Get one for free from DirectTV, or get a similar DVR from Dish Network or your cable company. Anything you buy now will be obsolete or broken in a few years anyways. If you cough up hundreds of dollars for the unit and hundreds more for a lifetime subscription, you will just have to do it again sooner than you think as the technology changes.
Most providers, both sat and cable, will be happy to give you the equipment for free. DVR gives you a free Tivo that you can keep even after you become a customer. Dish Network gives you a proprietary DVR that they own and you must give back once you no longer are a customer. In either case, better for them to own the thing than you. They do often simply break. They will become obsolete.
Here’s abother vote to go with your cable or satellite provider. I have Comcast cable, and a DVR costs about $10/month. It’s already connected to the cable (duh!!) so you don’t need a phone connection. 2 receivers, so you can record something and watch something else. It’s also HD ready, although be aware that you’re going to use a LOT more hard drive space for HD TV (about 4x more space, or 4x less hours of programing).
I know that DVR stands for Digital (not Digitial) Video Recorder. But then Debaser’s sentence makes no sense: “Digital video recorder gives you a free Tivo that you can keep even after you become a customer.”
I know we’re getting into IMHO territory, but I have both the cable company’s DVR and TiVo and TiVo’s interface is MUCH more intuitive and MUCH easier to use. Also, the TiVo remote is brilliantly designed. Lastly, TiVo has a secret code (Select-Play-Select-3-0-Seclect) to skip forward 30 seconds at a time instead of having to fast forward through commercials. Of all TiVo’s features, this is the one I miss the most when using another DVR. Without it, I have to press the Fast Forward button three times (to zip ahead at the highest speed) and have my thumb poised to hit the play button as soon as the program resumes. With the 30-second skip, if the commercial break is two minutes long, I just have to hit the skip button four times, and I’m back to the show.
Tivo’s fixed this problem with their latest software patch. If you ask to record two programs consecutively, and the first one is scheduled to overlap the 1st minute of the second, it’ll clip off the 1st minute of the second program and record the remainder.
If you have a DVR from Comcast as I do, you can add the thirty-second commercial skip to it. Instructions are available on the internet. And supposedly Comcast is going to offer Tivo software as an added-cost option.
I’m wary of TiVo rebates though. I bought my Toshiba SD-H400 for $200 with a $100 MIR rebate. I never got any rebate though, and neither did alot of people on that TiVo forum I post on.
The dual channel setup is news to me though. I would set it up but I have satellite.
My Dish Network DVR has a “skip forward 30 seconds” button and a “skip backward 10 seconds” button on the remote. I just have the one button to press, as opposed to your select-play-select-30-select combo, and if it skips too far, the backward button gets me pretty close to where I want to be.
In the “brilliant user interface” comparison, TiVo’s secret code definitely loses out to the handy-dandy single button on Dish Network.
That said, I’ve been unhappy with the reliability of the Dish Network DVR’s. Mine died after about a year. The replacement gave out three months later. The replacement for the replacement was DOA. I’m on box four in a year-and-a-half.
I have been a Tivo devotee from the start. I own a Series 1 that orginally had only 14 hours of recording time (I’ve upgraded to 140 hrs) that I got way back when (I guess it must be going on five years now). I got it with a rebate that I had no problems with. I have never ever had a problem with it.
The TIVO skip forward (and back- using the instant replay button) works exactly like Dish networks - just one button press. The secret code is just needed to enable the button to function that way in the first place- you only have to enter it again if the tivo needs to be powered down for some reason.
On the other hand, I agree strongly that cable company/satellite DVRs are more cost effective, and sometimes it is downright annoying to not be able to watch something on the digital tier of TV live because Tivo is busy recording something or other that my wife wants to watch (or vice-versa). Tivo used to be better because you could install your own software that did all kinds of neat things, but AFAIK you need to sotter in a chip to get software hacks working in the series 2.5 and up boxes you buy new now. (note this doesn’t apply to increasing the space- still possible in newest boxes)
Another thing to think about: Buy vs rent. I don’t know the situation w/ Tivo, but with the Satellite TV, you have to buy the DVR, so when it craps out you’re stuck with replacing it. If my Comcast DVR craps out, I just turn it in for a new one.
What I meant to say is that DirectTV gives you a free Tivo that you own and can keep forever once you sign up as a customer of them. Even if you leave for another cable or sat provider, you can keep the Tivo they gave you.
Not true. Both DirectTV and Dish network give you a DVR for free. DirectTV uses a Tivo brand that they give you to keep. Dish Network has a proprietary one that they make and they own. When you leave them, you give it back just like a cable box.
In any case: Get a Tivo or DVR from a satellite or cable company. It’s much better than going into a store and buying one. You don’t need or want to own it yourself, unless you get it for free.
Thanks for the correction. Is this also true for HiDef DVRs? I was basing my comments on my experience with HiDef TV, so maybe that’s where I got it wrong.
I agree 100% with Wombat. TiVo’s user interface sucks compared with Dish Networks. However, the Dish Network hardware is junk. The hard drives on the DVR’s crash, the dish units break, the remotes even break. The only good news is that they seem to realize this and are very responsive to these problems. You get a new unit in a couple days and it doesn’t cost anything.
I really miss the skip forward and backwards feature that Dish had and Tivo does not. Why would they not have the most useful feature about a DVR service? To make matters worse, Tivo’s fast forward and rewind buttons are next to useless. There are three speeds, and there is no clue in the manual to what they even are. The first is so slow as to be not useful for anything. The next is too slow also. It takes at least 10-20 seconds to get through a commercial, which is way too long. The last is too fast for a commercial, but way too slow for getting to the middle of a three hour movie. All the speeds have an annoying feature that automatically skips backwards once you hit play, so you end up watching at least one commercial per break.
Does anybody have a link to how to modify Tivo to get the skip forward/backwards feature? I didn’t know that it was possible to modify it.
Yup. They charge you for a HiDef DVR, IIRC. I don’t have a high def TV so it didn’t matter to me. But, I seem to remember higher priced DVR’s that weren’t free that you could choose from.
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