I forgot to add one thing: My wife got me TiVo for Christmas. It’s possibly the best gift I’ve ever received. It’s so insanely wonderful that there’s absolutely no question she’ll need one of her own when she starts her out-of-town job next month. It’s that essential.
Thank you for the TiVo, sweetie, from every cell in my body. 
Not to mention that if you do, through a great act of will, turn off the TV after your 7pm program and pick up a good book, you might put it down at 10 o’clock and watch your show . . . or if your book is particularly engrossing, you might not. You don’t have to watch your program live; the Great and All-Knowing Machine is aware that you want to watch it and it will record it for you. Similarly, you don’t have to rush home from dinner with friends because you forgot to set the tape. You don’t have to say g’bye and hang up when you’re talking to your mom because your favorite show is coming on.
Sweet, sweet freedom.
We’ve been Tivo-ized for two years this November. Yes it is like a religion. I hardly EVER watch live tv any more, except for sports. Even then, the sports can be paused (or rewound 8 seconds to catch a replay).
Couple of other notes…TiVo IMHO is the best DVR out there…the interface, design and support are superior IMHO to Replay or the DVR you might get from the cable company.
In addition to the box, you also have to purchase the service. I believe it’s about 12-13 bucks a month, but we got the lifetime. Come November, the lifetime fee will have paid for itself.
TiVo is also relatively easy to hack on some levels (the Series 2 TiVos are harder to hack since the data is encrypted).
For example, we originally purchased a 60hr TiVo, but purchased a 100GB HD and followed online instructions (from a 3rd party…it violates the TiVo warranty) and boosted our record time enough that all of our shows (and plenty of suggestions) are recorded at Best Quality.
They recently made the Home Media Option free (pissing off many early adopters)…so we bought a cheap ($20) usb wireless adapter so that we know listen to all of our music via mp3s off of my Mac…much easier than changing CDs. (And of course we can remotely schedule now).
Be sure to check out the TiVo forum for other info.
If you have a kid…it’s fantastic. We know that we will ALWAYS have 5 (or however many we set) episodes of our daughters favorite shows TiVo’d, any hour of the day.
I got the Dish Network PVR a couple of years ago. I now only use VCRs (and at one time, I had as many as six going) to transfer stuff to my DVD recorder.
While the PVR can’t look for stuff to record for me, it does have a 62hr HD. That, along with online tv lisitings, is more than enough for me. I could easily record a full season of my favorite shows and still have plenty of room left over.
I can pause for up to one hour and go back (on the same channel, assuming I haven’t changed it) about 30 minutes. I rarely watch “live” tv anymore.
I bask in the glow of fellow TiVo devotees.
Seriously, I decided on Saturday to buy one because of the Olympics. I like the Olympics, but only on my terms.
We went. We bought. We came home. Within the hour it was running and we were watching baseball (the Indians won!) and the Olympics and recording and instant replaying and pausing for bathroom breaks and sweet sweet hallelujah it was really neat.
And I who hate sound effects am diverted by the “Pop Goes the Weasel” sound effects of fast forward, but that’s another tale for another day.
Grrr, now i may actually sign up for TiVo. However i have insight cable and adding DVR will cost about $20/month more than i’m paying right now.
Why would adding the TiVo cost another $20.00 a month. If you are talking about a PVR offered by your cable comany it is not TiVo
What MannyL said. There isn’t a single integrated cable-box/DVR offered by a cable company that holds a shakily-held Polaroid of a candle to TiVo’s technology. DirecTV offers an integrated setup (based on TiVo, no less), but the cable providers’ boxes are decidedly inferior. Just get a TiVo and install it inline. Piece of cake.
Yeah, its Insight DVR. Its an extra $5 or so for the DVR digital box instead of the regular digital box and another $12.95 a month for service.
Does TiVo work on all forms of Tv (Dish network, Directv, Insight, etc)? IE, do you just buy the reciever and pay the $5 a month and do that independent of your cable/satellite company?
Time to start checking fatwallet for deals on TiVo.
