TIVO- Good, bad...any advise
 

My wife just got me a TIVO recorder for home. Does anyone have any experience with them, and can they give me some helpful hints about setting it up or programing it? Thanks for the advice.

check out tech tv.com

they have many hacks, and links


or google tivo forum .

i don't use the tivo suggested automatically record function. Also, I just realized that you can have it sort by your wishlist criteria in Now Playing which is really handy if you are trying to figure out why it recorded something.

I have a series 2 but haven't done the home media option yet. I want to but I have a year prepaid service so I'm trying to use that up first if possible.

Animation recorded on basic level is good for some shows. We try to watch everything in Best quality if we can.

Also get used to watching the Tivo instead of live TV... you can record a program and watch a tivo program at the same time, but you cannot watch 1 program live and record a different program.

enjoy!

TiVo has changed my life, I dont know what I would do without mine. I have 2.

Best. Invention. Ever. :)

i love mine.......i find it annoying watching tivo on other peoples tv's

What everyone said above! It will change the way you watch TV forever! :D

Here's where you can find any answer to any TiVo question:
Tivo Community

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I love mine. I've had it just about 1.5 years. I bought a philips 20 hour one, and upgraded the disks so now it does somewhere around 90.

I really can't say enough about how much it has changed my life. I have it set up to record all of my favorite shows. Medium or basic quality is good enough for most of them, if you dont mind a little granularity. I think I have 20 or so shows on my season pass list. It really helps especially during the new tv seasons. I get home at 9:00 at night, and can watch all my shows that normally start at 8. The great thing is, if the show is moved the tivo knows and will record it wherever it is.

I also bought the lifetime service when it was $250. For me, the total investment was ~$500 bux and WELL worth it.

I'm with tripleboc. Where's Tivo for my stereo? I'm beginning to think that the 8 second backup button is affecting my ability to pay attention.

As far as setup is concerned, it was simple enough - the menus take you right through it. Hooking it up might be the bigger problem if you have a full home theater setup.

"htp://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/" is the best source for tips, issues, etc.

I've had 2 tivos for about 2 years now ... and if I could offer 1 piece of advice it would be to "pad" (add recording time to the end of each show) whenever possible. It sucks to sit down to watch Friends or whatever and find that the last part of the show is cut off because the network ran over the scheduled time.

Yup. Don't know how many times I've been in my car, listening to the radio, when I've made motions to 30-sec rewind...

I've had DirecTivo for a couple of years now and it's the one piece of equipment in my home theater that my wife is actually happy I got.

Thanks for all the advice. I guess I had better set it up this weekend and I will let everyone know how it went. Thanks again to everyone in the TFP Community.

It is great. The one i use is upgraded with about 80G and planning on more, as cash allows. Don't have to worry about erasing things to watch others, just take your time. All in all, screw the FCC and the broadcasting bitches, this is a consumer item that actually serves the consumer.

Yay! I love my Tivo! :D

It is very easy to set up and quite user friendly.

Once you get used to having TiVo, watching regular TV with all those horrendous commericals becomes difficult. :)

Great idea but they rip you off. I have Leadteks Winfast TV. its free and you can do whatever you want, delay tv, record programs. whatever you want. im addicted to it. and it only costed 51 bucks!!!! If you want to know more PM me, and ill give you all the info.

Padding time to the end of the show has a down side. If a show is scheduled for 8 to 8:30 and you pad on 1 minute extra, TiVo will not record any show on from 8:30 to 9. I only pad the shows that historically run over (Raymond, Survivor, etc.) TiVo could definitely improve this feature.

Is anybody using TiVo with DirecTV? I had heard that TiVo was in Chapter 11 and may cease operations. Anyone here have the lowdown?

My Dish Network installation came with a TIVO box (not called that, though) and now I couldn't live without it. It's especially great for sports. I can watch a game in half the time. My remote has a button for an instant 10-second advance. I hit that at the end of a football play and they're forming at the line for the next play. Same for zipping through commercials, timeouts and those boring gabfests while the ref is sorting out a challenged play. And you can still go back and pick up anything you missed or want to see again.

DirectTV now license's the Tivo software. The down side to this is that when Tivo updates their software, DirectTV may or may not decided to pass the updates on to it's users. For example, the Home Media option is not available to Series 2 D-Tivo owners.

Home Media Option (HMO) for DirecTV Receivers with TiVo

And as far as I've heard, Tivo has not filed for chapter 11.

