question about Tivo

[supersuperwendy]

Ask your local cable company if they offer a box w/ a DVR built in. We had a TIVO for a few years, but when Comcast came out with the DVR cable box...it was the way to go!!!! We love it. We cancelled our tivo service and the stupid thing sits on a shelf.

 

[katymae]

Hi, I'm Katy and I'm a TIVO addict...

 

[mlwear]

I am another TIVO nut. I have had mine for almost 2 years, and I also bought the lifetime service. With a rebate, this 80 hour box was about $99? Maybe less, I forget. The thing with TIVO, is the interface. It is SOSO user friendly. It's the searches by title, keyword, actor names, director, etc that make it so simple, and the season passes. Like the other cable provided boxes, you can record, pause, slow motion, replay, etc. It's the simple interface thats unique, and I can't stress enough how great it is.

We got a flat screen high def plasma a few months ago. I am still using the Tivo series 2 to record basic cable, I watch the high def without the Tivo, but I am itching for the brand new series 3 TIVO that is made for high def viewing & recording. Price: $799. Ouch. It's new technology, and it is sort of like a computer, new things always cost alot...... I just can't do it right now, but I still WANT it, lol.

Me too, Me too! We already have 2 old the older Tivo's , single record tuner and I really want the hi-def, but it is so expensive (however, if you are a current Tivo customer you can buy a no-longer sold lifetime subscription plus they "throw in" 12 months of sustained subsciption to your current box. Such a huge difference when I go form watching Tivo on high quality to switching over to the high def.
Do they still make the Tivo that lets you record with one machine onto DVD's. I was longing for one of those, but when I checken out the series 3, I also looked for the record to DVD models and couldn't find one. Maybe now since you can transfer to your computer (which I have never done ) there isn't a need?
I do like having two Tivos and having them connected by our wireless system (good thing DH is good at that stuff), for geeks like us, it is really cool
I did see the offer for the free box. If you aren't going to record a lot of programs, it is a good deal. I was even thinking about it plus a year's subscription as a Christmas gift for my parents. I think the box with more hours is sold for $30, which is nice too! Plenty of info on tivo.com

 

[Good Ol Gal]

Me too, Me too! We already have 2 old the older Tivo's , single record tuner and I really want the hi-def, but it is so expensive (however, if you are a current Tivo customer you can buy a no-longer sold lifetime subscription plus they "throw in" 12 months of sustained subsciption to your current box. Such a huge difference when I go form watching Tivo on high quality to switching over to the high def.
Do they still make the Tivo that lets you record with one machine onto DVD's. I was longing for one of those, but when I checken out the series 3, I also looked for the record to DVD models and couldn't find one. Maybe now since you can transfer to your computer (which I have never done ) there isn't a need?
I do like having two Tivos and having them connected by our wireless system (good thing DH is good at that stuff), for geeks like us, it is really cool
I did see the offer for the free box. If you aren't going to record a lot of programs, it is a good deal. I was even thinking about it plus a year's subscription as a Christmas gift for my parents. I think the box with more hours is sold for $30, which is nice too! Plenty of info on tivo.com

yes they still make them, they're made by Humax or Toshiba. We have the Humax one and I love being able to make dvds with it!!

 

[kfeuer]

Just wanted to mention for anyone who has DirecTV, you can get a Tivo dual-receiver and it only costs $7 extra a month no matter how many you have. We have one downstairs and one in our bedroom, and it works out great. We got both of them for free from DirecTV, we just committed to staying with them another year, which was no problem because we love DirecTV. If you've been with them awhile, call them up and tell them you're checking out options with other services and see if they can do anything for you, that's how we got our free Tivo's.

