TiVo still worth it?

In My Humble Opinion
41

Velma: if the show you are recording switches to a different night or changes time, will it still record it? And the wishlists are more than just searching. For one thing, you save them, so you don’t have to enter them in again. For another, you can have it automatically record wishlists if you want. Like if I have a wishlist for things with the word Yodel in the title, and I have it set to auto record, then I can just sit back for eternity and every time something with Yodel in the title comes on it will record for me.

When you fast forward past a commercial, and then go back to play, does it stop and play right there, or does it back up 2-3 seconds to account for your reaction time?

42

I have two Tivos, a series 2 and a series 3 that was mandated when we went to digital/HD TV.

I agree with most of the posters here, but I must say that I’m rather disappointed that the series 3 doesn’t have most of the series 2’s coolest features (upload shows to computer/iPod, in particular). That seems a harsh penalty for a box that cost me nearly $1000 with a lifetime subscription – to be LESS functional than the box it replaces. They say “we’re working on it,” but it’s been a year, and there aren’t even hints that it might be close. They also were apparently unaware for the last five years that Microsoft was going to produce a new version of Windows: six months after release, they don’t even have a beta version of their server software that works in Vista. This sort of lag in development is the kiss of death for companies that are competing with much lower cost competitors on innovation alone; I hope they get their act together soon.

On the other hand, there was one “unexpected” feature of the Series 3 Tivo – it converts standard def 480i shows to 480p on playback; producing a surprisingly better picture.

43

As long as I tell it to, say, record all episodes, or all new episodes, yes. If I specifically set it up for only that time slot, no. Although if it starts late due to a football game or something, it seems to miss that. When I tape shows on Sunday nights I adjust the overage time to be generous and that has taken care of it for me. And it won’t record an episode of a show I already have saved. For example, I am recording The Sopranos on A&E, and I told it to record all episodes on that channel. Sometimes they play 2 episodes each Weds, sometimes 1. Then they re-run them throughout the week, often using them as fillers at like 2am or whenever they need something. So it will find any episodes that I don’t already have and skip the ones I don’t need.

This I am not sure about. I don’t use all the features, I don’t think I can create permanent wishlists but maybe I can. I know there are a lot of search features and things like that I don’t use. I usually just search for a specific show or movie I want. I will go home tonight and see.

I just use the commerical skip button instead of fast forward. I would say 80% of the time it brings me to the beginning of the show. If I do go over, I just hit “back”, and it goes back 2-3 seconds or so, not the full 30 seconds or whatever the commercial time was. Hitting back once is usually all I need to do.

44

Well I have a Series 1, a Series 2 Tivo and a Time Warner DVR. I prefer the smoothness and ease and, as mentioned, the maturity of the Tivo interface. The FF, RWD etc. seem to work much better on the Tivo. However, the cable DVR can record two shows at once, which neither of my Tivos can do and the channel changing on the Tivo requires the infrared things and if they get moved it can mean your show doesn’t get recorded.

On the whole I prefer the Tivo over the cable DVR, but only just barely.

45

OpalCat, it looks like I can create wishlists or something similar. Here is what my instructions say:

“Dish Pass lets you create timers to record programs automatically based on your search criteria. When the receiver finds programs that meet your search criteria, it will automatically set a timer to record that program. As the guide is updated, Dish Pass will continue to find and record your shows based upon your search criteria.”

You can search by theme, keyword, title, etc.

and also:

“After you have searched for programs or other info, your receiver builds a history. You can use your history instead of typing the info again.”

I haven’t tried this feature so I don’t know how good it is at finding programs, but there it is.

46

Brainiac4, fair enough that the user interface is a huge component of the appeal.

Auntbeast and OpalCat, there’s no need to pick apart your posts to reply to them directly. In narrative form:

There is no auto-rewind feature after you stop fast forwarding. That is a very nice feature of TiVo that I’ve not seen anywhere else. I disagree that it’s an underlying technology issue, it’s simply a surface piece of the user interface. Surely it’s not technically impossible to do; I’m guessing TiVo copyrighted or patented the feature so nobody else is allowed to mimic it, even though the other units could support it.

Most DVRs also have the skip-back feature, (mine is 8 seconds,) though most do not have the glorious skip-forward feature. Advertisers hate those. I find the skip-back feature – which is cumulative – substitutes for TiVo’s auto-rewind nicely. For example, I FFWD through commercials on level 3, which means it takes a few seconds to get past an entire commercial break. If I hit play as soon as I see commercials, and immediately hit skip-back twice, it almost always leaves me in the fade-in coming out of the commercial break. If I didn’t recognize the show was on, as sometimes happens, and went to far, I can hit skip-back three or even four times instead of two, which gives the same ideal results. That’s an actual downside of TiVo when you think about it. What if I didn’t recognize the difference between the commercials and the beginning of the next segment, and fast forwarded too far? Tivo helpfully rewinds me some of the distance, but it still starts playing after the segment has already begun. (Of course, assuming Tivo also has a skip-back feature, that’s a moot point.)