Glad I read this post. Been going back and forth on getting a Tivo, think I'll pick one up. Thanks for the info.

I'm late to this thread, but I need to add my 2-bits.

I won my TiVO in a contest 2.3-3 years ago. It came with one year free service. I've kept it going ever since.

We also have the DishNetwork PVR on the other TV.

First word, if you don't have one, GET ONE.

I prefer the TiVO menus and set up, but both do the same things. I have several shows that I set up on season passes set to record one minute early and 1 minute long. That makes it easier to drop a show to tape and get it all set up right. Also, I have set to only record new episodes. So it skips all reruns. If it has a time conflict, it finds another showing of the new one and sets itself to record it. To be blunt, I have never missed an episode of any show I wanted to see.

One special word of warning. If you are taping an NFL game, be sure to add at least an extra 1/2 hour. Otherwise, you'll hate yourself if the game goes into overtime.

All I can say, is that I will keep these machines until they fail. Then I will replace them with newer models. Of course, I may change my mind when the new TiVO/DVD-R hits the market.

Replay TV filed chapter 11 and was bought by the parent company of Denon. Tivo is still solvent and is now licensing the tivo software to many manufacturers. You will see DVD recorders with Tivo lite functionality soon. You will be able to use the lite functionality for free (much like a vcr) or upgrade to the full blown Tivo for a price.

tivo rocks! my favorite part is the "always recording" function for pausing and rewinding live tv.

It's scary how much scheduling your life around a few good shows disappears with TIVO. It really is a fantastic thing - even the naysayers in my house have to admit how cool it is...

Tivo Hacking Book :D

I hate to be one of those "me too" people, but me too! Tivo is the best piece of technology I've ever purchased. If not for porn surfing, I'd get rid of my PC before I got rid of my Tivo. I can't stand watching TV without it. I've gotten so accustomed to Tivo that I've found myself reaching for an imaginary remote to pause/rewind all sorts of things - people, the radio, ...

I love the tivo! I would recommend upgrading to a bigger hard drive. I put a 60 gig drive in mine, upping the recording hours to 96 on normal quality. For $40 it was definitely worth it.

is there a Tivo that will work in Canada? I have rogers cable and would love one.

Some helpful hints....

Always record sporting events at High or Best. Otherwise the encoding artifacts will be toooooo much.

Season passes are awesome. I make season passes for shows that I like to watch every now and then and put them at the bottom of the priority list.

If you can, use your home network to synch. No more tying up the phone, MUCH faster (especially when updating software!) plus you are one step closer to the Home Media Option. Provided you have a Series 2 (which you probably do) all you need is a supported USB->Ethernet adapter, and you're all set!

If you are somewhat tech savvy and interested in doing so, it's very easy to add more capacity to your Tivo. Check out the Hinsdale How-To that you can find at tivocommunity.com for more info.

Finally, use the damn thing! I can't live without my tivo. At friends houses, I find myself reaching for the remote to hit replay... in fact, during a football game I grabbed his vaguely tivo-shaped remote and punched where the replay button should be, only to have it change the channel. Don't do that.

Also, I found a link about setting up a Tivo for canada...

<a href="http://www.tivocanada.com/short/index.php" target="_blank">Tivo Canada HowTo</a>

Just got my Tivo couple of weeks ago. (after reading this thread!)

I have a DirectTV box (without Tivo) and use it with normal Tivo. I didn't get the integrated DirectTV/Tivo because I wasn't sure if I wanted to stay with DirectTV.

The Tivo unit gets the video and audio via an RCA jack and another RCA jack goes to my TV and stereo. And the DirectTV box is controlled by Tivo via infrared connection.

It makes flipping channels a lot slower, but other than that it's great.

D-TiVo's have two advantages over the stand-alone units; They always record at the best quality and they have two tuners (so they can record two shows at one time). On the down side (and this is a big one), they don't have the Home Media option available DOH!

But if you're not staying with DirectTV, then you've really got no choice in the matter. Either way, TiVo is awesome.

tivo is the shit. I could not live without it anymore. It's kind of a catch 22 though. You end up watching way more tv than anyone probably should.

The best part of having my DirecTV Tivo is that I no longer get panic calls from my wife asking me to tape something. I'm in broadcasting, for God's sake - and I STILL had trouble setting up VCR's to record properly. She set up her record priorities. I set up mine. And with double input/record capability - no sweat! My nect step is to hack it so the storage capacity is increased.