I'm just starting out researching the Tivo and had a thought. Would it be better to get a Tivo or DVD Player/Recorder?

The advantages of having the player/recorder is

1) I can keep certain things as DVD's.
2) If I record something upstairs i can just take out and put it in the DVD downstairs and pop it in my DVD player to watch.

Do you have to have the Tivo subscription to record programs or can I just manually set up a record time. I wouldn't record enough to justify the service. By the way if it is possible to record without a subscription, is that legal?

These are just some preliminary questions. If some of you have opinions on what I should do please let me know.

Thanks,

TiVo is awesome and changed my life. I highly recommend it. And I also recommend that you get the subscription, because I think you /think/ you won't record much, but tivo might convince you otherwise

However, if you do want to drop the subscription, then TiVo doesn't get you /too/ much over the player/recorder. w/o subscription you lose guide data, so you can only setup manual records. I think you still get pause/rewind/etc of live tv, but i almost never /watch/ live tv, so I don't know for sure.

Anyway, as with almost any TiVo user, I'm completely passionate about the product but I find it impossible to easily convince people to get it other than to say you won't regret it and two months from now you'll wonder how you survived without it

ms

The newer TiVo's will not record without service. I know a few people that love the TiVo and only have about 5 shows that they record. If I didn't have a TiVo this is what I would be buying Pioneer Progressive-Scan DVD Recorder with TiVo Series2 unless I had HDTV available in my area.

P.S. I currectly have 3 Standalone Series 1 TiVo's.

A normal stand-alone tivo will not function very well without a subscription. If I recall from the 2.0 days it would allow you to time-shift (30 minute cache) and manually setup recordings like a VCR. However, you would not be able to get guide data or schedule any recordings from the guide (since you didn't have a guide).

There are some new TiVo devices coming out from Toshiba and others that have a DVD burner built into the TiVo. You do not HAVE to pay for guide data, but you will only be able to schedule things 3 days in advance. If you pay for the guides, you can do the normal 2 weeks in advance. I may be a tad wrong, but from memory I think that summary is pretty accurate.

I just setup my DirecTivo on Sat... and holy crap. I can't believe i didn't have this for so long. Tivo already changed the way we watch TV in ONE DAY since we've had it. I think you'll really appreciate with the little ones. If they spill something you can just pause TV and come back to it. heheh. Or have it record every episode of Blues Clues or whatever the hip kids show of the moment is and have them available on demand.

You could always do what i'm planning on... and hack the Tivo to be able to take the recordings off to a massive storage drive or burn them to DVD for archiving.

EDIT: Oh, and you don't think you'd record enough to justify it... i'd wager you'll be amazed at how much you'll want to record once you get it setup and see all the stuff that's available during hours you don't watch TV. I've got quite a few season passes setup already, and have a bunch of wishlist stuff. One of them worked already and i was surprised to find a Chuck Jones special sitting there waiting for me last night!

That's what I was thinking. It would be nice to watch a show when we want. Other than the service itself I don't see a lot of advantages to Tivo over a DVD recorder. You can even pause and rewind while recording to DVD. Then again, I'm new to this kind of thing.

Thanks for the input so far everyone, keep it coming.

I can't even see comparing the two actually. Hm. The Tivo functionality is just always there... you don't think about it. With DVD's i can see having to worry about changing discs. I wasn't aware that there were any kind of Tivo like functionality on DVD recorders. The constant recording of the last 30 minutes feature is kick ass too... which allows the whole pausing/rewinding of live tv feature to work. The Tivo Suggestions and Wishlist features are killer as well.

I wasn't aware that there were any kind of Tivo like functionality on DVD recorders.

There is, but even more importantly, there are now some units that are hybrids: A full hard-disk-based Tivo plus a DVD recorder, all integrated.

I was aware of the hybrids (very slick indeed) but not any purely DVD-R's that could pause/rewind and all of the other Tivo fun functions which seems to be what Doug is talking about.

Now if only they'd come out with the HDTivo my life would be complete.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that most of the DVD recorders were, from the beginning, similar to Tivos in that they were random access and that you could pause the playback of the stream as it was recording.

Now if only they'd come out with the HDTivo my life would be complete.

Agreed. But now that I've messed with a DirecTV HD receiver and a Tivo, now I'd want an HDTivo to be two-tuner and have over-the-air digital reception capability. I'm sure such a unit would be really expensive....

Ditto on all opinions toward Tivo here. I can't express how much it changes the way you watch TV. It's incredible. I recently had to record something on a VCR, and completely forgot to start it on time. I NEVER have to worry about that with Tivo.

