I have used TiVo pretty much since it came out. We got a Series 1 within a few months of seeing them first advertised and it totally changed the way we watch TV. Then we got DishNetwork and got one of their DVRs for the bedroom, and it was so annoying to use that we rarely used any of its actual recording features. Much more recently I’ve seen my mom deal with her cable company’s DVR and likewise friends do the same and I am convinced that TiVo is still superior.
People with generic DVRs who have never used TiVo tell me they’re the same, but they’re not. I don’t know exactly what features theirs do or do not have but just on the user interface level alone TiVo has them beat. I also don’t think they do season passes, wishlists, starting/stopping X minutes early/late, and other such features that TiVo has. Oh, and being able to program your TiVo from away from home though a computer or smart phone–can other DVRs do that? I’m not sure.
So help me make my case so that I can intelligently explain why TiVo is better than cable-company provided DVRs. Or convince me that I’m wrong.
I’ve had a few different brands, including TiVo and I have found them all to be pretty much the same. I don’t have a TiVo now and I can program it from a remote PC or a smart phone.
BTW, I was one of the first people ever to have a DVR. There were originally only two DVR companies, TiVo and ReplayTV. TiVo won that battle and Replay no longer exists. A good friend of mine was the lead programmer at Replay and I had one of the first beta units.
My DVR also has Season Pass and starting and stopping late as well as smart searching. It may not have been so at first but they really all are pretty much the same now.
I have a Dish Network DVR. It has (or used to have) a season pass button – I think that may have been one of TiVo’s cases for patent infringement. Anyway, my box records all the new episodes of the shows I want.
I’m not quite sure what a wish list is. I can start or end recordings up to 90 minutes early or late, and I can program my DVR from my iPhone (which I actually do fairly regularly).
I’m no expert on these things, but it seems to me that saying that this DVR is superior to that one is like saying that this microwave is the best, and anyone who buys the other is a sucker: there may have been differences at some point in the past, but now they’re more or less the same.
A wish list is like, for example, automatically finding anything with a certain actor in it, or with a certain keyword in the title or description, which you can then have set to automatically record.
I still say the user interface is far superior on the TiVo.
I didn’t think season passes (still recording a show if it changes time or day, etc) was something the others did, but maybe they’ve caught up.
In those very early days, Replay had the better interface. (I am probably very biased because a good friend designed it.)
At first, TiVo’s business model was an inexpensive unit sold at a loss and a monthly fee. Replay was a more expensive unit and no fee. This changed eventually but since I was a beta tester, I had free service for life. TiVo’s model proved more popular plus they had a better name. TiVo went public in '99 (I think) and replay was set to go public in the first half of '00. Then the market crashed and they pulled their IPO in order to wait for things to recover. They ran out of money before that happened. My friend came very close to being set for life with his options but that didn’t happen.
I got rid of that old Reply box after a few years because compared to what was out there at the time, it was slow and only held ten hours of video. I got a TiVo after that and then, I think, another TiVo. When I switched from cable to DirecTV, I got one of their boxes and then yet another DirecTV box when I got a high def tv earlier this year.
Really, Opal, they are all about the same. There is a bit of a learning curve between boxes but that’s trivial.
BTW, I just looked on Wiki and after a few different owners, DirecTV bought the original ReplayTV technology so it turns out that I have a ReplayTV again. I doubt that my friend’s Easter Eggs are still there though.
From what I understand TiVO tapes(haha) stuff that it thinks you might like based on things you have already set to record. The DirectTV DVR, as far as I know, does not do that. Other than that and the fun boop sound the TiVo uses as you navigate I think they are all pretty much equivalent. I’ve used the DirectTV DVR HD, and the standard DVR one and think the interface is easy to use and pretty powerful. I know my Mom has had it since around 2005 and she set one of them to tape anything with Denzel Washington. So, it has had that feature for at least 5 years.
