TiVo TCD540040 Series2 40-Hour Digital Video Recorder
See it at Amazon.com for $124.98Average Customer Rating
(3.5 out of 5)
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(5 out of 5)It changed the way I watch TV
I read all the other reviews, good and bad before deciding to actually write one myself. TiVo has its problems, and while I'm tolerant, perhaps because of my own software engineering background, I can see how many people might not be.
To summarize my review up front. Despite the problems, TiVo has changed how I watch TV and my wife, very skeptical and tolerant of her 'geek' husband is also a total convert. If our TiVo dies, another one will be on order in 24 hours. We've had our TiVo for over 2 years and we wouldn't be without it.
Now let's get to the nitty gritty. We have one of the first of the Series 2 machines with a lifetime subscription and we did in fact have to exchange it early in it's life. Since then, we've had very few problems. Here they are.
The problems :
* The machine occasionally locks up and need to be rebooted. How often? Sometimes several times a week. Others, maybe less than once every few months.
* The machine occasionally reboots itself without warning. I'm still not sure if this is deliberate. It's never done it while recording or playing back a show, but it has done it while I was watching live TV, which is not necessarily detectable unless I'm time shifting. Things work great after the reboot, but it's a bit irritating if I'm time shifting live TV, which honestly is rare.
* Our first machine's hard drive died. We had decent service replacing the machine, however we did have to pay S&H. TiVo could certainly improve here, but the service WAS very acceptable.
The nits (design issues, IMO) :
* My favorite feature is turned off and hidden. This is setting the skip to 30 seconds. When watching live TV, hit select, play, select 30, select. This has to be reset every time you restart. I imagine this is not the default to prevent lawsuits from unhappy networks because I don't even watch their commercials sped up any more.
* I wish changing the channel didn't flush the 30 minute live TV buffer.
* I wish the buffer was 60 minutes.
The raves :
* My favorite feature. 30 second commerical skip (see above).
* I virtually never watch live TV any more. Channel surfing is DEAD in my household. My observation is that many people in other reviews complained about how slow the channel changing is. I guess this is true, even with the serial cable, but the whole point of the TiVo is to NOT have to change channels or watch live TV any longer.
Seriously, if you're intent on channel surfing, you won't get the point of a TiVo and it probably isn't for you. My father in law doesn't get our TiVo and it doesn't make sense for him or anyone else with a 30 second - 5 minute attention span. A DVR doesn't make sense for you at all. That doesn't denigrate your TV-watching style, it just means don't purchase a DVR.
If you're the sort who likes to change channels during the commcerical (I used to do that), TiVo doesn't make sense unless you change your habits. I have. I don't watch commercials either.
* I have managed to catch up on all my old TV series using season pass. This has been easy even when I'm not sure when the shows are because TiVo finds them on various channels and surfs to record them for me.
* Wishlists have turned up old hidden 2am gems that I like to watch occasionally. This is fun.. to catch on old movie or find a show with a favorite actor or topic.
* I thought at first that I had to watch everything my TiVo recorded. No way, that isn't the point. The point is to have a diverse set of wishlist items, season passes, and suggestions from selected from thumbs up and down information you input over time to always be able to watch if and when you decide to watch TV. That is empowering as I now choose what and when to watch.
* We're starting a family soon, and TiVo supports parental protection based on show ratings. We have it turned off right now, but when our children get old enough to hold a remote, that will be turned back on and customized to our preferences. That and we can skip commercials are powerful tools in our parental toolbox.
* You can network your TiVo and hook it up to your home network for updated TV listings via network instead of phone line and to play your family digital photo album on the TV as well as your collection of MP3's. If you have a stereo hooked up for movies, this is very nice.
* The user interface is pretty easy to use. Even install, while involving many steps is about as easy as one can make it given how many decisions must be made at the user's end (how did you hook it up? what kind of cable, satellite, etc? what channels do you get? and so on).
* You can hack your TiVo. There actually are some good reasons to do this.
1) It's cheap to add more hard disk space if you need it. I should do this soon.
