# Adios TiVo: Thoughts on moving from TiVo to Comcast DVR



## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

About a month ago, our beloved TiVo Series 2 bit the dust. The hard drive was so shot that it couldn't be brought back to life. About a week ago, Comcast finally added some HD channels worth watching, so we ended up with a 160GB Motorola Comcast DVR from the local Comcast office. The first one has some hardware gremlins, but now we have one that works, so I thought I'd offer my thoughts on the two different DVR systems.

First of all, I am not comparing the hardware capabilities of the Comcast DVR with the Series 2. Obviously, the Comcast box does HD, has two tuners, and the TiVo didn't. The only capability that is fair to compare is On Demand, since the modern day TiVos don't have access to that. I'm also not counting MRV, which would be huge if we actually had two HDTVs. I'm a college student and I live at home with my parents about half the year, so two and a half people just don't need two DVRs or HDTVs.

I knew that the Comcast remote was huge from seeing other people's remotes, and yes, it is huge. It actually doesn't weight that much, and isn't that much physically bigger than TiVo's, but it seems rather large due to its soft of boxy design. That being said, I do like the remote.

What I noticed, however, is that the remote, like the software on the box itself, is a cable box with a DVR, while TiVo is a DVR with a cable box. Got that? While it is a totally different paradigm, the Comcast box actually works as a DVR just as well as TiVo. Where this is evident in the remote design is the positioning of the buttons. While TiVo's remote has the DVR buttons in the middle where your hand naturally falls, and the menu buttons farther up, the Comcast remote is the exact opposite. While the Comcast DVR's remote buttons aren't particularly ergonomic to use, they are not that bad either.

The software on the box, is well, UGLY. It's just freaking ugly. It's 480i, 4:3, and it looks like someone plopped a bunch of buttons on the screen in a grid. That being said, it is quite functional. Looking at the box as a DVR that doesn't need to connect to anything else, it has the identical functionality as TiVo, and in some cases the menus are actually a little quicker to navigate, once you learn where the heck everything is.

The Motorola grid guide is pretty nice, and pretty responsive too. I've never used a TiVo Premere, so I can't compare the speed, but the Motorola one is definitely fast enough for day to day use.

The one place that the Comcast DVR does fall a bit short is the equivalent screen to the Now Playing List. It's the same concept, although the actual list only covers half of the screen, so you don't see as many shows at the same time, and the network logos and such aren't shown. On the other hand, in the HD world, 160GB of disk space is going to go pretty fast, so there may not be any need for a long list of recorded shows.

On Demand is the first place where the Comcast box really has a huge advantage over the TiVo. They have a lot of shows up for free, including he first couple of episodes of Gold Rush: Alaska on the Discovery Channel. It's pretty nice to be able to get shows and movies On Demand, whenever you want them, and it doesn't eliminate the option of having Netflix or other streaming services, since that can be done through a Blu-Ray player, media streamer, or laptop.

The second big advantage of the Comcast box is pricing. While TiVo is $500 for an existing TiVo subscriber like us, and $700 for everyone else, the Comcast box is about $7/mo, so the TiVo would pretty much never pay for itself, and in the event of a hardware failure, the local Comcast office is about a 20 minute drive away and we have a new box for no cost other than the gas to go over there.

The only thing that I really don't like about the Comcast box is that on top of not having native mode, it keeps going back to 720p. While I can't tell the difference between i and p, I can tell the difference between 1080 and 720, so it makes sense to output to the TV at 1080i (the TV is 1080p).

The other thing that may become an issue is that our area has, at most, 160GB units, although 250-500GB units are supposed to be coming at the end of next month. This is one area where TiVo has a clear advantage, although it is also an area where Windows 7 MCE has a clear advantage over TiVo.

Bottom line: I'm not missing TiVo one bit. TiVo's not coming back, at least on our main TV. The Series 2 might, since it wouldn't cost that much to resurrect.

With all this in mind, I'm not sure what place TiVo has in the market moving forward. Sure, there are a few power users out there who need MRV and other features, but with Windows 7 MCE competing fiercely for their business, where does this leave TiVo?


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## mattphelps (Dec 27, 2010)

Too bad... but I'll with my TiVO and cross the bridge when I get there.


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## SMWinnie (Aug 17, 2002)

OP is right to note that he's comparing apples to oranges by comparing a Moto 6412 to a SD TiVo. Two notes on the 6412-to-Premiere comparison.

Comcast/Xfinity appears to be rolling out On Demand access over the web for their customers. If this works without a Comcast DVR (and the language is ambiguous), then a prospective TiVo owner will have one fewer reason to hang onto the Motorola box.
Comcast/Xfinity appears to be in the early stages of rolling out a whole-home DVR solution. If/when available, this lessens the TiVo MRV advantage.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

What I think this all boils down to is $7/mo for the cable company DVR versus $500 for a Premiere with lifetime. 

First I can assure the original poster that $7/mo is not actually covering the cost of the cable company DVR. For some reason in your area it is being used as a loss leader - lucky you. If it meets your needs again lucky you. 

Second TiVo is not and should not try to compete on price against cable companies. They offer a superior product and need to be competing on value. If a TiVo doesn't offer more value to a person than their cable companies DVR then there really isn't any reason the person should get a TiVo. 

Buying a TiVo DVR instead of using your cable companies DVR is like buying a Cadillac instead of a Chevy. The Chevy will likely get you from point A to point B just fine but it is not the same as going from point A to point B in a Cadillac. Paying more for either a Cadillac or a TiVo is based on perceived value. If you do not perceive any (or enough) added value then there is no reason to buy the more expensive product. 

Thanks,


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## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

SMWinnie said:


> Comcast/Xfinity appears to be rolling out On Demand access over the web for their customers. If this works without a Comcast DVR (and the language is ambiguous), then a prospective TiVo owner will have one fewer reason to hang onto the Motorola box.


Yeah, it works. I have a TiVo and no Comcast DVR and I can view on-demand content on my PC, even for premium channels such as HBO that are part of my cable subscription.

I'm not sure whether it's the entire on-demand lineup, but there's about 80 cable channels and a bunch of PPV movies available.


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

Gee, its fine if the OP just wants to harp some love for his new Comcrap decision but to just completely ignore the areas where tivo covers and the Comcrap has no functionality....jeez what a comparison.

Yes they both record from your cable TV lineup. Thats where the comparision ends.

The tivo is a whole home network connected multimedia center. Handeling Video, Audio and photos. Full access to music and photo collections, full access to user video stores and sources. Network connected streaming and download video sources etc.

The comcrap box is stuck in the 90s and can only record and play back. None of the other things Tivo does.

Tivo is far more than a video recorder, if you fail to understand and use those features, then you really don't get it. Pay Comcast $20 a month for the rest of your life to record and play back what THEY want you to see.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

SMWinnie said:


> OP is right to note that he's comparing apples to oranges by comparing a Moto 6412 to a SD TiVo. Two notes on the 6412-to-Premiere comparison.
> 
> Comcast/Xfinity appears to be rolling out On Demand access over the web for their customers. If this works without a Comcast DVR (and the language is ambiguous), then a prospective TiVo owner will have one fewer reason to hang onto the Motorola box.
> Comcast/Xfinity appears to be in the early stages of rolling out a whole-home DVR solution. If/when available, this lessens the TiVo MRV advantage.


The thing is, that requires going and undocking the laptop, plugging it into the TV, fiddling around with the wifi, getting the power adapter when it's about to die, while On Demand on the Comcast DVR is a one click deal.

Interesting, I haven't heard about their MRV. They are going to need a lot bigger hard drive if they are going to do DVR to client. Interesting nonetheless. Of course U-Verse and DirecTV already do MRV.



atmuscarella said:


> What I think this all boils down to is $7/mo for the cable company DVR versus $500 for a Premiere with lifetime.
> 
> First I can assure the original poster that $7/mo is not actually covering the cost of the cable company DVR. For some reason in your area it is being used as a loss leader - lucky you. If it meets your needs again lucky you.
> 
> ...


Well, the cable bill is $70/mo, and a DVR is something they have to offer in order to compete with DISH and DirecTV and U-Verse who are all offering DVRs for $6-$7/mo. I'm not sure it's costing them anything at this point, since the box may well be old enough to have been cost amortized already. It's definitely not new.

It does partly boil down to the cost, and the ability to turn it in for a new (to us) box if this one bites the dust.

The problem that TiVo has right now is that they don't offer a whole lot more than what Comcast does. The iPad app is cool, but not really a big selling point, the only thing that I see that's really significant in terms of DVR functionality is the MRV. The internet streaming can easily be done with a Roku, Apple TV or Blu-Ray player in addition to the Comcast DVR.


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## c.hack (Sep 8, 2004)

I would have agreed 5 years ago that TiVo offers a superior product. Today it is only superior to the bottom of the line:
- Netflix streaming poor quality and reliability. I have a Roku and PS3 also set up for Netflix streaming and neither my S3 or Premier can compete on quality, usability or reliability (same show, same time, same internet)
- Youtube streaming is unreliable. It frequently locks up my S3.
- Buying lifetime (and I have two) locked me into cable TV - I can't switch to satellite or Clear Wi-Max now. Renting a DVR gives you more flexibility.
- TiVo is notorious for over-promising and under-delivering. The Premiere is still a piece of junk - slow and unreliable. Still no iPad app. Still no DirecTiVo. Nothing but promises.

I don't see TiVo as being competitive anymore.


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## interestingstuff (Apr 23, 2005)

So, inquiring minds want to know:

What did or do you plan to do with your 'dead' series 2?


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## innocentfreak (Aug 25, 2001)

atmuscarella said:


> First I can assure the original poster that $7/mo is not actually covering the cost of the cable company DVR. For some reason in your area it is being used as a loss leader - lucky you. If it meets your needs again lucky you.


