To me it is worth the service charge to have TiVo download updated programming schedules and maintain my Season Pass information alone. I mean if you watch/record a lot of conventional network broadcasting (ABC, CBS, NBC) you may not see the value in Season Pass Manager. However, if you watch anything on Comedy Central (e.g. South Park, Reno 911, etc) that has oddly timed seasons - you'll never miss a new episode with the Season Pass turned on. This was especially helpful with FOX programming last season when they just juggled their shows around for the hell of it.

Also another bonus about the scheduling - if you are recording two things at once (DirecTiVo) and want to recording something else on say HBO, you can go into the programming for that show and "view upcoming episodes" to see if there is a reairing of the show ANYWHERE else (e.g. HBOW, HBO2) in the next 2 weeks where there is no recording conflict.

When I want to watch a show, I pick it from the Now Playing list that shows what I have recorded. With a VCR, I'd have to find the tape that it may have recorded on and FF to where is should be. YAWN. TiVo even tells me what the show was about and when it aired. It also prevents me from searching for the show only to find out it was a repeat.

Another cool feature if you don't typically fill up your recorder is "TiVo recommends". With this turned on, TiVo will use its free time to record any programming that it thinks you will like based on your Season Passes and on your show ratings (you get to thumbs up or down shows to fine tune the suggestions). A VCR could never do that!

Seriously, if you have this much doubt about the product at this point, nothing will probably change your mind. However, you should consider getting the demo DVD and looking at it. I can't imagine NOT having TiVo. I now understand why Miranda was freaking out on Sex and the City when her TiVo crapped out and started making all those "bong bong" sounds.

I have only had Tivo for a week and I think if it was a woman, I would marry it.

1. With Tivo, there is ALWAYS something you want to watch on TV. No more endless flipping and watching shows just because nothing else is on. When you find yourself flipping, hit List and watch any one of your favorite shows.

2. TV is now on your timetable, you are not on its. I don't have to take my dog out at a certain time so I can get home to watch Show X when it comes on. I can just watch it whenever I want. Can you do this with a VCR? I guess. Does ANYONE do that with a VCR? No.

Tivo is so insanely superior to regular TV and VCRs, I feel like I'm stealing it by only paying $5 a month.

Just as a heads up, the DirecTivo does not do this. One of the first things we did when we got ours was set up a Season Pass for "Whose Line Is It Anyway?", which is shown on at least three different channels on a regular basis (ABC, ABC Family, and Comedy Central). We set up the SP by selecting one of the episodes on ABC Family, and it only recorded episodes on that channel, completely ignoring the ones on ABC and Comedy Central.

However, you can use the Wishlist feature and just type in the program name and have it record anything with that title. It's a little more clumsy, but it still works.

However, it is easy enough to set up a SP for each show/channel combination. I have a SP set up for Seinfeld on our local Fox affiliate, and another SP set up for Seinfeld on TBS.

Find someone that has a Tivo. Mess around with it for a bit. There's nothing that can convince you more than using it for yourself.

But, if you look at all the posts in this thread about Tivo, all of them are positive. Not one negative post. That should tell you a great deal as well.

Not at all. I have about 30 season passes set up now, ranked by Priority so that a more important season pass cancels a lower priority one. I can set up one to record 4 minutes past the end, and in high quality. I can record another in medium resolution. I can program it so that it only records first run programs and not reruns, or I can program it record a season pass of the show any time it comes on.

I can program the season pass to only keep 5 episodes, so when it records a sixth one, it deletes the last one. For example, I do this with Letterman so I always have the last week available. Can't do that with a VCR.

And the most important difference is that they are all on the hard drive. I don't have to swap tapes in and out so all my lettermans are on one tape. I used to have 300+ VCR tapes laying around and it was a nightmare. Because with 4 VCRs, I tried to do the similar thing that my one Tivo is now doing.

Another huge difference is the ability to "catch up" on a show. I forgot to tape Survivor... but no worries, Tivo knows it is a season pass. But I walk in a 8:25. In the old days, I would have had to wait to watch it... or what I used to do... grab a "Least Valuable Tape" and start a NEW recording on a different VCR, rewind the first tape and start watching it, and then grab the second tape when it is done and then watch that. Yuk.

With tivo, I just push the remote button and start watching the start of the show. No rewinding. I fast forward through the commercials. The tivo continues to record the show while I watch the earlier part. By the time I get to the end, I will probably catch up. Watching shows this way, I find has two major benefits too. I don't get as distracted by commercials and I can save a lot of time. I can watch a average NFL game in about an hour.