2) Part of the process involves backing up the hard drive. If the hard drive in your TiVo dies, this means you have a backup and may be able to repair your current box (with a lifetime subscription in my case) instead of purchasing a new one.
3) Some people I know are also able to save video onto their computer and burn their own dvds. I considered this but decided against it for now because the quality isn't exciting, and the legality is questionable (although you can now purchase a TiVo/DVD burner combo that does the same thing).
Suggestions :
* Seriously consider hacking your TiVo once it's out of warantee at least to add your own warantee of a backup hard drive, even if you don't add hours to it. There are services that will do this for you if you pay them.
Alternatives :
* Replay - I haven't spent much time looking at Replay. Their approach has caused so many lawsuits, and they've been in and out of brankruptcy, I decided not to bother. People rave about it though.
* Ultimate TV - Microsofts offering. My brother-in-law enjoys his, but it's no longer available. What's out there still works and it seems to be a nice system.
* MythTV/FreeVo - these are free software systems that you can use to build your own computer into a TiVo live DVR that incorporate even more features like computer gaming and so on. I'm very interested as a software engineer and will probably build one (and have friends who have done so), but it's more of a hobbiest approach and you do have to constantly tinker to keep it running in excellent shape.
Final comments :
I love my TiVo. It has truly empowered me to watch what I want, when I want, and HOW I want. I don't watch commercials unless I really want to. TiVo suggestions have showed me that there really is worthwhile TV to watch (we watch a lot of FoodTV, Discovery, TLC, DIY, etc. type shows) available... more than I have time to watch. Thumbs up and thumbs down on various shows have really fine tuned what the TiVo records as a suggestion (only using available space).
It definitely has little quicks and problems. I could do without the occasional hangs and I'm always nervous that the hard drive might crash. TiVo probably could use better customer service although I have never had a problem. However, I use a lot of honey in my interactions with customer service people (I used to work in tech support) and almost always get better results than the irate grumpy people I know, even calling the same help lines.
The value has FAR exceeded the cost, IMO. Watching what I want when I want. Saving 15-20 minutes an hour and 7-10 minutes for half hour shows by skipping commercials is time I spend on other things. Watching more shows if I'm lazy, but more usually fixing up things around the house and getting projects done. Hopefully you will find the same, but at least you can make the decision informed in as much detail as I can give in this little space here.
(3 out of 5)Tivo is excellent, but has one potentially serious flaw.
I purchased and returned an 80-hour Tivo this past week (this new silver model). For the most part, Tivo actually lives up to the incredible hype. In just a few short days, it really did make watching TV easier. It remembers your location in a show so you can switch between which show you're watching if you want to and come back to the same spot later (also handy if two family members are watching two different shows). The interface has a "Star Trek" level of simplicity to it. It really frees you from having to know or care exactly when a show is on, or whether it's a repeat or not, or whether its time has been moved or the show is preempted for that week or whatever. It gives you lots of control as to how many episodes of a particular show will be saved, whether it can overwrite a show when it gets full, etc. The "recommended" shows it records were actually mostly stuff I might want to watch (and are based on which shows I've given thumbs up or down to), and the recommened feature can be disabled, and never interferes with either the recording or storage of shows you specifically tell Tivo to record (in other words, Tivo only uses empty space on the drive to record recommended stuff, and it will overwrite those shows if it runs out of space before touching the shows you requested). Oh, and everyone probably knows this, but you can watch one show as another is being recorded, or watch and pause a show AS it's being recorded, come back to it later, etc. The guide is fantastic too. Technically it's probably all available for free online, but it's a heck of a lot more convenient to have it displayed on your TV as you're flipping through channels, or deciding on what shows to record.