I still don't believe that is what it truly costs either. I have had too many friends tell me they only pay a certain amount for a DVR until I looked at their bill and saw all the fees that go along with that DVR. They thought they were paying $5, but it always turned out to be at least double that.

If you look at old threads on here, people were paying $11 or so for their first Comcast DVR and then $16 or so for the second one so I would be shocked if prices went down.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

c.hack said:


> I would have agreed 5 years ago that TiVo offers a superior product. Today it is only superior to the bottom of the line:
> - Netflix streaming poor quality and reliability. I have a Roku and PS3 also set up for Netflix streaming and neither my S3 or Premier can compete on quality, usability or reliability (same show, same time, same internet)
> - Youtube streaming is unreliable. It frequently locks up my S3.
> - Buying lifetime (and I have two) locked me into cable TV - I can't switch to satellite or Clear Wi-Max now. Renting a DVR gives you more flexibility.
> ...


Interesting to know that Netflix doesn't work well on TiVo. I'm kind of not surprised.

The locking in to cable is a big thing. With the rented DVR, we can easily switch to Dish or U-Verse (although my parents won't get Dish since they "don't want holes in the roof"). The only downside is that if we decide to cancel pay tv completely, the DVR goes away, whereas a TiVo would still be around with OTA.

TiVo really hasn't innovated in recent years. In many ways, competitors have outgunned them by offering client-server systems.

The opportunity TiVo is missing here is to have a central DVR/server with 4 or 6 tuners, and client boxes connected via MoCA that can stream live TV from the server, avoiding monthly rental fees for the additional set-top boxes from the cable company, and creating an integrated DVR experience for the customer.



interestingstuff said:


> So, inquiring minds want to know:
> 
> What did or do you plan to do with your 'dead' series 2?


Right now it's sitting in the basement. I'm debating whether to spend the $40 on InstantCake to revive it with an old 30 gig drive I have laying around down there. It only costs about $5/mo to run in power, but it doesn't do HD, so it's usefulness is pretty limited.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

innocentfreak said:


> I still don't believe that is what it truly costs either. I have had too many friends tell me they only pay a certain amount for a DVR until I looked at their bill and saw all the fees that go along with that DVR. They thought they were paying $5, but it always turned out to be at least double that.
> 
> If you look at old threads on here, people were paying $11 or so for their first Comcast DVR and then $16 or so for the second one so I would be shocked if prices went down.


We're billed at $15 but an HD box would be $7 and an HD cablecard for a Premiere would be around the same, so for comparison to TiVo, it's a fair number. I'm still not sure if the HD fee is per account or per box, however, but since we only have one box, it's irrelevant for us.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Bigg said:


> The problem that TiVo has right now is that they don't offer a whole lot more than what Comcast does. The iPad app is cool, but not really a big selling point, the only thing that I see that's really significant in terms of DVR functionality is the MRV. The internet streaming can easily be done with a Roku, Apple TV or Blu-Ray player in addition to the Comcast DVR.


That sums it up pretty good. TiVo is never going to be able to compete on price - so it has to provide more value (in the purchasers mind) or there is no justification for getting one. I like my TiVos but to be honest the reason I have them is because I am an OTA user (currently no cable or sat). If I go back to pay TV - it likely will be Dishnetwork so I would have to use their DVRs.

Thanks,


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

atmuscarella said:


> That sums it up pretty good. TiVo is never going to be able to compete on price - so it has to provide more value (in the purchasers mind) or there is no justification for getting one. I like my TiVos but to be honest the reason I have them is because I am an OTA user (currently no cable or sat). If I go back to pay TV - it likely will be Dishnetwork so I would have to use their DVRs.
> 
> Thanks,


The only way TiVo can price compete is with OTA, since the service saves big bucks compared to cable or satellite, but that's a relatively small market compared to cable.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Bigg said:


> On Demand is the first place where the Comcast box really has a huge advantage over the TiVo. They have a lot of shows up for free, including he first couple of episodes of Gold Rush: Alaska on the Discovery Channel. It's pretty nice to be able to get shows and movies On Demand, whenever you want them, and it doesn't eliminate the option of having Netflix or other streaming services, since that can be done through a Blu-Ray player, media streamer, or laptop.


I disagree - most of what Comcast has on OnDemand is crap, and the whole point of a DVR is to record what you want to watch, not what Comcast thinks you might like. Almost all of the free content has already been shown and could have been recorded by a Tivo, so there's not much of advantage there unless you like overpaying for PPV or VOD movies.

Plus as others have said, Xfinity is available to Comcast cable subscribers over the net so you can watch a lot of that stuff with a laptop or HTPC anyway.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Netflix works great on my TiVos.

I tried a moto box while the P was new- we got a new tv and wanted to see what everyone else's version of a DVR was.

OMG. It is so counter-intuitive I could puke. on demand- playbutton was 2x only, while dvr was more Tivo like. but to go up and down menus you need to use the "last" button. Somtimes you used the exit button. the DVR and on demand are not linked and at the end of the program you have to go back through all of the menus to see your now playing list. It was like my dog programmed the thing. Drove me nuts every time.

On demand is nice, but the tivo gets all of the episodes I want already. The online stuff is still vaporware- does not work, does not appear to know what channels i have, and makes me log in every time. No thanks.


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## aaroncgi (Apr 13, 2010)

jcthorne said:


> ...
> The tivo is a whole home network connected multimedia center. Handeling Video, Audio and photos. Full access to music and photo collections, full access to user video stores and sources. Network connected streaming and download video sources etc.
> ...


Note, I don't consider playing only MP3 files to be 'full access' to music collections. There are a whole lot of other formats for recording and storing music, and I frankly think the Tivo should support all the major ones (or at LEAST all the ones supported by Windows Media Player).

So when I want to play music from my computer, I just use WMP and play from my computer directly. It would have to be on anyway, for the Tivo to access my drive. I am pretty sure the Tivo cannot access a NAS (network attached storage) drive sans the computer, which is another huge miss.

Don't get me wrong, the Tivo is going in the right direction, but the extra features are far from polished, and lacking in basic functionality in some cases. Fortunately for Tivo, it's the only standalone name based DVR which will record Off The Air, so it's still a win for us. If it didn't have that functionality, we'd still be on Dish Network.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

slowbiscuit said:


> I disagree - most of what Comcast has on OnDemand is crap, and the whole point of a DVR is to record what you want to watch, not what Comcast thinks you might like. Almost all of the free content has already been shown and could have been recorded by a Tivo, so there's not much of advantage there unless you like overpaying for PPV or VOD movies.
> 
> Plus as others have said, Xfinity is available to Comcast cable subscribers over the net so you can watch a lot of that stuff with a laptop or HTPC anyway.


It depends. They have a lot of shows in HD so you can catch up. That being said, we have the box to be a DVR, not use On Demand.



jrtroo said:


> Netflix works great on my TiVos.
> 
> I tried a moto box while the P was new- we got a new tv and wanted to see what everyone else's version of a DVR was.
> 
> ...


The last and exit are a different paradigm than TiVo, where you press the same button again to exit the guide or whatever. It was extremely annoying for the first five minutes, and once I learned how to use the thing, it has been pretty straight forward.

It's seriously two clicks to get to the list of your recordings. On Demand is a separate part of the service from the DVR, and it's not the greatest interface, but it does work. The one thing that annoys me about On Demand is that you get kicked back to the home screen of On Demand when you're done watching an episode, so if you're watching a series of something, it's incredibly annoying to go back through the menu for each new episode.

The Moto interface is not as polished as TiVo by any stretch of the imagination, and it's incredibly ugly, but I do think it's actually faster to get to stuff than on TiVo (not talking about the speed of the box, I'm talking about number of clicks and menus to get through).


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Bigg said:


> so two and a half people just don't need two DVRs


You're right about *NEED*. But I have 3 Tivos (actually 4, but one is unplugged) and another non-Tivo hard drive/DVD recorder.. just for me!! (one of the Tivos is a S1, mostly for 'backup' recordings, backing up my non-Tivo recorder that could die at any moment).


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Bigg said:


> What I noticed, however, is that the remote, like the software on the box itself, is a cable box with a DVR, while TiVo is a DVR with a cable box.


If you ONLY look at a S2, you're right. But the Series 3, TivoHD, Tivo Premiere ARE EXACTLY THAT SAME KIND OF combined "cable box and DVR" as your Comcast box.



atmuscarella said:


> That sums it up pretty good. TiVo is never going to be able to compete on price


But if people DO fairly compete on price, it CAN compare, at least for some people.

Look at ALL of the costs.. With multiple tuners, you may be able to get rid of extra cable boxes. Or even simply $15/month compared to buying a Tivo with lifetime subscription could eventually make the Tivo a better deal, even with cable card costs.


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## Kishore (Feb 20, 2003)

Is it $7/month for a HD DVR?-if so it is pretty cheap. 

Time Warner charges us here $19/month for HD-DVR- makes owning a Tivo a no-brainer if you want to watch, record and enjoy in HD. 

~K


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

mattack said:


> But if people DO fairly compete on price, it CAN compare, at least for some people.
> 
> Look at ALL of the costs.. With multiple tuners, you may be able to get rid of extra cable boxes. Or even simply $15/month compared to buying a Tivo with lifetime subscription could eventually make the Tivo a better deal, even with cable card costs.


It is very hard to globally compare the cost of a TiVo to a cable company DVR because:


The cost of cable company DVRs varies greatly from place to place
The cost of having cable cards installed and renting them varies greatly from place to place
The Cost of a TiVo varies depending how and when you buy it.
The actual cost of a TiVo is somewhat of a guess because no one knows how long a individual unit will last
If someone is willing to look at long term ownership (over 2 years) there are many cases where a TiVo can be very cost competitive with a cable company DVR. However you will not actually know if the TiVo was cost competitive until years down the road. There also are many cases where DVRs are being used as loss leaders and a TiVo will never be cost competitive.

