The Motorola DVR that we get from Cox for $3 a month (on top of our regular cable bill) is wonderful. It has the ability to record and play back in virtually flawless HD. It has two tuners. The program guide has up-to-the-minute accuracy, even when shows are delayed. My only complaint is that the thing can only hold 12 hours of HD programming. Wish they had a bigger box.
Oh I never addressed that stuff:
My DirecTiVo holds 80 hours and costs me $5 on top of my regular bill (for two boxes).
We have both Tivo and Comcast DVR. We’ll eventually dump the Tivo. Reasons:
[ul]
[li]Video quality. The Comcast DVR records HD (or at least widescreen) and looks great. Tivo looks very, very noisy by comparison. Tivo looks terrible on a digital TV.[/li][li]Simplicity. Tivo puts a lot of junk in their product these days. The Comcast DVR has fewer marketing messages. That will probably change.[/li][li]Comcast records two channels at once. Nice.[/li][li]Better guide. Tivo has a grid, but it’s slow. Comcast’s is very fast.[/li][li]If it breaks, a nice man will come to my house and fix my Comcast DVR.[/li][/ul]
What’s better about Tivo:
[ul]
[li]Stability. Our Tivos never crash. Never. The Comcast DVR does, sometimes.[/li][li]Wishlists. Comcast records season passports just like Tivo, but keyword recording isn’t there. No suggestions, either.[/li][li]Tivo has a way better logo than Comcast. 
[/li][/ul]
You can set it to record only new episodes of Law & Order. You can also set it to record every episode of Law & Order and delete the ones you don’t want it to record. Or you can just record one episode at a time.
It really isn’t as scary as you make it sound. Tivo can record everything with Law & Order in the description, but is can also record by show title. So it won’t record SVU and Criminal Intent if you just want the original Law & Order.
My TiVo records on two channels at once. Some of the standalone ones do, too. TiVo also has different ways to view the guide. There is a regular grid and then another one, which I far prefer. I forget where in the settings you change that. The only marketing messages I’ve seen on TiVo are just a single star item on the main navigation menu every once in a while; hardly intrusive.
Is that 80 hours of HD, or standard-definition programs?
I don’t have HD so I have no idea what the equivalent is. Maybe when I’m megarich I’ll have stuff like that, but it won’t be anytime soon.
It is possible, however, to put additional hard drives into a TiVo. It does, however, void the warranty.
Cable DVR does all of that too, though. That’s what makes the fanaticism bug me; the quantum leap isn’t unique to TiVo, so the brand loyalty is really based on bells and whistles. While that is quite enough to inspire brand loyalty, it is not enough to merit the devotion. Macs at least are fundamentally different in their architecture; TiVos and DVRs are basically the same thing. The only real difference is that TiVo has a more mature user interface.
Thanks for the response on all three points. Even if you can’t create custom folders, just putting shows into their own folders is a huge plus. Regarding the extra time, nothing short of manual intervention can correctly handle sports-event overrun, so no points off to TiVo there. And given this description for the wishlist, that sounds awesome. I would be on that like white on rice.
One thing I’m curious about, though. When it comes to recording on different channels, does TiVo know what channels I have? In the Law & Order example, I was referencing the 6 repeats a day that USA/TNT broadcast. But now I’m thinking of the movie Broken Flowers. I saw when it hit HBO or Starz, (can’t remember which,) and wanted to tape it but never got around to it. (I just got cable DVR last week.) Now I’d like to tape it, but it’s only on Cinemax for the next week. Would a wishlist entry record the Cinemax broadcast and call it a day? I’d hate to have 2 hours of “Please call this number to subscribe to Cinemax” recorded instead of waiting for it to air on a channel I actually pay for.
It knows what channels you have with regard to, for example, showing you your channels (you can also set up a list of favorite channels so you never have to scroll past all the crap you never watch) but it will sometimes try to record something on a channel you don’t get. However, if it gets to the end of the recording and realizes it doesn’t have anything, it doesn’t save it.