Also with TiVo, there are no stacks of video tapes, some with labels, most with not. It's all listed and catergorized, most with descriptions so it's easy to see which episode of a show it is. The main hassle I had with video tapes was that you had to insert it to find out what was on the tape.. and then you can't write on it.

The last thing that is very cool about Tivo is that it fills up the empty spaces with shows it thinks you want to watch. A few times of giving certain shows a thumbs up and others a thumbs down teaches it. Very cool if you are bored and want to see what it taped for you.

There is not a price comparison because a VCR does not do those things that I mentioned. One could have bought a tivo and not used the online monthly service. That was my intention when I first got one. Like many, I did not get it. I thought it seemed suilly to pay this amount per month. But then I got one. Holy crap.

As far as removable media vs fixed. You can always transfer a tivo recording to video tape, but I find that it's pretty rare. You do have a good point though that you should get a large enough drive so that space is not an issue. I have a 160gigs and I find I don't even think about how many shows I can record.

Of all the features you find on a Replay or TIVO, the relatively simple one is probably my favorite. You just wait 15-20 minutes and then start watching the show commercial free.

A typical primetime Wednesday probably features about 6 total hours of programming that I like - if I start watching an 8 pm show (like Smallville) at 8:30, I can pretty much watch all of the 6 hours of programming in 4 hours.

If you have a DirecTiVo (from DirecTV), you actually record the exact signal the satellite dish receives. It's already getting a compressed MPEG signal, so there's no need for the box to have an encoder. That keeps the price down and improves your quality, but it also means it can't ever work without DirecTV. Not that I would ever dream of dumping DirecTV of course.

If you have a stand alone (SA) model, it has an encoder and allows you to chose which quality you want things recorded at.

Some other advantages of the DirecTiVo is that it has two tuners so you can record two things at the same time (and even watch a third pre-recorded program at the same time). SA TiVo has one tuner. The DirecTiVo is also an integrated DirecTV receiver. So you don't have to fool around trying to get your TiVo to communicate with the receiver. With the SA TiVo, the TiVo box has to tell your cable box to change the channel. I have no experience with this setup, but I've heard that at times it can be tricky to make it work 100% of the time.

Why is a season pass cool? I'm going to be brave and admit that I watch Steven King's Kingdom Hospital this year. With 4 episodes to go and the show not doing well, ABC bumped it. They did eventually finish the series off a few weeks back and my TiVo automatically found it and recorded it for me. The final episode was 2 hours long. The TiVo knew that and started recording at 8 that night and got the full two hours.

If I was still using a VCR, it wouldn't have done that. It would have been up to me to dutifully search every week to see if they were going to show the remaining shows or not. The end result is that I most likely wouldn't have ever seen them.

Related to season passes are wishlists. I was interested in seeing some films from Akira Kurosawa since I'd heard so much about them. So I setup a wishlist to look for films from Kurosawa. Now my TiVo can automatically find and record any Kurosawa movie it finds on any channel. Let's see your VCR do that. And that's just the tip of the iceberg for wishlist. They can search on Director, Actor, Category (I setup a wishlist for Sports / Billiards & Pool and got overwhelmed with pool shows) and more.

You can't easily copy shows to a computer or DVD with TiVo (although it can be done if search on the net enough). But you do have the option to save a program to VCR if you'd like. I'm not into saving stuff, but the few times I've tried it, it worked quite well.

A SA TiVo is something like $12.95 last I heard. I have the DirecTiVo model and it's just $4.95 a month. And worth every penny.

Alright, thanks for clarifying everyone. That new Tivo To Go that lets you backup shows to your computer sounds interesting. I'm not really into archiving shows anymore either because I know that they'll come to DVD, but before DVD that was a good thing about VCRs/Tapes.

Archiving is still good if a station runs a show that won't be on DVD though like maybe Twin Peaks Season 2 or whatever or some obscure show.

I wonder what the propietary video format is that Tivo uses?

ReplayTV already has the ability to archive shows to a networked computer, and since the shows are already MPEG-2 you can just author and burn to a DVD with little time and effort.

As for Tivo/Replay which is better? I think either one you get you will be very happy with. As a 3x ReplayTV owner, my opinion might be viewed as biased, but because of ease and no need to archive I ended up getting my parents a Tivo over ReplayTV. For "techie, computer nerds" or people who plan to archive shows I'd recommend replayTV.

Oh, and Poopli.com is a HUGE benefit if you have a 50xx series or hack your 55xx to allow internet video sharing.

