Any TiVo people out there? What do you think? What sucks? What rocks?
We just hooked it up and now it’s downloading, so I haven’t explored yet.
I have an Oscar party every year, I’m thinking TiVo is going to exponentially increase the amusement value. Start when we want, “What’d he say?” Fast forward through the commercials and the dull shit, pause when everyone wants to comment…
Nothing sucks. It’s all great. TiVo is cooler than sliced bread wearing sunglasses.
Heh. Welcome to the Tivolution. In a week you’ll be wondering how you ever lived without one.
If you want to find out more than you ever wanted to know, come join the rest of us Tivoholics over here.
TiVo is the best investment, entertainment-wise, I ever made.
– My wife walks in while I’m watching TV and says something to me. I can pause the TV, give her my full attention, and then go back to what I was watching when she came in. Makes me a good husband!
– I can watch an entire football game in about 1 1/2 hours – even less if I need to.
– I was watching a show the other night when I couldn’t understand a line. I rewound, listened again, still didn’t get it. I paused, turned on closed captioning, rewound, read the line, paused, turned off cc, and resumed the show.
– I hardly ever see commercials anymore.
– I don’t have to worry about being unexpectedly not home and missing a show - all my favorites get recorded whether I’m home or not, whenever they’re on.
– I can enter “Humphrey Bogart” into a Wishlist and it will record any Bogie movie ever shown on any channel I get, whenever its on, without me knowing ahead of time.
– I never have to complain that “nothing’s on” because I always have a huge stash of recorded shows to watch.
The only downside I can think of is that I hate watching live TV now, because I hate waiting through commercials and not being able to FF. That’s why now I always start watching about 15 min. after the show starts.
You know, everybody talks about fast forwarding through commercials, but at least once a day, I end up fast forwarding through the commercials until something catches my eye, then stopping to watch that particular commercial. Sometimes two or three times. Sometimes I’ll even call my wife in to see it for herself.
My theory is that allowing us to choose which commercials to watch, TiVo has raised the bar for commercial creativity.
We just got a second TiVo for the bedroom this week. We purchased the Home Media Option, and now we can transfer programs from room to room. Last night, we got tired during ER, so we moved in to the bedroom and watched the rest of the show there. This weekend, I’m loading the software on my computer to let us listen to our music library through the TiVos.
Expect to start forgetting which show is on when, or even what network is on which channel, and just plan to watch the show you want.
Expect to come home and find out that TiVo has recorded something all on its own, based on what it thinks you like to watch. It’s like a Secret Santa party in your office – this may or may not be the gift you wanted, but you can usually figure out why somebody would get it for you.
If you like the Simpsons, expect to find out that the football game ran long and you’ve got the end of the game instead.
So, this TiVo… What are some average subscription costs, and who do you subscribe to? Cable company, independent TiVo provider, or TiVo itself?
Hmmm- pretty sure stand alone tivo is 12.95 a month or 300 bucks for a lifetime subscription.
DirecTiVo is only 5 bucks a month - no brainer if you have satellite
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My wife walks in while I’m watching TV and says something to me. I can pause the TV, give her my full attention, and then go back to what I was watching when she came in. Makes me a good husband!
– I can watch an entire football game in about 1 1/2 hours – even less if I need to.
– I was watching a show the other night when I couldn’t understand a line. I rewound, listened again, still didn’t get it. I paused, turned on closed captioning, rewound, read the line, paused, turned off cc, and resumed the show.
– I hardly ever see commercials anymore.
– I don’t have to worry about being unexpectedly not home and missing a show - all my favorites get recorded whether I’m home or not, whenever they’re on.
– I can enter “Humphrey Bogart” into a Wishlist and it will record any Bogie movie ever shown on any channel I get, whenever its on, without me knowing ahead of time.
– I never have to complain that “nothing’s on” because I always have a huge stash of recorded shows to watch.
The only downside I can think of is that I hate watching live TV now, because I hate waiting through commercials and not being able to FF. That’s why now I always start watching about 15 min. after the show starts.
WOW! Couldn’t have said it better myself - that should be in the commercial.
Tivo is great for sports - also really good for catching films and documentaries that you might have missed - it is like hiring a guy to sit in your living room and watch all your channels and tape anything that you might like. Think of it that way and 12.95 a month is a bargain!
I was all set to weigh in here, but Skammer captured it perfectly. What he said.
Heard that! I got Tivo for Christmas. I didn’t get it hooked up and activated until this past Sunday; it was kind of a pain to connect due to a cramped AV setup I didn’t want to take completely apart, so I put it off a few days. But I’ve had it online for five days now. And I simply cannot imagine doing without it. I’d rather get rid of TV entirely then go back to the pre-Tivo days. It makes that much of a difference.