Also, DVR does handle changes in night/timeslot, and may persist. My Survivor timer automatically caught all 3 hours of Sunday’s finale episodes, despite Thursday being the regular night. And the timer persisted, so it looks like (no guarantee) it would have just hung around and waited for next season. I chose to delete it to reduce clutter.

Also, about deleting when you’re near the end of a show, that’s sounds like PBKAU to me. If you just hit stop, any version of DVR should bring up a menu of choices, one of which is delete. Mine certainly does.

47

As I mentioned above, the Motorola DVR that we rent from Cox Cable has this feature. It may be that they licensed it from TiVo.

48

Ellis Dee, TiVo does have an 8-second “instant replay” function, which works well with the jump back when fast-forwarding. Worth mentioning is that the amount it jumps back depends on the FFWD speed. At the lowest FFWD (2x, IIRC), it jumps back not at all (or so little I don’t notice it), since your reaction time is fast enough. At the next level (5x? 10x?), it jumps back several seconds. At the highest level (30x? Really dang fast, anyway) it jumps back a proportionally higher amount. It’s a nice feature.

And regarding the delete option… Any DVR should (and probably does) offer you the main episode-specific menu when you stop playing any recording, which should include all of the options. What TiVo does (and I don’t know if others do or not) is provide a dedicated prompt to allow deletion very easily in a specific contextual circumstance. TiVo’s also modified their software to make deletion easier by supporting the “clear” button as a delete, and removing the confirmation prompts. This is because they’ve adopted a “trash” metaphor for recently deleted items, making them retrievable in case of accidental deletion. Just another little nice thing about the UI.

Overall, I can’t say that TiVo is inarguably better. It sounds like you are happy with your DVR, and don’t see much benefit to an alternative. I’m certainly happy with my TiVo. I have read many articles comparing the various DVR alternatives with one another, and the consistent message has been that TiVo has an edge, although it’s been decreasing in recent years.

49

I don’t know if TiVo is necessarily STILL worth it to EVERYONE, but it was definitely worth it to me.

I got my TiVo in Jan 2002. It was an awesome deal: Free directv installation, 6 free months of HBO, and free Series1 DirecTiVo box with 1-year directv subscription. Then I bought the lifetime TiVo service subscription for $250. That means I’ve basically paid < $5/mo for the Tivo (box + service), and the longer I keep it going the better that number gets. You can pry it out of my cold dead hands - it’ll probably out live me (minus the drive).

It never crashes or screws up recording either. On the flip side, every single person in my family who has had a non-TiVo cable DVR box has experienced aggravation due to them. My parents recently got a big flat screen and HD cable (comcast). When my mom tried the DVR for the first time she had a strong urge to “throw that goddamned dvr out the window.” I love being able to talk my mom into buying $800 electronic items (standalone HD TiVo). :wink:

50

When we first bought our HDTV a year ago, we were forced to convert to Comcast’s DVR, as Tivo’s HD (Series3) wasn’t ready yet. We counted the days until we could trash the stupid Motorola Comcast box and go back to our beloved Tivo.

(Yes, I know that’s how annoying Mac users sound…)

It was mostly a user interface thing–searching, recording options are infinitely more intuitive with Tivo’s software. It was also hardware: the Comcast box would periodically freeze up. The user would keep trying buttons to get a response…and then 2 minutes later, the freeze would thaw and all those button presses would get de-queued. Fun.

(The Series3 is also dual-tuner, with one-button-flip between the 2 tuners. And it has slots for cable cards --2, one for each tuner – that replace the cable box.)

51

But the series 3 Tivo box (the only one with dual-tuner HDTV support) costs $800, which is a lot of money, on top of the monthly fee. I think Tivo has priced itself out of the market, as few people are going to pay that much, especially compared to the ten bucks or so it costs to rent the Comcast DVR.

52

True; the Series3 is seriously overpriced. We were able to rationalize it as (a) a Christmas present and (b) we were able to carry over our lifetime service plan from the old box, so no monthly fee.

53

Yeah it’s overpriced right now…I thought the Series 2 was a bit pricey as well. Until I found out that I had to pay $300 for my DirectTV HDDVR which I still have to pay a monthly lease fee on. I still haven’t figured out what I paid that money for if I’m only leasing the equipment.

Oh and for a couple of posters that are into using a home computer as a DVR, be sure and check out MythTv…it’s a free software DVR that has some great functionality. An article compairing it to Tivo can be found here. I’ve never had the time to create a MythTv home media system, but it has some neat features. Best of which in my opinion is the ability to have a front-end/back-end setup. So you can have one central recording system with as many tv capture cards as you want, and a lot of front end systems to stream those programs to.