My bottom line is TiVo is sold based on value (being a superior product) because even if it cost the same as a cable company DVR why would anyone bother buying one unless the TiVo was a greater value? It would just be easier to deal with one company and one bill otherwise.

Thanks,


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

jcthorne said:


> ...Tivo is far more than a video recorder, if you fail to understand and use those features, then you really don't get it.....


Maybe for you it is, but for most TiVo users, that's EXACTLY what it's used for the vast majority of the time. I've had TiVo for seven years now. I'm well aware of all it's features. But what I use it for is to record and playback programs. It does this better than most cableco DVRs and has much better PROGRAM RECORDING & PLAYBACK features than cableco DVRs. But the main job is recording and playing back programs...


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## plazman30 (Jan 23, 2005)

Competing on cost, it's really hard to justify a TiVo. The TiVo with Cable Card rental is costing me $0.95 more per month than the Verizon DVR would. But I had to buy the box. Competing on features, I think TiVo wins hands down. The features that make it for me are the following (not all are actual TiVo features):

1. The 30 second skip hack (I know, available on some Comcast DVRS AND DirectTv DVRs also)
2. The TiVo website (awesome for recording shows and finding content)
3. TiVoToGo (In my case kmttg), for getting stuff OFF the TiVo
4. Copying shows between TiVos.
5. pyTivo for getting things onto the TiVo

Plus the ability to put a larger HD into the box. I have 2 Premieres with 320 GB HDs in them. I am going to add 2 TB HDs in them at some point this year. The average cable company/satellite DVR just won't give you that kind of capacity.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

plazman30 said:


> Competing on cost, it's really hard to justify a TiVo. The TiVo with Cable Card rental is costing me $0.95 more per month than the Verizon DVR would. But I had to buy the box. Competing on features, I think TiVo wins hands down. The features that make it for me are the following (not all are actual TiVo features):
> 
> 1. The 30 second skip hack (I know, available on some Comcast DVRS AND DirectTv DVRs also)
> 2. The TiVo website (awesome for recording shows and finding content)
> ...


Maybe some of this terminology means different things to different people but what you wrote clearly says to me that your TiVo was not cost competitive to your cable company DVR as it clear cost more. My understanding of the terminology is: 
Cost competitive means you are simple looking at the product's cost if the cost is equal to or lessor than the cost of the competition it is cost competitive - basically a black and white determination.​Value competitive means that when one takes the cost and feature set into consideration the over all value is equal to or exceeds the competitive product's value when considering it's feature set and cost - basically a subjective (personal) determination.​
Again from what you wrote it appears to me that you clearly feel your TiVo was a better value than what is being offered by your cable company.

I would think that most people who have purchased a TiVo have come to the same conclusion - that TiVo is a better value - because I find it hard to believe that there are very many cases where a TiVo clearly costs less than using a cable company DVR.

Thanks,


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Bigg said:


> It depends. They have a lot of shows in HD so you can catch up. That being said, we have the box to be a DVR, not use On Demand.


so you misstate the cost 15 vs 7 (oh but the TiVo would take up 8 so it was accurate )

then state on demand as a big advantage, but then say you do not use it.

you can do Netflix on a Roku and you can also do Comcast PPV/VOD with a cable box from them they likely would give you for free.

so the upfront cost is of course less, but otherwise the comparison falls flat.

for me the fact I can put in a large drive and keep lots of shows on hand that *I* want to see - also easily setup wishlists to record movies I want and just the sports teams I want is worth the upfront cost to me.
Netflix is a wash because while it works fine on my TiVo DVR as well - the interface on my Wii or Xbox 360 is much better.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

mattack said:


> You're right about *NEED*. But I have 3 Tivos ...


You watch too much TV. I can understand a big family needing a few Premieres or a Win MCE box with a couple of TB, but one person???



mattack said:


> If you ONLY look at a S2, you're right. But the Series 3, TivoHD, Tivo Premiere ARE EXACTLY THAT SAME KIND OF combined "cable box and DVR" as your Comcast box.


Well the S2 is a different story, since it lived in the days before cable boxes, as an analog device. My point is not the hardware, they are similar, but in the software. The TiVo software is a DVR software that has a "Live TV" option, the Comcast DVR is a cable box that has a "DVR" option. The design of the remote reinforces that design decision. Although I DVR almost everything that I watch, I am not at all uncomfortable with that design.



mattack said:


> But if people DO fairly compete on price, it CAN compare, at least for some people.
> 
> Look at ALL of the costs...


The Comcast box is also a dual-tuner box. It's the only box we have. The downstairs TV is analog. The break even point is somewhere in the 4-6 year range, depending on how exactly they charge the CC vs. the box, and by that point, the box is likely to die anyways. The S2 was a good deal though, as it lasted over 6 years, and could be repaired if it weren't for it's technical obsolescence.



Kishore said:


> Is it $7/month for a HD DVR?-if so it is pretty cheap...


Yeah, but you have to have the HD service first, which would also be required for a TiVo.



atmuscarella said:


> It is very hard to globally compare the cost of a TiVo to a cable company DVR because:
> 
> 
> The cost of cable company DVRs varies greatly from place to place
> ...


1. Yes, quite true. The cost comparison here is only valid for Comcast services from Branford, CT under current pricing structures and DPUC regulation.

3. You have to compare the smaller Premiere to be fair, and that's $500 for our TiVo account, $700 for Joe who was never a TiVo customer.

That's why less than 2/3 of a single percent of digital cable users in the US are using TiVos. It's also why TiVo has a business problem. They have to offer a product that is different than what the cable companies are, and significantly different enough to attract customers. Right now they are not doing that, and actually falling behind Comcast once Comcast rolls out the AnyRoom DVR, which is a client/server based architecture. That, and the real HT geeks now have MCE with the Ceton card for total cable card nirvana.



Bierboy said:


> ...But what I use it for is to record and playback programs......


I know the models vary from cable system to cable system, but the Moto 6xxx box I have is just as good as TiVo at recording and playing back shows except for disk space.



plazman30 said:


> ...The features that make it for me are the following (not all are actual TiVo features):
> 
> 1. The 30 second skip hack (I know, available on some Comcast DVRS AND DirectTv DVRs also)
> 2. The TiVo website (awesome for recording shows and finding content)
> ...


1. Had it for 6 years, rarely used it. Problem is, the TiVo loses it after every reboot and then you accidentally skip to the end of the program. Fun fun.

2. I'll give you remote scheduling, although supposedly XFinity has something like it, I just haven't bothered to set it up yet.

3. I've just gotten used to downloading or streaming the shows that I want to listen to on my computer while doing other stuff off the internet, so that they don't use up DVR tuner or disk capacity. I just can't see the usage case for watching a TV show on my 13" laptop with earbuds when I could watch it on the 55" 1080p TV with 5.1 channel surround.

4. That's a biggie right now. Look a year down the road with AnyRoom DVR though, that's toast.

5. Laptop/Roku/Boxee/whatever.

Capacity is one big factor that TiVo has an advantage, but when Comcast finishes rolling out 500GB boxes, that advantage is going to be a lot less significant. Also, DirecTV and DISH both have 500GB boxes, and they use MPEG-4, so that goes a lot farther than in the MPEG-2 world.



atmuscarella said:


> Maybe some of this terminology means different things to different people but what you wrote clearly says to me that your TiVo was not cost competitive to your cable company DVR as it clear cost more....


I don't disagree with your definition of value, but the Comcast DVR does the same thing as the TiVo and if it breaks, it doesn't cost us any more than the rental fee.

I don't think that a Premiere was a better value. The S2 was only because it was really cheap, since it lasted 6 years, and was a one time cost.



ZeoTiVo said:


> so you misstate the cost 15 vs 7 (oh but the TiVo would take up 8 so it was accurate )
> 
> then state on demand as a big advantage, but then say you do not use it.


AFAIK, the HD fee is $8 so it's paid either way, TiVo or no TiVo. The $7 is the box rental fee, so that's what has to be compared to the $500 cost of TiVo.

We use OnDemand a little bit. Used it last night to watch an episode of Intervention, so not everything on there is junk. Heck, Gold Rush: Alaska, which is the #1 rated show on cable is on there.

The other factor that I forgot to mention before is that I don't think I could stand to buy anything from TiVo, as they have been extremely slimy in suing Echostar over some absurd patents.


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## Kishore (Feb 20, 2003)

For your case where you state that HD-DVR monthly charge is mere $7- then from a pure economic and TV watching/recording point of view owning Tivo would not make sense --end of story.

If I were in your shoes - yes I would have a tough time to decide (since I love extra functionality which I use in Tivo ). I wish I could get such rates here 

Cheers,
Kishore


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## plazman30 (Jan 23, 2005)

Bigg said:


> 1. Had it for 6 years, rarely used it. Problem is, the TiVo loses it after every reboot and then you accidentally skip to the end of the program. Fun fun.
> 
> 2. I'll give you remote scheduling, although supposedly XFinity has something like it, I just haven't bothered to set it up yet.
> 
> ...


1. 30 second skip was the first thing my wife and I missed when we switched to the DirectTV DVR. The clock hack is really nice too.

2. I have FIOS. I dumped Comcast years ago and don't plan to ever go back. I find TiVos web site to be awesome. Went on it to record Rudolph for the kids and it suggested all sorts of other Christmas specials soon as I scheduled the recording.