I also think the subscription is worth it for only a few shows. It's also useful for finding new programming that you weren't sure you were interested in. Then there's one-time recordings like sporting events.

When I first got my Tivo, I didn't have subscription for a few days, and it was quite difficult to use the machine at all. The unit is really designed for there to be guided data present, and that data is fantastic. It's not just for knowing what to record, it's great info for telling you when the program was made, who was in it, etc.

I've seen a couple of the non-Tivo DVD recorders' "Tivo" functions. They're a bit lacking.

It's just an amazing product.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure it's possible now with Series 2 Tivos, but you can extract video from Tivo and burn it to DVD that way or store it on hard disks. You can already network them pretty cheaply (with just a USB>ethernet adapter), and download guide data that way.

Lastly, I'm going to wait on DVD recorders of any type until I can edit out portions of my recordings. At the moment, every recorder makes "invisible chapters", so that commercials or whatever get skipped during playback, but they're still there, taking up space on the DVD.

Yeah, what everybody else said. The Tivo (or even better, a ReplayTV) will be used constantly, and you won't watch TV without it. A DVD-Recorder will just be used to tape a few things per week that you want to keep, I would bet. Buy the PVR first, you'll get far more use out of it.

Matthew

You can also upgrade TiVo's with bigger HDs. I've replaced the 40GB drive in mine with a 250GB drive. On basic quality I can get 299 hours on it It's actually using Mark Lord's LBA48 patch to allow it to use drives greater than 128GB.

So far Tivo seems to be the way to go. If I were to get one what size drive do you recommend? 40 hrs worth seems plenty for me but I have yet to get one so maybe I would discover I need more recorder time.

I don't know anything about DVD recorders, but I do have Dish Network's DVR (which does the same things basically as a Tivo) and I have to say (like the others) that it changed my life. However, it changed my life in a way I didn't expect. I now watch far LESS TV than I used to. The reason is that once I got used to skipping commercials my tolerence of commercials got very low. Now I WILL NOT channel surf, because that means starting a show with no buffer, and therefor no ability to skip commercials. So watching TV has become a very intentional thing, almost always involving a pre-recorded show, but even when it doesn't it is something my wife and I plan to do now. This makes for far les drivel in my life from the almighty TV and I never miss shows anymore.

So that's my input. I love this thing, though not as much as my empeg!

now I'd want an HDTivo to be two-tuner and have over-the-air digital reception capability

From what I've heard on the Tivo forum over a month ago, the HDDirecTiVo will have dual tuners for DirecTV plus the ability to record OTA HDTV. Last I heard it was supposed to be available this holiday season.

I thought it was announced that it would be a 4 tuner (2 ota, 2 sat) but you could only use any two at a time ...

Last I heard was March 2004, but I could be out of date.

Another question,

Can you record to shows that are playing at the same time or is this what the mulitple tuners accomplish?

Have you got a 721? I wouldn't recommend a single-tuner PVR, since watching one channel and recording another is one of the main things that I do (like last night on Fox/HBO).

That's multiple tuners ... I don't know if there are any standalones that have multiple tuners, but the DirecTivo's do.

While the dual tuner DirecTiVo is awesome, I had a single tuner original tivo for a long time and it was still sweet (no tivo < single tuner tivo < dual tuner tivo). But you definitely have more instances of conflicts (whereas I don't know that I ever have conflicts with the dual).

ms

It's funny how even with a dual-tuner unit, you still sometimes get conflicts.

Last I heard was March 2004, but I could be out of date.

That is probably a lot more accurate. You would think you would hear something official about it by now if it was coming this year.

Would it be better to get a Tivo or DVD Player/Recorder?


There is no room for dispute on this: Get the TiVo.

I have never owned anything that changed my life as much as TiVo. But you must understand that the hardware isn't what you're paying for. What makes TiVo valuable is the TiVo service.

Here are just some random thoughts in praise of TiVo, in no particular order.

1) Imagine never missing a TV show you wanted to see, no matter what else is going on in your life.

2) You like the show "<Fill In The Blank Here>" ? Then add "FITBH" to a wish list, and no matter what time, what channel "FITBH" appears on, TiVo will grab it for you. If David Letterman has one of the actors from "FITBH" as a guest, TiVo will even record that Letterman show.

3) You will never watch television again. You will only watch TiVo. Because while most of the time there isn't anything particularly good on television, there is always something good on TiVo. TiVo just sits there happily, unobtrusively recording things, and after you've had it a month or so there will always be about 30 hours of stuff worth watching.

