Will TiVo Survive?: A “Maybe” Recommendation
Written: Feb 21 '01 (Updated Feb 27 '01)
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Pros: Really changes TV for the better, especially for those who like television the least.
Cons: This may be an intermediate technology and the hardware quality is mediocre.
The Bottom Line: Perfect for gadget lovers, technophiles and people with elaborate home entertainment systems. For the vast majority, this is a “necessity” whose time has yet to come.
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| aplatt's Full Review: Philips TiVo PTV 300 Digital Recorder |
So you’ve read about the “TiVolution” and seen the infomercials and it sounds interesting, in theory. Yet maybe you’re not really looking to start a revolution but just want to replace that aging VCR (which the Smithsonian wants) or just want to set up a nice home entertainment system. Still, judging by the overwhelming majority of epinions on TiVo, people who do get one actually seem to love it. I have one and I love it but I won’t tell you that you need one too.
Please note: this review is rather lengthy due to the complexity of this particular product. If you're familiar with TiVo's features you might be able to skim past the next couple of sections. I've italicized key phrases to facilitate this.
Also, if you happen to live in Canada, then I'm sorry, but it seems that TiVo's ignoring you. As of the last update to this review, there is still no TiVo service for the great white north. Kinda bites, eh?
“You say you want a revolution”
TiVo’s biggest challenge is that they are selling the answer to a problem that consumers don’t know that they have. Maybe a clearer message than the slogan, “TiVo will change the way you watch television” is simply that TiVo works a lot like a VCR but there are no tapes and it’s a heck of a lot easier to record shows (that is, once you get the system set up). Unlike a VCR, however, it won’t play rented or any kind of video tape.
So maybe there isn’t an easy answer - but once you get TiVo, you quickly realize that it really does change the way you watch television. My favorite aspect is that I no longer have to watch commercials, period. The product features, however, go way beyond that so let me walk you through a few examples of people who might buy TiVo:
• “I hate TV, there’s never anything worth watching.”
You might be surprised at how much good programming you’ll find once you’ve set up TiVo (unless you just don't like video programming in which case you should probably spend your epinions time on other topics). What you find really depends upon your interests. I’ll use myself as an example here, because I fall into this category.
I’m keen on philosophy, science, historical drama or documentary, science fiction and witty comedy. On the other hand, I can’t stand the barrage of alien abductions, exploding buildings, top ten amazing things, B-movies and talkshows with dead spirits on Discovery, History, Scifi and other channels. Most of that was covered by Leonard Nimoy’s “In Search Of…” during my childhood.
Once I got TiVo loaded, though, I was able to search through every channel over the entire subsequent two weeks and found more appealing programming than I even wanted to watch. It’s surprising what good quality television there is at 4 o’clock in the morning. I’m now following PBS college courses in philosophy, watching historical movies that I’ve always wanted to see, and watching my new favorite comedy, Sports Night, all without having to stay up until 4:00 am. I’ve essentially created my own virtual television network with selected quality programs from PBS, A&E, Comedy Central, TLC and others.
• “I have only a few shows that I watch religiously.”
If you fall into this category then you have probably, at some point in your life, passed on a social or family event or ignored an important phone call because “my show is on.” You’ve probably also waged fierce battle with your VCR to get it to record your show, and most likely with mixed results. TiVo might work well for you, since it takes just two clicks on the remote control to schedule a recording and you can even get something called a “season pass” which will cause the recorder to pick up your show whenever it plays.
• “I just like football.”
Football, or any sport, is best viewed live. The tape-delayed Sydney Olympics demonstrated that point well. What TiVo does offer to sports fans in the magic of your own instant replay. And then there’s that extended overtime when you don’t want to miss a thing but gotta pee real bad. TiVo will let you pause the game and then pick up right where you left off. You’ll catch up at the next commercial when you can fast forward through it. I do wish I had had TiVo during the Summer Olympics because I could have skipped the endless, heart-warming human “interest” stories on NBC and focused on the real sports instead.
• “I’m a total couch potato, I watch TV during most of my waking hours.”
I’m going to assert that TiVo might not be necessary for you. If in fact you are that happy with television, you might consider saving the money to get a TV for the bathroom.
• “I really don’t care, I just watch the evening news.”
You too may fall into the category of folks who should probably spend their money elsewhere. A good quality VCR, if you even need one, would probably be a better answer.
The bottom line, here, is that no reviewer can justify to you spending a bunch of money on TiVo. You have to decide what you want to get out of that $200 or $2,000 or $20,000 entertainment system you have and then make your choice based upon your individual style.
“You say you got a real solution”
From a product perspective, the Philips PVR (“personal video recorder”) is latter-day first generation, at best. There’s not a lot to this machine. It basically consists of a small computer with a slow processor, an even slower modem and a huge storage capacity. Most of the soft features such as the on-screen programming guide (which is by far the best I’ve seen), season passes and recording by program name requires that you also get the TiVo service (sold separately). If you get just the base unit without the service, it will still work much like a VCR but you will have to enter the showtimes to schedule a recording and you still won’t be able to pop in a tape from Blockbuster.
The quality of the base unit is dodgy. One of the most common complaints I’ve seen on this site and others is that buyers sometimes got a crummy modem. Actually, every unit is sold with the same crummy modem, it’s just that some of them die earlier than others. Five weeks with TiVo and the modem on my Philips PVR died an ugly death. The bad news is that the retailer only offered a 30 day warranty (and I was at day 31!). The good news is that Philips offers to exchange faulty units for up to 90 days, but you have to pay for the shipping ($40 from NYC).
