Do any of you guys have one? One of our VCR's lost the front display and the other just stopped working so I'm thinking it's time to upgrade. Is TIVO the way to go or are the other digital video recorders just as good? And how much memory is enough? The smallest one at Best Buy is 40 hours and the largest is 140 hours. 40 seems like plenty to me but maybe bigger would be better in the long run. Thanks in advance.
TIVO Rocks!!! [rockon] Everyone that I know who has TIVO is absolutely hooked. Just imagine being able to record all of your favorite shows on to a hard drive connected to your TV and watch them at your leisure or store them indefinitely without having tapes everywhere. You can pause live TV, fast forward past commercials, instant replay, etc. I have it with DirecTV and it is only $5/month. I would probably pay $15/month because it is so great. Let me know if you have any specific questions and I'll be happy to answer them for you.
You can hack alot of the TIVO machines... ie you can buy a smaller one (40hr) and swap in a monster drive effectively increasing the time it can record... and saving money (in some instances).
We built our own digital video recorder that sits in the living room using an old computer and a nice video card. The card captures video to the hard drive, and it downloads everything automatically from the internet. The only problem I have with it is that it does not interact with my digital cable box, and therefor I cannot record and of the very high channels (hbo, etc).
Im sure there is a way around this, I just havent looked into it enough.
Oh, as to answer your question more directly, I agree... TIVO is great b/c you can ffwd over commercials (under certain circumstances) rewind live tv, etc.
A friend has tivo and its great, I just prefer the build your own option b/c if youre a nerd (like me) and have lots of spare parts laying around, then you can save money by doing it yourself.
I don't like TIVO simply because of their "marketing stradegy" where you have to pay a monthly fee and own a phone line for it to upload your viewing habits, etc. The hardware is cool, but I'd never buy one on principal.
You might also want to look at some of the newer DVD burners, like from Philips and Panasonic. Similar to a VCR, they record directly to DVD media (rewritable) and most of them have internal hard drives for doing the time-shifting or storing programs you don't want to burn to DVD. They are a bit expensive I think, so I just use my computer for recording at the moment (or just download stuff that other people have recorded).
Also, if you have digital cable or satellite you may find it hard to schedule programs through your box as s0l mentioned. I know my cable company sent me a notice the other day saying they are planning to offer a digital tuner box with a hard drive recorder built-in, but I don't know how much they plan to charge for it.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I don't like TIVO simply because of their "marketing stradegy" where you have to pay a monthly fee and own a phone line for it to upload your viewing habits, etc. The hardware is cool, but I'd never buy one on principal.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
You're paying to have people at TiVo continually identify common traits in shows that are then used to predict what you might want to watch.
Personally, I'm running Windows XP Media Center Edition which offers the basic time shifting sort of features but none of the advanced TiVo stuff. It's sufficient for my needs.
One more question. I know that you need to connect it to a phone jack. I don't have a jack near where the TV will go. Will this be a problem.
The thing about not being able to live without it is what scares me. Just like my cable modem. I couldn't even begin to imagine life with a dial up now. It sends shivers up my spine just thinking about it.
Any opinions on just paying the flat lifetime fee of 299? Seems like it would be worth it if Tivo is going to be around for a while.
I paid the up front fee and it seems to have paid off since I've had it over 2.5 years now. You don't need to plug it into a phone line if you have broadband. It will do ethernet as well.
One more question. I know that you need to connect it to a phone jack. I don't have a jack near where the TV will go. Will this be a problem.
The thing about not being able to live without it is what scares me. Just like my cable modem. I couldn't even begin to imagine life with a dial up now. It sends shivers up my spine just thinking about it.
Any opinions on just paying the flat lifetime fee of 299? Seems like it would be worth it if Tivo is going to be around for a while.
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NO, don't pay the lifetime fee. I'm pretty sure that the fee is applicable only on the lifetime of the Tivo unit and not on a lifetime of service.
kjel identified a great point in that you can get a "season pass" for your favorite show(s). Tivo can be set to record any shows that you want and always knows if your show will be broadcast at a different date/time and automatically records it for you (unless a sporting event runs over the allotted time).
Frankly, I could care less if Tivo knows my viewing preferences. I hope that everyone with Tivo records noting but Westerns and Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne movies...then maybe they'll take stop showing useless crap like every show on Lifetime Network [crazy].
I have to agree with most of the other replys here: Tivo rocks! I have the DirecTivo version which has a satellite tuner built into the Tivo box (or vice versa depending on your perspective). Season Pass is awesome, it records specific shows whenever they're on, you can even tell it to ignore reruns if you want. One of the best features is, when you want to watch something real time, just set up the Tivo to record it, then start watching it 15 minutes after it starts. That way, you zip through the commmercials and generally get to the end of the program around the time its actually ending (for a 60 minute show).
I do pay $5 a month for the "Tivo service" but, my total satellite bill is still about $10 a month less than a comparably priced cable package that would NOT include a Tivo like service.
2004 Sports Coupe 6MT Brilliant Silver, Willow, Premium Package
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