Wishlists are also great for searching for stuff, too. You can have tons of saved wishlists, and “automatically record this wishlist” is just one option available. So I could go in and click on my wishlist for “Geena Davis” and then click “view upcoming showings” and it will show me everything coming up that has her in it. Then I can manually choose to record something if I want to. So it’s basically a fairly sophisticated “saved search” function, with an option to automatically record search results.
Ellis Dee, I agree with your points, but wanted to call out this one:
For me, at least, that’s a HUGE difference. User interface can make or break an experience (or change the results of an election – butterfly ballots, anyone?) and is far from trivial. TiVo’s advantage is (as far as I know, as a longtime TiVo subscriber) entirely in their UI, but that’s perhaps the most important part of a differentiated user experience.
In response to the OP, I would say that a DVR is a must-have if you allow television into your home. I own a TiVo (and am fortunate to be a “lifetime subscriber” from back when such a thing cost $100), but have actively looked at the alternative options, and have not yet seen anything compelling enough to get me to switch. I do not have HD (either service or display), and that may change things. But for simple time-switching of all the television I ever care to watch, with minimal work on my part, TiVo is f***ing awesome. So for me, at least, TiVo. But it is an individual choice. Much like Mac vs. PC, without the compatibility thing.
I have never owned a Tivo, but I do have a dual tuner card in my new PC ($100 and no monthly fees), so I can record one channel while watching another, and burn it to DVD for watching on TVs not connected to my computer. With Windows Media Center software, I can easily program all my recording desires ahead of time, and manage them all on hard disc. What am I missing?
My biggest gripe about the Dishnetwork DVR is that there is no easy way to archive off the content. I would have to play each show and record it on to VHS or DVD one at a time (since you can’t cue it up to play a bunch of stuff, either). Even thought it has a USB port so that it can interface with its own proprietary “PocketDish” device (portable media player for playing your DishNetwork content). Even though the data stream is simple MPEG-2, the way it codes it onto the hard drive means you can’t figure anything out.
I see Fear Itself has a similar set-up to what I have, except I have a WinTV PVR USB2 instead of a dual tuner card (mine is an external unit that plugs into a USB port), and I have it set up on an extra PC that sits next to our entertainment center and hooks directly into our television, so that I don’t have to burn any DVDs.
I also use GB-PVR (freeware program) instead of Windows Media Center to record my shows, because I find it to be a better scheduling program, and because it’ll serve a web interface that’ll allow my wife and I to log into it from any web browser and schedule any shows we meant to record but forgot about. All playback is done through Windows Media Center.
It’s definitely worth it if you have the extra hardware and the technical inclination. We get the usual benefits of commercial DVRs (pausing live TV, recording an entire season of a show, etc…), but one added advantage that I don’t believe TiVo (or any cable box) has is that we can transfer video to our homebrew DVRs, as well as music and photographs.
Plus GB-PVR has automatic commercial skipping and deletion. And plays downloaded videos.
I’ll try and answer a few of these questions as a Tivo user.
Right now DirectTv has split from Tivo. So any DirectTv recievers you get with a DVR function are most likely to be their own brand, not a Tivo anymore. I have two DirectTivo units, and two DirectTvDVR units. The Tivo’s have much better functionality. It’s not just a more mature interface, it’s the underlying systems that is much better. For instance one of the things I like about Tivo is that when I’m fast forwarding through commercials, and hit play as I get to my program, it automatically jumps back a few seconds so that I hit the start of the program. My new HDDVR from DirectTv doesn’t have that functionality.
Tivo will also ask you if you want to delete a program if you exit watching it near the end. This sounds like a minor thing, but with all the kids programs we record for the little one there are always at least 3 minutes of fluff at the end. So with Tivo I could just say “sure delete it” when I exit the program once the show is actually over…with the new DVR unit I have I have to either fast forward to the end, or remember to go back in and actually select the program again then choose delete. It’s a pain in the ass.