3. You can't stream a show when you're on the train on the way to work. Even if you were going to pirate a show off of Bittorrent, good luck getting last nights 10:00 PM show downloaded in time to run out the door at 7:00 AM the next morning. With kmttg, you can queue up a few shows, go to bed and just slam the laptop lid and run out the door in the morning.

4. Anyroom will be at v. 1.0. MRV has been around for years. Good luck with Comcast v.1.0 products. Been there, done that. I got the Comcast DVR in the first 3 months of release. Never owned any kind of DVR before and even then I knew it sucked.

5. Before the TiVo, I had the DirecTV DVR AND a PC running Windows 7 and MediaBrowser. Because I could push stuff ONTO the TiVo, I was able to get the Win 7 PC out of the loop and save myself some space, convenience and electricity. The TiVo even downloads my TWIT podcasts in HD and puts them right in the My Shows list.

The TiVo Premiere is Energystar compliant. I don't know what that saves you on your monthly energy bill vs the FIOS DVR, but if it's even $1.00, I am now $0.05 cheaper than what FIOS DVR would cost me.


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## cwerdna (Feb 22, 2001)

To the OP: What software is on your box? Is it i-Guide?

i-Guide looks like http://www.rovicorp.com/products/service_providers/guide_sp/i_guide.htm and http://i-guide.tv/A23/index.html.

I believe Comcast still has more than just one or two totally unrelated pieces of DVR software floating around on their boxes.

They've got at least i-Guide, TiVo (as a choice in a few areas), possibly Moxi in former Adelphia areas (?) and SARA (?). They used to also have MSTV Foundation Edition in Seattle and Spokane areas (which ran on Motorola boxes), but that's long gone now.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Bigg said:


> The other factor that I forgot to mention before is that I don't think I could stand to buy anything from TiVo, as they have been extremely slimy in suing Echostar over some absurd patents.


Now we have the real issue - so wtf was the point of you posting here, just another Tivo rant? Good job, you troll well.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

Bigg said:


> <snip all the tl;dr stuff>...The other factor that I forgot to mention before is that I don't think I could stand to buy anything from TiVo, as they have been extremely slimy in suing Echostar over some absurd patents.


Indeed. How dare TiVo defend their hard work inventing processes that allows them to stand apart from other DVRs. They should just give away their code to all their competition, so the competition doesn't have to steal it for their own devices, or put any thought into innovation on their own.


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## JimboG (May 27, 2007)

Bigg said:


> The other factor that I forgot to mention before is that I don't think I could stand to buy anything from TiVo, as they have been extremely slimy in suing Echostar over some absurd patents.


Gimme your car, your wallet, and your pets. Surely you wouldn't be so slimy as to want to defend your property, would you?


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

JimboG said:


> Gimme your car, your wallet, and your pets. Surely you wouldn't be so slimy as to want to defend your property, would you?


And the fact that the courts have constantly sided with Tivo.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

plazman30 said:


> 1. 30 second skip was the first thing my wife and I missed when we switched to the DirectTV DVR. The clock hack is really nice too.
> 
> 2. I have FIOS. I dumped Comcast years ago and don't plan to ever go back. I find TiVos web site to be awesome. Went on it to record Rudolph for the kids and it suggested all sorts of other Christmas specials soon as I scheduled the recording.
> 
> ...


2. Lucky. Wish I had access to Fios. We don't have access in any form to the un-recompressed feeds, since it appears that Comcast is triple-channeling the HD.

3. Can't stream? Do you have bad service in your area? I'd imagine you could stream over WiMAX or EVDO.

4. If they just take it from Motorola, it shouldn't be too bad.

5. See, I just watch TWiT on my computer anyways.

6. Good point. God knows what Motorola tank is using.

All that being said, if I had FIOS, I'd probably get WinMCE so I could have a huge drive for the massive amount of HD content, and the higher bitrates.



cwerdna said:


> To the OP: What software is on your box? Is it i-Guide?


Yup, it's i-Guide. It's a DCT6416. And yes, it really is that ugly. But the guide works pretty well, even if it's aesthetics leave a lot to be desired.



orangeboy said:


> Indeed. How dare TiVo defend their hard work inventing processes that allows them to stand apart from other DVRs. They should just give away their code to all their competition, so the competition doesn't have to steal it for their own devices, or put any thought into innovation on their own.


Omg, they should have a patent for recording one show to a hard drive and watching another. Has anyone every heard of *random access storage?* That's so basic it shouldn't be able to be patented. Code is copyrigthted, not patented. Idea are patented, and basic DVR functionality shouldn't be patentable.



zalusky said:


> And the fact that the courts have constantly sided with Tivo.


Just shows how broken the patent system is.


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## thyname (Dec 27, 2010)

plazman30 said:


> 1. 30 second skip was the first thing my wife and I missed when we switched to the DirectTV DVR. The clock hack is really nice too.


What is the "clock hack"? Sorry I just got my Premiere a few days ago and don't know this. Or is it the SPS9S trick?


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

Bigg said:


> We're billed at $15 but an HD box would be $7 and an HD cablecard for a Premiere would be around the same, so for comparison to TiVo, it's a fair number. I'm still not sure if the HD fee is per account or per box, however, but since we only have one box, it's irrelevant for us.


Well at least you admit to fudging your numbers. There is no $7/month DVR from Comcast.

Also, FYI, cablecards are nowhere near $7/month from Comcast. I've read free for the first or, at worst, $1.50-$2/month for a Comcast cablecard.

So you should be using $13/month more that you are paying to Comcast compared to what you would pay to them if you owned a lifetime Tivo Premiere.

And when using those numbers you would see that you'd nearly break even on the lifetime Premiere by the end of 3 years and still own the Premiere which would most likely still be worth a few hundred dollars on Ebay.

I think it would be fairly safe to say that after 2 years you'd essentially break even on a Premiere actually. AFter two years you'd have paid $312 to Comcast vs $500 paid for a lifetime Premiere Tivo. And after 2 years I think the chances a Tivo Premiere is worth at least $200 would be quite high!


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## plazman30 (Jan 23, 2005)

thyname said:


> What is the "clock hack"? Sorry I just got my Premiere a few days ago and don't know this. Or is it the SPS9S trick?


It's SPS9S.

Andy


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

trip1eX said:


> Well at least you admit to fudging your numbers. There is no $7/month DVR from Comcast.
> 
> Also, FYI, cablecards are nowhere near $7/month from Comcast. I've read free for the first or, at worst, $1.50-$2/month for a Comcast cablecard.
> 
> ...


I still think you have to pay the HD fee in order to get HD on the TiVo, but I may be wrong.

Still, you lose ON Demand, are locked into Comca$t, and you have to own the box, and be responsible for when the thing breaks. That being said, we'd get freaking native output and more storage.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Bigg said:


> The other factor that I forgot to mention before is that I don't think I could stand to buy anything from TiVo, as they have been extremely slimy in suing Echostar over some absurd patents.





Bigg said:


> are locked into Comca$t


and the agenda comes out.

Umm the absurd patents were the heart of what TiVo founder invented with his team. The original finding was *willful infringement*, though TiVo later let the willful part drop to try and streamline the case. The patents have also been upheld by the USPO on several re-examinations instigated by the slimy lawyers from DISH who have been denounced by the courts directly for their gaming the legal system in other cases.

so you also have most of the main facts of your agenda dead wrong.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Bigg said:


> I still think you have to pay the HD fee in order to get HD on the TiVo, but I may be wrong.
> 
> Still, you lose ON Demand, are locked into Comca$t, and you have to own the box, and be responsible for when the thing breaks. That being said, we'd get freaking native output and more storage.


Definitely wrong about the HD fee in most Comcast areas - you only pay for extra Cablecards (outlet fee that everyone pays), not for HD itself.

Very easy to add a bigger drive to a Tivo, one of my biggest beefs with the Comcast junk. That and the fact that it was buggy as hell, laden with ads and you couldn't remove channels from the guide.

No thanks, I've enjoyed being 'locked in' to Comcast with Tivos, but not if I had to use their junk.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> and the agenda comes out.
> 
> Umm the absurd patents were the heart of what TiVo founder invented with his team. The original finding was *willful infringement*, though TiVo later let the willful part drop to try and streamline the case. The patents have also been upheld by the USPO on several re-examinations instigated by the slimy lawyers from DISH who have been denounced by the courts directly for their gaming the legal system in other cases.
> 
> so you also have most of the main facts of your agenda dead wrong.


So TiVo should be able to hold the entire industry hostage with their BS patents over recording video to a hard drive or something? It's absurd. TiVo has no ethics anymore, they are failing as a company, so they resort to suing other companies who are successful. Any victories they are having just proves that the patent system is completely broken. What's next, patenting sliced bread?


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

slowbiscuit said:


> Definitely wrong about the HD fee in most Comcast areas - you only pay for extra Cablecards (outlet fee that everyone pays), not for HD itself.
> 
> Very easy to add a bigger drive to a Tivo, one of my biggest beefs with the Comcast junk. That and the fact that it was buggy as hell, laden with ads and you couldn't remove channels from the guide.
> 
> No thanks, I've enjoyed being 'locked in' to Comcast with Tivos, but not if I had to use their junk.


So the HD is free?!?!?


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Bigg said:


> So TiVo should be able to hold the entire industry hostage with their BS patents over recording video to a hard drive or something? It's absurd.


that is not what the patent is about - it is deeper than your futile attempt to make it seem silly and indeed some of the newer DISH DVRs are likely not infringing. But hey if you want to keep displaying your ignorance then please keep going.

