derk99's Full Review: TiVo Series2â„¢ (80 Hours) (80 GB) 80-Hours Video ...
Received this series II Tivo for Christmas and had an interesting time hooking it up to my home theater with Dish Network.
Turns out DirecTV is a snap to work with Tivo but Dish is more challenging. You need to connect little transmitters to the front of your DISH box to let Tivo change the channels.
From then on, you use Tivo's remote control to change channels, not the one from DISH. That's a loss; the DISH guide is much better.
However, that said, we are very satisfied. Note that the 80 hours of recording time is on "low quality" which no one will use. On BEST quality you get about 24 hours worth. Still more than enough.
Slight - and I mean slight- image quality drop will come from installing TIVO since from then on everything you watch will be, in fact, delayed slightly and coming from the Tivo hard drive. That allows you to "Freeze" and even back up and watch the last 30 mins of whatever you were watching. There also is slow-motion and frame by frame service.
Doing that allows one to pretty easily skip commercials and such.
You need to periodically connect TIVO to a phone line (previous posters who said it had to be connected full time are wrong; you can just connect it once every few days and hit "Manually Update" so it can download the new guide.)
Cost is $13 a month or $249 for the life of the TIVO device (not your life). I opted for the 249. Also usable with no subscription if you are manually inclined. (Update: Price goes to $299 on March 1, 2003)
The plus of Tivo is, we have limited TV time and we used to only be able to watch "what was on." With TIVO we watch what we want during those times instead of playing luck of the draw.
Do keep in mind that Tivo can cause an issue with unattended kid watching. By that I mean that Tivo "learns" what you like to watch. If you like "Real Sex" on HBO and you park your kids in front of "The Wiggles" on PBS and "Real Sex" comes on, Tivo will change your channel. If you're not there to intercept, the kiddies will get an eyeful.
Now, record two shows at once! Record from two basic cable channels, or one basic cable and one digital cable channel, at once. Does not support recor...More at TiVo
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DVR-S2 DT Digital Video Recorder , Dual Tuner Design, Simultaneously Record Two Shows at Once, Records up to 80 Hours, KidZone Parental ControlMore at B&H Photo-Video-Pro Audio
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