As long as I continue to have a source of program data, I say meh.

How do they even survive as a business with every cable company providing their own DVR?

stuhayes2010: How do they even survive as a business with every cable company providing their own DVR?

By providing a product experience that is infinitely superior to the free junk that cable companies offer.... the search engine alone is worth the $10 a month I pay for Tivo.

The Tivo is a *BONG*

stuhayes2010: How do they even survive as a business with every cable company providing their own DVR?

Because every other DVR I've seen blows monkey crotch. Integration with Netflix is nice, as is downloading shows. And the ads they have are not that obtrusive.

/Tivo, cold dead hands, etc.

What's a TiVo?

labman: Maybe if they hadn't abandoned DirecTV customers who went Hi Def, they wouldn't have lost a lot of customers. I loved Tivo, but when I switched to HD four years ago, they didn't make one I could use. They still haven't released one that works with DirecTV HD.

The DirecTV unit is actually pretty good. Not quite as good as Tivo, but better than most of them on the market. The only thing I find annoying about it is that you are capped to 50 shows, and I've run into that once are twice.


I don't think that was all their fault. D* wanted to use their own DVR's so did their best to cut TiVo out of the picture. I'm still using 3 SD DTiVo's. I didn't have a HD TV until last January and I'm holding on for a few more months before biting the bullet and stepping down to the non-TiVo units.

Tivo REALLY needs to lower its pricing...
it hasn't added or changed anything to its programming for YEARS...
at least Netflix (before the debacle) managed to ADD the online streaming, AND have the dvd rental thing AND actually lower its pricing from $12.99 to $9.99!!!
Bravo to them for that, but then Reed Hastings farked up...

Any suggestions on what to do with a standard definition TiVo that has been gathering dust since we got Fios two years ago?

Wellon Dowd: Any suggestions on what to do with a standard definition TiVo that has been gathering dust since we got Fios two years ago?

If it's got lifetime, eBay it. The lifetime's worth more than the box.

I have a Series 2 with lifetime that I hooked to a OTA digital converter -- get tons of digital (but not HD) programming, all for free. No cable teevee bills for me.

What the hell is TiVo spending money on? They don't seem to ever do software updates that really fix things.

As said already, TiVo is miles ahead of any other DVR I've seen in terms of functionality. The recommendations alone make it worthwhile.

However, they are not moving quickly to stay leading edge and I worry greatly about their long term viability. If it weren't for TiVo I would have dumped Comcast years ago, but TiVo won't work with UVerse. :P

The 4.0 software is a couple of years old now and was not the blazing fast super-interface it should have been to begin with. I think their choice of Flash as the platform hamstrung them; button presses are sluggish to the point of distraction. Combine that with the ancient Netflix app that only shows movies already in queue and it all adds up to the fact that TiVo needs to come up with something BIG in their next release.

/Happy TiVo customer for nigh on a decade now
//A Series 2, a Humax w/ DVD recorder, Series 3, and currently on a Tivo XL
///Will continue to be as long as they stay ahead of the curve
//Three bloops for slashies

flaminio: Wellon Dowd: Any suggestions on what to do with a standard definition TiVo that has been gathering dust since we got Fios two years ago?

If it's got lifetime, eBay it. The lifetime's worth more than the box.

I have a Series 2 with lifetime that I hooked to a OTA digital converter -- get tons of digital (but not HD) programming, all for free. No cable teevee bills for me.

Unfortunately I went conservative when I purchased it and only paid for three years of service, long since expired. I popped for the lifetime service on the HD unit that replaced the Series 2.

My cable company had standard DVR's they swapped for TiVo's, the TiVo's have a ton more space but in every single way are worse then the old generic DVR I had. I figure they promised the cable company there would be a ton of new On-Demand business and they would get a cut, as just a box to record programs I hate the damn things.

The box takes a half hour to boot. The menus are slow and unresponsive. Tivo sucks.

sassyfrancis: I've got two TiVo units, and love them both. Every time I read things like this, it makes me cringe at the possibility of the company going out of business.

Mother effing THIS. I can't go back to watching TV without Tivo. There's no way.


assjuice: The box takes a half hour to boot. The menus are slow and unresponsive. Tivo sucks.

You either have a bad box, or you're dumber than hell. And I'm not ruling out "both." No disrespect.

CaptainWes: Barricaded Gunman: assjuice: The box takes a half hour to boot. The menus are slow and unresponsive. Tivo sucks.

You either have a bad box, or you're dumber than hell. And I'm not ruling out "both." No disrespect.

No, assjuice (hah) is right. I have a Series 2 that takes forever to boot and is slow as shiat.

You probably have a bad box, then. The boot time is inconsequential, as one typically never turns off a TiVo. I haven't rebooted mine in literally years. As for slow, the interface goes when I tell it to, so I don't know what benefit speed would give it. It's not doing protein folding, after all.

labman: Again, I will say that while I liked Tivo more, the DirecTV DVR isn't bad at all. the only drawback is the 50 show limit and recommendations, but I never used those anyway and I don't often have more than 50 season passes at a time.

I don't use suggestions, but have around 90 season passes. Granted they're not all on the air at the same time. I just don't want to have to remember to set up the shows that run wierd seasons.

Barricaded Gunman: By providing a product experience that is infinitely superior to the free junk that cable companies offer.... the search engine alone is worth the $10 a month I pay for Tivo.

Do you still need to use the IR blaster?

I haven't touched TiVo in several years, but I can't imagine any advantages over any cable/FiOS DVR I've used that could possibly make up for that clumsy setup.

Yankees Team Gynecologist : Do you still need to use the IR blaster?

Yes. And while it lacks style points, it works flawlessly as a workaround for controlling all different types of cable boxes by simulating a handheld IR remote control. I set mine up years ago and haven't thought about it since.

Yankees Team Gynecologist: Barricaded Gunman: By providing a product experience that is infinitely superior to the free junk that cable companies offer.... the search engine alone is worth the $10 a month I pay for Tivo.

Do you still need to use the IR blaster?

I haven't touched TiVo in several years, but I can't imagine any advantages over any cable/FiOS DVR I've used that could possibly make up for that clumsy setup.

No, the new Premier's have a slot for a cable-card, and will also record over-the-air high def with an antenna.

Yankees Team Gynecologist: I haven't touched TiVo in several years, but I can't imagine any advantages over any cable/FiOS DVR I've used that could possibly make up for that clumsy setup

Depends on the model.

The IR blaster was needed on older models, because they were basically meant to be an add-on to cable boxes (the cable box does the actual tuning).

Now we have cable cards (plug in PCMCIA style cards that do the tuning and decoding).

/unfortunately, cablecards also have some PITA DRM which hamstrings some of Tivo's useful features. But you're basically going to have that same issue everywhere because that is the nature of cable cards (you don't have to use our cable box, but any device you plug this card into has to obey our rules).

/Cable DVRs are still behind the curve, some people are willing to deal with them, some are not. I actually had a Series 3 tivo (for myself) and a cable co DVR (for the roomate) at the same time, and well, the cable co DVR was shiat (It would forget to record things and didn't update the guide info fast enough to deal with sudden schedule changes). Within two months of having it, the roomate was asking me if the tivo had recorded the last episode of lost, because the cable co DVR didn't record it for some reason.