So we turned the TV off and turned on the stereo. With a cableco DVR, you don’t have this problem. Tivos only have one tuner, so you can only watch stuff that’s already recorded or what’s being currently recorded. With my DVR, this is not a problem.
Also, ABC has started the (admittedly sneaky) practice of scheduling Lost from 8:00pm - 9:01pm on Wednesdays. That means that Tivo owners can’t record anything from 9:00 to 10:00 Wednesday night - because the extra minute of Lost creates a scheduling conflict for any show that comes on immediately thereafter. Having two tuners, I don’t have this problem.
Well, bully for you - but how does this help anyone that has a Tivo and cable? Are you admitting that DirectTiVo is better than a regular Tivo?
Heh - not to rub salt in your wounds, but “vanilla” HBO is included in TWC’s basic package. It’s channel 5 for those on TWC’s Gastonia, NC branch and channel 8 for the rest of the Charlotte metro area. I’m in my computer room now - which only has analog cable - and was watching the Entourage marathon earlier tonight.
Also, Time Warner is supposed to roll out the Explorer 8300 boxes this spring. This will be a “DVR Server” for the home that will stream DVR content to any TV in the house that has a thin-client “DVR-aware” cable box. The only beef that most people that have any type of DVR have is that they can’t watch video from the Tivo in the living room on the bedroom TV*. Hopefully, this will fix that.
I know that Tivos can be made to do this with a little tweaking. I know several ReplayTV people that routinely kick content from their RTV box to their PC for ummmm… “archiving”. But I’m sure as hell not gonna try to teach my parents how to do it. In other words, it’s kind of difficult for someone that doesn’t hang out at the Tivo Underground to do.
PS - Contrary to what you folks might think, I DO NOT work for any cable company, much less Time Warner. I just think that - after all my years of bitching about crappy cable companies - I’m finally getting value for my cable dollars, and I’m excited about that. Hell, they provide me with a 3Mbps Internet connection too.
If your cable is hooked up right, you can. Even with digital cable, the lower channels are typically still transmitted in analog, so you can use your TV’s (or VCR’s) tuner to watch one channel live while you’re recording another, as long as it’s not a digital channel.
Yeah, that sucks, especially since the extra minute is usually commercials anyway. With hacks like TivoWeb, I believe you can schedule recordings to stop early, but TiVo’s UI will only let you schedule them to stop late.
From what I’ve heard, it is better. It records two shows at once, records in perfect quality (direct from the digital video stream), and gets its listings from the satellite instead of a phone/internet connection. If I had DirecTV, I can’t think of any reason why it’d be better to keep my standalone TiVo.
You can do it easily if you have another TiVo in the bedroom. Streaming video from one DVR to another is part of the Home Media package that became free for all users earlier this year (just like streaming MP3s and photos from a PC).
With a little tweaking, you can stream video from TiVo to a PC. I do this at home when I’m feeling too lazy to walk into the living room. With even more tweaking, you can stream shows over the internet to watch when you’re away from home.
How does this work? DO you need a VCR and\or an A\B switch for your regular cablke if you don’t have a VCR? Come to think of it, I think my friend (the Buffy fan) had some kind of rigged system with her TV… and a\b switch or something.
Oh yeah, I’d forgotten that Tivo released the Home Media thing this year.
You just need a splitter like this one. The input connects to the cable from your wall, one output goes to your TV, and the other output goes to your TiVo*. Then you connect TiVo to your TV’s video input.
ATI make several video cards with RF inputs that will do everything that a TIVO will do and more. It uses an internet connection to update the guide. Its free too , no monthly fees. I been using ATI’s All in Wonders for 3 years now. Wont work if you have satellite.
Slight hijack, but since we are on the subject of Tivo…
For those of you who have Tivo, do you find that the schedule is correct? I’ve noticed that the DirecTV program guide isn’t always accurate, and I wonder if the incorrect info gets transfered over to the Tivo schedule programming.
Can you record by picking a channel and a time to record, rather than specifying a particular show to record? (it doesn’t sound like it, if ABC scheduling a program to end at 1 minute past the hour screws things up). It seems that a VCR is better in that regard, because I can set it up to record ABC from 8:00 to 9:01, and then record NBC from 9:02 to 10:00.
Finally, is Tivo is smart enough to know when a program you want to record goes over the planned air time? For instance, suppose game 7 of the World Series is shown on the Tivo schedule to run from 7 pm to 10 pm. When the game goes into extra innings and doesn’t end until midnight, does Tivo record everything, or does it stop at 10 pm?
Overall, yes. Sometimes networks get a little. . .creative. . .with programming less than 24 hours before a show airs, and sometimes it’s just flat out wrong, but in general it tends to be accurate. I imagine all of the schedule information comes from the same place (it always seems to match Yahoo! and Titan TV), so I don’t think it would be any better or worse than what your current provider shows.