PS - TiVo brought a prototype DVR to DISH as DISH seemed in genuine negotiations with TiVo - then when all that was left was to sign the agreement the prototype vanished and DISH said it was not signing. It is DISH and Charlie Ergen with the lack of ethics and TiVo is rightfully recouping the fees DISH stole by copying their DVR technology right down to the patented internal design that allowed for the first DVR that did not cost thousands of dollars.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Bigg said:


> You watch too much TV. I can understand a big family needing a few Premieres or a Win MCE box with a couple of TB, but one person???


I don't deny that, but one of the Tivos is a S1 that I should probably unplug some day, but it is sometimes useful recording from the few analog channels we still have.

But I want to be able to pad ALL recordings. So having multiple tuners is VERY useful.



Bigg said:


> The Comcast box is also a dual-tuner box. It's the only box we have. The downstairs TV is analog. The break even point is somewhere in the 4-6 year range, depending on how exactly they charge the CC vs. the box, and by that point, the box is likely to die anyways.


I have no proof it won't die, but you have no proof it is "likely" to die either. My S1s have been running for I think 9 years (err, one is unplugged.. so one has)..

My S3 & TivoHD have been running a few years. None are dead. I realize that is only a few individual data points. Plus, the thing most likely to die is the hard drive, which can be easily replaced.


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## plazman30 (Jan 23, 2005)

Bigg said:


> I still think you have to pay the HD fee in order to get HD on the TiVo, but I may be wrong.
> 
> Still, you lose ON Demand, are locked into Comca$t, and you have to own the box, and be responsible for when the thing breaks. That being said, we'd get freaking native output and more storage.


You are NOT locked into Comcast, if you live in a good area. My coworker cancelled Comcast. Verizon came out and put FIOS Cablecards in their TiVos and they were up and running and THEY GOT TO KEEP ALL THEIR RECORDED SHOWS. Huge plus right there.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Bigg said:


> So the HD is free?!?!?


HD channels are included with your tier of service, no separate fee. If you're talking about the Tivo HD, no of course it's not free but as I said will pay for itself in 3 years or so vs. renting Comcast's junk.


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## 1999cobra (Nov 10, 2005)

Been there done that - after being fed-up twice with repeated DirecTv costs I switched to Comcast (as stupid as this sounds not once but twice)...

However, I never disconnected the Dtv service thank God. Comcast promised me Motorola boxes and brought SA boxes the menu system looked like something from the old DOS days.

Back to Dtv I went with a promise of reduction in pricing blah, blah, blah, Dtv is good for that. Of course as usual the prices went back up in 6 months. Back to Comcast I went when they solicited me again (I was a Comcast phone and broadband subscriber all along) They promised Motorola boxes again told me they had an updated menu system etc, etc, ... Again, I tried and again Comcast failed. Point you will not be happy with Comcast in a nut shell IT BLOWS, their service, their equipment, and their menu system is so much less than Tivo and even Dtv it's not funny - sad actually.

Dtv would have been a better choice seeing as their equipment, ideas, and menu system was virtually stolen from Tivo although not the same pretty close.

Just sayin'


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> that is not what the patent is about - it is deeper than your futile attempt to make it seem silly and indeed some of the newer DISH DVRs are likely not infringing. But hey if you want to keep displaying your ignorance then please keep going.
> 
> PS - TiVo brought a prototype DVR to DISH as DISH seemed in genuine negotiations with TiVo - then when all that was left was to sign the agreement the prototype vanished and DISH said it was not signing. It is DISH and Charlie Ergen with the lack of ethics and TiVo is rightfully recouping the fees DISH stole by copying their DVR technology right down to the patented internal design that allowed for the first DVR that did not cost thousands of dollars.


If the law of the patent really says that DISH stole technology from TiVo, then that is just really good proof that the patent system is absurdly broken. I've taken apart my dead TiVo, and it's not that much different than a PC from a few years before it's time. They basically took the CPU, RAM, and video card and flattened it onto a motherboard, and then took a caseless PSU and a hard drive, and stuck it into a desktop case with some plastic on the front to make it look nice. Highly innovative there. Sheesh.



plazman30 said:


> You are NOT locked into Comcast, if you live in a good area. My coworker cancelled Comcast. Verizon came out and put FIOS Cablecards in their TiVos and they were up and running and THEY GOT TO KEEP ALL THEIR RECORDED SHOWS. Huge plus right there.


We're in an AT&T area, so we'd be locked into Comcast or OTA.



slowbiscuit said:


> HD channels are included with your tier of service, no separate fee. If you're talking about the Tivo HD, no of course it's not free but as I said will pay for itself in 3 years or so vs. renting Comcast's junk.


Ok, if that's the case, then the 3 year number is about right. However, we get free replacement/upgrade units, and ON Demand.



1999cobra said:


> Been there done that - after being fed-up twice with repeated DirecTv costs I switched to Comcast (as stupid as this sounds not once but twice)...
> 
> However, I never disconnected the Dtv service thank God. Comcast promised me Motorola boxes and brought SA boxes the menu system looked like something from the old DOS days.
> 
> ...


We should have had DirecTV from day 1, but my parents just don't understand satellite. They think they know about technology, but I'm the only one who really does. They also want the alternate PBS, which DirecTV doesn't provide, for reasons I cannot explain, while Comcast provides it in HD, which I can't explain either. I don't think it's worth the additional national HD channels we'd get on DirecTV though. We also have a cost issue of the debundling surcharge on our internet from Comcast, and we're too far away to get 6mbit DSL. DISH would have come in cheaper than Comcast even with the debundling fee.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Bigg said:


> If the law of the patent really says that DISH stole technology from TiVo, then that is just really good proof that the patent system is absurdly broken. I've taken apart my dead TiVo, and it's not that much different than a PC from a few years before it's time.


again you clearly have no idea of the tech being used. TiVo came up with a way to specifically parse the video for playback that eliminated the need for expensive hardware to do the same kind of trick play on playback. That is the heart of the patent and what DISH stole from TiVo. There is a significant difference and indeed a PC with a simple capture card and playback software does not infringe the patent. You simply do not understand the facts of what you are talking about


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Bigg said:


> Ok, if that's the case, then the 3 year number is about right. However, we get free replacement/upgrade units, and ON Demand.


Yep - you get free, 'upgraded', non-expandable, can't remove channels from the guide (wtf??), sometimes doesn't record your series correctly, sometimes doesn't respond to the remote and then plays all your button presses back later, junk. And as I said before a mixed bag of On Demand that Comcast thinks you might like, most of which you can DVR anyway.

If you're happy with the lowest common denominator of DVR then more power to you, but I have one Tivo HD that will be paid for this year (vs. renting) and another I got on clearance for $99 last year that will be paid for next year. Which is again, not even factoring in the resale value with lifetime service.

You'll still be paying to rent their junk.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> again you clearly have no idea of the tech being used. TiVo came up with a way to specifically parse the video for playback that eliminated the need for expensive hardware to do the same kind of trick play on playback. That is the heart of the patent and what DISH stole from TiVo. There is a significant difference and indeed a PC with a simple capture card and playback software does not infringe the patent. You simply do not understand the facts of what you are talking about


Then it's software, which shouldn't be patentable from day 1. It's copyrightable, but that just prevents someone from stealing the code, not from reverse engineering it.



slowbiscuit said:


> Yep - you get free, 'upgraded', non-expandable, can't remove channels from the guide (wtf??), sometimes doesn't record your series correctly, sometimes doesn't respond to the remote and then plays all your button presses back later, junk. And as I said before a mixed bag of On Demand that Comcast thinks you might like, most of which you can DVR anyway.
> 
> If you're happy with the lowest common denominator of DVR then more power to you, but I have one Tivo HD that will be paid for this year (vs. renting) and another I got on clearance for $99 last year that will be paid for next year. Which is again, not even factoring in the resale value with lifetime service.
> 
> You'll still be paying to rent their junk.


It works well enough, and I don't have remote issues other than the first 20-30 seconds, after which the box is extremely responsive, and IMHO, the menus are faster to navigate than TiVo's, since TiVo is one dimensional, while this thing is two-dimensional. It's not as intuitive, however, so there is a learning curve, which I'm over now.


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## rage777 (Aug 19, 2006)

Bigg,

I don't want to attack you because you don't like Tivo, which is your right to not like a company. But does that mean you don't have any Apple products as well? Apple likes to sue everybody for everything.

Also saying Tivo is just a flattened PC is like saying the iPod is just a small CD player. That's why they were both so successful, they changed something that was common and made it better. Why not say today's PC is just a smaller version of the DEC Alpha?


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

Bigg said:


> Then it's software, which shouldn't be patentable from day 1.


"a claim drawn to subject matter otherwise statutory does not become nonstatutory simply because it uses a mathematical formula, computer program, or digital computer" and a claim is patentable if it contains "a mathematical formula and implements or applies the formula in a structure or process which, when considered as a whole, is performing a function which the patent laws were designed to protect"

Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175 (1981)


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Bigg said:


> Then it's software, which shouldn't be patentable from day 1. It's copyrightable, but that just prevents someone from stealing the code, not from reverse engineering it.


you do realize the case has been decided, right? and forgive me if I do not take much measure of your idea of what is patentable or not. shwru980r has the actual info. You are entitled to your opinion but your opinion is simply not based on the reality of facts and you do not get to change that reality simply because of your objection to the facts


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## pteronaut (Dec 26, 2009)

Bigg said:


> ...We're in an AT&T area, so we'd be locked into Comcast or OTA...


No U-Verse available from AT&T in your area?


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

Bigg said:


> First of all, I am not comparing the hardware capabilities of the Comcast DVR with the Series 2. Obviously, the Comcast box does HD, has two tuners, and the TiVo didn't.


You are mising many of the most important aspects of the hardware, not to mention the software. The S2 was a dog from day 1. I never bought one. Instead, I kept my 1999 vintage S1 until the releae of the S3, in Sept 2006. The S3 is a much better hardware platform. I can't recommend the S4.



