Some questions about Tivo?

Factual Questions
1

I want to give my mother a Tivo box and a year’s paid subscription for Christmas. I am next to clueless about the service, however. A few questions (forgive any that sound stupid):

1- Is it possible to run a DVD player and Tivo to the same TV without interfering with each other?

2- Does Tivo have to be connected to a phone line or is cable sufficient? (My mother doesn’t have a cable Internet connection, just TV.)

3- Do you think that a 70 year old woman who can program a DVD/VCR but isn’t terribly computer literate would be able to learn it? How complicated is it?

4- Is it true that you can stop a live broadcast and replay the last few seconds? How does it “catch up” when you’re finished?

5- Once you have Tivo, do you still use your VCR to record anything?

6- Can you watch a DVD while Tivo is recording?

Thanks for any answers or input.

2

Yes.

You will need to connect TiVo to a phone line so it call make it’s daily call and download the latest TV listings. You can also use a broadband internet connection.

TiVo’s interface is very well designed, so it will probably be easier to use than a VCR.

Yes, it is true. Generally, one would catch up by fast forwarding though the commercials. For example, if you skip back two minutes, you’d be able to skip ahead two minutes during the next commercial break.

Probably not.

Yes.

3

I would just add about #3 that setting up the Tivo is not particularly hard, but I could see how it would be a bit vexing to set up for some. And if she wants to record one thing on Tivo and watch something else she will need a splitter.

4

It depends on what connections you use for both of these: RCA (the little plastic plugs) or coax (your basic “cable” connection) how easy it is. But yes; worst case you’ll need an RCA splitter ($15). If the TV has two inputs, you probably won’t even need that.

Either internet or phone line. Since she’ll have to use the phone line, know that the calls are pretty short and it will hang up if you pick up the phone. Unless she lives somewhere really remote, it will probably be a local call.

It’s almost trivially easy. It is trivially easy after you get it set up, just choose from a meno of options: basically “play something already recorded”, “play live TV”, or “setup something to record.” The recording has lots of options, but they’re all pretty easy. Certainly easier than most VCRs.

If you’re watching live TV through the Tivo, and pause it, it starts buffering the incoming signal, up to about an hour, I think. Once you start playing, it will discard what you’ve seen and use the space to record more, so you get a sort of “sliding window”. Once you stop watching live tv, it tosses it. It’s all very transparent (although I don’t use this feature much).

No, unless you want to record two things at once (the Tivo only has one tuner). This single tuner issue also means that you can’t watch one show and record another using the tuner in the Tivo (but there are workarounds that use the TV’s tuner, it’s in the manual).

Yes, depending on how you set up the DVD player and Tivo. For both 5 & 6, you can “turn off” the Tivo (it will still record, but just passes the incoming signal through to the TV), which allows you to watch the other signal while it’s doing things.

On preview (I got a phone call while I was writing this), I see others have given you some of these answers, too. I’ll post anyway, for the extra details.

5

Thanks.

Is it possible to transfer something recorded on TIVO onto a videocassette or DVD so that you can keep it without having to save it on the TIVO space? (The unit I bought for my mother is 40 hours, which admittedly I doubt she has even 10 hours worth of stuff she’s taped on videocassette saved, it’s just a question.)

Also- is my understanding correct that she can tell it tape Days of Our Lives and it will automatically do so everyday and store it in order until she has a chance to watch it? Does it know automatically when Days comes on, or in the event of a football game (my mother’s a football fanatic) does it know automatically when the game goes off?

6

TiVo is always automatically recording the television show you are watching. It “buffers” (holds) up to a half-hour of whatever current channel you are on. TiVo automatically discards that half-hour from the buffer when you change the channel.

Of course, if you have set TiVo to record a certain program, it records the whole program, and keeps it for however long you want.

7

Yes - it’s possible. It’s done in real-time though, so it’s probably not worth it. In my experience, my Tivo is usually full of stuff that I end up deleting instead of watching. I’ve never had any significant problems with space.

[/quote]
Also- is my understanding correct that she can tell it tape Days of Our Lives and it will automatically do so everyday and store it in order until she has a chance to watch it? Does it know automatically when Days comes on, or in the event of a football game (my mother’s a football fanatic) does it know automatically when the game goes off?
[/QUOTE]

Yes, Tivo has what they call “Season Passes” - meaning she can set it up to record Days everyday. It will automatically download a TV guide so that it knows when and on what channel Days will show. It does know when the game goes off - BUT in my experience football games can (and do) run long. When recording them, it’s best to set the Tivo to record an additional 30 mins or so.

