Description
The TiVo is the digital VCR designed to bring control into your life. Since it is impossible to change TV channel lineups to suit your own schedule, and it is too hard to constantly be programming recordings on a VCR, you might miss many of your favorite shows because of work or school. The TiVo is the answer to this problem that many people face every day. It is more than just a VCR. It is a system that molds its programming to fit you. Based on what you tell it about the kind of TV you watch, it records shows throughout the day. When you come home at night, you can see the all the shows you programmed to record plus new shows that fit your tastes. Best of all, it is all automatic. Take total control of your TV with the TiVo.
Setup
Setup of the TiVo seemed like a daunting task at first. When I opened the box, I was greeted by a jumble of wires that was three inches thick and at least six inches in diameter. The instruction card did little to alleviate my fears when it informed me that setup could take up to two hours. Nevertheless, I got to it, and I discovered that it wasn’t that bad. I didn’t have to use many of the cables because I don’t have a cable box or satellite. I simply needed to connect the video output and cable to my TV like any other VCR. I also hooked it up to my VCR through standard audio/video cables. (Both the TV and VCR could be hooked up with S-Video connections.) The final step was the phone line.
I had to connect the TiVo to my phone line, even though there wasn’t a jack handy. Fortunately, Phillips provided a hundred feet of phone wire, plus a handy splitter in case the jack was in use (which it was). Of course, I still had to deal with the wire, but it wasn’t too serious. After that I was ready to go. Because I didn’t have a cable box, I was able to skip two steps in the installation process, but they were well documented and didn’t seem too complicated. All of this was accomplished in fifteen minutes.
After I powered on the TiVo and my TV, I just had to follow on screen directions. It was simple information about my area, phone line, and cable service provider. At that point the TiVo made a three-minute call to setup the device and program the settings. After I had set up the personal info (about fifteen minutes later), I was effectively done. The TiVo made another phone call which took fifteen minutes, and then set to work to expand the data it had downloaded. The expanding took over an hour, which was what extended the installation time. During this time, I could not watch TV at all, even without the TiVo. Fortunately, there was nothing else required of me so I left it alone and went away.
When I came back an hour or so later, it was done and everything was ready. At that point, I was easily able to program the TiVo’s volume and TV power buttons. All I had to do was select my Sony TV brand and test the different IR codes until I got a match. The last thing that was required was to call TiVo and set up my service. This introduced a minimum cost of $9.99 for their basic service program. They have two other pricing options available: $99 per year or a one time charge $199 for lifetime service.
Performance
After installation was complete, I started browsing through my TV channels. This is when the TiVo really began to impress me. Although switching channels was a little bit slower, there didn’t seem to be any real decline in picture quality. Nothing seemed to be different…yet. As I was flipping through channels, I came across a basketball game just in time to see an impressive slam-dunk. I instantly reached down and hit the instant replay button and there it was again. It automatically replayed the last 8 seconds of live TV. The TiVo was living up to expectation.
The next test was the most important one: the snack test. I decided that I needed some chips and a soda to accompany my personal TV. I casually pressed the pause button and was gratified to see the show instantly freeze. I sauntered upstairs and took my sweet time coming back. When I did, all I had to do was hit play, and I was instantly transported ten minutes back in TV-time. Plus, I was able to fast-forward through commercials, which was a definite advantage. Getting back to the present was pretty easy as well. All I had to do was press the “Jump to Live” button, and I was back to watching regular TV.
Perhaps the greatest advantage of the TiVo, however, was being able to instantly record any program I was watching with just the press of a button. When I had to go out in the middle of a show that I was watching, I simply pressed the record button. The TiVo automatically began recording my program until it what was over. It didn’t continue like a VCR when you just hit “Record.” When I came back several hours later, I was able to pick up where I left off. This was something that was impossible to do on any regular VCR without presetting a tape to record on. Also, when I came home while the program was still recording, I was able to go back to where it started recording, even though it was still recording the rest of the show. That worked with all recordings, regardless of how I set them to record. Chalk one more up for the TiVo.
Seeing old recordings was a simple matter, too. Under the first option in the TiVo menu was a list of all the programs currently recorded. I could go through the list and watch any recorded program with just the touch of a button. Even if I didn’t watch a show, I still had a few options. I could delete it instantly or save it until there was a conflict over space. (If I did not tell the TiVo to save a specific program, it would eventually delete it if it ran out of space, generally two or three days afterwards.) For one show that I really wanted to save, I chose to record it to my VCR. This was simply achieved by popping a blank tape into my VCR and hitting record when the TiVo told me to. With the touch of a button, I was able to watch, delete, or save any recorded program on the TiVo.
Now I was ready to test the actual advance recording features. I pressed the TiVo button to access the main menu. I opted to record a program, and I was faced with several options. Just like a normal VCR, I had the option of manually setting a program to record. That was the most traditional method of recording a program. Other options included “Search by Name”, “Search by Channel”, and “Search by Time”. By selecting any of these options, I was able to search for my favorite shows. Here is where the initial one-hour of setup came in most useful. The TiVo had connected to its service and downloaded the listings for the next five days. I could trace any show over this period, and for most, read follow up info. I could easily see what the show was, when it was showing, and I could even read a brief synopsis of most shows. With those options, I was not only able to select my favorite shows to record, but I was also able to unselect shows that I had seen before. Even better, I was able to find late night reruns of my favorite shows, by searching for them by name. This was much easier than reading through the TV Guide, day by day, to find the same shows. The Live TV Guide was a great function of the TiVo, and well worth the $9.99 per month it cost.
Even after I had found a program I wanted to see, I still had even more options. Besides the option of recording individual shows, I also had the option of “purchasing” a Season Pass. Although I “purchased” it, it didn’t cost any money. All it meant was that the TiVo would record every single showing of that show, on that channel, forever. This was a really handy way of selecting my favorite shows to record all the time. That way, I could see all the daily shows that I normally would miss, at my leisure.
Finally, TiVo’s rating system was a great asset. As I watched my favorite programs, I would rate each of them with a thumbs-up or down. This was easily accomplished with the two large thumbs-up and down buttons on the remote. It was so easy to do in fact, that I rated most shows I came across, even while channel surfing. With up to three thumbs-up or down, it was also easy to rate shows on different levels, from terrible to neutral to great. What this did, was tell the TiVo what my preferences were. The next time I checked the recorded programs menu, I found a group of programs that I hadn’t recorded. Looking up the icon next to the programs told me that the TiVo had recorded these programs based on my taste. These shows were all automatically deleted for space if it was necessary, so there was no problem. In fact, it was helpful, as I discovered some new shows that I liked and added to my regular recording list. The TiVo’s choices were rather intuitive overall, and the rating system was a good addition to the TiVo system.
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