You can, but, unfortunately, TiVo can only be set to record in increments of 5 minutes. So you would have to record from 8:00 to 9:05 on ABC, and then 9:05 to 10:00 on NBC, or just lose that extra minute and switch to NBC at 9:00.
Of course, this isn’t a problem for those fancy-schmancy DirecTiVos, which can record two shows at once. Grumble, grumble
Probably. Aside from the increments-of-5-minutes thing, TiVo users hate this kind of programming because it will cancel any automatic programming for that time slot. For example, if you have a Season Pass for “Show A” at 8:00 on ABC (higher priority), and for “Show B” at 9:00 on NBC (lower priority), “Show B” won’t record if “Show A” runs until 9:01. Alternately, if “Show B” has a higher priority, then “Show A” won’t record.
Again, not a huge problem if you can record two things at once.
TiVo only records what is actually scheduled, so you would lose any overtime or extra innings in sports. Although, when you pick a program to record, you can set it record a certain amount of time over what is scheduled. For example, I always set football games to record an extra 90 minutes, since those almost always run long.
I love my TIVO. ButI hate the fact that since I got one of the earliest ones (Model 112) and have already paid for the lifetime subscription, I cannot really take advantage of all the new cool features of a Series 2 Tivo without having to pay for the lifetime subscription all over again.
I have the DirecTV DVR with Tivo. It is the greatest thing since… well, I don’t know when, it’s just really great. We love it.
First of all, it has two tuners. This allows you to record two shows at once, watch one show and record another, or watch two different shows at the same time. You can also record two shows while watching a third. I’ve gotten really good at watching two football games at once and missing neither. It’s really cool. Start with the Cowboys game. When it gets to a commercial, hit pause and switch tuners to the Texans game. When they get to a break, hit pause and return to Dallas. Fast forward the commercials you missed, and begin watching when the game resumes. You can fast forward the dull spots and catch up to the live broadcast. When Dallas reaches a break, flip back to Houston. No need for picture-in-picture. You can also watch two regular TV shows this way. The DVR does this by having each tuner build up a thirty minute buffer.
You can also join a show after it’s started recording and watch it from the beginning. We’ve gotten in the habit of joining our favorite shows about twenty minutes after they start. We can watch from the beginning, and by the time it’s over, we’ve caught up and finished at the same time.
It does require a phone line, but so does the regular DirecTV box. The DirecTV box, however, will work without the phone, but the DVR will not. It will refuse to record or offer listings, or do pretty much anything until the phone is connected. I use a wireless phone jack to bring the phone to the living room. I had to move the jack across the room and run a phone wire along the baseboard, however. The DVR sets up so much interferrence in the line that the wireless jack couldn’t be located anywhere nearby.
Unfortunately, the DirecTV DVR does not include any of the media center stuff that the Series 2 DVR offers. There is no networking capability. That stuff sounds really cool. I wish we could do that. There may be a non-functioning network jack on the back, however, so maybe those functions will be in the future. I don’t remember for sure if that jack is there.
Thanks for the info. That’s about 200 times the information that DirecTV has on their website. Does the unit need two separate cables from the dish to use both tuners? I have a 4 output LNB and only two tuners, but running an extra coaxial cable to one of my tuners isn’t going to be fun.
Bummer to hear that it doesn’t include the networking stuff. The wi-fi connection would work for me.
Yeah, DirecTV’s website is pretty worthless, at least for hardware info. I tried to find out info on the HD DVR and it’s even worse. Finally found it at Best Buy or somesuch. There was talk of my paying $1000 for the thing, so that will wait for another day…
The DVR does require two coaxial cables. It was a bit of a pain to run the second line, but the installer did a great job for me. He was very cooperative and did it the way I wanted, not the usual punch a hole and run approach.
The DVR will work with only one cable, but then only one tuner will be active. It’s basically like having two DirecTV boxes in one location.
However, in another room, I have sort of a unique set up. I have internet running to my computer from the cable TV company and DirecTV running to the set-top box. They both enter the house on the same coax. The DirecTV guy pulled the cable up from the ground and the cable from the dish and ran them both into some sort of gadget (a diplexer??). Then, one cable carries both signals into the house. Inside, there is another gadget that splits the cables again. One leg goes to the cable modem, the other to DirecTV’s set-top box (not a DVR). I don’t know if this sort of setup would work for two DirecTV signals. I’m not exactly sure how it works or how DirecTV’s signal differs from regular cable. Still, it might be worth looking into if you’ve got that sort of expertise or your installer will look into it.
The wireless phone jack corresponds to a landline transeiver. It is not connected to my wireless network. It’s a completely seperate deal. You can get these things at WalMart or anywhere. They run around forty bucks. I wanted to make sure you didn’t think it ran on the home wireless network, like the computer does.