  • Peter Wiggen
8

Stupid coding. :smack:

Anyways - in case I wasn’t clear - the Tivo knows when things start and when they end. It knows how long to record. It’s very, very smart.

9

Yes, all TiVo boxes allow you to export a recorded program from the TiVo to a VCR. You have the option of exporting the whole program, or from whatever point you have paused the program on the TiVo. You can also export to a DVD recorder, but the export will be in an analog signal, not a digital signal, meaning some loss of quality. Another nice feature is that the TiVo will automatically place a title card at the start of the recording, with program information.

Some TiVo boxes now come with a DVD recorder built in, and the transfer is digital, with no loss of quality.

About that 40-hour TiVo: that’s the maximum recording capacity using the lowest quality setting. At the highest quality setting, expect about 13-14 hours recording time, maximum.

10

About live sports events: TiVo downloads every day a program guide for the next fourteen days, and so while it knows the time frame a live sports event is scheduled for, it does not know when the game will actually end. Just tonight a football game on Fox ran about 15 minutes overtime. My TiVo thought The Simpsons was on, and recorded the last 15 minutes of the game, followed by the first 15 minutes of The Simpsons.

If I had been a little more careful, I would have checked ahead to see if a live sports event was on tonight, and instructed my TiVo to add an extra number of minutes (anywhere from 1 to 30 minutes) to the tail end of the recording time of The Simpsons, just this time.

11

FTR, I set mine to record 30 mins late for todays Giants Seahawks game, and it stopped recording just as overtime started, so I’d reccomend an hour to be safe.

If you have a cable box and want to record one thing while watching another, you need a splitter as others have noted. However you can only watch basic cable while recoding. Getting your TV to cooperate in this process can be somewhat challenging depending on the type of TV you have. After connecting the coax to the TV, you might need to have it search for new channels or “auto tune”. Figuring out how the inputs need to be switched can be complex as well. I’d reccomend writing down how things need to be set, so that she doesn’t have any problems.

12

You do not have to keep TIVO connected to a phone line all the time, but it will nag you about it if you don’t.

13

This wasn’t specifically asked, but you can also transfer shows from your TV to your PC …using “TiVoToGo” (not available for Macs yet…if ever ::grumble grumble::slight_smile:

http://www.tivo.com/4.9.19.asp

Of course this assumes some sort of ethernet/wireless connection from the TiVo to your PC.

14

You might want to consider a DVR - Digital Video Recorder - which is probably offered by your cable provider. It’s like TiVo, but with fewer bells and whistles. Cheaper, too.

With my DVR (from Charter Cable), I can record 1 program while watching another, or record 2 programs simultaneously, in which case, I must either watch one of them or turn off the set and they’ll both record. I don’t know if you can do this with TiVo.

And just like TiVo, the DVR let’s you pause, Fast Forward/Reverse.

DVRs are really wonderful. If you’re a news junkie, you can record the Sunday morning news shows like Face the Nation, Meet the Press, The Chris Matthews Show, etc. Then when you watch them you zip through the commercials. Great continuity.

Before you record anything you can go into the program scheduling to see what programs run when. E.g., Meet the Press runs twice on Sunday mornings here in CT, so this allows for flexibility if you want to record that and Face the Nation, and the Chris Matthews Show. Remember, you can record just two at a time.

Yesterday, I tuned to a CPSAN program in progress, in which an author was talking about his book. I was interested in seeing this from the beginning. Found the program would repeat in the wee hours, so I recorded it. Four hours, though! Oy. I’ll have to FastForward to find that author.

That’s another TiVo/DVR benefit. You know how when you FF with your VCR you don’t see crap? It’s a lot of guess-and-by-golly before you find your place. With TiVo/DVR you see scenes of what you’re moving through and you can stop the FF much much more accurately than with a VCR. This is hard to visualize - until you see it in action.

Another side benefit. You don’t buy all those Video Cassettes. But wait! You had a question about recording on your VCR. Suppose you have a relative who wants to see a program you DVRed. You can copy the program from your DVR to your VCR and mail the cassette to that loved one.

Good luck!

