I don’t even like TV, so not sure why I got a sudden impusle to get a TiVo… maybe it’s because when I DO watch TV I hate the commercials, and the cartoon network insists on putting Sheep in the Big City on at 3am.
Anyway, it’s doin’ its thing at the moment, downloading, processing, indexing, etc etc. Once it’s all done, I’m going to remove the phone cable that’s stretched across my living room at a height of 4’ (nearest phone jack was 20 feet away) and hook the TiVo up to my wireless network.
A few questions about that:
I have not purchased the Home Media option (or whatever it’s called, that thing you buy for $99) because I’m not sure I need it (yet).
I would like to be able to transfer stuff off the TiVo to my hard drive at times. Can I do this? Do I need the Home Media option? Or does the TiVo just load on my network like another hard drive?
What else do I need to know about the wonderful world of TiVo?
No, sorry, you can’t do this. Tivo stuff stays on the Tivo (or Tivos, if you’ve got more than one). Although ISTR someone on one of the Tivo forums reporting that they’ve hacked the Tivo file system, that’s probably not for the casual user.
OOooooh, thanks for the 30 second skip thing GMRyujin. One question: what does that button that you override to do the 30 second thing do normally?
I did a little research into TiVo hacks, and it seems that TiVo records in a proprietary format, which is about the stupidest thing I can think of. Lemme guess, Tivo is owned by a joint venture between Apple and the people who brought us Betamax.
I didn’t buy the thing primarily to record stuff on my computer, but it would have been a nice option. Why in the world would TiVo make such a simple thing so hard?!?
While you can get a lot of help over at the Tivo Community Forum, Deal Database covers the hotter issues such as video extraction. Once you get the hacks installed it isn’t that difficult to pull the video files off your TiVo but remember that you are voiding your warrenty if you crack open the case.
The 30 second skip replaces the trickplay feature which jumps 6 seconds back. Handy for a quick review of that last few lines spoken or instant replaying some scene before they replay it on TV.
Actually the 30-second skip replaces the ‘end of recording’ button that takes you to the end of the program that is recorded. It is actually good that thing is gone because it can sometime be hit by mistake and you find out who got booted off the island while you are still watching the show.
Is it that one? I prefer to use the 2xFF to speed by the commercials because I actually like some of them and don’t really want to miss any new commercials so I have never enabled that feature.
Does everyone here know the of TiVo+ key combinations? If you hit TiVo twice you go right to Now Playing. Tivo then 2 will take you to the ToDo list. I don’t recall the others but the FAQ on TiVo Community should have them.
If you have a PC, you could get a TV Wonder or something similar for $30. Haven’t done much with mine yet though. Tried recording a movie off of PBS at 2am but I couldn’t get it to play back.
It’s too late for you, but Series 1 tivos store video unencrypted, so it’s easy to convert to mpeg for burning to dvd. This is why when I recently bought a TiVo, I got a used series 1 instead of a new series 2.
As to why, my guess is that they are trying to avoid lawsuits from big media companies accusing them of enabling file-sharing. They probably can’t afford to fight such a lawsuit, even if they win. (Case in point: Replay TV was sued for having automatic commercial skipping in their units. TiVo wisely decided not to include this feature, nice as it would have been.)
Anyway, it’s doin’ its thing at the moment, downloading, processing, indexing, etc etc. Once it’s all done, I’m going to remove the phone cable that’s stretched across my living room at a height of 4’ (nearest phone jack was 20 feet away) and hook the TiVo up to my wireless network.
[/quote=Athena]
I don’t think TiVo likes non-landline phone connection. You may find it cannot dial-in and it will cease to do what you bought it for.
In Orlando in 2000 and 2001 I had SO MANY problems with this issue and local number access. I was contacting my satelitte provider, TiVo, contraption manufactuor, every other month ranting about something or another. :mad: Then the contraption got “zapped”. (Lightening capitol of the world-orlando) :eek: I had to use the warrenty sent it back for repair. Received a NEW machine. Fewer problems since. Maybe I had jinx/defective unit?
[/Weebl/] LOVE TIVO!!! TiVo is GOOOOD! MMMMMMM TiVo! TIVO![/Weebl/]
TiVo works just fine via internet, either via wired Ethernet or wireless. I even had mine using my home network in the setup stage thanks to an undocumented feature I found out on the internet.
checks pants, still female, still heterosexual er, no.
OK, after 24 hours of TiVo use:
2 out of 3 Tivo tech support people are smart and wonderful. The other one will want you to tear your hair out and send the TiVo back for a full refund (he told me that it would take up to TWO WEEKS for the TiVo to download the latest and greatest version of the software that would work with my wireless network, without doing the first bit of diagnostics. When I called back to complain, I got a smart tech support guy, who told me that was crap and walked me through the correct procedure.)
It really sucks that it can’t record a channel you’re not watching at the time. C’mon, guys, it’s a hard drive and a tuner. Throw in another tuner, let me watch what I’m not recording right now. Or at least offer the option of buying a version with this capacity. I know I can splice the cable wire and have the option of watching TV sans TiVo while TiVo records, but that kinda defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?
The UI is really good. Snaps to TiVo’s UI team.
I love love love the on-screen TV Guide. This is what Digital Cable should be like, not the monstrocity that it is with a full 1/3 to 1/2 the Guide screen taken up by advertisements.
I wish I’d thought of TiVo 5 years ago. Not a technically difficult problem at all; the idea was the money maker.
Must find nifty hacks.
And yeah, ILovCoffee, like friedo says, the series 2 TiVos work just fine with a wireless network connection. No phone line needed.
That’s the analog guide. The digital guide is just program listings in the bottom half, the top half split between a preview screen in the top right corner and an info screen in the top left. At least that’s what Comcast does.
I was concerned about this also, when I first got mine (it’s been about a month), but I recognized quickly that it’s really a non-issue. See, the magic of TiVo is that you no longer need to watch live TV. Everything I watch, now, is a recorded show off the now-playing list. Occasionally I’ll watch something live while TiVo is recording it if I’m available and/or it’s something I can’t wait to see, like Angel and such. But those are rare exceptions, and I never, but never, watch live TV for the hell of it any more. So I watch nothing but already-recorded material, and TiVo is free to run in parallel recording what I’ve told it to (or whatever it decides I might enjoy). Once you get adjusted to looking at Now Playing for shows you know you want to see, instead of browsing the channel guide to see if there might be something worth watching, you’ll wonder why you’d ever want to channel-surf. It really is a complete paradigm shift, but it’ll take a little while to get used to it.
Maybe I had jinx/defective unit? 