Bigg said:


> The only capability that is fair to compare is On Demand, since the modern day TiVos don't have access to that.


I'm not sure I follow, at all. It's fair to compare two devices. The best comarison is between contemporary devices. The Comcast DVR falls way, way short of the TiVo on many counts.



Bigg said:


> I knew that the Comcast remote was huge from seeing other people's remotes, and yes, it is huge. It actually doesn't weight that much, and isn't that much physically bigger than TiVo's, but it seems rather large due to its soft of boxy design. That being said, I do like the remote.


OK. I've seen better remotes than the TiVo Peanut, but the Peanut ranks very well in the pack.



Bigg said:


> What I noticed, however, is that the remote, like the software on the box itself, is a cable box with a DVR, while TiVo is a DVR with a cable box. Got that?


I think so. The most important aspect of the statement, however, is the fact a cable box is an iditotic device. It's a massive time waster. Abandoning the STB was one of the greater reliefs of my entertainment life. Abandoning the [email protected]#[email protected] Scientific Atlanta 8300 DVR was the greatest relief of my entertainment life.



Bigg said:


> While it is a totally different paradigm, the Comcast box actually works as a DVR just as well as TiVo.


No, it doesn't. Not by a very, very, very long shot. Unless you wish to limit the definition of a DVR to, "A device with a hard drive that records video", then the Comcast DVR works nowhere nearly as well as the TiVo at being a DVR. OTOH, if one does define a DVR that way, then the TiVos is vastly more than a DVR, while the Comcast DVR only qualifies.



Bigg said:


> Where this is evident in the remote design is the positioning of the buttons. While TiVo's remote has the DVR buttons in the middle where your hand naturally falls, and the menu buttons farther up, the Comcast remote is the exact opposite. While the Comcast DVR's remote buttons aren't particularly ergonomic to use, they are not that bad either.


So IOW, on the Comcast remote, the buttons no one should ever really want to use are where the hand naturally falls. Ooh. Wonderful.

I use <Play>, <RR>, <FF>, <Pause>, <Jump>, and . I use the arrow keys some. I use Power when I sit down and before I stand back up. That's about it. (Sometimes I use the Volume or Mute keys.) If the keys other than the DVR keys are at all useful, then it's a lousy DVR. A good DVR, let alone an excellent one, renders the other keys virtually useless.



Bigg said:


> The software on the box, is well, UGLY. It's just freaking ugly. It's 480i, 4:3, and it looks like someone plopped a bunch of buttons on the screen in a grid. That being said, it is quite functional.


I couldn't care less about ugly, but how are Wishists implemented? Suggestons? What 3rd part apps like pyTivo or Galleon are available? What underground apps like TiVoWebPlus, TyTool, and MFS_FTP are available?



Bigg said:


> Looking at the box as a DVR that doesn't need to connect to anything else, it has the identical functionality as TiVo, and in some cases the menus are actually a little quicker to navigate, once you learn where the heck everything is.


Looking at the box as a filter to eliminate unwanted content - the TiVo's most important function - how good is it? Looking at the box as an intelligent and effective robot that knows what the user wants and selects it to be recorded without ever bothering the user - the Tivo's second most important function - how good is it? Looking at it as a base platform that allows the user to upgrade and manage the hardware and software to fit their needs - the TiVo's third most important fucntion - how good it it? I know the answer to all three.



Bigg said:


> The Motorola grid guide is pretty nice, and pretty responsive too. I've never used a TiVo Premere, so I can't compare the speed, but the Motorola one is definitely fast enough for day to day use.


Yet another exceedingly poor feature. To be sure, most DVRs require the user to use the guide. Indeed, this was without question the very worst problem in a very, very long list of utterly horrible problems with the Scientific Atlanta HD8300 with which I was forced to live for 9 torturous months. Between the fall of 1999 and December of 2005, I did not use any guide, ever. Since September 2006, I once again am free of that utterly obnoxius and completely unnecessary abomination. There are two different guides on the TiVo (ignoring Swivel Search), and I hapily never use either. The only reason I have looked at them at all is to familiarize myself with every aspect of the device - as I do with every device I own - and an occasional test run to measure how much time is wasted by usng either of the guides. (It's huge, BTW.)



Bigg said:


> The one place that the Comcast DVR does fall a bit short is the equivalent screen to the Now Playing List. It's the same concept, although the actual list only covers half of the screen, so you don't see as many shows at the same time, and the network logos and such aren't shown. On the other hand, in the HD world, 160GB of disk space is going to go pretty fast, so there may not be any need for a long list of recorded shows.


Lord, where does one start? Ignoring the fact most of the things you have mentioned so far are bad aspects of the Comcast DVR, not positive ones, here you are efectively saying, "The Compcast DVR is so pitifully limited that it doesn't matter it has a horrible content listing." My NPL has several thousand listings on it. The TiVo NPL is one aspect of the TiVo that is really lacking, but it still is far better than the competition. The fact it is so poor means I often do not use the TiVo NPL, BTW. If I am browing the list of videos, it just takes too long. With the Comcast DVR, there is no other option.



Bigg said:


> On Demand is the first place where the Comcast box really has a huge advantage over the TiVo. They have a lot of shows up for free, including he first couple of episodes of Gold Rush: Alaska on the Discovery Channel. It's pretty nice to be able to get shows and movies On Demand, whenever you want them


Again, it is only "nice" because the Comcast DVR is so limited. With a couple of thousand videos right in the NPL, there's virtualy zero chance that there is not something else even better in the NPL, and since the Tivo will be recording the episode anyway, there's no really significant down side to not having it instantly available.



Bigg said:


> and it doesn't eliminate the option of having Netflix or other streaming services, since that can be done through a Blu-Ray player, media streamer, or laptop.


So the Comcast's advantage is that all the things it does not do, other devices can? The exact same thing can be said of a broken 8-track cassette player. More to the point, however, is the fact there is great advantage to having a single, unified, integrated solution to watching TV. I have a fairly large library of DVDs sitting in a Sony 400 Disc DVD Jukebox. I haven't used it in a couple of years, because it's too much trouble to switch over to the DVD input, turn on the box, and select a video to play when there are so many great videos avaiable without switching anything, including going to a different interface.



Bigg said:


> The second big advantage of the Comcast box is pricing. While TiVo is $500 for an existing TiVo subscriber like us, and $700 for everyone else, the Comcast box is about $7/mo, so the TiVo would pretty much never pay for itself, and in the event of a hardware failure, the local Comcast office is about a 20 minute drive away and we have a new box for no cost other than the gas to go over there.


A lot of people make this comparison, but it is artifically limited. First of all, many CATV providers charge a great deal more for their DVRs. TW Cable San antonio, for example, charges $19.95 a month for the first DVR and $9.95 a month for each additional DVR. If Comcast isn't charging as much for their DVR, then they are "salting the claim" as it were, by loading the cost of supplying a DVR into their regular subscription costs. If they were being equitable in their pricing, then they would charge subs who did not get DVRs or STBs less and then charge more for their DVRs and STBs. This rather sleazy marketing trick makes their DVR artificially more attractive. Such pratices *SHOULD* drive consumers away from Comcast, but unfortunately they do not. Instead, it drives them away from buying 3rd party equipment. It is sad, but nonetheles true, that most people worry more about their individual wallets than about promoting sleazy business practices.

On top of that, unless the TiVo fails completely (or is destroyed or stolen), it has a significant resale value, especialy if it has lifetime service. Once youa re done with the leased DVR, you've got bupkus. To make a proper comparison, one must make sime estimate of how much may be recovered through resale or re-purposing the purchased unit.



Bigg said:


> The other thing that may become an issue is that our area has, at most, 160GB units, although 250-500GB units are supposed to be coming at the end of next month. This is one area where TiVo has a clear advantage, although it is also an area where Windows 7 MCE has a clear advantage over TiVo.


Get real. My TiVos have 2TB, 1.5TB, and 750GB, respectively, on which to each record data. I could easdily go way beyond that if I chose. They all have access to the 11TB array. A 500G DVR just barely rises above being totally pathetic. For most people, it is not large enough to take advantage of any of the best features of the TiVo. Generally, it takes 750G or more to make most of the TiVo's best features even functional.



Bigg said:


> With all this in mind, I'm not sure what place TiVo has in the market moving forward. Sure, there are a few power users out there who need MRV and other features


I almost never use MRV. On the list of truly great features, I would personally put it way, way down the list. I certainly don't consider it important. What I do consider important are the terrific recording features of the TiVo, most of which are unique. The Tivo is a Digital Video *RECORDER*, yet you mention virtually nothing of its recording features. Perhaps you are not being intentionally disingenuous, but if not you are certainly putting on blinders.

Suggestions. (Some audio servers have a diluted utility similat to TiVo Suggstions, but I know of no other DVR with anything close.

Wishlists. (AFAIK, no other recorder allows one to select a movie that hasn't even been filmed, yet, and that may not be in the guide data for years to come.)

Fine grained search criteria including boolean expressions. ( Directed by John Ford _and_ starring John Wayne _and not_ starring Maureen O'Hara)

User replaceable / upgradable components.

User ownership. (The ability to do whatever one damned well pleases with the unit.)

The list goes on.



Bigg said:


> but with Windows 7 MCE competing fiercely for their business, where does this leave TiVo?


For anyone who actually knows what a TiVo is and how well it can enhance the viewing experience, in a very good spot. No offense, but you sound very much like a lot of people out there who have very little clue of what the TiVo can do and how to take advantage of its features. On the down side, this applies to the average potential DVR sub. OTOH, that same potential sub won't see any advantage in an HTPC, either.