The exchange has gone somewhat less than smoothly. It took some time just to find the phone number to the Service Center. Once I did call in, I got a technician very quickly but then was told I needed to call back to a different department. Overall, the Philips representatives were friendly but somewhat unhelpful. I was promised a two day turnaround once they received my old unit. They received the old unit on February 8, 2001 and I called a week later to find out that they had no idea what was happening. Three calls later and still no information. Finally, I got a call on February 19, 2001 from Philips saying that they had the machine but had lost the paperwork and would, finally, send me a new recorder. I’m still waiting even as I write this review.
You’ll need the modem for the TiVo service to work. Unfortunately, TiVo must use your phone line every day for anywhere from 15 minutes up to an hour to connect for updates. One problem is that there are lots of optional features like dial tone or busy signal detection that apparently cause lots of problems (I infer this since the first suggestion TiVo’s troubleshooter makes is to switch off these advanced features.)
The other bad news is that you cannot set the time when you are willing to let TiVo tie up the phone, short of manually forcing the call each day at a time you find convenient. Picking up the phone to find out that your TV is using it at 8pm (and not about to get off) is not only a nuisance but a hazard. I’m sure it will take just one lawsuit from someone having a heart attack who couldn’t dial 911 because TiVo was using the phone. Isn’t it amazing how class action lawyers can focus the concentration of consumer products companies?
Setting up the service is a somewhat long and complicated process. As with almost anything that sits near the heart of a home entertainment system, the TiVo box is a snake’s nest of wires and cables. My only advice if you’re setting it up yourself is to follow instructions carefully and then pray. If you are comfortable plugging in an audio receiver or a vcr, you should be able to get your system connected without too much hassle or too many calls into customer service. Once everything is plugged in, the on-screen setup menu is fairly easy to follow.
Now let me fill you in on a few tips about the TiVo service that they don’t bother to tell you when you register. First of all, you should know that when you buy the service, it will work only for a specific machine. This may seem minor, but if you do have to replace the machine, you have to get all new service. If you bought the $199 lifetime subscription and have to get a replacement machine, I hate to say it but they may leave you out to dry. I would also caution against the lifetime deal because it will take about two years to reach the same present value cost. Two years from now, this whole technology will probably have changed a lot and that lifetime deal may feel a lot like lifetime technical support for your Apple IIe.
“You ask me for a contribution”
Let’s face it, adding TiVo to your system isn’t free or even cheap. The hardware will cost between $300 and $700 and then there’s that $10 monthly charge for the TiVo service. I justified the cost because I had been spending $60 a month on cable service for only hit-or-miss opportunities to watch programs I enjoy. As for the monthly charge, I figured that the cost is more or less the same as a single premium cable channel like HBO but far more valuable since I was able to create my own custom virtual network.
Once you’ve decided that you are ready to put up the money for a personal TV system, the biggest question will be: how big of a unit should you get? First of all, the advertised recording times of 20 hours, 30 hours and 60 hours are totally misleading. Those recording times are for “basic” quality which will usually be unacceptable to folks with a decent home entertainment system. I found that “medium” quality was just about the minimum acceptable for me but that cut my 30 hour recording time down to 19 hours. At "high" quality it records 14 hours and at "best" quality capacity drops to 9 hours. A good rule of thumb is to cut at least 1/3 to 1/2 off the recording time that they advertise. I found that the “30” hour unit provided more television than I could bear to watch. However, if you want to record a lot of movies, they obviously take up a lot of space. The “30” hour unit won’t really provide enough room to store lots of movies around for any extended period. You can, supposedly, download a recording to VHS tape but I never tried that feature.
“Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright”
If you’re still scratching your head and wondering if you really need to go out and buy a Philips recorder with TiVo, you’re not alone. Lots of people, including investors on Wall Street, are wondering the same thing. Frankly, TiVo has had an uphill battle selling a difficult concept to the market. They’ve also taken a very high-risk strategy in keeping their underwhelming hardware technology close to home with only Philips and Sony offering products. This strategy didn’t work out so well for the Betamax, has been problematic for the MacIntosh and may be the achilles heel for Palm.
So, are you buying a Betamax when you buy TiVo? That’s a great question and the answer is a big maybe. Cable companies, for one, have been promising for some time now that they will roll out interactive television and advanced digital set top boxes with PVR functionality that would make TiVo obsolete. Then again, those same cable companies also promised high speed internet access for years and didn’t really start rolling anything out until DSL promised to steal the market and helped focus their concentration.
The bottom line is that if you’re a gadget lover, you will have more fun than a hunting dog in a nest of squirrels playing with all of TiVo’s fun and cool features. On the other hand, if you’re still wondering about whether or not you really need to fork over hundreds of dollars for a pvr-thingama-jig, then you might sit things out a bit because the way television will change over the next few years promises to be as wacky as Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.
Update 2/22/01: The day after I posted this review, the Wall Street Journal ran a terrific article about personal TV, "Personal Video Recorders Put Viewers in Control of TV". If you can get a paper copy or read it online, the Journal's review provides an excellent analysis of competing alternatives.
Update 2/23/01: I finally got my replacement unit. Setup went smoothly and my first call in for installation went fine. But the very next update call failed! I got another bum modem. We think it might have something to do with the phone system. Apparently, if you live in a building with a doorman or buzzer which uses your phone, there may be interference with the TiVo modem. The solution they have proposed is that I buy a Phonex system which will help offset this issue. There's another $80 to the cost. I'll update the comments section in a couple of weeks to let you know how it turns out.
Sorry, New York, but with all our apartment buildings we're in a hot zone here for TiVo. Awfully touchy service, no?
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 400
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Epinions.com ID:
aplatt
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Location: New York and Chicago
Reviews written: 16
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