OP says it all, markedly better than local cable DVR?
Never had DVR, so I really can’t compare. But I lurves my Tivo. Hard to imagine how we ever watched TV without it.
I had another kind of DVR (dishnetwork, fwiw) for a while and I can’t even begin to express how inferior it was to actual TiVo. I won’t use something else again.
Rgr that, I was leaning toward going for it, think I will now.
It’s Lada vs. Lamboughini. There really is no comparison.
I have Comcast cable and use the dvr they provide. It’s made by Motorola and it works perfectly fine for my needs.
gladtobeblazed: have you ever had a real TiVo, though?
I used to think a VCR was just fine and dandy, too. Now it’s a nearly useless relic.
How so?
We have a dish satellite something-or-other DVR and I quite like it. It does everything I really want it to do.
How is a TiVo actually better, though, out of curiosity? What does it do that a regular DVR can’t?
I know it can recommend shows you might like
And I know it probably has more space.
… but what else?
Well, yes, it can recommend shows but I don’t care about that. I like the season passes feature, where it will record shows for you no matter what time/night they are on–and you can set it to record only new episodes, or new + reruns, and you can tell it how many max episodes to keep. It also has wishlists, so for example, anytime anything with the word “juggling” in the title or description airs, it records it for me. Anytime anything with Weird Al in it is on, it records it. For a while it recorded anything with “cirque du soliel” in the title for me. It can automatically record anything with your favorite actor in it, or whatever. The season pass manager has a very easy to understand/manipulate hierarchy to help it decide what to record if there is a conflict.
I don’t know what your DVR does, but I remember that one I had and it just irritated the crap out of me, especially since I was used to TiVo (which we still had, in the other room). I was just forever trying to do X or Y only to find out that my only option was the less useful Z.
Edited to add: also, the TiVo user interface is so much more intuitive and easy to use than the DVR we had.
I had a cable company DVR for a while, and it worked great for me. Over the two years I had it, they slowly added more features that made it easier to use. No wishlists like Opal describes, but that doesn’t seem that useful to me. The hierarchy to tell it what to do in case of conflict would have been useful though, especially since I had four other roommates in that house, all with our own TV priorities. But it had two tuners, so it didn’t matter all that much. I would say you should get the cable company DVR, then consider upgrading to Tivo later if you’d like more features.
I’m not a television watcher (Just House and Heroes) but you may pry my TIVO from my cold, dead hands.
BACK AWAY! IT IS MINE!
The TIVO interface is far and away the best thing about it. Doing anything with a TIVO is a piece of cake. I still have the old version 2, my next one will be the one with the DVD-R ability, that would be nice.
TIVO just won a huge lawsuit not long ago against a major cable company for infringing on their patents. They also have a long history of losing money on hardware. That is not where their strength is. They own the patent on the entire process and ultimately, that will be what saves TIVO the company.
My husband was shocked when I asked for a TIVO because I am certainly not a television hound like he is. However, for someone like me that likes a few shows and can never remember when things are on, or hate watching commercials, or goes on weird tangents, it is awesome.
That and it allows me to be able to avoid Survivor at least 7 years, even though it comes on on one of my few nights off. WORTH IT!
Nope, I’ve never hada TiVo myself, but my friends have. I have no use for recommended shows, or for recording shows with my favorite actors, or recording shows from keywords. I know all the movies or shows my favorites are in and I’m a big boy now, so I’m quite capable of browsing through the channel guide all by myself to find something interesting. I have no need for anything that TiVo does besides recording exactly what I tell it to, when I tell it to. My dvr is cheaper than TiVo, so I’m sticking with it.
My DirecTV DVR has a Wish List feature, also the Season Pass, record only new episodes, etc. Maybe the early ones didn’t?
Cable DVRs do this too.
These are TiVo only, as far as I am aware. Not one of those features appeals to me, though.
The only reasons for upgrading to TiVo that would appeal to me:
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The ability to save programs to folders. For example, create a sitcoms folder, a drama folder, a movies folder, etc… Can TiVo do this? Because cable DVR dumps everything in one giant group and gives you two options: sort by name or date/time recorded.
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The ability to switch back and forth between two recording shows. Only applicable to football season, really. I’d like to watch two 1:00pm games in real time, skipping commercial breaks and halftime in both. When one game gets to a break, switch to the other where I left off, watching until that game gets to the next break, then switch back to the first game where I left off, etc… Cable DVR cannot do this; you have to “play from beginning” each time, which would take a solid minute to scroll forward when you’re 2+ hours in. Of course, this is hardcore usage, and while it technically works with TiVo, TiVo often busts a gut and fails at some point if you do too much FFWD and “hot-swapping.” My buddy and I saw it fail numerous times while trying to watch two games at once this way. (There is a workaround with cable DVR that I plan on trying out: catch up to real-time, delete the recording & start a new one, then switch to other game, lather rinse repeat.)
Things I don’t like about TiVo:
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One thing I’m thankful that cable DVR canNOT do is record a show on different channels. I shudder to think of the potential disaster of setting a timer to record something like Law & Order and watching the whole hard drive fill up in about 3 days.
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The big problem with TiVo is the price. I can hold 100 hours on my cable DVR for 10 bucks a month. How much would that run me if I went with TiVo? I can’t justify using folders if it costs more than a couple extra bucks.