Other stuff: Tivo worked fine for me with over the air broadcast TV, so it's not just for people with cable, etc. (it doesn't handle flaky channels QUITE as well as my VCRs, but it's fine). Tivo has 4 quality settings. A unit that says it's "80 hours" is only 80 hours on the "Basic" setting. I found Basic to be good enough for stuff without much movement-Charlie Rose, the McLauqhlin Group, etc. But the pixilation/artifacting is horrible if there's much movement. Quality is worse than a (good quality) VCR on it's lowest setting. Medium is decent, and I was using that for Days of our Lives, and is maybe slightly worse than a (good quality) VCR's lowest setting, or at least it's different. High is very good, and on my 80-hour unit was supposed to provide between 30-40 hours storage space, if I'm remembering correctly. I never bothered using the best quality.
Here's the deal killer for me. I bought a Tivo to replace a VCR that had died in my bed room. As it turns out, Tivo never actually shuts off. The only way to get the hard drive and fan to stop spinning is to physically pull the plug on the unit. Even the "standby" mode does virtually nothing. It shuts off the front light (if you didn't manually shut it off in the menu), it disables the video output to the TV, and it lets the RF connection to the Tivo pass through to your TV. That's it. It doesn't shut down the drive or the fan, and it even keeps recording the 30 minute TV buffer. While this model Tivo is actually quieter than a running VCR, or game system, or computer, I still found it very distracting when I was trying to sleep or read in an otherwise silent room. Please consider where you're going to put your Tivo and how much stray noises bother you before you buy one, to figure out if this is going to be an issue for you.
That's the only reason I returned mine, and I *do* miss it.
Here's some other nitpicky stuff about Tivo that could be improved, but isn't a deal killer. You can add time to the beginning or end of a recording, but that will cause Tivo to not record a show you might have scheduled for right after that recording. In other words, if a show is from 7-8pm and you tell Tivo to add a minute to the recording time, Tivo then won't record a show you have scheduled from 8-9pm, even though it would only be missing the first minute. My Sony VCRs handle that situation correctly (they finish the current recording and then go to the next). You can get around that by manually scheduling a recording (record on this date, time, etc.), but that kind of defeats some of the purpose of having a Tivo. The internal clock gets updated every time it dials in for the program guide, so it's not TOO big of a deal because it almost always gets the whole show without adding a minute or two to the beginning or end, but it's strange that the software doesn't handle this better.
I found skipping commercials to be slightly more difficult than on my Sony VCRs. My VCRs have a "smart cue" button which with one press begins fast forwarding through the tape, and when you see the start of the show, a second press of the button rewinds a set number of seconds, so it's usually just a matter of hitting a single button twice to skip a commercial. With Tivo it's not quite so simple. Hitting fast forward once goes 3x speed (slower than my VCRs fast forward). Hitting it twice goes to 10x speed (faster than my VCR), and three times goes to 20x speed. When fast forwarding at 10 or 20x, hitting the play button causes Tivo to jump backwards a few seconds and begin playing. It's SIMILAR to what my VCR does, but it requires more button presses (hitting fast forward twice, then hitting play at the right moment), and I found it VERY difficult to comfortably hit the play button in time. 10x is just a little too fast for me, and it doesn't jump backwards at all in 3x mode (and that's a little too slow). There's a hidden feature it's possible to enable that causes Tivo to jump forward in 30 second increments with the press of a button, but I found that even more annoying than the fast forward/play method.
It's harder to record for just a short bit-like sometimes with a VCR I may want to tape a 5 minute segment of a show, and Tivo would pretty much end up grabbing the whole 30 minute buffer, or the rest of the show, which is USUALLY what you'd want, but not always. There's also no great way to quickly skip to a certain part of a show. Like on my VCR if I see something I want to show someone else, I can make a note of where the tape counter is, and then just move the tape to that point later, whereas on Tivo I'd have to fast forward through the whole show and try to spot it.
Last, as of the time I'm writing this, there's no way (officially at least-there might be some unofficial way around it) to transfer shows to a computer or burn them to DVD. That shouldn't be much of an issue, because Tivo has announced a feature that's supposed to be released fall 2004 called TivoToGo (it will be added for free as a software update when the unit dials in for the program guide). TivoToGo is supposed to allow you to network your Tivo to your computer, copy shows over, watch them on your computer, and burn shows to DVD (so that you should be able to watch them on DVD players too). It sounds like there may be a one time charge for some of the software needed on the PC, and it remains to be seen how user friendly or restricted TivoToGo will be, but it SHOULD be a great feature.