To answer Rubix's question, I'm fairly certain that TiVo encodes the tv it records into MPEG-2 format.

I own a first generation standalone TiVo (modded with a 2nd harddrive for more space) and I simply cannot imagine watching tv without it.

It's definitely worth a try for 30 days to see if you like it. Don't take everyone's word here for it. Use it, then get back to us.

"Techie, computer nerds" pop open their TiVo when it arrives, install a network card, upgrade the memory, add a larger drive, and disable the encryption flag.

das

No need to get back to us. We already know what you'll say. You'd be about the hundredth person around here to believe that TiVo was nothing special and then come back on your hands and knees to apologize.

das

10 Reasons a ReplayTV/Tivo is far better than a VCR

1) No babysitting required. With a VCR, you go out of town for a week and return to a VCR containing a full tape that only includes *at most* 8 hours of the shows you had scheduled to record. The capacity of a ReplayTV/Tivo is limited only by the size of the biggest hard drive you can find and afford. NOTE: this reason doesn’t apply to those of you who have set up a robotic arm to feed your VCR blank tapes as needed.

2) Sophisticated and flexible recordings. You can easily setup recordings from a TV listings grid. There is no need to enter start and stop times, dates, etc. as with a VCR. You can also set up very flexible recordings. For example, you can set a ReplayTV/Tivo to record every show/movie starring Tom Cruise. You can also record airings of your favorite shows regardless of their time or channel using a Season Pass (Tivo) or Theme (ReplayTV). The Tivo Season Pass can sometimes be a little more useful than a Theme but no so much that I personally would trade the other features ReplayTV has that Tivo doesn’t.

3) Commercial Advance (ReplayTV only). Watch one-hour shows in forty-five minutes by *instantly* skipping past commercials, all without ever lifting a finger. Depending on the show and network, Commercial Advance works *extremely* well. If for some reason it doesn’t, you can skip around (forward or backward)within a show in X-minute increments (again, ReplayTV only).

4) Conflict management. Tivo allows you to assign your scheduled recordings a priority. In case of a conflict, the show with the highest priority will record. ReplayTV currently only allows you to assign a priority to Theme-based recordings; however, it does allow you to schedule the conflicted show to record on another ReplayTV on your LAN. This is *the* one area that Tivo clearly has an advantage over ReplayTV. However, because of IVS (see below) and the ability to network multiple ReplayTVs, this is offset substantially. However, it is still a nice feature that Tivo has and ReplayTV doesn’t. Again, I’m not willing to trade the features ReplayTV has that Tivo doesn’t for it though.

5) Streaming between networked units. With ReplayTV, you can watch a show recorded on your bedroom ReplayTV while viewing from your living room ReplayTV just as if you were in the bedroom. You can also stop watching a show in the living room then resume watching in the bedroom at the exact point you left off in the living room. With HMO, Tivo offers a similar, but inferior feature. Shows aren’t streamed but transferred. You have to wait until a certain percentage of the show has been transferred in order to begin viewing.

6) IVS (ReplayTV only). Did you forget to record a show? Did you local network preempt your favorite show because of a weather emergency? With a ReplayTV, it’s no problem. You can download the show directly to your ReplayTV from other ReplayTV users across the USA/Canada.

7) Remote scheduling. With both ReplayTV and Tivo, you can schedule shows to record from anywhere in the world that has an Internet connection. With MyReplayTV.com, shows must be scheduled a few hours in advance of their air time. However, using DVArchive 3.1, you can schedule a show to record on a ReplayTV even if it airs in one minute!

8) Easy transfer of shows to PC for archival/DVD/SVCD (ReplayTV only). With ReplayTV, it is simple to transfer a show to your PC using DVArchive 3.1. From there, you can easily burn the relatively standard ReplayTV MPEG-2 file to DVD/SVCD (removing commercials before doing so if desired). There are apparently ways to do this with Tivo, but they are far more complex. I am not familiar with them, so I will not comment more.

9) Streaming shows stored on a PC to ReplayTV. With DVArchive, you can store shows from your ReplayTV on your PC (see above). If you want to watch them on your TV again, you ReplayTV can “see” DVArchive and stream shows from it just as though it were another real ReplayTV. Even non-ReplayTV shows can be streamed in this manner with a little work. While I do not believe Tivo has a similar feature, it does permit playing MP3s stored on your PC. This is a feature that appeals to some; however, many of us already have other (far superior) devices that already do a much better job with this particular task.

