Any other TiVo owners here?

[heySkippy]

I can't be the only one.

It's my opinion that TiVo is the single greatest tech gadget invented in the last 10 years. We currently have a pair of DirecTV TiVos and have been TiVo users for 4 years.

We don't watch much TV at all so it's absolutely perfect for us. The few programs that we do care about, we don't care about what time they came on or even what channel. When we're ready, it's ready. It really changes the way you watch television.

And of course, I now have an "Auto-record Wish List" set up for anything with the letters NSX in the title or description. No luck yet.

Anyway, just curious.

 

[The Kid]

Ive had TIVO for about a year, and my life hasnt been the same since. When I go out at night I record all my shows and movies and watch them when I get home. Its unreal :biggrin:

 

[martin]

Hi

I saw on the Daily Show that Bruce Willies has one. He has his own "Tivo Ranger" to program it

Best interview I have seen for quite some time.

I would like a Tivo, but it is almost nothing on norwegian televison I want to watch. And it will probably not work here either. I think you can buy a satelite reciever with the same functions as the Tivo, but I have cable.

I download "Lost", "Apprentice" and "The Daily show" with Bit torrent.

I have one more show I download, but I am not man enouge to tell which show

Regards

 

[FuryNSX]

I'm part of the TiVo faithful. That thing rocks!!

 

[Bilulan]

Hi

I have one more show I download, but I am not man enouge to tell which show

Regards

tell me its not Dr. Phil?

 

[NsXMas]

I'm thinking more like "Oprah".

 

[NsXMas]

Do you guys pay the monthly fee for the service? I'd buy Tivo but I hate added monthly fees.

 

[martin]

tell me its not Dr. Phil?

Hi

To end the speculations I have decided to come clean :biggrin:

Not Oprah, not Dr. Phil and not even Ricky Lake. It is Judging Amy. To explain my self I am only watching the show because Adrian Pasdar is in that show.

If anyone saw the not so hit show Profit which aired back in 1996. I am hoping the character that Adrian Pasdar is playing in Judging Amy will come out of the closet and be as evil as he was in "Profit".

Regards

 

[WillErickson]

Do you guys pay the monthly fee for the service? I'd buy Tivo but I hate added monthly fees.

I'm with you, I hate monthly fees also. I believe you can buy a tivo lifetime subscription for $300 or so, but I wasn't crazy about that either. My solution? I just bought a panasonic HDD/DVD recorder, and I love it. If you have cable, it has the tv guide interactive guide built in, which gives it tivo functionality, but its a free service. I use dish network, which also has an interactive guide, so I have to program both units in order to timer record, but its very user friendly, and you can easily set frequency to weekly or daily to record programs that you want to always record. Plus, if the hard disk fills up (I record a lot of movies on HBO/Cinemax) I can simply burn to DVD in a simple step, there's even a high speed dubbing mode. Its a great buy at $500.

Will

 

[bclark]

I have a 1st gen TIVO box. A buddy of mine hacked into it and I now have all of the TIVO functions without having to pay the monthly fee. To my understanding, it is not possible to do this to newer boxes but I've had mine for a few years. You can even upgrade the hard drive to get more capacity. I have a 40GB drive and I can store up to 40 hours of programs. I also purchased an ATI TV Wonder Pro card for my computer and I can burn recorded programs from my TIVO onto dvd.

 

[NetViper]

I just rent my DRV from comcast. Same thing as TIVO. It us a dual tuner. I can record two shows at once and watch another. It also records HD.

My complaints so far are this:
1. Its LOUD. You can hear the HD and fan ALL the time.
2. It keeps freezing up on me
3. Sometimes it stops recording things in the middle of a show.

Nonetheless, I really enjoy it.

 

[xsn]

I just rent my DRV from comcast. Same thing as TIVO.

My complaints so far are this:
1. Its LOUD. You can hear the HD and fan ALL the time.
2. It keeps freezing up on me
3. Sometimes it stops recording things in the middle of a show.

It doesn't sound like the "Same thing as TIVO" at all then. My TIVO does not have any of those problems. The user interface on most of the cable company DVRs I have seen is inferior to TIVO as well.

I agree with the original poster that TIVO (DVRs) are one of the best new consumer electronic products in recent years.

 

[NSX2398]

I've had one of the first gen models for a least 4 years. But because I live in Canada, the subscription service isn't available so have to use it like a tapeless VCR .. but even so, it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. I love being able to pause live TV and use the live replay .. and the fact that you don't have to wait for a program to finish recording before you start watching.

I hadn't realized how intuitive the user interface until just recently when I had to get a Motorolla HDTV PVR and it's a confusing as hell .. but TIVO doesn't do HDTV so I have to put up with it. The other thing I wish TIVO would do is to allow me to extract recordings in a MPEG4 format so I could quickly load them onto my Lyra to watch while I'm travelling. I'm waiting for the release of the PRISMIQ PVR which is supposed to do exactly that.

 

[Arshad]

Yeah I've got one of the dual tuner scientific atlanta boxes as well (like the comcast PVR) and it sucks ass. It has a ton of problems and the UI is garbage and limited compared to TiVo, but it's one of those things you can't live without in spite of its faults. Particularly for those with young kids who can never watch the shows when they come on at prime time, it's perfect for catching up on your TV once the kiddies are all tucked away in bed.

