Forgive me, I'm behind the times...what's this Tivo craze?

[Entity]

What's this TiVo craze all about? I looked around for some info on it, but couldn't find much, besides what I could find at Tivo. It looks cheap and high-quality from what I can see - I don't really have any need for recording TV shows, but it's an interesting idea. How does it work without the TiVo subscription service? Can you still program the unit to record something a week from now, if you're not willing to pay $9.95 a month?

Just confused, and interested. I stop paying attention to the tech world for a few months (ok, maybe a bit longer) and see what happens?

Rob

 

[Namuna]

The biggest features...

You can 'pause' a live show. While you've got the image frozen, Tivo continues to record in the background. Which essentially gives you the pause feature.

Set it once, it records ALL INSTANCES of the show Let's say you've got a show that comes on at 6pm and 7pm weeknights AND 10am Sat & Sun. With Tivo, you setup to record once and the service will pickup all instances.

And more.

 

[Entity]

Can you use the record once, record always feature without subscribing to their service?

Rob

 

[Ornery]

If anybody were to divulge that info in this thread, it would be erased and locked. If anybody knows how to do it, just email me and I'll pass the info on to Entity.

 

[Talon]

Ornery,

YGM

 

[konichiwa]

Ooh! Ooh! Talon, me too!

Entity

It's basically a VCR, but instead of tapes it has a big hard drive. You subscribe to their service which is basically an indexing service (like the ones on DSS) and you can do many things; pause live TV like Namuna said, or set to record a show every time it plays, etc.

 

[Daniel]

Hmm if there is a way around the service can someone let me in the loop too?
thanks

 

[Talon]

Konichiwa,

It's not about that. It's just about expanding the capacity. Adding more drives. Stuff like that. The same kind of stuff you do for your pc. It's just an interesting read.

 

[MrBond]

I thought it was just a useless gadget at first, but my Dad uses it more and more. I guess he rarely watches commercials anymore, he'll just start the recording, and do something for 10-15 minutes, and then catch up to the show at the end. I wasn't impressed with the quality of the construction of our TiVo, but it wasn't a bad deal for $99.