10) A comprehensive list of upcoming recordings. Tivo has its integrated To-Do List. Using DVArchive 3.1, ReplayTV has its “Upcoming Shows” list. The latter is more flexible, but the former is integrated into the actual unit. Both are helpful to get a sense of what will and will not record.

These are the high points. There are many other reasons. The bottom line, as others note, is that you really must experience a ReplayTV/Tivo for yourself to truly understand.

I use my cable co DVR, and when I upgraded my tv last month to a new Panasonic LCD, I could not stand to upgrade to a HD box and loose my DVR. Last week the HD DVR became available and now I have both HD and my DVR, with no upfront cost (the only reason I am still on cable instead of DirecTV) and life is grand. The software sucks compared to Tivo or Realplay, but it still has most of the functionality.

This, my fellow ReplayTV/Tivo users, is why the future is ultimately not so bright for either product unless ReplayTV and Tivo can manage to convince the cable/satellite companies to license their technology (which is doubtful considering that most people will be satisfied without it). At least ReplayTV will probably live on in Denon/Escient products targeted at the higher-end A/V crowd.

Yeah - I have 2 Replays and 1 Comcast DVR. Man does the Comcast DVR suck, but I wanted the extra tuners - recording ability. I only use it to record the higher digital channels (not too often) and when I have 3 or 4-show conflicts. Unfortunately, you're right - people will get used to these and never know that something far better is out there.

Red Dog, how much is the Comcast DVR per month? What makes it worse than the Tivo/Replay?

Frankly, I don't know what the cost per month is. I called and threatened to move to DirecTV even though I don't have a LOS to it (they don't know that) and made demands. They gave me what they give new subscribers: DVR + SHO + STARZ for $50. I added HBO to that for a $68 cable bill. If I were to guess, it is probably $9.95/month. However, if you threaten to go with a Dish, they will make you offers to stay.

As for the difference, the Comcast DVR is not all that reliable. It records ok but it acts up sometimes on playback. The methodology of recording is horrible (for example, if you want to record South Park every Wednesday at 10, it will record every single SP shown on CC during the week - which sucks because they air about a dozen South Park eps per week).

If you were ask me what to get....it really depends on your usage. If you don't watch a lot of TV, and just need to record a few shows, I'd say go ahead and get the Comcast piece of shit DVR. Replay offers so many more things: easier to jump around in a show, commercial advance, far better recording methodology, quieter when recording, etc.

Another thing you may want to keep in mind if you're thinking about Tivo is that it's not great for recording individual shows, at least that's been my experience with the DirecTivo unit.

Sure, Season Passes and Wishlists work great and all, but there are times where I'll be thumbing through the listings and find a specific episode of something I want to record. I'll go to its slot in the listings, hit record, and when I go back to watch my recorded program, it'll be the wrong episode of the show, if I'm lucky. If I'm not lucky, then it'll be an entirely different show. For example, I tried to record an episode of Icons on G4, but ended up getting some half hour special about Spider Man 2. Another time I told the unit to record an episode of something on the Food Network that had to do with cooking with garlic, and got an episode dealing with shellfish or something like that.

I don't know if this is a problem with DirecTV's listings, or if Tivo is just being disagreeable, but I figured I should bring it up...

Sounds like a listing problem to me.

In the year I've had mine, I've never once had it record the wrong program (unless the listing was wrong).

My bro just got his 1st Tivo. A DirectTV Tivo actually. Only has 35 hours, so he ran out of recording space already. I sent him the link for the place that sells Tivo HD upgrades, mentioned earlier in this thread. I keep telling him, you don't need to have the phone line plugged in all the time, program guide/scheduel's downloaded using the DirectTV line, but he wouldn't listen. Oh well, at least he's having fun w/ it. Good stuff.

I often see this listed as a big plus for the ReplayTV units. Of course, once you have you've used a DirectTivo for about 2 days, you can use the 60x FF for 2-3 seconds, slow down to 3x FF and then hit play after a second and nail the end of the commercials every time. It becomes second nature after you do it a time or two.

To me, I'd rather do this rather they rely on Replay to perform the same act automatically most of the time.

It takes me about 3 seconds to fly thru the commercial breaks on my DirecTivo. Yeah, auto skipping would be nice (if it worked 100% of the time, which is not the case with Replay), but I wouldn't consider this feature alone to sway me from a DirecTivo to a Replay unit.

I agree. Commercial skipping in that manner is second nature now. Also, if I see something important fly by like a news alert or something, I can still catch it. I've never seen it as a drawback let alone a dealbreaker.

das