The mrs is getting a serious jones for TIVO after I was casually mentioning it to her a few weeks ago. So, we’re seriously “looking into it”.
For those TIVO folks out there…if you were to get started on TIVO now, how would you do it?
would you get the lifetime service subscription or monthly?
would you buy a new TIVO box (and where?) or get a used one off of eBay (and what model should one look for)
This is the thread for open ended advice on all that is TIVO.
(FWIW, we don’t have a dish, and have no intentions of getting one…we have MediaCom cable)
We got a box from a tivo message board where someone was selling kits. That is, an older box, an extra hard drive, and a mounting thingie. The box itself had like 15 hours, with the extra drive, we get 90 hours. It is a good thing.
I’d get the lifetime. Once you go Tivo, you will never be able to watch TV the “old way” again.
A good place to start is the tivo community. Those guys really know their stuff.
I’ve got a Sony series 1 Tivo with and extra 80Gb HD and a lifetime subscription. Having so much storage space isn’t really a big issue for most folks, but I’m often out of the house for weeks at a time and Tivo just about runs my life when I’m away. Right now, there isn’t much use having a series 2, but it has big rooms for improvement. If you do go with a series 2 and you are thinking of upgrading the drive, then buy soon as the newest models only have space for a single HD. Apart from that, happy Tivoing
Tivo is the single greatest invention of the 20th century.
If you are into geekdom and know your way around a linux box, then buy a cheap series I 20 hour unit off of ebay, then plop an extra 120 gig drive into it. (and hack a webserver, caller ID, weather, and many more cool things onto it as well).
If not, just get a new one and by all means get the lifetime subscription. Keep in mind the lifetime means life of the tivo, not your life.
Also there is a lot to be said for the “DirectTivo” - combination direct TV DSS satelite and tivo. The DTivos (as we call them) save the satellite stream directly to harddrive, so there is no signal quality loss due to recompression.
Get (or hack, if you are comfortable with it) as big a unit as you can. 40 hours of TV is nothing.
Keep your VCR (even if you have a DVD player). Run the TiVo through the VCR and now you can move from disk to tape for all the stuff you want to keep forever.
We bought ours new - but years ago before hacking instructions even came out. With the lifetime subscription (because its necessary, just bite the bullet when you buy it). We’ve never bothered to hack it (I keep expecting my husband to show up with a new bigger one).
If you buy new, get it at Best Buy ('cause I own stock). Besides, its not something you need sales or installation help with, so there isn’t any reason to buy from a full service retailer.
I’ve have a TIVO for about a year. You can"t beat the fast forwarding through the commercials. My unit is a Sony. Had a problem with the hard drive when I first got it…sent it to the manufacturer, got it back within two weeks and have had no problems with it since. It’s combined with my sattelite reciever and I love it!
I have to second the recommendation for DirecTivo. If you are a first time DirecTV buyer you can get a deal on a receiver with at least 25hrs of recording time.
I got a Philips dsr6000, dual-line dish and hardware for about $100 a few months ago. With DirecTIVO you can record one channel while watching another, or watch a recorded show while recording two programs on different channels. Dolby digital 5.1 on some channels.
I think I’m turning into a professional couch-potato…
I have a question for all you TiVo owners, one that I’ve not seen answered anywhere in the FAQs:
Say you have a TiVo, not one of the DirecTiVos, but one of the older, simpler ones. Do these things have the capacity to record from one satellite channel while you watch another satellite channel? That is, can the thing record “Sink the Bismarck!” on satellite channel 120 while I watch that biography of Charlie Chaplin on satellite channel 124?
I ask because, if you have to set your satellite tuner to whatever channel the thing is gonna record, that honestly doesn’t seem all that useful to me, even if it uses a little IR transmitter or whatever to set the tuner on its own. I wanna record something while watching something else.
The answer is, of course, maybe. It depends on whether or not you have a dual receiver satellite dish. If you do, then yes you can and if you don’t, then you can’t.
It’s not Tivo’s fault if you don’t have the right gear.
