brookelorren's Full Review: TiVo Series2â„¢ (80 Hours) (80 GB) 80-Hours Video ...
Me and my husband were thinking about Christmas ideas, and we were thinking about how we had just about everything in the $100 or so range that we wanted. Then we thought of the Tivo. We gave the idea to our parents, but as Christmas approached, the idea grew on us. We really wanted one. It would be so convenient.
Well, we didn't get one for Christmas, but we went out and bought one anyway. The box was about $200, but you get a $150 rebate with at least one year's service, making the price $50 after rebate. For $300, you can buy a product lifetime service, which we did, since I don't want a monthly bill. So it was a $500 initial purchase, which is a lot, but I think it is worth it.
Set Up
Alas, our Tivo experience did not start out so hot. We use Vonage for our phone service, and Voice Over IP is NOT Tivo friendly. During our initial setup, we were almost frustrated enough to pack the thing up and take it back to the store. But I'm stubborn.
I give Tivo's Setup process a D-. The only reason why it did not get an F is because I ended up actually succeeding to set the thing up. However, it took over 9 HOURS to set up, spread out over two evenings. Two weeks later, I ended up spending another 6 hours working on Tivo again... but that's for later.
Actually hooking up the wires was doable, but not completely self-explanatory. I had to study the diagrams to actually hook up the wires... wire hookup might be semi difficult for the technically challenged, but if you have trouble, invite a geek friend over and have them help you. It was slightly more difficult than hooking up a VCR.
The user interface is self explanatory and easy to use. The remote is very friendly as well, and I did not need to look at directions to figure it out. Going through MOST of the setup process was a breeze. Until I actually had to have my Tivo box call the Tivo server.
Why Tivo doesn't allow you to hook it up to your Ethernet immediately is beyond me, maybe that will be in Series 3. You HAVE TO set up the box with a telephone line. If you don't have a land line at home, you have to take the box over to your friends house and leave it there for around 8 hours. If you have Voice over IP phone service, it will take a while.
My phone line hooks up where my computers are, which is in a completely different room than the TV. Initially, we bought a contraption that would send phone signals over your electrical outlets... that was a joke. The signal had way too much static, so we took that back and got 50 feet of phone cord. Then the real fun began.
Tivo would spend a couple of minutes preparing to dial, then it would actually dial. This is a slow and painful process. With my phone system, if I was lucky, the phone would actually dial, but more often enough, it would fail. If I was lucky enough to get through the dialing stage, it would initialize, or try to. Most of the time it would fail. The first night, which I spent three hours working on the Tivo, I did not actually get to the downloading stage.
The second night, I tried again. I got to the downloading stage. Yay! But after a few minutes, I often failed. It would be nice if Tivo would save whatever you download so you don't have to download it all over again if your download fails, but I don't think that it does. After six hours of sitting in front of the Tivo clicking immediately to restart trying to download upon failure (oh, and lots of prayer too), I finally got through to Tivo and completed the initial setup. Yay! I was one happy camper.
We figured that our setup woes would be over... Tivo allows you to buy a modem (another $50) that lets you do all your updates via the internet through your computer. We ordered the modem the next day... we didn't want to go through that again.
Alas, that was not the case. When we hooked the modem up, we found that you needed to download and install software to get the modem to work. Why the software didn't come pre-installed on the Tivo is beyond me. But there was another evening of praying in front of the Tivo... trying to get this software took another six hours. But we did find some help on this second try... using phone prefixes. If you have Vonage and dial *99 before your phone number, it will tell Vonage that you are making a data call. *70 will shut off call waiting. You can use them together with pauses in between (I think that you use a comma to pause). After we added these prefixes, we got to the downloading stage most of the time, although we still had a couple of download failures before it actually downloaded.
The modem finally got set up, and our connection problems have been minor ever since. Sometimes connections will fail for a few days, and the network doesn't seem to be hooked up all the time, but if it hasn't talked to the Tivo server for a couple of days, I just find a time that Tivo has a strong signal and manually connect.
Being A Tivo Owner
I LOVE having a Tivo. Other than the agonizing setup process, I give my Tivo an A+++. It's really that awesome.
Before I had a Tivo, I didn't watch that much TV. I would faithfully watch Survivor, The Amazing Race, and American Idol. Sometimes we'd watch The OReilly Factor or the news. We usually forgot to watch 20/20. We NEVER watched the Simpsons or 60 Minutes, because we were always in church when they showed, and it was too much trouble to record them on the VCR. I can watch ALL those shows now, whenever I feel like watching them.
