One of the coolest things ever for TV viewing
Written: Jan 06 '01
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Pros: Pause live tv; great guide; better use of your tv time
Cons: "Tivo Suggests" goes a little nuts sometimes; Slightly unstable
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| adjensen's Full Review: Philips TiVo PTV 300 Digital Recorder |
Do you, like I, have a "scratch" VCR tape or two that you use to record shows you don't want to keep, but don't want to miss? Do you forget when your favourite shows are on? Do you wish you could pause, quickly review or fast forward live tv? If so, you need Tivo.
I'll break this review into two parts -- the first part on the Sony, the second on the Tivo service.
Sony 30 Hour recorder
I bought this from 800.com and was a little steamed that it took two weeks to show up, even though I'd ordered "express shipping". No explanation, it just took a long time to get in. I picked the Sony because, well, I buy a lot of Sony stuff -- aside from one bad phone, I've never been disappointed in a Sony product. I can add this Tivo recorder to the list -- it's great.
I have two minor complaints about the box. First, superficially, it's silver, and all my other components are the standard black. Secondly, I experience occasional "burps" in the system -- menus take a long time to show up, controls are unresponsive, etc. I don't know whether that's a Tivo or Sony thing, but turning the box off and on again clears it up right away, and it only happens rarely.
The box holds up to 30 hours of recordings in basic mode (there are a number of different recording options; basic is fine for most uses). It is slightly noisy during hard disk access, but not to the extent that it impacts your viewing. Because there is only one tuner in the box, you can't record a show while you are watching another live show, but you can watch an existing recorded show while something else is being recorded.
As a hardware device, I have no problem recommending the Sony Tivo recorder, unless you really, really don't like it in silver :-)
Tivo Service
Setting this up can be a time consuming process. First off, you need to subscribe. There are a couple of options, primarily "Lifetime" and "per month". I would recommend Lifetime -- for $200, you don't ever need to worry about the service again (note that it's the lifetime of the Tivo box, not your lifetime, so if you get a new box, you need to resubscribe.
Once you're subscribed, you boot the Tivo and let it "call home". It figures out the local cable or satellite options, then you pick what service you use, and then let Tivo work things out (takes up to 10 hours, depending on your service). When I got this going in Lansing, Michigan, Tivo did not have my cable service (particular to the apartment complex) in the system and it took about a week to get it going. That setup took about an hour. I brought the box back to North Dakota, where I have Directv, and the setup took about 10 hours.
Tivo needs to use the phone periodically to update its guide (listing of the shows that are on). It defaults to once a day, and the call takes about 10-20 minutes. This can be a problem if you don't have a phone extension near your tv -- if so, just run a cable or look into a wireless extension. You must let Tivo connect to a phone!
Basic Tivo features are simple to use. Pausing live tv is a button click away, as is a "quick review" feature that lets you jump back a few seconds in time to see something again. You can rewind through the current channel's buffer, up to 30 minutes (also the limit of the pause), although the buffer gets cleared whenever you change channels.
When you have recorded programs, you can watch them by going to the List page. Depending on the quality used for recording, you can build up quite a list of things to watch, but Tivo will delete old programs if you don't get to them fast enough and it's running out of space (you can permanently save programs, but it's far better to save them to a VCR so that you don't waste the space.) Sadly, there is no "commercial skip" feature -- you need to fast forward and hit "play" at the right time.
Tivo Extras
Here we get into the neat features of the system. First, there's the "Season Pass". If you like a program, you can enter a season pass recording option for it. With that, Tivo will record every occurence of that show on that channel for you. If they change times, or don't run the program that week, Tivo knows and takes care of it for you. The only problems with this are: If you record two season passes that conflict, you have to cancel one of them; "Marathons" on the channel fill up the hard drive fast (witness the 24 "Irons Chefs" that I got during the Food Channel's recent marathon); and channels which show the same program at multiple times during the day will end up with multiple copies of the same show.
Next, we have "Tivo's suggestions". When you are watching programs, you can use "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" to tell Tivo what you think of the show. After a bit, Tivo begins to find shows you aren't recording that it thinks you might like, and records them for you. That is generally nice (Tivo won't skip or throw away shows you asked to record in order to record suggestions,) but it can go nuts. My daughter pressed thumbs up on a couple of kids cartoons, and I came home to find about 15 cartoon suggestions recorded, all of which had to be deleted separately. Also, if you record any movie, Tivo assigns a thumbs up, and when the movie comes on again (ie: premium channel!), Tivo happily gives you another copy. It would be nice if you could tell it not to record a movie you've already seen. Basically, unless you practice very prudent use of the thumbs feature, Tivo quickly gets out of hand. You can reset all thumbs at any time, though, which is appreciated.
The guide feature is magnificent. You can look at what's on other channels at any time without leaving the channel you're on. You get nice descriptions of the shows, and can look up to a week in advance. You can also search for programs by name, time and/or channel and set up recording with one click.
Finally, there are Tivo and network showcases, where you find things like "featured HBO movies", "great family movies" or "every movie currently playing that John Candy is in". These are nice to peruse once in a while, but I don't use it much. Tivo also runs a weekly program called "Tivo presents" that highlights some of the shows during the upcoming week, but I rarely watch that because their suggestions aren't all that interesting. During "Tivo Presents" and specially formatted commercials, you may see a Tivo icon on the screen -- pressing the select or thumbs up button automatically records that show.
All in all, Tivo is the thing to have if you watch TV. The benefits are amazing, although you'll definitely find yourself watching way more tv than you used to!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 400
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Epinions.com ID:
adjensen
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Member: a.d. jensen
Location: Grand Forks, ND USA
Reviews written: 143
Trusted by: 111 members
About Me:
Now blogging reviews at http://kandsmil.blogspot.com/
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