Heh. Look up “irony.”
Re usage recommendations: This comes after only a week of use, so bear with me.
First thing you’re going to want to do is set up your season passes. Be careful about how you do this; if you’ve reliably kept up with a current show and now you want to continue going forward, use “first run” so you get new episodes only. If you want to catch up on an older show, use one of the other settings. Note, Tivo is pretty smart about identifying first runs, but it can get a little funky sometimes. For example, I’ve got “Daily Show with Jon Stewart” recording as first-run, because I’m usually but not always at home at 11pm and I don’t want to miss it. But for some reason, Tivo goes and grabs all the repeats of that first-run show, at 10am, 7pm, and the following 1am. Don’t know why this is. Kind of a pain. If anyone has a recommendation, let me know. Point is, be prepared for some adjustment.
You’ll also want to monitor the To-Do list. This is where Tivo keeps track of everything it’s planning to record, not just the stuff you’ve told it to, but also things it’s identifying as possibly of interest based on your viewing habits. It’s here that I’ve been stripping out the extraneous showings of the “Daily Show.” I’m also keeping an eye on what Tivo is suggesting, and either keeping the titles or marking them with thumbs-down so Tivo can learn what I like and what I don’t like. The very first suggestion it came up with was positively spooky in its accuracy (an obscure indie movie from last year), but since then it’s been all over the place and I’ve spent a lot of time crossing things off. I expect this will become less of a chore over time. Plan to do this. You might also just pick shows at random off the guide that you hate, and mark them with thumbs-down, to build a preference library from which Tivo can extrapolate.
Another thing I’ve found myself doing is browsing the programs by category for the next few days. For example, I’ll pull up the science documentary section, enter A to start at the beginning of the list, and mark off a couple of things that interest me (“ooo, a Hubble show, check that one”). Then I watch them at my convenience when they turn up later. This is going to reduce my channel surfing to near zero, I expect. I can turn on the TV when I have an hour or two and be assured there’s something I want to watch, instead of flipping around and hoping, and then picking something half-assed because I’m just killing time. This will be a major change for me; no more couch zombie!
The one thing I expect I’ll have to be careful of is keeping up with selected viewing, so I don’t fill up the recorder and get behind. As long as I’m judicious about picking things in advance, and operate on a schedule, I don’t think this’ll be a problem. As is indicated above, instead of watching TV for four hours a day to find the one hour that may be good, I can watch one hour a day and be assured it’s something I want to see.
Tivo is great. Give me Tivo or give me a blank space on the wall where the tube used to be! 
I went and looked at tanstaafl’s link, and there is fabulous advice for new users in this discussion thread.
Great link, t! Thanks!
I’ve been thinking about getting TiVo for some time, but I have a few concerns. Maybe you guys can help with #3.
Beautifully formatted, recorded, and saved crap is still crap. I was delighted when I went to digital cable until I realized that I was getting 200 channels of garbage instead of the usual 6.
I already pay $90 per month for cable TV and cable modem. If I just went back to dialup and rabbit ears, I might be far better off.
If I record a show from cable to VCR, I have to make sure the cablebox is not only on, but tuned to the right channel. The notion of watching one cahnnel while recording another is, IMO, a myth (unless I buy rabbit ears and watch local broadcasts). How does TiVo deal with all this? Can it switch cable channels for me? Can I watch Faux News Channel while recording Pet Psychic? Excusing my horrible taste in TV, how does TiVo accomplish that?
One more question:
Tonight I want to record a show on BCTV, the 700 Club, and Touched by an Angel. All three begin at 8pm. At the same time, I want to watch Spunk-Soaked Anal Cheerleaders on DVD.
Possible?
Not to throw water on your fire or anything, but I read that this past Christmas was the last time that one should by TiVo, since they are changing their business plan to supply software to the makers of set-top boxes for cable, and that in the near future you will be able to do with them what the TiVo box now offers. TiVo figures that people will no longer want to buy an extra box and have to set it up, etc. Any worries for you TiVo people?
Everything rocks, almost nothing sucks. I was “fortunate” in that I bought a refurbished one from half.com instead of a new one; for whatever reason it was registered as a lifetime membership to the TiVo service so I don’t have to pay the monthly fee.
The only downsides I can think of are: 1) it makes watching live TV kind of annoying because you can’t fast-forward. I usually either wait 15 minutes before I start watching a show, as someone else suggested, so I’ve got enough of a buffer to FF through commercials. 2) You get dependent on it – I was travelling recently, and became infuriated with hotel TV’s because I couldn’t pause & rewind to catch a line I’d missed. 3) If you got the standalone model (not DirecTiVo), it doesn’t work so well with cable boxes. I got a “free upgrade” to digital cable but can’t use it because I’d rather have hassle-free TiVo.
