10 out of 10, 100%, 5 stars, or however your rating system works, is what this review of the Tivo is giving it, so you don't have to scroll down to the end to see what the final round up and score is.
Bottom line, it's like having an infinite number of video recorders for everyone in your house! With the added bonus of being digital quality and never having to set the timer!
So on to the first thing...Never setting the timer. It is because rather than tell the recorder when and where the program is, you just have to know the title, and it takes care of the rest with extremely simple on screen menus. And it just works! It's all in plain and simple English. Would you like to record this show, would you like to record all the shows, would you like to record repeat showings, etc. No mysterious symbols, about the width of 3 atoms, glowing knowingly smugly, in the darkness at you, keeping that nagging thought in the back of your mind that perhaps it KNOWS it isn't going to record anything for you ever! With the Tivo you have lists of things, but not just strange looking lists of times, dates and channels. Actual titles, with channel logos (and their numbers) and dates, all listed from the latest thing recorded, down to the earliest thing you recorded.
The magical part seems to be that all of this is recorded on good old fashioned hard drives and not tape. This means you can play something through a billion times and it never gets worn out, you can pause for ever, and even rewind or pause live tv, but more on that later. The hard drive thing, means that every show you have recorded for different members of the family, all remember how far through they have been watched (if at all). So if I go and watch a rather geeky episode of The Screen Savers for a while before leaving the house, it will resume playing (if I want it to) from the place I stopped it at. No tape to take out, no tape to keep track of, nothing at all except wanting to watch the rest of your shows.
The thing about being able to pause live television is that you can be watching any channel and the Tivo is recording that too. So if you want to channel surf and then find something interesting, you need never miss any of it because you can pause it, and even rewind if you like. If you are doing something in the house and only able to watch some of the show, repeated pausings and resuming playback means that after a certain amount of your own buffer, you can skip the commercials. So you can get work done around the house, AND see all of a show without having to wait for commercials to get on with the rest of a job!
This particular Tivo can record two things at the same time, and then you can watch something else too! So that means conflicting, or overlapping shows on different channels need never be a problem. And if one show being recorded is Barney's Big Adventure, and the other is "She dared to stand up to him" (I think you get my meaning here), you can still watch. "Stuff blowing up with computers attached" that recorded last week, all AT THE SAME TIME!!
The other odd thing the little wonderful box does is record shows it assumes you would like based on things you either watch live or ask it to record. So far I have discovered a lot of new stuff this way. You would think that a Tivo would mean you never watch anything you didn't know about again, but that's where I was wrong. On satelite it seems that they show millions of episodes of a show all the time, but the Tivo is set by default to only record new or non-repeating showings of any show or movie. This shows how many duplicate shows REALLY go out. So if you have seen all those Star Treks, you can leave this thing to make sure you catch the new season as soon as it hits the screens. Or you can say that you want all the repeats, but not duplicate showings, so again, you get all DIFFERENT episodes. Then of course you CAN set it to record all showings including duplicates, but that seems like no fun at all....
As for image quality, I imagined something along the lines of those movie trailers you get online, all blocky and smeary, but I was wrong, it was perfect! The DirectTivo replaced a basic six year old box which was obviously in worse shape than we thought. The DirectTivo picture was amazing, especially for a recording with no tape! I don't mean it was passable as a digital recording, it was BETTER than the old DirectTV box.
If a specific show or movie is not listed, you can tell your box to record any movie or show, with a specific actor (or director) and leave it on your to-do list on the Tivo. When ever a thing matches, it will record it for you.
The shows it has recommended have been interesting, and I think I said before that I am glad of all that marketing and pigeon-holing going on in this instance, as it is actually useful. You find all sorts of new shows you never heard of but seem to like, on the list of recordings you have stored away on it.
As for playing time, we can have 100 hours of solid TV watching, before it will fill up. You can save shows for as long as you like, or just delete them after you have finished them. The reccomendations it records are second place to what ever you specify to record. No chance it seems of filling up the drive inside. I mean that would be four whole days of watching TV around the clock, so with a steady stream of watching and letting shows delete there should be no problem.
This is one of those gadgets you hear people go on about, but don't seem to know anyone yourself who you can ask about it. Take the plunge and you too will soon never miss those shows on TV where you say "OO that looks good we will have to watch that one." Which of course you forget instantly all about it, and then hear how great it was, at work or something, about two episodes from the final one. With the Tivo you just set it, and forget it.
Tivo
