I received my Tivo as a gift and along with the Tivo I was fortunate to have the gift-giver help with the installation.
The entire set-up and activation took about 2 hours, but that was mainly due to the difficulty encountered reaching the back of my components in an entertainment cabinet. Otherwise the total set-up time is about 1 hour.

I have been using the box for about 2 weeks now and feel reasonably comfortable with it and can comment on the good features and the bad. Let's start with the good ones:

1. Because recordings are made on a hard disk, there is no need for tapes or DVD disk. Just ask it to record (by scheduling or instant) and the program goes on the hard disk.

2. While watching live TV, you can pause up to 1/2 hour and then continue watching the live show. You can also go back, go forward and save.

3. The menu is very intuitive and easy to use after a few hours of practice. You can search for specific programs, general categories, time & channel, titles, names, etc. and Tivo will find it for you and then you can decide what to record & save.

4. Updates are made regularly every 24-48 hours through your phone line so there is no need to do this manually.

5. There are a few other neat little things it can do, but I just wanted to cover the major ones here.

Now for the negative comments:

1. You cannot watch a live program while recording a different program at the same time. So if 60 Minutes and Dateline are on at the same time, you have to choose which one you want to record and watch if you choose to. Unlike a VCR where you can record & watch different channels at the same time, this is impossible with TIVO.

2. If you own a 40-hour TIVO, that means you can get 40 hours of recordings at the lowest quality setting. There are 4 quality settings and if you use the highest, a 40-hour Tivo gives you about 11 hours of record time. They don't mention this in their advertising.

3. TIVO automatically sends to your unit programs that it thinks you would like based on previous choices and also sponsored events which also appear on your list. You can program the unit to not receive the TIVO suggestions, but you cannot remove the sponsored programs.

4. The update calls made by TIVO are not always made in the early morning hours, so occasionally your phone line is tied up for 10-12 minutes when someone may be trying to reach you. If you need to make a call during this time, you can do so by picking up the handset and hanging up and then picking it up again after 10-15 seconds. This may not be a major concern most of the time, but it certainly would if you were trying to make an emergency call immediately.

The bottom line is that TIVO is a neat little machine to own, but I would like to see some improvements on future models, such as:

1. Elimination of the ugly IR sensors that have to be mounted on your cable box. Maybe the cable companies will eventually build the sensors into their boxes for TIVO users.

2. Installing bigger hard drives in the units so that when you buy a 40-hour unit you are really getting 40 hours of quality record time.

3. Arranging for the update phone calls to be made ONLY in the early morning hours such as 1-5 a.m. when people are less likely to need their phone or be receiving calls.

4. Design the TIVO so that a different program can be watched than the one being recorded. Perhaps installing 2 hard drives?

5. Allow the user to opt out of receiving sponsored programs.


Recommended:
No

Amount Paid (US$): 169.00