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 | TiVo TCD649080 Series2 80 Hour Dual Tuner Digital Video Recorder TiVo — DVD / VHS Rating: |
I've had VCRs before, obviously (yeah, thats back in the good old days when DVDs were these big huge things called VHS that had two heads and magnetic tape between!). I also spent a lot of time with a Dish Network PVR and was extremely impressed with it - it did everything I wanted it to. Occasionally I had to power it off because the hard drive went nuts and live TV wouldn't work properly, but it was a decent device.
I've also had my share of digital cable tuners, and all of them have sucked. The on-screen guides are worthless, and even the ones with integrated DVR still suck. So, I was looking to this TiVo to shatter my impression of clunky, difficult-to-configure, barely-works video recording hardware.
Thankfully - the TiVo delivers. I'll walk you through exactly what I did when I got the box in the mail:
I need to stress something here: At no point was any of this difficult. I was able to get TiVo to be able to change the channel on my cable decoder box with no hassle, it aligned my channels properly so that the guide was accurate, it asked me if I wanted to use the analog video cable (yellow wire) or the S-video cable (both were hooked up), it calibrated my wireless connection (that worked on the first try as well).
Interaction Designers and UI Designers take note: The TiVo on-screen interface is an absolute joy to use. I've never really spent much time thinking about how I would want to interact with a DVR, but if I had - I'm sure I would've come up with something nowhere near as cool as TiVo. Everywhere in the overall TiVo experience is integration, flexibility, scalability, and it just works. Its so slick, and so integrated, and works so well, you'd think it was an Apple device.
So I installed TiVo desktop on Windows Vista (that's right, Windows Vista) and when I get home I should be able to beam over a copy of Smallville and Supernatural to my laptop so that I can watch my recorded shows on the train on the way to and from the office. The only thing I'm worried about is the MPEG-2 Codec - I'm not sure if there's one installed in Vista or not. If there isn't, I can probably buy a $20 codec easy, and then be able to use Vista's unbelievably cool DVD creation tool to burn anything I really want to keep onto DVD.
I don't have near enough room to cover all of the features that I get with the Series 2... but I can go online to TiVo's website and schedule season passes and individual recordings and within minutes my TiVo will know what it needs to do. I can have the TiVo read music and photos from my laptop and play them on my TV. Hands down this is the single coolest appliance I've purchased in years. Couple this with all the other fun stuff I'm going to get on my TV with the Wii on November 19th, I may just geek out so hard I start foaming at the mouth and pass out.
Bottom line: If you like your TV and your movies, you need a TiVo series 2. I've never been more impressed with the ease of use, configuration, and manipulation of a complex piece of hardware like this.
I discovered that TiVo recordings can only be burned to DVD using
Roxio/Sonic DVD Studio. At least, they can't be recorded using any
software that comes with Windows XP. Unless I'm doing it wrong. If the
Vista thing works, go you.
According to TiVo tech support (asked them this very question), they said
as long as you had an MPEG-2 codec on your machine, you could use whatever
DVD burning software you liked as long as that software could burn MPEG-2s.
Congrats! I love TiVO! - I have two but my 3rd is a DirecTV DVR ... which
sux - their software just can't compete with TiVos ...
You can burn them to DVD, convert them to other formats, pretty much do
anything you want with the files, as long as the TiVo desktop is installed.
Oh, there's plenty of room on the internal HD for all my shows. My main
motivation for putting stuff on the laptop is so I can watch it on the
train on the way to and from work.