Ah. I asked because my brother and I are thinking about getting one for my mother for Christmas; she does so much recording that she’s wearing out her VCRs at Ludicrous Speed™. But, she does all her recording from on-air channels, so the inability to watch a different satellite channel from the one being recorded wouldn’t be a deal-breaker. I just wanted to know if it had the capability, in case they wanted to do that in the future.
But that raises another question: since she does all her recording on-air, and she knows what she wants to record and when it’s on, does she really need a subscription to TiVo’s “guide” service? Is there anyone out there running a TiVo without a subscription who can tell me if she would or wouldn’t be missing out on something special? No subscription would sure save a heap o’ cash…
Ah. I asked because my brother and I are thinking about getting one for my mother for Christmas; she does so much recording that she’s wearing out her VCRs at Ludicrous Speed™. But, she does all her recording from on-air channels, so the inability to watch a different satellite channel from the one being recorded wouldn’t be a deal-breaker. I just wanted to know if it had the capability, in case they wanted to do that in the future.
But that raises another question: since she does all her recording on-air, and she knows what she wants to record and when it’s on, does she really need a subscription to TiVo’s “guide” service? Is there anyone out there running a TiVo without a subscription who can tell me if she would or wouldn’t be missing out on something special? No subscription would sure save a heap o’ cash…
Ive had Tivo ince the first month it came out and im MR Tivo now. Ive sold at least 4 of them just by having my friends come over and say" i GOTTA get one". You need the service for a few reasons. First it resets the internal clock and keeps it accurate. Secondly the whole point of Tivo is ease of recording. Its litterally like 3 or 4 buttons to push…you type in “Friends” and record and it can record first run only shows or every Friends on every channel all day long. You can type in a fav directer or actor and it will record any and all shows he or she is in on any channnel at any time day or night. it “learns” what your likes and dislikes are and just throws stuff into the hopper…great for those nights with nothing on…just check out what tivo has stored up for you. i have 2 of the damned things for the sole reason that i have the tivo only unit and the one drawback is you cant watch one live channel and record another live channel. i would reccommensd the series 2 and you can order then inexpensivly direct from Tivo.com. This wholew system will be especially great for people who are techphobic because of its incredibly easy to use features.
I agree with jonpluc. The best thing about the TiVo is that it fills the hard drive space you’re not using with things it feels you might enjoy, and it’s usually quite good at it. For instance, I am a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and have been for about four months now, ever since TiVo pulled a couple episodes off FX for me. There have been several movies, too, that I’d been wanting to see but would never have gotten around to renting that TiVo grabbed of HBO or Bravo.
The other thing is that TiVo will do a better job than you will of following schedule changes or of figuring out when an episode is new or a rerun.
Eleusis the subscription fee is essential but the most important feature to me is the live TV paused button which i use more than ANY other feature by far and away and that does not require the subscription to work.
jonpluc If you have a tivo performing like you describe, then by all means, yes. It must have 1.3 software which we haven’t had the luxury of for over two years.
If you buy a new tivo, or even let your old tivo update itself, it will PONG at you and cast derision, scorn and shame for not purchasing the subscription.
Yup, DVRs are way cool. Tivo definitely has the first to market advantage, but there are a lot of companies currently building boxes that will offer either the same features cheaper, or some expanded features.
How do I know? I write the manuals that those companies use to put those boxes together. Which companies? Well, pretty much all of them.
A couple of things - right now Tivo is not the only DVR on the market. In some areas Dish customers can upgrade their boxes to contain a hard drive. Those people don’t have to pay the subscription fee, because they can select and record straight off the existing electronic program guide. The features are essentially the same - recording, commercial skip, live pause and rewind (up to 30 minutes).
The conversion to, and availability of, DVRs will be much faster in Europe and Asia than in the U.S, simply because the digital broadcast infrastructure is already in place, because many countries went directly to satellite without ever laying significant amounts of cable.
Down the road the features available with DirecTivo will be available to anyone, i.e. the multi-tuner capabilities that allow you to record two shows while watching a third.
A little further down the road there will be multi-tuner boxes with onboard DVD players/recorders. Due to the stanky economy development has slowed a little bit, but I’m guessing these boxes will be available within 2-3 years.
That’s what I’m waiting for. I hate having multiple boxes for things. I want to just chuck my cable box, VCR, and DVD player at once and replace it with one box.
