gamblin_man's Full Review: TiVo TCD652160 180-Hours Video Recorder
It seems like Video Cassette Recorders have been around forever. They have been around long enough that the difficulty of setting them up to automatically record a program for what has become known as "time-shifting" has entered legendary status. The somewhat fragile cassettes necessary with these ubiquitous tools of the modern couch potato are also well known as cartoons frequently depict their ribbons of tape festooned around children or animals. Enter TIVO. It is so much more - and in some ways so much less.
Back in my youth consumer electronics was my avocation and, for a short while, my vocation. Now I am just a consumer of the tools of the electronics home appliance trade. This review won't be full of technical details, but written by a user for other users.
TiVo HD 180-Hours Video Recorder
We actually have Epinions to thank for this toy. We had received a check from Epinions for writing reviews and intended to purchase a new desktop computer. At Best Buy we had money left over and, since Honey was on the other coast supervising the birth of our newest grandchild, I used the residual to buy TiVo.
In the box
Of course there was the DVR itself, a wide deep black box with little to distinguish it besides the TiVo logo and a light panel. There was the pretty formidable remote with lots of buttons to touch and a couple of batteries to install. There were some manuals and, of course, not enough cables to do the entire job.
Setup
Setup was very easy. It consisted mostly of dialing 1-800-COMCAST. Like I said, I am now a user. It has been a long time since I built my own stereos and ham equipment. Think of tubes for an idea of how long. Since the TiVo HD has dual tuners, you need two cable inputs to use it. Since it can accommodate cable decoder cards, you don't have to have two cable boxes. You do need two decoder cards to get the full benefit of dual recording and watching.
The cable guy arrived. It was his first time installing a TiVo HD so I got to watch a novice installation and setup. Unlike me he opened the quick start guide and proceeded to make it all happen. It went very smoothly for him. The TiVo came with a cable for video link, but I had an HD cable ready for the installer. I also helped him hook the TiVo to my internet router with another cable I had to supply. You don't absolutely need high speed internet to use TiVo. There is also a phone connection so that TiVo can dial in to its mother ship for instructions. An optional accessory, which my brother-in-law has on his, is a wireless transceiver.
I said the TiVo was more than a VCR - and less. The more is ease of finding future things to record and making it happen. The more is use of digital technology, read a hard drive, to record those programs instead of a tape. The less is that, without the TiVo mother ship you are dead in the water. It is not just difficult to use TiVo as a conventional VCR or DVR, it is impossible. With my TiVo purchase at Best Buy came a one year subscription to the TiVo service at its internet (or telephone) mother ship. It is about time to renew that service. The current cost is $129.95 for the next year. They do have monthly packages and a lifetime package as options.
Setup was complete in about forty-five minutes, including the wait while I registered the TiVo and it then finished the setup process. If you do a warm or cold reset, expect to be minimally entertained for around four or five minutes while it happens. Updates to the software and programming occur in the background or late at night so those do not bother us at all. It all occurs over the internet (or dial-up) and is pretty much invisible to us normal users.
What you can do - and can't
Let's start with what you can't do. You can't use it without the TiVo service. You can't, like a normal VCR/DVR, tell it to turn on at a time certain, go to a specific channel of your cable service, and record for a fixed period of time. So unless you plan to keep paying throughout the TiVo's useful life, don't get it. We do.
But what you can do is pretty amazing, particularly if you have struggled with your older VCR/DVR remote and then had to call your kids to make it happen. The mother ship downloads two weeks at a time of TV programming exactly fitted to your cable offerings. In fact, TiVo monitors your cable channels and, as the offered channels change over time, it updates the service to keep it matched. You can use the TiVo guide to find something in the future you want to time-shift, and just press record. That's it. But that isn't all you can easily do with your easy to understand TiVo remote. If the program is one of a series you can tell TiVo to record every episode. You can modify those instructions to only record first-run episodes, only record episodes you haven't recorded before, or let it record every episode. If it is something like a sporting event you can add time to the recording to cover those rain eventualities. Your TiVo HD will hold 180 hours of programming (20 hours of HD programs) and automatically erase the oldest ones to make room for more.
I like to play No-limit Texas Hold-‘em. There is lots of that on TV, but it is scattered across several channels in several different time slots. I went to Find Programs and typed in (on the screen) Poker. I got a list of all the poker related shows for the next two weeks. I selected the ones I liked, set them up for Season Pass, and set the options for time and which ones to record and to skip. It took all of a very few minutes to do this nearly a year ago. Since then the TiVo has faithfully followed my instructions and I have more programming to watch when it is convenient for me (usually while I am in an on-line poker tournament) than I can keep up with. Deleting the excess is a just a few remote clicks. If you check the mother site from time to time on your computer you will find other options. For instance, last fall, with s simple request, the mother ship began downloading instructions to record all the season premiers of the shows coming back and the new shows. Another simple request got all the pilots lined up for me.
With a few simple remote clicks and perhaps a little typing on an on-screen keyboard you can program to your heart's content. I, for instance, pre-record all the NASAR races. It monitors your watching habits and automatically suggests other programs you might like. With a click of the Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down button you can modify its thinking. But that isn't all you can do with your TiVo. Want a Domino's Pizza? Order it through your TiVo. One of the things we lost when we gave up our Comcast cable box was instant movies. Now that is corrected with the latest TiVo service update. I can order through Flix for instant viewing. So far, though, I haven't been impressed with this service. Out of seven or eight tries I have only been successful with one movie. The others had badly distorted and out-of-sync sound. In fact, even when switching back to regular viewing I had to reset TiVo sometimes to get the sound back to normal. Maybe the next update will fix it.
TiVo has output for a VCR and the ability to copy unprotected programming to your VCR. I haven't tried it. But I have copied programs to my computer over the network and then burned them to a DVD successfully. That can be nice for some special event you want to save for posterity or to share with others. You can also reverse the process and load programming, pictures, or sound to the TiVo. It works.
The Downside and Final Thoughts
The first downside is that to make use of TiVo you will be adding another layer of cost to your cable bill. If you use satellite instead of cable you can't use TiVo at all. It seems that the TiVo performance gradually deteriorates over time. We have to reboot about every two months. Since the last program update this problem has not yet reoccurred.
If you understand the cost going in, TiVo can be a godsend to us couch potatoes. It makes programming easy and nearly foolproof. It does a good job of recording HD programming and reproducing it clearly on an HDTV. Ours is 1080i and it looks just as good recorded as it does live from the cable.
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