Tivo’s user interface used to be the best around, but it hasn’t changed at all in ten years and has been bested by some of the competition. Hell, they only just added the video-in-menu feature that every other DVR has had for years, and only in their newest model. Tivo (the company) knows that selling subscription Tivo boxes is a doomed business model and they have spent most of their time in the last five years trying to find some other way to make money rather than improving their namesake product.
I have a Tivo HD and owned a couple of Tivos before this one. My next DVR will be whatever Comcast or Verizon Fios gives their customers. Both of those are better than a Tivo. I had the Comcast DVR several years ago and it sucked (which is why I went back to Tivo), but their newer ones do everything I want and they do it faster and with a better-looking and just as intuitive interface as the Tivo.
I have Verison FiOS, and it’s DVR does the season pass, that’s just recording all instances of show whenever it plays, right? I can select only “new” or “new and repeats” or “all including duplicates”, and select a particular channel or all channels. It’s pretty good about catching time changes. It does the stop and start early/late thing.
It does not do wishlists, based on a particular actor or topic, and does not record anything that I have not specifically told it to record*. At least, if it does a wishlist, I don’t know how.
I can program it away from home, on a computer or phone, though I never have tried this feature. I can also view recorded programs on any TV in the house.
*this is a good thing, because the Mrs. freaks out whenever the DVR is nearly full, and deletes programs until there’s ample space for our scheduled recordings.
The remote recording from a phone is very, very nice. And check the Verizon website - they’ve just started rolling out larger DVRs, though I don’t know if it’s regional. They hit you with a one time $40 charge, but I was able to talk that down to $26. The monthly charge stays the same.
That’s the thing. I’ve got Comcast, and I have their DVR. I’d heard that Tivo was good, but I’m not paying a monthly fee for my cable, and then another monthly fee on top of that for the Tivo. It’s true that I’m doing the same thing anyway with the Comcast DVR (as this has an additional fee), but the $5 bucks or so for the DVR is a lot easier to stomach than another $20 subscription (or whatever it is for Tivo). It’s probably a psychological thing, but since it’s all bundled together, it feels better. I’m sure I’m not the only one to feel this way.
Our first DVR was Tivo with DirecTV. It was fabulous. Then DirecTV switched to their proprietary DVR and we’ve been bummed ever since.
DirecTV DVR has definitely caught up in terms of what features are available. However, we still miss our Tivo dearly. DirecTV is not responsive at all, there’s major lag and that’s frustrating. Tivo was snappy, easier to use, and we actually enjoyed the suggested programming.
Also, DirecTV DVR’s do not have large enough hard drives, that’s vexing as hell.
Another advantage of using the DVR that Comcast provides is just that - Comcast provides the DVR. You don’t have to buy it separately, you don’t have to go through any extra hassle getting it set up (getting Comcast to properly set up a Tivo with a cable card is a real pain), and if it breaks they give you a new one. If your Tivo breaks after the warranty is up you’re hosed (or you can pay Tivo a bundle to replace it with a refurbished box).
I’ve been a TiVo Kool-aid drinker since the Series 1 days… Back then it was a 14 hr model. Today I have an HD version with 2 GB storage…
The two biggest advantages in my book are the following:
Expandable storage space - I can store way more on my TiVo than a cable-company DVR.
Program transfer to/from PC - I can have any video on my PC and can transfer it to my TiVo to watch in our living room on our entertainment system. This could be anything from our latest vacation video to something I’ve downloaded off the internet. Of course, being able to do this also expands our storage again - it is essentially infinite. I have a NAS on our network and store countless movies and TV shows on there - no CDs or DVDs to have to monkey with…
TiVo’s interface and programming beats other copycats hands down. Most people that think the other DVR’s are equal have never consistently used the TiVo interface to notice the difference. I still have 2 directv w/ tivo receivers that I refuse to give up. We have two of their other directv proprietary DVR’s and they suck.
Directv keeps promising a new version of their receiver with TiVo…but its release keeps getting delayed.