Seeking advice on TIVO

Cafe Society
1

Mrs. Evil Captor is considering getting a TIVO. She would like to time shift about five TV shows a week that are not on at convenient times and has heard the TIVO is useful for that.

Her questions: she has heard there are different models, what kind will she need for her interests? Would a basic model do?

Is a TIVO easy to use? How does it compare with programming a VCR? Using ROKU?

Do you need to pay a monthly subscription to use a TIVO? To whom? How much? We’ve already got cable.

Is a dual screen TIVO helpful?

Any info you can provide will be appreciated. There is of course marketing material out there, but we figure we’ll get more honest evaluations from people who actually use them.

2

You know how people compare Mac to PC, and say how easy the Mac is? The TiVo is the Mac of all DVR’s.
He’s, you need a subscription. You can go month to month, annual, or lifetime.
Dual- tuner is very nice, and highly recommended.

3

I use a cable company DVR but have heard that the Tivo DVR is much better and their software is way better. But I just checked the subscription price on their website and it’s expensive:

Monthly service: $19.99, 1-year commitment; month to month thereafter.
Product Lifetime service: $499.99, pay once for the life of your DVR.

So either twenty bucks a month or you pay $500 upfront until the box dies.

4

My dad is kind of a technophobe old man and he manages with the cable company (Time Warner) DVR just fine.

Not sure if it even costs extra, but if it does I doubt it costs $19.99/mo. I could be wrong, tho.

5

I think the monthly is only $20 a month if you get one of their free boxes. If you pay for your own box, it’s $13/month. Essentially you can either pay $200-300 up front for a new box, or get it free and agree to a 2 year (?) subscription at $20/month.

6

The ease of use will be very appealing, my wife is a Mac fan so she will get the metaphor very clearly. But the subscription cost may be a deal breaker. She’s in an economizing mode right now.

7

If you’re planning to record a lot of HD programming, you’ll probably want the upper Premiere model.

They’re not offering yearly plans anymore? I’m currently paying $129 per year, plus a small monthly fee to the cable company for the cable card and adapter. I think it’s well worth it; I’m not dealing with the cable company’s wonky equipment (except for the card and adapter, both of which look new), I have two tuners, and online access is great. Download times for programs purchased online (through Amazon, for example) aren’t bad at all, but you will have to purchase a separate TiVo network adapter.

If you’re with Time Warner Cable, they will insist on sending a technician just to install the cable card. I had so much trouble with them that I briefly considered switching to satellite. (The brain-dead tech who took my service request somehow interpreted “cable card for the TiVo” as “I don’t want cable anymore”, and pretty much cancelled my digital cable subscription.)

8

I had a similar experience. I think it took a total of five technicians, over a 2-week period, to install the card. But since it was installed, I haven’t had any problems.

9

I’ve used TiVo, and I’ve used 3 separate cable companies’ DVRs. There’s no contest. The TiVo is orders of magnitude faster, with better performance and ease of use. You can stream stuff you’ve downloaded through it. Other DVRs are laggy, buggy, and annoying to use.

10

I’m with Drain Bead - I have Tivo, and I’ve used other DVRs. There’s really no comparison; Tivo is a joy to use. I really can’t imagine ever watching TV without it. Even Mr. Athena, who used to be an avid channel-flipper, won’t watch TV unless it’s either recorded on the Tivo or running through the Tivo so he can fast forward/skip commercials/etc.

We no longer sit down and say “Hmm, what’s on TV tonight.” Instead, it’s “Hey, we’ve got the new True Blood recorded, and look, the Tivo figured out we like the Bourne movies and it recorded one off cable, and wow, I didn’t even realize it, but the new season of Bourdain’s No Reservations started last week and there’s an episode for us to watch, and WOW! Boardwalk Empire started over from the beginning so we can watch those episodes we missed the first time through.”

It’s great for sports, too - you can fast forward through the dull parts. In fact, Mr. Athena’s gotten to the point where he groans when he’s invited to a non-Tivo household to watch a game. He can’t stand to sit through the idiotic announcer babble and the commercials, much less the dull parts.