 

[buzz2400]

subscribing

 

[dkostel]

I have 1 DVR through DISH and a Tivo. The Tivo is much better than the other DVR. With Tivo I can get a season pass, not so with the other DVR, I have to record the show each time it is on (not a big deal, but I do have to remember to do it). I probably should get another Tivo reciever, but I'll wait until series 3 prices come down. I believe only Direct TV is contracted with TIVO. I don't know if any others offer a season pass

 

[surfgirl]

Hi, I'm surfgirl and I'm a Tivo addict ~

We have two Tivo units - a Humax with DVD burner and a 80hr. standalone (no DVD burner). We record a lot of sports on it and like to keep them to watch when we want to watch tv and live tv isn't good. So we actually used weaknees.com to upgrade the hard drive of the DVD burner to 300 hrs. (I still haven't filled it yet 6 months later!).

I use Tivo to:
- record a season pass of a show that we like
- record kid's shows daily (Bob Builder, Reading Rainbow, etc.) - when my 4 yr. old has 'quiet time' we can watch 30 minutes of tv that she likes and not be committed to a specific time
- watch live tv and pause to use the bathroom, get a snack, answer the phone.

We also have a hard time watching tv at a non-Tivo house! (we are so addicted, we took it the to beach for our 2 week vacation... just hook it up with a new zip code and we were golden!).

I thought I would *like* Tivo, I didn't know I would *LOVE* Tivo... it definitely has that AHA factor!

 

[JerseyGirl84]

Hi, I'm a Tivo addict too! We have 3 in our house. The first one my husband bought me as a present and we got the lifetime subscription. A year later, I bought one for my husband. About 1 1/2 years ago, Dockers was giving away Tivos if you spent $100 at JC Penney on their products. They also gave a free 3 month subscription. The cool thing about that was that the calculated the 3 month subscription at the $12.95 price, so since we were only paying $6.95 a month for the third, we actually got a credit towards 5 1/2 months of free Tivo. My kids love it and record their own shows. With 4 kids interrupting me all the time, this is the only way to watch TV!

 

[buzz2400]

I have been thinking of getting tivo. don't you have to plug it into your phone jack. If you get the dvr thing from your cable company you don't have to, correct?

 

[PatriciaH]

We have a Replay TV and love it. It is the unit that skips right over the commercials automatically. I bought it from a dealer on Ebay. It came with the lifetime membership and he had upgraded the hard drive to 240 hours record time. We LOVE watching shows without the commercials. We record 24, Lost, Desperate Housewives, Bones, CSI Las Vegas, Numbers, Amazing Race, Without A Trace, Family Guy, How I Met Your Mother, Law and Order SVU, Medium and Monk. We also added The Office, My Name Is Earl, Veronica Mars, and Heros this season

 

[Minnie's Mate]

I have a TiVo and a Direct-TV unit and pay one fee per month for both services. The TiVo has to be hooked up to the phone line to get the programming, but the newer Direct-TV unit gets its programming over the satellite signal and will store 100 hours. I got it about a year or so ago.

We are sooo in love with whatever you want to call it (TiVo or DVR). This past week end was Starz free week end and there were three movies on that I haven't seen but didn't have time to watch, I just looked in the program guide, highlighted the title and pressed the "R" button, that was that. Now I can watch them when I have time. I can watch one show or record it while I watch it while another is recording.

BTW, the reason the HI Def units don't have DVD recorders yet is because the Hi Def uses needs a blue laser to store the additional digital data to have the Hi Def picture quality and the Hi Def DVD players are just now hitting the market at about $1,000 each. They will come down in price later, like everything else has, and will play the current DVD's when you buy them. The blue light has a shorter frequency than the current red laser units and thus can store more info in a smaller amount of space...thus the extra data needed for the Hi Def.

 

[IDoDis]

We have Direct TV and just added the Tivo last weekend. We got free installation and equipment and now pay an extra $5.99 a month for the Tivo. All we had to do was agree to stay with Direct TV for at least another 2 years. Our Direct TV receiver was going on the fritz (after 7 years), so we needed that upgraded anyways. This is not an advertised deal, but if you call and then say "maybe we'll switch to XXXX company because they have free sign-on bonus," then Direct TV will do the install and equipment for free to keep your business.

 

[LeesyUD]

When you record without a subscription you manually program what time and channel you want the Tivo to record. You can also set it up to repeat daily, weekly, etc. It does not have a channel guide since it isn't communicating with the service. As long as the Tivo is hooked up you may pause live tv for 30 minutes. So if you have to go to the bathroom you can pause it.