The other thing I should mention is that it took me a while to discover the “zen” of TiVo. When I first got it, I set up all my shows to record, and then would come home to find the thing full of shows I had to watch. It was like another to-do list with more work – I’ve only got so many hours in the day, how could I possibly watch all this stuff? Eventually, though, I made peace with the TiVo. It’s not necessary to watch everything the machine has recorded. Shows can just evaporate without my having watched them, and the world won’t end. My Now Playing List isn’t a list of shows I have to watch, it’s a list of shows I can watch. Om.
Another suggestions: turn off TiVo’s Suggestions. It’s a nice idea, but it breaks down in practice. F’rinstance, the first thing I got a season pass for was “Iron Chef”. The TiVo, in its naivete, kept recording more cooking shows for me, even – horrors – Martha Stewart Living. As smart as it is, the TiVo doesn’t recognize that the appeal of “Iron Chef” isn’t as a cooking show, but as a Japanese Game Show Spectacle. If I had a ton of HD space and/or a ton of time, I might be more open to it, but as is I’d rather just have it record the shows I want it to record.
True enough. Fortunately your Tivo only records what you want it to. If you turn on suggestions, it may find stuff you’ve never seen before that you like.
The TiVo comes with an IR generator that emulates your cable box’s remote control. It will change the cable box’s channel whenever it needs to record something, meaning you can go on vacation for two weeks, and it will record all your favorite stuff without you having to do anything.
Assuming Pet Psychic was already recorded and stored on your TiVo, then yes. You can watch anything that’s on the TiVo’s hard drive, and it will record from the live TV at the same time. In fact, you probably will never even notice when it’s recording. If you’re watching live TV and TiVo wants to change the channel to record something, it will pop a message up on the screen asking for permission. (This message times out after a few seconds, so if you’re not actually watching TV at the moment, it assumes it has permission and changes the channel and starts recording.)
One of my favorite features: You can watch live TV and simply press the TiVo’s pause button. The action stops and the TiVo immediately starts recording the show in a buffer until you come back.
That’s kind of a let down, actually. What I would really like to do is to record and watch seperate shows at the same time. Or record two at the same time. Then again, what I’m asking it to do is be on two seprate channels simultaneously. That’s not a function of TiVo, it’s a limitation of cable and/or rabbit ears. I’m asking my TV to break the laws of physics, essentially.
Maybe someday some future CabVo system wil be able to do that and more. I’m there. But for now, about the only benefit I can see from TiVo is recording all of those stupid chock-full-o-commercials judge shows while I’m at work, or recording 24 while I’m at rehearsal.
I may be better off just killing my TV.
I have one gripe - TiVo doesn’t record the HD channels. That was our biggest disappointment after we got our unit. I have heard that a HD TiVo is going to be released this year, so less than a year after purchasing ours, we’ll have to buy a new one. We have to switch to the HD tuner to watch HD programs, and can’t record. It is a toss up - would we rather be able to use the TiVo, or watch in HD?
tdn: There’s a hybrid box combining DirectTV and TiVo that can record two channels at once or record one channel while you’re watching another live channel. Go to the forum linked by tanstaafl and look for references to “DirecTiVo” for more information.
Boscibo: That is a bummer about the HD limitation. Hadn’t thought about it, but it makes sense, given what TiVo does to a regular cable image. Food for thought for technophiles, I guess.
The big complaint I have about the TiVo is not so much with TiVo itself as with the people who generate and send schedule updates. If you want to tape a program, but something before it in the schedule runs over, TiVo usually doesn’t catch it. I think this is a function of DirectTV’s scheduling guide, but it is a bit annoying. I lost part of something I wanted to record because the Green Bay- Philly game ran late on FOX.
The system has neat properties, not all of which really matter to me. We got one with our DirectTV setup because it was a way for us to record programs simultaneously shown on different networks. The “set it and forget it” aspect of recording programs is nice when it works, but it doesn’t always expect the unexpected.
Agree with what everyone else said about ohw wonderful TiVo is. People like me that have had the epiphany of TiVo become bores to their friends, always trying to persuade them to get one.
The only “warts” I’ve found thus far are:
[ul]
[li]The “season pass” is specific to a channel - how about if I want to record every episode of something, regardless of the channel that is showing it? You can sort of do this with Wishlists but I wish it were an option for Season Pass[/li][li]There’s no way (short of the well-published hacks, which with Series 2 TiVos require you to take a screwdriver to your box) of displaying the amount of space used, free space etc. on your hard drive[/li][li]Some of the menus are slooooow - e.g. Season Pass, recording options…what is it doing ?[/li][/ul]