As far as prices, I don’t know what their current plan is, but $20/month seems high. We pay that for 2 Tivos (we have one in the basement, because hell if I’m going to sit on the spin bike without a Tivo to watch) - the first is $12.95/month, the second is $6.95/month, but I know that second price is a grandfathered deal and no longer available. Not sure about the first one.

11

My advice: there exist several models with different storage capacities. Get the most storage you can afford, especially if the members of the household have different tastes. That way you can minimize or at least put off the inevitable “how come it’s filled up with YOUR stuff and there’s no room for MY recordings?” issue.

12

I’ll join the chorus of TIVO lovers. I have tried my cable company’s DVR too and it just couldn’t hold a candle too TIVO.

13

For background, here’s a previous thread comparing TiVo with Comcast’s DVR.

They have two HD models available. If she’s not planning on keeping a lot of stuff for a long time, the basic $99 model ought to do the job. They claim “up to” 45 hours of storage on the hard drive, but that assumes you will select the lowest image quality; if you select best image quality, the available storage space will be quite a bit less, maybe 20 hours or so. You’ll likely be surprised at how fast you use up the available space, though; I’d strongly recommend getting the larger-capacity unit.

My experience programming a VCR is like this:

You first have to look up the time and channel for the program you’re interested in, then fire up the TV and VCR and set the TV so you can see what the VCR’s on-screen menus are showing you, and then twiddle with the menus to set a start time, a stop time, and a channel, and then you have to make sure you have a cassette in the VCR and rewound properly. To watch your program, you have to fire up your VCR, rewind the tape to the right point, set the TV to the correct channel/input so that it’s showing you the VCR’s output, and then press play. Note that you cannot watch a show you recorded earlier while the VCR is busy recording a program (unless you happen to have a dual-drive VCR).

My experience with using TiVo for the past six years is more like this:

Fire up the TV. The TV is always receiving its output from the TiVo, so immediately you’re ready to start setting up the recording. You press the “guide” button on the remote; it puts a list of channels and current/future programs on screen. Using the remote, you move the cursor to the program you’d like to record, then you press the record button (alternative: if you don’t know when/what channel your program is on, you can type in the title and TiVo will search/find it for you). If you want to record every episode of that program (with or without repeats), you can select “get a season pass,” and it will do just that without any further input from you; it’ll automatically record every future episode of this program until you tell it to stop. When you want to watch one of the shows you’ve already recorded, you press two buttons on the remote, and then you’re looking at a list of shows on your hard drive; cursor-down to your show, press play. Note that you can watch shows you’ve recorded earlier even while the TiVo unit is busy recording a show. You can even start watching a show before TiVo is finished recording it. Example, suppose TiVo starts recording your 1-hour show, and you start watching it about 20 minutes after it started. You can now fast-forward through all of the commercials, and you’ll finish watching the end of the show right around the time that it’s finished broadcasting.

Because your TiVo needs to constantly update its schedule information (so it knows what’s on every channel, what time shows begin/end), yes, you do need a monthly subscription with the TiVo company (and the TiVo unit needs either a phone line or a broadband internet connection to be able to receive this information). If you expect to keep it for more than about two years, then the best deal is the single payment of $500; the break-even point (compared to paying $20 per month with no commitment) is 25 months.

I think you’re talking about a dual-tuner TiVo. And yes, this is a great thing. It means that the TiVo can use one tuner to record a particular show, and you can use the other tuner to watch a different program on a different channel at the same time. or the TiVo can use both tuners to record two different shows at the same time.

Wife and I have had TiVo since 2005. We love it. Even if we don’t particularly need to time-shift a show, we still do so because it gives us the opportunity to fast-forward through commercials. We have tried ComCast’s DVR (free to borrow the DVR, and only $10 per month for service), and wanted to kill it with fire; it was a horrible, fetid piece of shit (see my post in the thread I linked to above). We gave it back to Comcast, spent $300 on the TiVo HD-XL and $500 for lifetime subscription. That tells you how crappy Comcast’s DVR was, and how awesome TiVo is.

If you personally know any friends/neighbors with TiVo, ask them for a short demo.