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## StringFellow (Apr 17, 2005)

It is really funny all of the Comcast bashing going on. I honestly have to say Comcast in my area is quite good. Comcast has provided 2 cable cards for 2 Tivos and both are free and the picture quality is about equal to DirecTV.

Back when DirecTV first came out with their branded HD DVRs, I picked one up for $300 at Costco (and a new HD TV). I signed up for HD service and they never stated there was a 2yr commitment for this new box. I didn't think anything about it since I payed $300 and figured it was mine. Well fast forward 1 year (when I was moving) and they wanted me to return the unit because I still had 1 yr left on my commitment. They said they would require the DVR to be returned and sent out a return box. They failed to send 2 additional return boxes and then billed me $500. I called and they stated the box was a loaner box and would need to be returned or I would be charged $500 for the replacement cost. After that, I refuse to go back to DTV. Oh and lets not forget all the lies I caught them weaving during this whole process.

When I first signed up for Comcast about 3 years ago they provided an HD SA cable box (no DVR). The menus sucked, but it got the job done. At that point we picked up a Tivo box. We purchased a 2nd Tivo about 6 months later and have no plans on going back to the SA equipment provided in my area. We now have a Tivo Premiere and I am not as happy as I would like with the performance, but it is still light years ahead of the local SA equipment.

Oh and one thing I haven't seen posted here, the Season Pass reliability is unmatched with Tivo. The DTV DVR would miss shows quite often, especially when shows switch times and/or channel changes.


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

$7 for a CableCo DVR?

Time Warner here charges $7.99 for the box and $ .50 for the remote. Then it's $10.99 for the DVR 'service' ($9.99 for 2nd box with service).

The software is OLD, ugly as all hell and no where near as sophisticated and powerful as TiVo.

I manage over 80 Season Passes on my TiVo. There's no way a cable co DVR could juggle all that reliably. At least none that I've ever seen.

Yes, it takes some work on my part to manage all that (ex: any show on multiple channels gets a Wish List instead of a SP) but once you set it up and watch it, it works.

Does the cable co. DVR even have a list of what it won't record? Can you view episode titles and numbers? Can you set up Wish Lists based on episode titles to catch something you may have missed?

Can you download shows to your iPhone to take on a plane? Can you watch Netflix on it?

Is the remote the best you've ever used, bar none?

Is the UI attractive, easy to understand and just fun to use? I'm gonna be living in this UI the better part of my evenings... I don't want some ugly 4:3 piece of crap that I have to hunt and peck to find things.

Maybe all that isn't worth it to most people... but for someone like me who LOVES TV and watches a lot of it, I would kill myself before I had to live within the UI and limitations of a cable co DVR every day.

It's worth the marginally premium price. No question.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

c.hack said:


> I would have agreed 5 years ago that TiVo offers a superior product. Today it is only superior to the bottom of the line:
> - Netflix streaming poor quality and reliability. I have a Roku and PS3 also set up for Netflix streaming and neither my S3 or Premier can compete on quality, usability or reliability (same show, same time, same internet)


Please list the DVRs which do a better job of this. Indeed, please list *ANY* other DVRs which do this, at all. Then, to bring the discussion back on topic to the thread, explain how the Comcast DVR does it better. We'll leave the fact I am not interrested in NetFlix aside.



c.hack said:


> - Youtube streaming is unreliable. It frequently locks up my S3.


Again, which DVRs do it better? How does the Comcast DVR do it better? I'll once more leave the fact I am not interestged in YouTube aside.



c.hack said:


> - Buying lifetime (and I have two) locked me into cable TV - I can't switch to satellite or Clear Wi-Max now. Renting a DVR gives you more flexibility.


It only gives one more flexibility if one is greedy and foolish. In the long run you will pay substantially the same amount either way. One is only "locked in" if one encompasses the same unwise attitude held by a monkey who holds a nut in his fist which makes it impossible to withdraw his arm from a hole without dropping the nut. It also ignores the facts the units can be re-sold and that the user has already gained value from the use of the components. The CATV companies are no more of a mind to give away money than TiVo is. The amounts they charge insure they will make a profit from providing the user with a DVR.

Otherwise, any leased unit is always going to be less flexible than a comprabe (or identical) purchased unit. After all, one may do anything one likes with a unit if they own it. Not so a leased unit. In the specific case of a TiVo, the number of things the user can do with a TiVo one is not allowed to do with a leased unit is very large. The number of things the TiVo can do that the leased unit fundamentally cannot is even larger.



c.hack said:


> TiVo is notorious for over-promising and under-delivering.


They have rarely promised anything. Their delivery has been great, if slow and steady. The latter is as good a thing as the first.



c.hack said:


> The Premiere is still a piece of junk


I can't recommend it, but I have not seen anything to suggest it is a piece of junk.



c.hack said:


> - slow and unreliable.


Not by the reports I have seen.



c.hack said:


> Still no iPad app.


Oh, who freaking cares?



c.hack said:


> Still no DirecTiVo.


So you are suggesting there is a DireComcast box? Why would a Comcast subscriber care whether there is a DirecTivo or not? How does a delay in delivery of a DirecTivo make the S3 and S4 TiVos inferior to the Comcast DVR? Most importantly, how would the lack of a DirecTiVo induce a Comcast subscriber to choose the Comcast DVR over a Stand Alone Tivo?



c.hack said:


> Nothing but promises.


That's simply false. They have delivered more than they promised. They promised alomost nothing and delivered a great deal. The S4 announcement was certainly nothing but hype, but then they didn't promise anything.



c.hack said:


> I don't see TiVo as being competitive anymore.


Then who is? What other companies make DirecTV recorders? What other manufacturers make 3rd party stand-alone DVRs? I count two, neither of which is superior to the TiVo. Are you tralking about the Cisco and Motorola DVRs? Don't make me laugh.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

cwoody222 said:


> I manage over 80 Season Passes on my TiVo. There's no way a cable co DVR could juggle all that reliably. At least none that I've ever seen.


I have a similar if perhaps a bit smaller number, but the Season Passes only make up a moderate fraction of the automated recordings on my Tivos. Wishlists and Suggestions make up as much or nearly so.



cwoody222 said:


> Yes, it takes some work on my part to manage all that (ex: any show on multiple channels gets a Wish List instead of a SP).


Well, not in my case, at least. I only very rarely manage the SP list, or even Wishlists, for that matter. Every once in a great while I will add or delete a Season Pass. Whenever a movie comes out in the theaters that I would like to see, I create a wishlist for it. Then, perhaps months later, when the movie comes out on Cable and gets recorded by the TiVo, I usually delete the Wishlist. Well, eventually. I don't rush to do it.

Now that I think of it, one of the great advantages of having a TiVo is I never rush to do anything, any more. Indeed, for the most part I don't do anything at all, any more, in terms of mnanaging my recording schedule. I just watch programs the TiVo has recorded for me without my having to specifically ask it to. I can't say the same of other DVRs. For the most part, other DVR are almost as much of a hassle to force to do what I want as a cluster of VCRs.



cwoody222 said:


> Does the cable co. DVR even have a list of what it won't record?


Conversely, can it be set to record something not in the schedule?



cwoody222 said:


> Can you set up Wish Lists based on episode titles to catch something you may have missed?


Can you set the Cable DVR to record something that may not come on for years?



cwoody222 said:


> Is the remote the best you've ever used, bar none?


Well, no. Indeed, I found the Scientific Atlanta remote to be pretty good. I have certainly seen remotes that were in many ways better than a TiVo Peanut, but I have never gotten a remote that was companion to a consumer device that is better than the TiVo Peanut, and most of the remotes that are better than the TiVo Peanut cost as much or more than a TiVo. The Peanut is certainly high up in the pack, if you ask me.



cwoody222 said:


> It's worth the marginally premium price. No question.


I certainly agree.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

StringFellow said:


> It is really funny all of the Comcast bashing going on. I honestly have to say Comcast in my area is quite good. Comcast has provided 2 cable cards for 2 Tivos and both are free and the picture quality is about equal to DirecTV.


No one is bashing Comcast, we're bashing the idea that a Comcast DVR compares favorably to a Tivo. I have excellent service with Comcast cable here, on multiple Tivos and other TVs.


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

Agreed. I've never been a Comcast customer (never lived in one of their areas). So I cannot comment on Comcast at all.

I'm commenting on the idea that TiVo is not a good value compared to a run-on-the-mill cable co. DVR. (and I'm only going on experience with a TWC DVR, not Comcast... but I believe they're similar enough)

Aside from being priced gouged since I cannot do bundles with CableCARDs and incompetent installers/customer service when it comes to CableCARD, my *service* (channels, pic quality, internet speed, reliability) are fine.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

lrhorer said:


> Now that I think of it, one of the great advantages of having a TiVo is I never rush to do anything, any more. Indeed, for the most part I don't do anything at all, any more, in terms of mnanaging my recording schedule. I just watch programs the TiVo has recorded for me without my having to specifically ask it to.


used to be for the holidays I would find an online schedule of holiday shows and print them out so I knew I was recording them or be around to watch them. That was years 1-3 of TiVo

then wishlist got that major overhaul and had better categories. Now I have a simple Holiday wishlist that runs year round - kids are watching some other recorded show and go - hey the Great Pumpkin is on tomorrow, oh wait this recorded 3 days ago, awwhh.
No problem - the Holiday wishlist recorded it, lets watch it next. yyyaaayyy!

no worries about getting ahead of the 25 days of Christmas that shows all the great Christmas specials - they all recorded just fine by finding show times among my other recordings given a higher priority in season pass manager. Total time I spent this year on worrying about holiday recordings - 0

so how would Comcast DVR handle that?


