[QUOTE=Campion]
It does record what you tell it to, but it also records other things it thinks you’ll like. Which, I understand, has been the ruination of many people.
[QUOTE]
I consider it an advantage of TiVo that I can turn this feature off. I watch enough TV; I don’t want it telling me what it thinks I would like. I turned this feature off when I first got TiVo and it’s been off ever since.
DVR is probably the technological advancement that will have the biggest overall impact on the television watching experience. Color is more realistic than Black and White. Cable/satellite gives you more channels than broadcast. HDTV is a marvelously sharp picture.
None of these advances actually change what watching TV means, DVR does. Watching TV now means watching the show you want, when you want. Not just for one or two shows, but for ALL the shows you regularly enjoy. You don’t ever have to miss a show, you don’t ever have to change your schedule to catch a show, they will always be waiting for you.
How much do I love my DVR?
Let’s just say it may be one of the reasons I can handle being married and have a 6 month-old in the house.
You’d think maybe once a week I’d be able to watch a show like The Office for a half hour on Thursdays at 7:30 without interruption? No way. If the wife needs help in the kitchen, the phone rings, the dogs want to go out, the baby is crying, etc. etc. etc. I’m pretty much screwed. Then what are my options if I miss it? Wait for it to come out on DVD a year later and fork over $40 just to see an episode I missed?
Now if I get interrupted I can just “PAUSE” and go take care of things, come back and resume where I left off. If the dog barks, baby cries, wife calls and I miss the punch line to a joke I can just rewind a few seconds and see what was said.
Or if the house is in chaos and I miss the show completely I can watch it later at 9:30 when the house is quieter and nothing is on TV anyway.
And of course there is the added + of watching shows at a later time. “SKIP THE COMMERCIALS!!!” You’ll soon learn that a 30 minute show is actually 20 minutes of show and 10 minutes of commercials. An hour show is 40 minutes of show and 20 minutes of commercials. And commercials are either 30 or 60 second spots. With the 30-second jump button (programable on the Comcast DVR) you just tap-tap-tap through the ads. How awesome to watch 2 hours worth of TV in an hour and 20 minutes!!?
I have become so adapted to the thing that I start to wish I had some of the features on my car radio. “What did that guy say?”,“When did they say band X is coming to town?”,“What did they just say about the weather/traffic?” I always reach for the rewind then realize “crap, this ain’t my TV.”
I also turned the auto-record off; I find that, for me, the suggestions aren’t always stuff I really want to see–it tends to assume, for example, that because I liked Firefly that I also want to watch Angel, and I mean no disrespect to the many loyal fans of that show, but I’m not into it. I do browse through the list of suggestions from time to time, though, and manually pick shows to record, so it’s still a very useful feature, one that I can use in the way I want to.
As others have said, it’s spoiled me for watching live TV. I love being able to run to the bathroom or get a drink without having to try to time it to a commercial break. I constantly find myself wishing I could pause and replay the radio in the car.
I don’t think anybody’s mentioned some of the minor, but still cool, features not having to do with watching and recording TV shows. If you’ve got your box networked, you can look at pictures from your computer on the big TV screen, listen to music (very nice if you also have a home theater setup) either from your hard drive or certain stations and Podcasts on the web (a limited selection, but still pretty good), see Yahoo traffic and weather on the TV…TiVo rocks my socks.
Ditto all the Tivo endorsements here. It really does change how you watch TV.
The only downside I’ve encountered is this: I often use the pause button when my wife says something to me, my intent being to silence the tv and give her my full attention while we’re talking. Then when we’re done talking, I unpause and go back to watching my show.
Now my intent – honestly – is to be polite and give her my attention without us having to talk over the tv. But she interprets this the opposite way and sometimes snarks “Oh, you don’t want to miss even a second of your precious tv program, huh?” I’ve tried explaining why I pause it, but she still says it means the tv is my priority instead of her. That’s not true, of course, because I could always rewind and go back to whatever I missed while we talked.
Not looking for marriage counseling, just wondering if anyone else has encountered this Tivo-based rift before.
I did think of one drawback to TiVo: there is a slight, albeit noticable, degradation of picture quality, even when you’re watch “live” TV. It’s most noticable to me during sporting events where there are lots of things changing on the screen at once.
You guys who turn suggestions off - you know that the feature doesn’t interfere with anything at all, right?
I rarely look at suggestions, but I never turned it off. There’s no reason to. It never pre-empts anything you want to record a suggestion, it never deletes anything you’ve recorded for a suggestion, and suggestions don’t really have any negative impact at all.
Occasionally I don’t want to watch what I have recorded, so I’ll glance over the suggestions box, and sometimes maybe I’ll find seinfeld or something and watch it.