One other really cool little feature I just thought of: Let’s say you are watching one of your recorded programs and you only get through half of it before you get sleepy, so you stop watching and go to bed. The next time you watch that program, whether it’s the next day or two months down the road, you can pick up from the exact spot where you left off, even if you’ve since recorded and watched other programs. Very cool.
According to this FAQ (third question down), with satellite you can choose to do the DirectTV DVR with TiVo service, or just do the regular TiVo plus satellite receiver configuration, like what your cable bretheren have. As it’s been pointed out above, though, I’d advise against doing the TiVo branded DirectTV solution, because from what I’ve heard it’s not quite as feature-rich as the regular TiVo setup.
I’m right there with all the other Tivo lovers! Preach it brothers and sisters!
We have 2 DirecTV Tivos, and are going to get a 3rd soon for the bedroom. My husband added extra hard drive space so I think we can get 120 hours on each. It’s nice because I store a lot of shows on the Tivos using the “Keep Until I Delete” feature. I still have things from early 2003 on my first Tivo.
One great thing about DirecTV Tivos is that there are 2 tuners so you can record 2 shows at one time. Since we have 2, I can record 4 shows on 4 different channels, and if I wanted, I could, while those 4 shows were recording, watch something totally unrelated that the Tivo had recorded earlier.
An example of such insanity would be the Academy Awards. There are so many stations carrying live pre-Oscar coverage and before I got the Tivo I’d had to keep switching channels. This year I had both Tivos, so I set one to record E!'s coverage (I know, I’m properly embarrassed) and WGN’s coverage (with Roger Ebert), and I set the other Tivo to record ABC’s coverage and something else I can’t remember (WLS maybe). While those 4 were recording, I occasionally watched some E! stuff from earlier in the day. I didn’t end up watching all of what I recorded before it was deleted, but at least I had the option. Not to mention I had “Academy Award” and “Oscar” in my Wishlist so could get shows about the Oscars in the weeks between the nominations and the ceremony. I’m an awards show junkie, so I did the same for “Golden Globes,” “Independent Spirit Awards,” “BAFTA,” and some others.
During the Democratic National Convention I put “Democratic” into the Wishlist and besides the convention itself (for the first time in my life, I watched every second of a DNC via C-Span) but all kinds of side shows (or in the case of FOX, sideshows) too. I also set my “Favorite Channels” list to only get C-Span, NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, CNN and FOX so they were the only channels that showed up whenever I looked at the Guide, so it was quick and easy to switch between channels. The Tivo still recorded other things that weren’t on those channels, such as a couple of movies on Turner Classic Movies, because all the channels were on my “Channels I Receive” list.
It’s heaven for the Olympics. We originally got our first one for the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. I set the Tivo to record whole blocks, then fast-forward through the events I’m not interested in, then delete the 3, 5, 6 hour blocks when I’m done. The replay button gets a lot of workout too, such as during the 4x200 swimming relay last night. Man, that was thrilling! The station repeated the ending once or twice in normal time, and once in slow motion. I watched it a dozen times (a few times using the Tivo’s slow motion), and watched the whole race again twice.
There are a few minor irritants that come along with Tivo, but the good far outweighs the bad. I’ll parrot the common refrain: it’s impossible to know how wonderful and essential it is until you get and use one for yourself. I can’t even remember how I watched TV without my Tivo. I’ve blocked out the memory.
Cool little tip for those with Tivos: to sort your Now Playing list (to the non-Tivo’d, that’s where the shows that have been recorded reside), press Slow (S), then zero (O), then Record ®, then Thumbs up (uh, T). Now you can press Info (or Display on older remotes) and sort by record date, expiration date or alphabetical. Very cool.
I once had over 100 items in my Wishlist and never had a problem, so I don’t know what the limit was.
That was back when I was just going nuts with the machine, seeing what it could do. I’ve deleted many of them, but I still have these and some others. I should cull through and delete a lot more, since most of them are obsolete now.