14

Another note on programming the Tivo: you can do it via their website, so if you’re at work and realize you forgot to set it up to record something, you can do it. They’ve also got iPad and iPhone apps (and maybe Android, I’m not sure) that not only allow you to program the Tivo, but you can use them to see what’s already on your Tivo, and they work as remotes as well. I’ve used the iPad/iPhone app to check out what’s on, and it’s handy - we’re eating dinner outside, for example, and start talking about what to do after dinner. Hubby says “well, what’s on the Tivo” and I whip out the phone and tell him.

And at least once, we’ll be on our way somewhere at night, and hubby goes “Oh shit, I forgot to record the game tonight!” No big deal, I do it from my phone.

Very handy, especially when you have a husband who forgets to record things all the time.

15

I have the Comcast version of the DVR, and I have no problem with it. However, I’ve never used a Tivo; maybe if I did, I’d see all the deficiencies in my current device. But, being in blissful ignorance much like the OP, I’m perfectly happy with the Comcast one. And it’s pretty cheap; $5 or $10 a month, right on the cable bill I’m already paying.

16

Get the Tivo. You won’t be sorry. It takes a bit to train it to your likes and dislikes, but then it will hunt down all sorts of stuff you didn’t know was on.

17

I guess you could consider me an aficionado. I bought a ReplayTV (remember them?) when they
first came out. I got a TIVO when I initially switched to DirecTV. Now that DirecTV no longer supports TIVO, I have DirecTV’s DVR.

Well, let me modify that. I have TWO DirecTV’s, dual tuner, HD DVRs with which I can be recording 4 shows at once while watching another recorded show. I virtually never watch “live” TV anymore. Once you experience the “I can fast forward through all of the commercials” feature, I think you’ll be recording much more than you can imagine now.

Sometimes, if a show is just starting that I want to see, I’ll start the recording and go do something else for 15 minutes. Then when I come back, I can watch the show and can fast forward through all of the commercials. I also have an annual Academy Awards party for a few friends. I set up the recordings for the pre-show red carpet show and the awards. My friends and I all sit down for a leisurely dinner. Once dinner is over, we sit down and start watching what’s been recorded, fast forwarding through the things that are boring. If we ever “catch up” to live TV, we stop watching and have desert, going back to watching after.

So my advice:

  • get the largest capacity HD recorder available. Looks like that’s the TIVO Premier XL, according to the TIVO site.
  • Definitely get the dual tuner.
  • When you get the TIVO, turn off the feature that records things TIVO “thinks” you’ll like. This just fills up your disk with crap.
  • If the Lifetime subscription is available, consider going for that. It will probably be cheaper in the long run.
  • Programming the TIVO is pretty easy – much easier than programming a VCR. Keep the manual handy for the first couple of months and you’ll be fine.

J.
Enjoy!

18

I agree - especially the but about turning off the “suggestions” and getting the lifetime subscription in advance. (This has the added advantage that, if you ever decide to sell the TiVo, the “lifetime service” transfers with it, so you can get a lot more money for it.)

There is only one thing I can think of that a cable company DVR can do that a TiVo cannot; order/watch PPVs and OnDemand shows. You really should have one TV hooked up to a cable company’s box (even if it is not a DVR box). Assuming you have at least one TV with two inputs (and even the smallest ones have multiple inputs now), you can connect both the cable box and the TiVo to the same TV (just connect a coax splitter to the cable from where it enters the room, then run one line to the TiVo and the other to the cable box.)

19

Adding to the cheapness, not only is the monthly fee lower, but you also don’t have to buy the equipment, and if it breaks down at some point you only have to take it down to Comcast and swap it for a new one.

Not saying it’s better than Tivo, I wouldn’t know, I never had Tivo, but it’s certainly an economical choice.

Supposedly you can get Tivo software on a Comcast DVR, but it costs extra, and I don’t know how it compares with a real Tivo. I only remember people talking about it while waiting for it to roll out when I was on a forum that specializes in cable/sat sorta things.

20

Well thanks for all the suggestions, they make a lot of sense, especially about getting the most memory possible and turning off the suggestions feature. The subscription price is a potential deal-breaker, we’ll just have to see how it goes, but it appears there are a lot of people who like their Tivos and few who don’t, which is an excellent sign.