A happy place for all the sarcastic displaced kiwi's of the world.

  We Have Tivo!

And life is great, well it would be if I wasn't still trying to work out a few kinks. Tivo.com has been offering a fantastic rebate offer for the past six or so weeks, $50 off their basic model and $150 off their top-end model. This discount was just what I needed to justify buying. So I took the plunge and the day after the rebates were first announced I placed my order. The unit turned up about a week later on the same day as my niece arrived for a two week visit. Hmmh, introduce young niece to Chicago nightlife and the sights, or setup my new toy?

Tough decision. I compromised and setup the Tivo very quickly so it could start recording all the great BBC America shows I would be missing while undertaking architectural tours and watching the White Sox win (for a change.) This means there are still some setup issues needing action, but now I have dozens of hours of recorded shows to watch - who has the time to mess around?

After a little over a month the Tivo has decidedly changed my viewing habits, and now more than 50% of all TV watching is via Tivo's "what's playing" feature, i.e. stuff that has been recorded at another time. Also, I don't sit down and mindlessly channel-surf anymore, why should I when I always have pre-recorded shows waiting for me.

Problems Still to be Resolved:
1. Sound cuts out intermittantly
2. Record and watch different channels simultaneously (damn cables, and signal splitters and other arcana I'm still working out)
3. Correct cable box (our RCN digital cable box doesn't play well with Tivo, so I had to construct a funky looking cardboard box "tent" to cover the IR port to restrict interference from the remote control signals.)

Top 6 Reasons to Love Tivo
1. Season Pass (every episode of a given show, never have to setup start/end/channel assignments again)
2. Instant Rewind on live TV ("What did he just say?")
3. Media Server (via wireless network: photos/music/movies/Internet from your PC)
4. Instant Record (Watching something and you decide to save it? "Hit record" and you also get everything that you just watched up until that point as well as everything afterwards)
5. Huge Capacity (300 hours of saved TV)
6. Tivo Suggestions (rate shows with a thumbs up/down button and Tivo will recommend and automatically save similar programs in the future. The more you rate the more accurate it gets - this is also known as the "my Tivo thinks I'm gay" syndrome.

Labels: Tivo

Share on Facebook
posted at 4:06 PM 1 comments