If, like me, you had a TiVo with lifetime service, which you regretfully bid farewell when you upgraded to HDTV, apparently you can now transfer your lifetime membership to a new HD DVR (though not the ultra-fancy Series 3.) I do love me some TiVo, so I'm thinking about it. For those who don't know, TiVo is to the DVR you rent from your cable company what my recordings of Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic through Beethoven's symphonies, are to the Muzak Beethoven's Fifth broadcast over the PA of your local supermarket.
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You forgot to mention "if you get it by November 8..."
Ahhhhhhh! The pressure...
You are so right about TiVo vs. other DVRs. We had TiVo for years for our DirecTV, but now we have Verizon's FiOs and its crappy DVRs. It's so bad that we have to call technical support about once a week. So far their solutions have amounted to replacing our boxes a few times, and telling us to wait for a patch they'll be putting out whenever they get around to it.
Is it so difficult for Verizon and Motorola to design something that works as well as TiVo? I just don't understand how my TiVo from 4 years ago was so far superior to a brand-new DVR by Motorola.
If only I wasn't forced to pay for FiOs in my HOA fee...
"TiVo is to the DVR you rent from your cable company what my recordings of Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic through Beethoven's symphonies, are to the Muzak Beethoven's Fifth broadcast over the PA of your local supermarket."
Muzak Beethoven's Fifth? I can deal with that. As long as it isn't like "The Fifth of Beethoven".
I really have to say I love my TiVo. I've said it before on your old blog, but I can't repeat it enough. If there was a choice between spouse and TiVo, and I had to pick one, well, I'd miss him.
My twice-upgraded Philips Series 1 with lifetime service remains quite sufficient to my needs. I love it.
Isn't this about the third or fourth last chance we've had to transfer our lifetime service if shelled out for a new (but not the newest) unit?
can the tivo possibly be so much better than the regular time warner dvr that it justifies dealing with TW-NYC people?
I won't go quite as far as my friend who characterizes the TiVo he received as a present as "The greatest gift I ever received, including the gift of life itself!" But it is a remarkably nifty gadget. My personal favorite feature (that doesn't seem to exist on my parent's cable company DVR) is the WishList-- put in a title, name, or keyword, and if anything that includes it is broadcast, even years later, it'll pick it up. I've gotten a lot of obscure, seldom-broadcast movies that way, including some that don't seem to have made it to DVD.
Yes, but IIRC only the second time it's been offered for an HD unit. (The previous time was for the Series 3, which was much pricier.) While I don't have HDTV yet, this seems like a good deal: it gives 12 months of service for my Series 1 in addition to the lifetime on the new box. It should give me better picture quality, even in SD (since the CableCard->TiVo connection is all digital, rather than digital->analog->digital), and a bit more recording time (180 hrs. SD vs. 120).
My Series 1 runs fine--though it's somewhat like George Washington's axe given that I've replaced the power supply once and the hard drive twice. But the lifespan of six-year-old computer hardware is pretty hard to predict, and if it dies then it'll probably never be possible for me to get another TiVo lifetime contract. (AFAIK, they haven't offered them to people without existing lifetime deals for several years now.) Assuming my S1 survives the next year, service will have cost me about $2.50/month, which isn't bad-- and if the new one does as well, I'll be quite happy. And I'll have a DVR for whenever it is I do get an HD set.
My lukewarmitude towards TiVo is perhaps unduly influenced by the fact that the only time I've ever seen it used was to watch Jackass, but (hopefully temporary) poverty prevents me from considering getting it.
We sprung for a Series 3 earlier this year (when Amazon had them on special for $600, minus another $200 for TiVo's Fathers' Day rebate). Coupled that with a Costco special on a 42-inch Vizio 1080p and we were out the door with some really, really cool toys under $1500. Sometimes my fiancee will come home, see something weird on the TV, and ask me what I'm watching. My response: "The pretty."
Also, your analogy was absolutely appropriate. My parents have the Dish Network crap, which has improved in the five or so years they've had it, but nonetheless remains crap.
The "TiVo HD" is the latest model.
I don't understand the tivo love. I have a generic two-tuner DVR and it works great. My brother's tivo is annoying, fills up with useless crap, and makes obtrusive noises all the time.
Recording obscure movies through wish-list is the only feature I can imagine wanting. I expected to love tivo, I've never been more underwhelmed by a techno-toy than when I finally used my brother's tivo. Very obtrusive compared to my generic DVR.
My brother's tivo is annoying, fills up with useless crap, and makes obtrusive noises all the time.
You can turn off the noises. :-) For that matter, you can turn off the recommendation recordings, though they don't hurt anything. (The TiVo will autodelete recommendations before it touches anything you actually requested, so it's not as if it makes the space unavailable. And occasionally it even picks up something I'd want to see.)