15

TiVo sucks. It’s almost 2006 and TiVo still doesn’t have multiple tuners or HD support*. They can blame the CableCARD people all they want, but the reality is that thousands of people are using cable company DVR boxes exactly because of the lack of those two features. “But TiVo has a better user interface!” the fans say. “But it makes these cute noises!” they’ll say. Frankly, I don’t care about the $!^# UI - until I can record two HD programs at once whilst watching a pre-recorded one, the TiVo fanbois can drink a big tall glass of “shut the hell up”.

OK - rant done.

Whilst your Mom might not care about HDTV support, she will care about having two (or more) tuners in her DVR. Aside from the doing the obvious - recording two shows at once - dual-tuner DVRs are (mostly) immune to the “dirty tricks” the networks are playing lately. You might have noticed that many TV shows end at 10:01 or 9:03 these days. Because most TiVos have a single tuner, running a show over by a minute or so means that TiVo won’t be able to record a show that follows that show you’re recording - unless (of course) that show happens to be on the same network as the show that runs over.

In other words, let’s say she wanted to record Desperate Housewives on Sunday night. The show officially runs from 9:00 to 10:02pm. If she also wanted to record Intervention on A&E (which airs from 10:00 - 11:00pm), TiVo would say that it’s “busy” and cannot schedule a recording at that time. The only workaround (AFAIK) is to manually schedule a recording (which works just like a VCR: "record channel 37 from 10:03 to 11:00pm on Sunday) or use the A\B switch and use a VCR to record Intervention. It’s stupid to have to do that in 2005.

Random other considerations:

  1. Cable company DVRs don’t need phone lines or network connections to get their programming data. They just get it through the same COAX cable that’s already attached to the converter box\DVR in the first place.

  2. My TWC DVR has a spiffy new feature: when you select a sporting event to record, it recognizes it as such and automatically asks if you want to extend the recording time by 15, 30, 60, 90 or 120 minutes. Even spiffier, it knows the difference between a live sporting event and a pre-recorded one, so it doesn’t hassle you about extended recording time if you’re recording a Premier Leagure football (soccer) match or a football\baseball\basketball game from ESPN Classic (all of which are edited to fit into a particular timeslot).

  • = Yes, I know DirectTiVo has both of those features. I’m talking about the general TiVo boxes available at stores everywhere.
16

It’s much better value to buy a lifetime subscription. A one year subscription is around $150, but for $300 you get forever.

17

[Nitpick] It’s for the lifetime of the TiVo box, not your lifetime. If you sell your TiVo and buy a new one or if it breaks out of warranty, you’d have to pay $299 all over again on a replacement box. [/Nitpick]

18

I’ve always gone to this board for my TiVo questions.

It is filled with people who work at TiVo and people who know alot about the electronics.

As far as tranferring to VHS or DVD, some TiVos or DVRs have a DVD burner built into them. You can also run your TiVo through your VCR and just record onto VHS that way.

If you are a subscriber to something like insight, direcTV or Dishnetwork you may want to get your DVR from them instead. I don’t know if it matters much but it is only about $5/month from these places and you don’t have to pay for the box sometimes. With TiVo the box costs about $200-300 and costs $13/month. Cable/satellite DVRs are also usually multi-tuning, meaning you can watch one show and record another at the same time. TiVo can’t really do that. I think the quality is better on brand DVRs too. I have heard an 80 hour direcTV DVR records at 80 hours of high quality recording. An 80 hour TiVo only records about 20 hours of high quality recording. 40 hours is the time on lowest quality setting. You’ll get used to lowest quality setting sooner or later but for TV quality you’d only get about 12 hours. .

TiVo doesn’t know when a show ends or stops though. I missed the last half of family guy because my TiVo recorded half of that show between simpsons & family guy and 15 minutes of family guy as the game ran 15 minutes late.

But it is a good gift idea.

19

There are a lot of DVRs available out there, and TiVo is just one of them. Not all of them have fewer features than TiVo, nor are all of them cheaper.

Mine is integrated with my satellite receiver, so it’s just one remote, there’s no extra subscription cost (it’s free with the satellite programming package), and the guides are integrated.

20

TiVo routinely offers substantial discounts on its boxes. Right now you can get a 40-hour TiVo box for $50, and an 80-hour box for $150 when you pre-pay for 12 months of service or a lifetime subscription.

Yes, you can. As long as the channel you are watching is analog (generally, cable channels 1-99).

Actually, about 27 hours at the highest quality setting.