So in my opinion the biggest thing Tivo has going for it is just being a more mature product for the average consumer’s use. Would you notice these things if you’d never had Tivo? Probably not…Does it mean any other type of DVR isn’t worth getting? Not really. The thing with getting whatever your local cable company provides is that it’s a crap shoot. Depending on where you live, and what cable company you have you don’t know what type of DVR you may be getting. With Tivo you pretty much know what you’re getting no matter where you live. And there is a huge fan-base of people to help with more advanced Tivo functions if you want advice on which model to buy, how to hook it up, or how to hack it.
SkipMagic Depending on what brand and version of Tivo you get, you can do most of those same things. Tivo Series 2 can transfer shows between units. And just about all the older models of Tivo have documentation on how to hack the unit to let you transfer show over your home network. It really comes down to how much effort a Tivo owner would want to go through. My new HDDVR from DirectTV is compatible with some sort of home entertainment network system that will let me listen to music via my TV or display pictures. I just haven’t gotten around to messing with it yet.
As a long time user of ReplayTV, I’ve become very spoiled with the auto-skip commercials feature. Has Tivo incorporated anything like this into their devices? My impression is that the networks/media companies dislike this feature very much and therefore have almost forced it disappearance. My old Replay 4500 has been going strong for quite a few years, and I replaced the original hard drive in it with a 200g model so we have 80 hours of record time. This thing cost me $60 and so far it’s been a great value (plus $13 a month for the ReplayTV ‘service’ - which I don’t particularly like).
The mention above of the GB-PVR has intrigued me and I do have a spare PC with a TV card in it laying around, so I think I’m going to give that a try.
There isn’t a commercial skip per se, but there is a setting to make one of the buttons do a… I think it’s a 30-second jump forward? And it maybe hackable to do more, too. There is also a nifty “instant replay” thing that will jump back 5 seconds. It’s very useful for if someone laughs too loud and you miss a line or the dog barks or something.
The best thing about TiVo for me is honestly not the features, but how easy and gracefully everything works. I started on Tivo, and have 2 DirectTV Tivo’s (not the newer DirecTV DVR’s) in my house, but I have firends and relatives who have other DVR systems. The other DVR’s work fine, but are just a little more clunky and a little less intuitive than the TiVo. Even the ones that have all the same features. It’s the little things that make the difference.
Like the fast forward function.
When you take a Tivo out of fast forward it pulls the program back just a little bit, depending on how fast you are going. The faster you are going the further it pulls you back further. So if I am fast forwarding through the commercials of a program at full speed, the the show will progress 15-20 seconds by the time I actually notice the show is on and press the button, Tivo compensates and I almost never have to rewind back to the start of the show.
I was using my parents DirectTV DVR which doesn’t do this, and you have to guess when the commercials are over or you end up going too far then rewinding, then fast forwarding, then rewinding etc. trying to line up the beginning of the show.
This is just an example, and I am sure you can get used to anything. But it is little stuff like this that makes the Tivo a more pleasurable experience.
The Motorola DVR that we rent from Cox does this. I love it! When I play back stuff elsewhere in the house from videotapes and DVDs, I really miss this feature.
We recently got Dish Network with 2 DVR’s for an extra $5 a month. I don’t see any descriptions of TiVo features here that I don’t have too, except for the folders. The only one I am not sure about is some of the searching features, I know I can search for upcoming shows by title, description, theme, person, etc. but I have not played around with that much. I can choose to record only new episodes, all episodes, only episodes in a certain time slot, or choose daily, weekly, plus some more options I can’t remember right now. I can customize how early I want each show to start taping and how long to go over, how many episodes of a show to keep at a time before it replaces them with new ones, how to prioritize, all kinds of stuff.
I can watch one show I have recorded while simultaneously recording 2 more. I have 80 hours of record time. When I press stop at any time while watching the show, I get a menu that asks if I want to protect, delete, resume from the point I last left off, or start over from the beginning. I have the 30-second commercial skip as well as different fast forward and rewind speeds.
It looks like Dish studied TiVo and picked up on their features to me.