At any rate, aside from the noise issue, I highly recommend Tivo! I'm just hoping they implement a real standby/off mode in a future model. I'll be buying one the second they do.
(1 out of 5)Buyer Beware of Rebate
Nice machine, was easy to set up. We had to hook it up to the phone long, so setup took a long time (plan on it being overnight). Also the remote buttons are really too small for elderly folks to use. All-in-all, I agree with the other reviewers.
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(5 out of 5)Tivo makes TV better, yes, but it's so much more
OK, let me say first that I'm not a Tivo employee. I'm just a Tivo user who can't say enough about this great little machine.
First, Tivo really will change the way you watch TV. Most people have a VCR and do at least some time-shifting. But it is a pain to record the VCR and deal with video tapes.
But with Tivo, you never have to mess with video tapes, everything's recorded on a large built-in hard drive in excellent quality digital video (MPEG 1).
With Tivo, you'll find that you watch what you want when you want (which is almost never when the network programmers want). And you will save a lot of time skipping quickly through commercials. Let me give you an example. Suppose you want to watch a one-hour show that starts at 8 p.m. Now, this one-hour show is really going to have 20 minutes of commercials. And you've got to give the kids their baths and get them to bed. So you start recording the show at 8 p.m., get the kids bathed and into bed, and start watching the show on Tivo at 8:20 (yes you can start watching a show even while it's still being recorded...try that with a VCR). Now as you're watching, every time there's a commercial you can skip through 90 seconds of commercial in about 5 seconds. So the upshot is you can still finish watching the show by 9 p.m. just as Tivo is finishing up the recording, and you've saved 20 minutes that you were able to spend with your kids instead. Multiply that kind of saving over a year, and you've acquired an enormous amount of quality time. And that's just one thing Tivo can do for you.
Another great thing is Season Pass. Like to watch ER every week, or Survivor, or really any series? Set up a Season Pass on Tivo (only takes a minute), and Tivo will record every episode, even in most cases if the network changes the time on you. This is because Tivo updates its program guide on a daily basis so is generally aware of any time changes the networks might make.
With Tivo Series 2 recorders, it also offers some additional cool features: multiple-room viewing (your Tivos need to be networked on your home wireless or wired network); music and photos (music and photos on your computer can be heard and viewed through your Tivo); and Tivo suggestions (if Tivo notices that your kids like to watch episodes of the Muppets, it will start recording similar programming automatically; you often can be pleasantly surprised by programs it records while you're away).
I could go on and on, but really now that you can get a Tivo for under $100 (after rebate), why not experience it yourself.
I recommend getting the 80-hour version. Even at the highest-quality video setting, you can get about 25 hours of programming.
Another thing that people don't realize is that you don't have to opt for the monthly service if you really just want to use Tivo like a VCR. When you first get it, you can go through "Guided Setup" and dial an 800 number to get the first month of programming data for free, but you are never forced to activate your service, and you can always record by time and channel.
However, I for one think the monthly service is well worth the $12.95 a month. You really do get a lot for the money.
(4 out of 5)Cool machine, but one flaw
When I bought my Tivo, I have to say I do love the features that come with the recorder. The onscreen guide and easy to program settings are pretty helpful. There are however, a couple of things that prevent me from giving it 5 stars.
First, if you're a Mac user, forget trying to use the Multimedia features (Photos, Music, etc.) Apparently, their software doesn't yet support the Mac OS system. Bummer, I look forward to using some of those features.
My other gripe is in regards to their "Lifetime Subscription" service. Buyer beware on this one. When they say lifetime, they mean lifetime of the recorder that you purchase. So if yours goes up, you have to buy a brand new lifetime subscription (another $300 bucks) along with that new recorder. The average lifespan of these machines from what I've seen is 2 years. My recommendation is to do it year to year ($155 each year for service)