Actually you cannot do this for free. In order to use any part of the tivo service it needs to go through an initial setup. You MUST have a subscription to do the set up. Believe me it will not work without it. We had a problem setting ours up one time bc there was a delay in our subscription getting started. All you will get is a message saying you need to call tivo to activate your service. Now I believe the boxes are preactivated. The only thing you will be able to do with out a subscription is pause, rewind, etc for up to a half hour. Just a warning for anyone who is thinking of doing this. I would hate to see you go buy the box and waste time and money.

I myself am a tivo junkie. We have 3 right now but are only using one. Our first was the original baby the 40hr DVR. Then we upgraded to an 80 hr with DVD burner which we loved. But as soon as we saw they had dual tuner we got the 80 hr DT and we love that as much as the burner one. We will probably sell the 40 hr, but the one with the burner we are keeping as we may need it when we eventually move to a larger place. It is soooo addictive. I happened to be away this week. We just got our newest one more recently and had not set any season passes for fall shows this week. I probably spent a half hour doing season passes online so we would not miss the shows. We didn't have time to program everything before we left. That's another reason why I love tivo!! I also love my Disney wishlist! My parents have the comcast DVR and while it does the job it is not nearly as great as tivo!

 

[pbharris4]

Get the one with the capability of recording 2 shows at once! With all these great shows coming on at the same time..it's great to be able to record both!

We're addicts too! We have DirecTv w/ Tivo. A 30 hr one in the basement (which quickly fills up) and then got an 70 hr one upstairs. Between movies, kid's shows, soaps, and Tv programs, I may have to upgrade or get another one!

 

[tink2dw]

We have Directv Tivo in the Living Room I just love the ease of it. Im to 60 season passes!!

In the Den we have Directv DVR. Oh what a complicated mess!! And I'm good with new tech stuff.

Give Me TIVO!!

I almost forgot!! We only connent our Tivo and DVR to the Vonage phone with a mutipule phone line plug, Once Every 3 months for a couple of days, it doesn't bother with getting phone call. Usually Directv call the boxes in the wee hours of the night anyway.

 

[ceburto2]

I have been thinking of getting tivo. don't you have to plug it into your phone jack. If you get the dvr thing from your cable company you don't have to, correct?

You can connect the Tivo to your computer using WiFi and get programming updates through it. Does away with the phone cord.

-ceburto2

 

[DaisyD]

We bought the lifetime plan as well and it was $300 and well worth it instead of having to pay the monthly fees, however they stopped selling the plan awhile back.

Us too. We have 3 lifetime TIVos and am upgrading one to a lifetime digital TIVO. We have the 80 hour one and the other two are 300 hours or something like that!

 

[Good Ol Gal]

You can connect the Tivo to your computer using WiFi and get programming updates through it. Does away with the phone cord.

-ceburto2

you do need to hook up your TiVo to a phone line for the initial download.

After that you can use a wired or wireless network adaptor.

We have a network set up in our house so all of our TiVos are connected and we can transfer shows from one to another, share music, Yahoo pictures, check the weather, play some games, etc.

And now they have Kid Zone where you can pick which shows your children can see on their Now Playing list.

 

[thunderbird1]

you do need to hook up your TiVo to a phone line for the initial download.

After that you can use a wired or wireless network adaptor.

Not anymore (according to TiVo). You used to have to hook it up to a phone line for initial setup, but they say they've done away with that "glitch." Many of us no longer have land lines, since cell phones are becoming so cheap.

You will not believe how much easier it is to record and watch only the shows you like instead of having to settle for whatever's on. Calling a DVR a "digital VCR" doesn't even begin to describe it--TiVo is light years beyond anything a VCR can do.

I especially like being able to transfer between TiVo's (via WiFi). I record all my season's passes in the basement, while my dh watches live tv in the living room. Then I transfer them upstairs for later viewing. If I wasn't so dang tired, I would go on and on and on about how great TiVo is.