dwichman's Full Review: TiVo Series2â„¢ (80 Hours) (80 GB) 80-Hours Video ...
Introduction
I have a Panasonic 47" widescreen HDTV with a Sony 5.1 surround sound system and Comcast Digital Cable. I watch TV on fairly regular basis, probably about 2 hours per night. All my friends had been raving to me about how awesome their Tivo is, and quite honestly I just couldn't understand why it was so great. When you think about it a Tivo is nothing more than a "smart" VCR. So I think I'm pretty smart, and I can program a VCR, why on earth do I need a Tivo? The answer ... It's that extra bit of "smart" that makes a world of difference. Read on ...
Why is Tivo better than a VCR?
When you think about it a VCR and Tivo have the same basic functionality; they let you record TV shows. Where the Tivo really makes the difference is in its ability to set it and forget it. It's very simple to go into the menus and tell Tivo what shows you want to record. The Season Pass feature will be your new best friend; simply search for the show you want to record (e.g. ER), then tell Tivo to create a Season Pass, whether it should record first run (new shows), reruns, etc., set a couple more options if you like and you are done. Tivo takes care of the rest for you and in my experience is incredibly reliable at recording your shows based on the options you chose in the Season Pass. There are lots of other ways to record shows; manually by day and time, just one instance of a show, wish lists, etc. But in my experience Season Pass is by far the most common. The playback of shows is also incredibly convenient. The Tivo software and the Tivo remote are incredibly user friendly and make it very easy to play back shows, skip commercials, fast forward, rewind, slow motion, you name it. Tivo really lets you watch what you want, when you want, without having to watch commercials. I honestly believe that I watch less TV now that I have a Tivo. Instead of channel surfing when I'm bored to watch programming that is mediocre at best, I watch exactly the shows I want (without the commercials) then when I'm done I run off and do other stuff...like read a book.
Setup
Tivo setup is very simple; the most difficult part is figuring out how to hook up the wires to your system which can vary depending on whether you have digital cable, satellite, etc. Consult the Tivo documentation during setup and they have lots of little pictures and stuff that will walk you through it. Once you have the unit installed you simply turn it on and walk through the menu guided setup. It's a snap, your grandmother could do it! And the Tivo box comes with everything you need to set it up. You'll be up and recording shows in no time.
Recording Features
As stated above, the Tivo makes it very easy to record your shows. The Season Pass feature is probably the most useful allowing you to record a full season of any show you want. It has lots of options to specify whether you want to record new shows only; new shows and reruns; and new shows, reruns and duplicates. You can also specify the quality it should record at, how long to keep the recording, etc. Another interesting option that I didn't use too much are wish lists; for example you can say you want to record all shows that have Sean Penn in them.
Recording Playback
Playback is very user friendly; it's easy and straight forward to go into your library (Now Playing) and choose shows to play. While you are playing them you can easily fast forward to skip past commercials, rewind, pause to get a soda, skip to the end, to the beginning, to the middle, etc. Tivo also does smart stuff like if you stop watching the show and start watching something else, it will remember where you stopped watching and give the option of resuming there. It also manages the shows very well; lets you delete them easily, specify when and under what circumstances you want them deleted (before and after you have recorded them), etc. The Tivo software is very "smart" and user friendly. It also gets updated automatically so you'll never have an out of date unit (software anyways, hardware is a different story).
Upgradeability
If your computer inclined as I am (somewhat), the Tivo is pretty easy to upgrade. Mine came with a 40GB (40 hour) hard drive, which actually is much less if you turn the quality setting all the way up, which I did. So I went out and bought 2 120GB Western Digital hard drives and upgraded my unit to ~280 hours. There are lots of resources and utilities online that will tell you how to do this. It was a good experience for me and it went quite smoothly. If you know how to put a PC together, move around hard drives, work with IDE cables and jumpers then you're good to go.
Complaints
Now for my complaints, which is actually the reason that I just sold my unit. At the time of this writing the only way to get a dual tuner Tivo that is capable of recording two shows simultaneously, or recording one show and watching another one live is to get the Direct TV unit. The only way to record HD shows is to shell out about $1,000 for a satellite based unit that can record in HD. Tivo is way behind on these features. Because of this I just sold my Tivo and got a DVR from my cable company (Comcast) that has dual tuners and allows me to record HD shows. I have to admit that the software is not nearly as good as Tivo's and I regularly have issues like missed shows, messed up recordings, etc. But hey, I get to watch them in HD (sometimes).
Conclusion
Tivos are great and they'll change the way you watch TV. Your TV-watching becomes much more productive and you watch what you want when you want rather than watching what the networks want you to watch. If you don't care about the features in the complaints section then I highly recommend it.
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