My girlfriend records things on tape still. She forgets to set it sometimes and then misses her shows. I think she’d really dig a TiVO and she thinks she would as well, but what kind? She has no interest in HD and she’s cheap.
Advice?
I might suggest that you look on Craigslist. We got our TiVo for $20.00.
I shall. Anyone else?
Note: she is also without digital cable.
Tivo is really great, but cheap and Tivo don’t really go together. First the Tivo box is $300 or so and there’s a monthly fee for the service and program listings. I love Tivo, I pay about $12 a month for it.
Does she get her television through an antenna? In that case, supposedly everyone getting TV through antenna will have to get a digital converter box in Feb 2009. Same with VCRs, if your VCR records off antenna it will be obsoleted too. There is a box coming out this summer that is a digital converter and has a hard-drive based recorder, with no monthly fees. No prices yet though, but here’s a blurb: http://ces.cnet.com/8301-1_1-9840910-67.html
Assuming she has cable, the dual-tuner 80-hour model is the one to get. It’s $100 at the Tivo site. Three years of pre-paid service is $300 more.
If she uses an antenna, you’ll need to find an old box. The new ones don’t have the proper tuners.
If you’re lucky, you’ll find one on CraigsList with Lifetime Service. New Tivo customers can’t buy Lifetime Service, but under some circumstances, existing customers can get it. (We have it on one of our two current boxes, and on our first box, which we gave to my wife’s parents.)
I think that my wife and I have bought five boxes over the years, including gifts and bartering.
She’s got cable. No antenna on her TV.
My buddy has an older one. They don’t subscribe, but they do record and pause live TV.
While Tivo brand dvr are quite nifty, unless you don’t have any premium channels, don’t care about recording/watching more than one show at a time, or really love the specific features of Tivo brand dvr… the best bet is usually just get whatever dvr is offered by your dish or cable service. On Long Island, we have cablevision, which offers a dvr version of their cable box for a little more a month than a regular cable box. Since you are renting it, there’s no charge for equipment, just for the service, which works out to the subscription costs for Tivo anyway, without having to buy the device.
FYI, the newer ones don’t work without a subscription, either.
I disagree. You may not have used a recent Tivo.
The cable boxes in my area have a jack on the back that accepts a cable for changing channels without an IR transmitter, so premium channels work fine. (The HD Tivos accept CableCards, so they replace the cable box. I assume that renting a CableCard is cheaper than renting a whole cable box, but I don’t know.)
Current Tivos have dual tuners. My in-laws have one, and it uses the cable box only when necessary (when recording a premium or digital channel, or two programs at once). That way, it changes channels instantly most of the time, instead of with the delay and program-guide banner that the cable box adds.
The last time I bought Tivos, they had a rebate for more than the price of the box, so “not buying the device” would have been a negative.
Wait, don’t work or do work? It seems to me like they still record stuff and have the TiVO interface and pause live TV and all that stuff. Am I mis-understanding?
Someone on ebay is selling Series 2 boxes on Ebay for $1 and free shipping. I wonder what the catch is?
http://electronics.search.ebay.com/tivo_TiVo-Digital-Video-Recorders_W0QQfromZR34QQsacatZ79862
If you’re talking bout listings like this: http://cgi.ebay.com/Tivo-HD-TCD652160-Factory-Renewed-184-99-or-less_W0QQitemZ320225480699QQihZ011QQcategoryZ147873QQtcZphotoQQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
They’re selling a coupon. I hate bastards like that. I was searching for cheap Playstation 3 games and kept coming up with 100% complete SAVE game listings, what was tricky about them is they showed a picture of the game box and it would be easy to miss that you were just buying someone’s saved game file.
Whoops. This is the link I meant to post:
http://cgi.ebay.com/FREE-TIVO-Series2-80-Hour-DT-DVR-Series-2-Dual-Tuner_W0QQitemZ160215297899QQihZ006QQcategoryZ79865QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
It looks like it’s for the box itself and not a coupon.
That’s possible. The Tivos I have seen have had to use IR transmitters to deal with premium cable boxes, which obviously would prevent dual tuning. The satellite Tivos I saw had dual tuners. If the newer models overcome those limitations, that’s great.
There is still the advantage of that renting a cable brand dvr amounts to just the subscription fee as opposed to a subscription fee on top of buying the equipment.
Yes, you’re misunderstanding. I just cancelled the service on a Series 2 (upgraded to an HD a while back, got a free year on the 2, which just ended).
Without the subscription, the only thing the box can do is play back what’s already recorded. It cannot record anything new (even by time and channel), and while I didn’t try pausing live TV with it, I don’t think it can do that, either. It’s basically inert.
I must admit I find this a little irritating; it would seem that a multi-hundred dollar (new) box would still retain at least as much function as a $20 VCR after it’s service was ended, but apparently it is not to be.
Except when there’s a rebate for more than the price of the box. The last time I bought Tivos, they were $130 (+$5 s&h), with a $170 rebate. (It was single-tuner boxes being liquidated on Woot.com. I bought one for my daughters’ room and one to give as a gift.) Because the girls’ Tivo is the second one in our house, it was only $7/month instead of $13. (Later, they began offering Lifetime Service for second boxes, but we had already pre-paid three years.)