Well it has a different name, but the concept’s the same, and I can’t complain about the price: $9.99 a month for the service, $0.00 for the box.
This comes as a promo from my cable supplier, and on Tuesday our Cable Guy will pull my digital box and remote, and replace it with a TiVo-type box + remote.
My son has the real TiVo. Paid ~$200 for it plus $12.95 a month for the service.
He has an 80Gig hard drive, mine will have 50Gigs. He can record about 50 hours at top quality per week, I’ll probably have a max of 20.
My box will enable me to record two shows simultaneously. His can’t.
My son and his wife really love their TiVo - even though they don’t watch that much TV. They’ve said goodbye to their VCR and the tapes.
Typical Scenario:
You’re watching a program and the phone rings. You hit the pause button, answer the phone and talk for as long as you need. While you’re on the phone, TiVo is recording the program, even though you Paused - the viewing of it.
So, you come back, press the Resume button and the show picks up where you left off. You can even zip thru the commercials (far faster and more conveniently than with videotape) until you catch up with the “live” transmission.
If you have questions, I’ll try to answer them, but I have never knowing seen nor even sinned in the presence of a TiVo box.
Things sometimes fall out of the sky for me.
Like DSL. I’d heard that my local phone company was running a promo to introduce it. So I called and ended up getting a free DSL installation, and free
software and hardware.
Awhile later our Cable Guy stops in on a service call. My son and I are in the den. Somehow the talk turns to his Cable’s version of DSL. He proceeds to tell me how much better it is than DSL. “In fact,” he says, striding confidently to my PC, I’ll prove to you that my DSL (actually whatever the name Cable gave it) is three times faster than your DSL.
He goes to www.toast.net, runs the test and blanches. MY DSL was (and still is) significantly faster than Cable’s. He was so humiliated that my son and I took pity on him. In fact we almost apologized, 
explaining that the DSL junction box (or whatever it is) was close to the house, so we had to be pretty damned fast.