The good news is that TiVo is working on a number of initiatives to reduce/remove the monthly fee in order to stay competitive. Although they've lost their DirecTV contract, they are looking into bundling their SW with some cable providers. I think comcast was one of the interested parties. Unfortunately they've made some business blunders which means that the company will probably be in the ground in the next 5 years, even though they arguably have the best SW in the business. Anyhow, the competition is not standing still and there are a lot of decent+cheaper options ranging from Media Center Edition PC's to Digeo etc. (Including roll-your-own options like MythTV, BeyondTV, ATI All-In-Wonders, etc)

BTW, for those in Canada using TiVo's, there are some options for getting guide data, but they are a bit of a pain. One such option includes setting up a linux box which scrapes the data using XMLTV and then serves it up to the TiVo.

 

[Carguy!]

I am on my sixth Tivo, two of them were knocked out with lightning and the other two have been upgraded to HD10's

I love my Tivo's and they were one of the first things I replaced after we were hit by lightning. Once you have one you can't live without it!

And yes Tivo's are capable of recording HD, take a look at the HD10 and you will see it does a great job.

 

[0ctan3]

if anyone has a newer TiVo, I did some of the animation that plays after it boots up.
...my 10 seconds of fame :biggrin:

 

[NeoNSX]

if anyone has a newer TiVo, I did some of the animation that plays after it boots up.
...my 10 seconds of fame :biggrin:

that makes 1:45seconds of fame... not including your "0ctan3 drives a RHD NSX movie" which went for 1+1/2 mins.

 

[heySkippy]

Well to the other TiVo fans I say nice to meet ya! I've seen the cable company offerings and PC solutions and the pale in comparison.

If you see this rolling down the road, honk 'cause that's me!

 

[Shumdit]

I have Tivo, but do not have to pay the monthly fees. It is a more basic version (only shows listings for the next 3 days instead of 14) but it is a lifetime free deal with the Pioneer DVD recorder is is built into (DVR-810H). It was about $575.00 (heavily discounted at the time I bought it, since it was over 1G at the best buy locally when I bought it, but for all I know it can be had for $250.00 the way prices drop on tech stuff). The nice thing is that I can tell it to record all of my kids shows, then have it burn 8 or 10 episodes of Thomas the train, etc. on a DVD for use in the car on trips.

 

[newby]

we've got 3 TIVOs....they work great for networking so that you can watch any show (from any tivo) in any room. Pretty sweet.
The monthly fee is not a big deal....$25 a month for the benifits Tivo offers is worth it to me. Considering they are almost giving away Tivos with that $100 rebate (total cost is only $100 after rebate).
And now with the new software so you can transfer shows to your computer and then burn them to a DVD (or watch them on the computer (laptop))....why buy a DVD burner with Tivo? Save the $500 and get a couple more Tivos... :biggrin:
I love it......

 

[squid2004]

I bought a PVR/DVR video card and setup for one of my workstations that I ran a digital cable outlet too. It does all my recording and scheduling for me so then when I'm ready to watch something, I can simply load it up on the wireless laptop out on the back deck or by the hot tub, or feed it to the main TV in the living room via another networked laptop.

It's pretty nice and since all video files that are recorded at DVD quality, I can archive and burn certain videos or movies to DVD in high quality very easily. Or share the show with other people, etc.

It does all the live tv pausing and monitoring like 16 channels at once and other fancy stuff but I rarely use it to actually sit and watch TV. It's mainly just a recorder workstation.



No problems, no monthly fee, friendly format, portable.... good times.

 

[Shumdit]

And now with the new software so you can transfer shows to your computer and then burn them to a DVD (or watch them on the computer (laptop))....why buy a DVD burner with Tivo? Save the $500 and get a couple more Tivos... :biggrin:
I love it......

Why buy it that way? For one I am not paying the monthly fees which will in short order cost you as much as I paid for my unit with free monthly service, and I can record shows on a DVD in 3 button pushes, much simpler and more time efficient than transferring to a PC to burn.

 

[heySkippy]

I have DirecTV TiVos so no multi-room sharing for me. On the other hand it's $5 a month for the first TiVo and the rest are no additional charge. DirecTiVos have dual tuners also, a nice feature.

The hard drive died in one of my units last year so I bumped it up to 100 hours & am liking that. I had bought a standalone DVD recorder about a year ago and was using it quite a bit but then it died. Am hassling with warranty repair in it now. Not particularly happy with Phillips on this.

 

[flaminio]

And of course, I now have an "Auto-record Wish List" set up for anything with the letters NSX in the title or description. No luck yet.

Heh. Great minds think alike, I suppose. I, too, have an ARWL set up for "NSX". It's number two on my season pass manager, right after Star Trek: Enterprise. No hits for me either .

TiVo rocks, but I do wish they had a two-tuner version. With well over 100 SPs and ARWLs, I get a lot of conflicts.

 

[flaminio]

Do you guys pay the monthly fee for the service? I'd buy Tivo but I hate added monthly fees.

I went for the lifetime service. It breaks even at about 23 months, and I'm sure I'll have my TiVo for longer than two years.