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A secondary drawback of TiVo is accurate scheduling. I’m confident in the cable DVR always knowing exactly the start and end times of the programs, since it’s the friggin’ cable company. For example, The Riches end time changes every week, and every week the cable DVR timer I set dutifully updates itself appropriately. I have seen numerous examples of “tell me what happened in the last two minutes of Lost, my TiVo cut it off!” back when Lost used to run a couple minutes long. Every time it did, the cable guide knew this a week in advance, and (if I had DVR at the time) would have easily handled it without fail. (Like it does now with The Riches.)
With cable DVR it is also painfully easy – to the point of absurdity – to add extra time if there might be a delay, like say on a Sunday night during football season. My understanding is that with TiVo you have to go out of your normal usage pattern to customize the start/end times. (I’ve seen TiVo users recommend setting a season pass for the show airing next as a fail-safe; why not just add an extra half hour to the timer? Is it a PITA or something?)
- Minor quibbles include the annoying sound effects in TiVo; they bugged me to no end when my buddy had TiVo. (He went to cable DVR and has been lamenting the downgrade.)
I’m assuming my complaints about TiVo are based more on ignorance than fact; I welcome any corrections. In the end, I would draw a comparison between DVD and HD-DVD/BluRay. While DVDs were a quantum leap above VCR tapes, HD-DVD runs smack into an issue diminshing returns. Cable DVR is a quantum leap above VCRs, but TiVo is really just a little bit better in comparison. 90% of the selling point is pausing/rewinding live tv and watching something from the beginning while it’s still recording, which both do equally well. (Those two features are the sum total of the quantum leap above VCRs/DVD burners.)
Oh yeah, final downside of TiVo: I get an annoying vibe from TiVo users, similar to Mac users.
Never had TiVo, but am intrigued.
I do, however, have DVR and love it…so nice to have shows suddenly pop up (series that I have forgotten about and new season begins).
My only complaint is that often my DVR, despite local listings, will shut off a minute or two before the show ends if it runs over. I almost never get the full preview of next week’s show.
Also, I have HD DVR and there are often some serious glitches that never happen in regular non-HD programming.
I am seriously thinking of cancelling the HD feature of my cable…which is a shame considering I have a great flat screen HD television - but Cox here in Las Vegas sucks and the HD costs a lot and is still very unreliable. Plus, many stations that are supposedly in HD only have about half of their programs in that format.
Sorry if I went a bit off-topic, but all-in-all, DVR is certainly better than the old VCR days, but will continue to read this thread to see what TiVo people have to say.
From what I understand, TIVO gets its channel information from the cable companies. They are far more interested in making sure the info THEY get is more accurate than what TIVO gets. We tried the cable company DVR and it was terrible compared to TIVO.
I understand your point about TIVO owners being rather fanatical. However, TIVO really does change the way you watch TV. I will see TIVO switching over to a show and I’ll pause it until enough time passes I can watch it without commercials. I don’t worry about whether or not I remember when the hiatus’ are over or new seasons begin. I can schedule all my dorky Rankin-Bass Christmas specials with ease. I can watch something when I’m in the mood to watch it. When I miss dialog, I can quickly rewind it to figure out what I’ve missed. Phone calls don’t cause me to miss a show, etc.
But mostly, once you are used to TIVO, you wonder why radios don’t have it. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to listen to the radio and miss something, or want to hear all of something or record something and you can’t.
It really does change the way you think about television.
Then again, my TIVO did think I was a hispanic, homosexual child for a while…
DirecTV used actual TiVo for a long time–just branded as DirecTV. Do you know if yours is a real TiVo? I have three… two DirecTiVo ones and one old series 1 TiVo that isn’t hooked up anymore.
TiVo will group shows into their own folders. I don’t know of a way to make custom folders, though. But I have a Stargate SG1 folder with 11 episodes in it right now, for example.
It is very easy to add extra time. You can tell it to start X minutes early or end X minutes late. It also does often adjust scheduling, but I think it depends on the channel sending out that information. Last week, for example, it recorded a 40-minute My Name Is Earl all by itself. It won’t catch it, however, if a ball game runs over and a show starts late, because I guess the channel doesn’t send out that information to the TiVo.
As far as a lot of the wish list stuff goes, it’s very useful if for example you really want to record X movie when it finally comes out on cable, but it isn’t yet. You don’t want to have to remember to check the listings every week for the next six months, so you just set a wishlist and it will snag it automatically when it comes on.
I have the Motorola DVR provided by Comcast. It’s convenient to have one box for both the cable box and the DVR. (For those who have Tivo, I don’t understand how the Tivo DVR can change the channel on the cable box. Care to explain?) The $13 monthly fee is another reason I never got a Tivo. A couple of years ago Comcast signed an agreement with Tivo to offer a custom version of the Tivo software for the Comcast DVRs, and that may become available within the next few months. If so, this could be the best of both worlds.
I am also waiting to see what happens after June 30, as the FCC has mandated that the cable companies separate the security aspects of the cable converter box from the tuner features (called the integration ban). I haven’t seen a lot of coverage of this, but it may mean that you’ll be able to buy a Tivo DVR or plasma TV with CableCARD support, rent a low-cost cable card from the cable company and be able to watch digital channels without a converter box.
My Series 1 TiVo had a little infrared emitter thingie that you put in front of the sensor on the cable box, and when you sent a signal to the TiVo, it sent a signal to the box. Kinda primitive, but that was a long time ago, it’s probably better now. What I have on both my TVs are the DirecTV/TiVo combo boxes. Dual tuner DirecTV converter with built in TiVo.