(confession time, share your Wishlists)
Lord of the Rings
Two Towers (in late 2002)
Return of the King (in late 2003)
Tolkien
Peter Jackson
Ian McKellan
Elijah Wood
Miranda Otto (got to see a lot of her early Australian films because of the Wishlist)
David Wenham
add about 10 more, properly spelled, LOTR cast members here
Moulin Rouge
Nicole Kidman
Baz Luhrmann
Ewan McGregor
Kate Bush (yeah, like she’s ever on TV. Just in case though)
Peter Gabriel (Tivo’s a boon when a new album is released from someone who’s popular enough to get noticed)
Tori Amos
Bjork
Happy Rhodes (ah, ever the optimist am I)
Todd Rundgren
Boswell Sisters
Eva Cassidy
Jeff Buckley
Lisa Germano
Natalie MacMaster
Nigel Kennedy
Noe Venable
Vienna Teng
Norah Jones
Sheila Chandra
Jane Siberry
Rebecca Jenkins
Najma
Rufus Wainwright
Warren Zevon
Douglas Sirk
Steven Soderbergh
Inger Stevens
Coen Brothers
Sofia Coppola (I wanted to catch TV appearances and her early shorts)
Arsenevitch
Les Blank
Danny Boyle
Doris Day
Natalie Canerday
Adrien Brody
Todd Haynes
Kaurismaki
Mike Leigh
Samantha Morton
Jacqueline McKenzie
Peter Mullan
Preston Sturges
Charlize Theron
Haskell Wexler
Steve Zahn
Anatomy of a Scene (since there’s no Season Pass for the entire IFC series)
Making of (got everything from movies to rubber band balls. It’s a very fun Wishlist)
Backstory
among others.
I’m still looking to see these movies, so they’re still in my Wishlist:
The Blue Light
Kiss Me Deadly
El Norte
The Third Man
What Becomes of the Broken Hearted
The Professionals
Pirates of Penzance
Sex In A Cold Climate
Stolen Innocents
Stranded Yanks
The Safety of Objects
Just because you make a Wishlist doesn’t mean that it will automatically get everything for you, you have to specify. You have to be careful too. Only a few of mine are “Set to record automatically” because my hard drive space was rapidly getting sucked up by things I didn’t want. You can’t (yet) specify “this, but not that” which can get a bit maddening. For instance, when a Lord of the Rings movie came out, I wanted Elijah Wood’s appearances on Letterman, Leno, whatever talk show. I did not want Elijah Wood in Radio Flyer or The Good Son or Avalon or any of his other movies, but the Tivo got them anyway. I constantly had to cull. I had to take George Clooney completely off the wishlist when I wanted his TV appearances promoting Solaris, because the Tivo got Every. Single. Frickin’. Rerun. of ER! That was bad at the time because we only had the original 30 hours available.
Thanks for the responses on the WishLists. It was very helpful (especially since the person I know with Tivo was unable to articulate anything about that particular function).
One small annoyance centers in how the season pass handles certain shows if you’ve specified “first-run only” (i.e. you want the premieres only and no re-runs).
Here’s the deal: TiVo’s code for this function compares program descriptions to determine whether or not it’s gotten a show before, and these program descriptions are supplied by the networks. And if there is no program description, TiVo tends to record the show “just in case,” because it doesn’t know whether or not you’ve gotten that episode previously. As a result, if there are shows that don’t reliably include program descriptions, you can wind up with multiple duplicates of episodes, even though you’ve specified “first-run,” because the TiVo doesn’t know any better.
A common example is “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” whose program descriptions are haphazardly included at best, so at the end of the day you find four copies of the same show (the 11pm premiere, the 1am repeat, the 10am repeat, and the 7pm <?> repeat, or whatever the schedule is). You can cope with this by setting a manual recording by time-and-channel, which is what I’ve done, but that means you always get the show and have to look at the first bit of it to make sure you’ve seen it before. (This has started happening with “The Graham Norton Effect,” also. I’ve had to delete two separate repeats of the Sharon Stone episode because the lack of program description made the TiVo grab it up.)
All told, that’s truly an inconsequential irritation compared to the overall wonderment of the device, and it amounts to maybe twenty seconds of additional effort per day on average, but it is a limitation of how the thing works.