But not everyone needs or wants one, sure. On the other hand, I've never met anyone who had one who was happy with a switch to another DVR. Maybe it's the crack they put in the remote, I don't know-- but I'm definitely sticking with mine as long as possible.
For those who don't know, TiVo is to the DVR you rent from your cable company what my recordings of Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic through Beethoven's symphonies, are to the Muzak Beethoven's Fifth broadcast over the PA of your local supermarket.
What's the big difference between the two?
I've had TiVo now for about four years, and I love it, but I don't see much of a difference between it and the DVR service my brother gets with his Verizon FIOS subscription except the recommended recording that TiVo does on your behalf (this is a nifty feature, and, although I only end up agreeing with maybe a fifth of TiVo's recording "decisions," it's still better than wasting storage capacity).
Anyway, back to my original point: what is it that's so much better about TiVo? My brother's DVR service seems to work perfectly well, and he can actually record one show while he's watching another (which I can't -- at least without considerable pain -- with my Series 2 -- and yes, I know I could buy a Series 3, but I'm not enough of a TV junkie to worry about it).
One other advantage of the cable company DVR is that there's no need to do any network or phone line download of programming info.
Again, don't get me wrong -- I LOVES me some TiVo just like Megan. But I suspect at this juncture I'd probably also loves me some Big Cable Company DVR, and I'd probably save a few bucks a month. It kinda reminds me of Mac fanaticism in the computing world: there may no longer be much of a user friendliness edge with Apple, but you're obviously going to find it easier to continue to work with what you're used to working with. And some people interpret "what I'm comfortable working with" as "better."
By the way, does anybody know if TiVo has a patented on its "recommended recordings" feature? I figure they must have one, else the cable companies would have copied it. And, speaking of Apple, wouldn't buying TiVo seem like a plausible move on their part?
Anyway, back to my original point: what is it that's so much better about TiVo?
In my experience, going from a cable-provided DVR to TiVo, there a number of key differences.
1) TiVo season passes are much more effective and easier to use and set-up; the TiVo records far fewer repeats than the other DVR did, and never misses a showing.
2) About those season passes, both the cable DVR and the TiVo HD could record two shows at once. With the cable DVR, I would always get two copies of any network show I had a season pass to, one standard def (channels XX) and one high-def (channels 7XX) as both aired at the same time. Took up space and prevented other programs from recording that aired simultaneously but were further down in my queue. The TiVo doesn't do this.
3) Connecting the TiVo to my home wireless network, I can schedule online no matter where I am (a great perk), I can subscribe to a number of downloadable programs, such as TPM TV (a blog on my TV!), the Onion, New York Times reviews, etc., and I can download Amazon Unbox movies, including the occasional $.99 rental. All great perks that have become indispensable features.
4) Not turned on yet, but I recently purchased a series 2 TiVo (see, I was very sold) for the bedroom. Come November, I will be able to watch programs recorded on the bedroom TiVo in the Living Room.
5) Also coming in November, TiVo HD will have a port for an expandable harddrive, which adds more space to a drive that was already bigger than the cable-provided DVR.
6) This is anecdotal, but the cable DVR would crash a lot, freeze a lot, and twice had to be taken back (along with all my recorded shows)
Each cable DVR is different, but in my experience, from ease of use to feature set, the TiVo really blows the others out of the water.
The cable-card Tivos are likely to become obsolete before very long. The reason is that the cable companies are going to move from the current broadcast model, where all programs stream down the cable to all households whether they're being watched or not, to a switched model that's more friendly to lots of channels, lots of high-def, and video-on-demand. Switched cable will require an interactive DVR/cable box, which Tivo isn't. So anybody who buys a cable-card Tivo (that's what this deal is about) will probably have a doorstop in a couple of years.
The reason this happening is HDTV, which takes four times as much bandwidth to transmit and receive as standard def. The cable systems can't handle 100 channels of HDTV at the same time, you see.
That being said, my Series 1 Tivo beats the socks off the DirecTV HR20 HD-DVR. The HR20 doesn't have a means of being told what channels I get, and therefore tries to record shows on channels I don't get. It's pathetic.
Switched cable will require an interactive DVR/cable box, which Tivo isn't. So anybody who buys a cable-card Tivo (that's what this deal is about) will probably have a doorstop in a couple of years.
This is a definite concern, but cable-card tech being so prevalent, work-arounds are being developed such that nobody's tivo will be "doorstopped" any time soon.
The current solution is a USB dongle that will handle the interactive communication.
Yes your TiVO may have a better onscreen interface than my rental Cox Cable HD-DVR, but figuring the cost of the HD TiVo and the lifetime subscription (what exactly that offers, you're left to find out as time goes on) vs. the rental of the HD-DVR from Cox, it would take approx. 8 years for me to equal the cost of the TiVO & subscription.
Before 8 years I'd likely want an upgrade, or need a repair, and I'd get those free from Cox, so for me it's a wash.