4) You will discover television shows that you really like -- shows that you never even heard of before. Because TiVo looks at the things you tell it to record, and then all on its own it records similar programs. So if you tell it you like "Nova" on PBS, then you can bet it will pick up "Scientific American Frontiers" without your having to tell it to do so.

5) You will never be tied to a TV schedule again. Not only do you not have to know that "West Wing" is on NBC on Wednesday nights -- you won't even care. All you have to do is tell TiVo to record a program called "West Wing" and it will take care of the rest. You don't need to tell it what day, time, channel, or anything else. You could even tell it to record any programs with Martin Sheen, and it would pick up West Wing for you.

6) The TiVo has the best user interface of any consumer electronic product I have ever seen. It is impressivly powerful and versatile, yet so logically laid out (menu driven) that after a brief perusal of the manual to make sure you have the cables and the nightly dial-up routine hooked up correctly, you could throw the manual away and in half an hour of menu exploration you will have mastered TiVo.

7) You will never watch a commercial again, unless it is one you really want to see. TiVo will fast forward at 60x viewing speed. This means you can skip through a 4 minute commercial break in four seconds.

8) TiVo has a feature called "View Recording History" that allows you to look back and see any "discrepancies" -- that is, why a program you might normally have expected it to record didn't get recorded. No big deal there. But... the Recording History also lets you look two weeks into the future and find out why programs you want to record aren't going to record, and it allows you to resolve these discrepancies. (Programs will fail to record usually because there is a conflict with another program you want -- TiVo will only record one program at a time.)

There is more. The TiVo is a lot like the empeg -- it is really hard to "get it" without a hands-on demonstration. Then it becomes a must-have item.

Let me put it this way... without exaggeration or hyperbole, I state this as an absolute fact: If I were to go home, and find a smoldering pile of ashes where my house used to be (don't laugh -- this actually happened to me once) the very first purchase I would make, before clothes, food, or anything else, would be a new TiVo.

tanstaafl.

Thanks for the great post. Maybe you can answer this. What size Tivo would you recommend? It looks like the Tivo wins hands down but now I need to know how many viewing hrs I should get. the 40 or 80 hr?

I know you can upgrade drives but I'm not interested in that at this point.

Thanks very much.

The Now Playing list in my 35 hour Tivo always includes more programming than I could possibly watch and keep current on. And I haven't even had it for very long.

The Tivo is designed so that even a small hard disk is useful: It's prioritized, so that there are certain programs that I tag as "Save until I delete", some are "Save until <specified date>", and others are just there in case I decide to watch them but they'll get deleted to make room for new content. I can let the Tivo determine the priority or I can tweak it myself.

The only way I could imagine wanting a bigger Tivo is if I tended to want to save a lot of different things for a very long time. Or if everything I wanted to save was always two-hour movies. But as it stands right now, most of what I want to save is half-hour series, and only save them until I've had a chance to watch them, then I delete them when I'm done. So I can't envision needing a bigger hard disk right now.

I should get. the 40 or 80 hr?


That would depend on the price difference, I think. If the difference is trivial (say, $400 for the big one, $300 for the small one) then I'd get the bigger one, but only for the improved flexibility.

My TiVo is an old standalone model, with a 30 hour capacity. I don't think I have ever had anything I wanted to see get overwritten because there wasn't enough room.

TiVo records on a dual-tiered First-in/First-out system. On the top tier are the programs you specifically told it to record. Those programs stay in the TiVo until you specifically delete them, or until you truly run out of room, at which point a new top tier program will overwrite the oldest program.

On the second tier are the programs that TiVo records on its own -- program TiVo thinks you'll like. All of these programs have to be over-written before TiVo will delete any top-tier program. And TiVo will never overwrite a top-tier program with a second-tier program.

I've made it sound more complicated than it is... just think of a list of programs in your TiVo, most recent ones on top. And then when you get to the bottom of the list, a second list (with different icons so you can easily recognize them) of second-tier programs (chosen by TiVo) that you can watch but which are in more imminent danger of being overwritten by new programming.

I've never felt the need for more than 30 hours.

But wait -- there is the issue of picture quality here. My TiVo holds 30 hours, but that is at the lowest quality. I don't have cable -- everything my TiVo records comes in through the antenna on top of my house, so it is pointless to record a low quality signal in high quality mode. If picture quality is an issue with you then you must get the larger disk. Highest quality uses five times as much disk space, I think.

tanstaafl.