I don’t know how vital Tivo is. I mean honestly, I think it comes in no higher than fourth on my list of essentials: 1) air; 2) water; 3) food & 4) Tivo.
My wife was skeptical when I bought it, but now she frequently says that it saved our marriage. Because I can’t watch TV and talk to her (or listen to her) at the same time. But now I can pause what I’m watching, give her my full attention, and pick up where I left off.
Also, if I’m up early in the morning and there is nothing on but a bunch of infomercials, I’ve got 50 hours of shows I like recorded that I can watch with the push of a few buttons.
Is my team playing on TV this Saturday but I have to go to my nephew’s birthday party? No problem. In fact, TiVo will record the game even if I didn’t know it was going to be televised.
I can watch an entire football game in about an hour and a half, without fast forwarding through any plays. Just skip the commercials and halftime show, FF through the timeouts, and watch each play from snap to tackle in real time. And I don’t have to rush home from church to see the opening kickoff.
I had an early 60-hr model for four years that died recently, and I went out and bought a dual tuner 80-hr machine. It came with a $150 rebate so it ended up costing me less than $100.
Just buy the freaking thing already! How much more convincing do you need? 
-silenus, unrepentant Tivo-lover
No, it doesn’t interfere, but I still prefer to not have it record everything–maybe it’s just my quirky tastes, but when I go through the list manually, maybe a fourth of what it suggests is something I truly want to watch. Letting it auto-record only to delete most of it seems a waste to me, so I like that I can choose whether to have it record or not.
I like it for 2 reasons:
(1) My wife, who was hopeless with the VCR, can use our DVR (Comcast) very easily, so doesn’t have to phone me to walk her through what remote does what and which tape has which.
(2) I watch a lot more shows, particularly on PBS, that do not have regularly scheduled hours. I love catching up on American Experience and American Masters reruns I’ve been missing these past years, so that’s helped me diversifying my viewing.
Only $10/month more than our previous cable package.
The 30 second skip is almost perfect for skipping the time between plays, if you want to watch a football game in a hurry. As soon as the play ends, hit skip, and you’re now about 5 seconds before the next snap. Very efficient.
Waste of what, though? The tivo is recording 24/7 anyway - it’s either being recorded to the live buffer, or stored in a longer lasting fashion. It doesn’t require any extra power, or resources, or anything whatsoever to record a suggestion instead of just recording live TV.
A waste of my time to either delete it or extra scrolling through the Now Playing list to find the stuff I want to see. Not a huge amount of time, sure, but as I said, I like that I have the choice to turn it on or off as I desire (I’m one of those people who also likes to turn off most of the Windows automatic features; I just like to have control over my electronic devices). It’s nice that they designed that feature to make everybody happy, y’know?
Well, I’m not knocking you, I just didn’t understand.
There’s no need/reason to delete the stuff, and it’s always grouped as the very last item on the now playing list (maybe it’s different if you don’t group it), so you never have to scroll past it.
If it makes you happy, that’s cool.
And spam doesn’t really take away from your ability to receive email. But you’ve still got to wade through it and delete the stuff you don’t want. I’ve never seen a recomendation for a show that I A) wanted to watch and B) didn’t plan on watching or recording already.
I’m not trying to be argumentative. I’m just saying why I have it disabled.
You guys may be talking past one another. A Series 1 Tivo does not have folders, all the recorded programs are just a long list. So, suggestions need to be waded through. A Series 2 Tivo has folders and suggestions go in the folder at the bottom and can pretty much be ignored.
Aha, I hadn’t considered that.
Yeah, I would absolutely turn off suggestions if they appeared chronologically intermixed with my recorded shows. I thought the software between tivos was more standardized, and that suggestions appeared in their own little folder at the bottom.
TiVo is Television Jesus.
I was excited when I first got it, and yet, even then, I had absolutely no idea what it would do. Within a week, I knew that it had gone from Extremely Cool to Absolutely Essential.
You ask whether or not I could live without it. Let me put it this way.
If somebody broke into my house and stole all of my electronics, the first thing I would replace, the first thing, is the TiVo. Before even having a screen to use it with. 
Here’s the thing. Having TiVo doesn’t mean I watch more television. It means I watch less. Because when there’s something good at 8pm and something good at 10pm, I’m not sitting there during the 9:00 hour just killing time between shows. I watch only what I want to watch, when I want to watch it. I watch less total, but what I watch is immeasurably better.
TiVo has had a tangible positive effect on my quality of life.
Get it now. Don’t wait. Now. Now! Go NOW!
So what about those of us that did not get one with the built in DirecTv tuners? Do we have to go to cable or could I survive with just the DirecTv DVR?