The first day after Tivo finished it's setup process, I got to work inputting the shows that I or my family members wanted to see. Every Saturday morning, the Tivo records Dora The Explorer, Little Bill and Blues Clues, and when we wake up at whatever time we wake up, she can watch them. Every morning, Tivo records Calliou, Sesame Street, Clifford and the Berenstein Bears, and if I'm at home, dd watches them when she wakes up. Tivo has this nice feature called "Keep at Most" where it will only keep the newest programs and delete the old programs when you record newer ones. I only keep one episode each of her programs.
Inputting all the shows that I wanted to watch was easy. You choose pick programs to record, and I chose to type in the names of the programs I wanted to see. You can choose to get a "Season's Pass" and record that show whenever it comes on the air. Using the "Keep At Most" feature, if my husband doesn't get around to watching The Simpsons right away, it will just record over the older Simpsons programs and its no big deal. There is always a Simpsons available for him to watch.
You don't have to know when a program is on either. My husband likes Star Trek Voyager, and we didn't know if it was on the air right now. By typing it in, we discover that it plays every afternoon, and we got a Season's Pass to it. Even if a show is not currently on, you can put it on your wish list, and it will record the shows when they come on. We put Quantum Leap into the Wish List for my husband, and when there was a Quantum Leap marathon the other day, it recorded quite a few episodes for him.
Tivo makes suggestions based on shows that you watch and shows you ask it to record. The recommendations that initially show up might be a little odd, but Tivo has a thumbs up and thumbs down feature that helps Tivo tailor your recommendations. After telling Tivo to record dd's cartoons, it recommended a bunch of Y7 and anime shows for her to watch that I gave the thumbs down to... but it also recommended Shanna's Show and the Wiggles, which she likes. If you want to get a season's pass to their suggestions, it's very easy. You can tell it to record suggestions for you or not. If you tell it to record suggestions, suggestions are the first items to get deleted.
There are several levels of quality you can record Tivo programs on. If you choose the highest quality, you will get about 10 hours of recording in the machine. We set up the Tivo to record it on basic all the time. This is not perfect quality, but it is good enough for us, and lets you have the full 40 hours of recording. If we were going to record something and transfer it to our VCR, we might up the quality, but basic is good enough for us. So far, after a month of owning the machine, it has not had to record over any of the programs we have told it to record (I delete most shows after I watch them, although I usually keep dd's shows to get recorded over, and keep a few other shows too).
Transferring any shows you want to keep to the VCR turned out to be pretty easy as well. They have a "Save To VCR" feature, but I have not used it. I just play the show and press record on the VCR (you have to set up your Tivo to input to the VCR and then to the TV to do it this way). The cool feature about this is you can cut out commercials simply this way. You just press pause on the VCR when you hit a commercial, fast forward through the commercials on the Tivo, and when you get to the beginning of the show again, unpause the recording on the VCR. It's very simple.
There are three fast forward and rewind speeds on the Tivo. After you fast forward, it will rewind a couple of seconds when you press play again. Usually this is a handy feature, as once you realize that the show is playing, you've already fast forwarded through a couple seconds on the show. The annoying part is if you are rewinding and it jumps forward a little. After realizing this I have compensated by rewinding a little longer.
You can fast forward, pause, and rewind live TV with the Tivo. I don't use this feature too often, because I don't watch too much live TV any more. Sometimes I will start watching the O'Reilly Factor 10 or 20 minutes after it starts, and I'll fast forward through the commercials and catch up to live TV. On the rare occasion that I am watching live TV, it does come in handy to pause the program to use the bathroom... the advantage to that is you can fast forward through part of the next commercial. Sometimes we'll also pause the TV to go put our daughter to bed as well, with the same fast forward through the commercials advantage.
Conclusion
The Tivo has changed the way we watch TV. We never miss a show because we're at work, or at church, or at a friends, or just forget that the show is on.
There is ALWAYS something to watch on TV. All I have to do is use the Tivo's "Now Playing" feature on Tivo Central (there is a neat little button on the Tivo that will take you there). There are always several programs that the Tivo has recorded for me that I'm interested in watching... either because I told Tivo to record it or Tivo suggested it. There are always programs for my husband and for my daughter as well.
Setup on the Tivo was a HORRIBLE experience, mostly due to our using Vonage phone service. The expense is a little steep to begin with ($200 with a rebatable $150, the $300 we shelled out for product lifetime service, and the $50 we spent on the modem). It's worth it though. I'm hooked on Tivo.
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