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

rage777 said:


> Bigg,
> 
> I don't want to attack you because you don't like Tivo, which is your right to not like a company. But does that mean you don't have any Apple products as well? Apple likes to sue everybody for everything.
> 
> Also saying Tivo is just a flattened PC is like saying the iPod is just a small CD player.


Apple sues people who do things that are clearly illegal, even if it is fun to read about the new Apple products before launch. TiVo is suing a sort of competitor because they have no real business plan left and are desperate.

No, it's like saying that a Zune infringes on Apple's patents because both use more or less off the shelf computer components with some custom PCB's to play files off of a hard drive.

It's just proof that the patent law is completely broken and needs to be reformed.



pteronaut said:


> No U-Verse available from AT&T in your area?


TiVo is not compatible with U-Verse. If you look at all the providers, you get DISH and DirecTV too, which are better than U-Verse.



lrhorer said:


> You are mising many of the most important aspects of the hardware, not to mention the software. The S2 was a dog from day 1. I never bought one. Instead, I kept my 1999 vintage S1 until the releae of the S3, in Sept 2006. The S3 is a much better hardware platform. I can't recommend the S4.


The S2 was a good machine for SD. Now it's just outdated.



lrhorer said:


> I'm not sure I follow, at all. It's fair to compare two devices. The best comarison is between contemporary devices. The Comcast DVR falls way, way short of the TiVo on many counts.


My point is, it's not fair to compare an S2 TiVo with a dual-tuner HD DVR from Comcast. TiVo Premiere to Comcast box would be more fair, but we've never owned a Premiere.



lrhorer said:


> OK. I've seen better remotes than the TiVo Peanut, but the Peanut ranks very well in the pack.


I'll agree with you there. The Comcast remote is good enough, although not as good as the TiVo remote.



lrhorer said:


> I think so. The most important aspect of the statement, however, is the fact a cable box is an iditotic device. It's a massive time waster. Abandoning the STB was one of the greater reliefs of my entertainment life. Abandoning the [email protected]#[email protected] Scientific Atlanta 8300 DVR was the greatest relief of my entertainment life.


We have Moto, not Sci Atlanta on our system.



lrhorer said:


> No, it doesn't. Not by a very, very, very long shot. Unless you wish to limit the definition of a DVR to, "A device with a hard drive that records video", then the Comcast DVR works nowhere nearly as well as the TiVo at being a DVR. OTOH, if one does define a DVR that way, then the TiVos is vastly more than a DVR, while the Comcast DVR only qualifies.


That's all a TiVo is really useful for. It's streaming functions don't work very well, and can be easily replicated/replaced by other boxes anyways.



lrhorer said:


> So IOW, on the Comcast remote, the buttons no one should ever really want to use are where the hand naturally falls. Ooh. Wonderful.


The menu navigation, volume, and channel buttons are in the center, which are pretty useful.



lrhorer said:


> I use <Play>, <RR>, <FF>, <Pause>, <Jump>, and . I use the arrow keys some. I use Power when I sit down and before I stand back up. That's about it. (Sometimes I use the Volume or Mute keys.) If the keys other than the DVR keys are at all useful, then it's a lousy DVR. A good DVR, let alone an excellent one, renders the other keys virtually useless.


With TiVo, you always have to use the 4-way D pad at the top of the peanut to navigate the menus.



lrhorer said:


> I couldn't care less about ugly, but how are Wishists implemented? Suggestons? What 3rd part apps like pyTivo or Galleon are available? What underground apps like TiVoWebPlus, TyTool, and MFS_FTP are available?


Never used or wanted either or those on TiVo. Don't care, don't care, don't care. In the HD world, if I'm not going to watch it on the HDTV with 5.1 surround, I'm just going to iTunes/torrent/stream it anyways.



lrhorer said:


> Looking at the box as a filter to eliminate unwanted content - the TiVo's most important function - how good is it? Looking at the box as an intelligent and effective robot that knows what the user wants and selects it to be recorded without ever bothering the user - the Tivo's second most important function - how good is it? Looking at it as a base platform that allows the user to upgrade and manage the hardware and software to fit their needs - the TiVo's third most important fucntion - how good it it? I know the answer to all three.


The Comcast box has series recordings that are functionally equivalent to SP's. It doesn't have hardware upgradability, but also no responsibility. If it breaks, it's not my problem, we drive over to Branford and they give us a new one.



lrhorer said:


> Yet another exceedingly poor feature. To be sure, most DVRs require the user to use the guide. Indeed, this was without question the very worst problem in a very, very long list of utterly horrible problems with the Scientific Atlanta HD8300 with which I was forced to live for 9 torturous months. Between the fall of 1999 and December of 2005, I did not use any guide, ever. Since September 2006, I once again am free of that utterly obnoxius and completely unnecessary abomination. There are two different guides on the TiVo (ignoring Swivel Search), and I hapily never use either. The only reason I have looked at them at all is to familiarize myself with every aspect of the device - as I do with every device I own - and an occasional test run to measure how much time is wasted by usng either of the guides. (It's huge, BTW.)


You have to use the guide to see what's on. Guide surfing is the new version of channel surfing. If there's something on tonight, it's often easier to just get it in the grid guide than to search for it.



lrhorer said:


> Lord, where does one start? Ignoring the fact most of the things you have mentioned so far are bad aspects of the Comcast DVR, not positive ones, here you are efectively saying, "The Compcast DVR is so pitifully limited that it doesn't matter it has a horrible content listing." My NPL has several thousand listings on it. The TiVo NPL is one aspect of the TiVo that is really lacking, but it still is far better than the competition. The fact it is so poor means I often do not use the TiVo NPL, BTW. If I am browing the list of videos, it just takes too long. With the Comcast DVR, there is no other option.


You have to get to a list of the hard drive at some point to play back DVR recordings. It works pretty well. It also helps that since it's a smaller box hours wise, other people (my parents) can't junk the thing up too much, so it's easy to find stuff in a short list of programs. If we don't watch it in a week or two, it's not going to get watched. Delete. If we wanted to endlessly hoard, we'd get an MCE box with a giant RAID array. Some of what we do with the DVR too is to watch something 13 minutes after it starts recording, and then you can zap the commercials.



lrhorer said:


> Again, it is only "nice" because the Comcast DVR is so limited. With a couple of thousand videos right in the NPL, there's virtualy zero chance that there is not something else even better in the NPL, and since the Tivo will be recording the episode anyway, there's no really significant down side to not having it instantly available.


We don't hoard TV shows.



lrhorer said:


> So the Comcast's advantage is that all the things it does not do, other devices can? The exact same thing can be said of a broken 8-track cassette player. More to the point, however, is the fact there is great advantage to having a single, unified, integrated solution to watching TV. I have a fairly large library of DVDs sitting in a Sony 400 Disc DVD Jukebox. I haven't used it in a couple of years, because it's too much trouble to switch over to the DVD input, turn on the box, and select a video to play when there are so many great videos avaiable without switching anything, including going to a different interface.


First, you're lazy, second a 400 disc changer???? That's nuts. Can anyone get off their butt and switch discs. Single disc is the way to go, keeps it nice and neat, as you have to put the disc back in it's correct box when you want to watch another one.



lrhorer said:


> A lot of people make this comparison, but it is artifically limited. First of all, many CATV providers charge a great deal more for their DVRs. TW Cable San antonio, for example, charges $19.95 a month for the first DVR and $9.95 a month for each additional DVR. If Comcast isn't charging as much for their DVR, then they are "salting the claim" as it were, by loading the cost of supplying a DVR into their regular subscription costs. If they were being equitable in their pricing, then they would charge subs who did not get DVRs or STBs less and then charge more for their DVRs and STBs. This rather sleazy marketing trick makes their DVR artificially more attractive. Such pratices *SHOULD* drive consumers away from Comcast, but unfortunately they do not. Instead, it drives them away from buying 3rd party equipment. It is sad, but nonetheles true, that most people worry more about their individual wallets than about promoting sleazy business practices.


Comcast is overpriced, but cheapish DVR's aren't exactly sleazy. DISH and DirecTV do it a lot more. Apparently, though the DVR actually costs $15 since supposedly they wouldn't charge us the box fee if we had CC's. Still a 3-year payback for TiVo though.



lrhorer said:


> On top of that, unless the TiVo fails completely (or is destroyed or stolen), it has a significant resale value, especialy if it has lifetime service. Once youa re done with the leased DVR, you've got bupkus. To make a proper comparison, one must make sime estimate of how much may be recovered through resale or re-purposing the purchased unit.


We pretty much keep everything for quite a while.



lrhorer said:


> Get real. My TiVos have 2TB, 1.5TB, and 750GB, respectively, on which to each record data. I could easdily go way beyond that if I chose. They all have access to the 11TB array. A 500G DVR just barely rises above being totally pathetic. For most people, it is not large enough to take advantage of any of the best features of the TiVo. Generally, it takes 750G or more to make most of the TiVo's best features even functional.


??? You can record and play back shows on a 160GB hard drive with no problems, as long as you don't hoard them.



lrhorer said:


> I almost never use MRV. On the list of truly great features, I would personally put it way, way down the list. I certainly don't consider it important. What I do consider important are the terrific recording features of the TiVo, most of which are unique. The Tivo is a Digital Video *RECORDER*, yet you mention virtually nothing of its recording features. Perhaps you are not being intentionally disingenuous, but if not you are certainly putting on blinders.


MRV is very significant if you have more than one TV. We basically only have one, so it's a non-issue here.



lrhorer said:


> Suggestions. (Some audio servers have a diluted utility similat to TiVo Suggstions, but I know of no other DVR with anything close.


Who cares. Didn't use them for 6 years, not going to miss them now.



lrhorer said:


> Wishlists. (AFAIK, no other recorder allows one to select a movie that hasn't even been filmed, yet, and that may not be in the guide data for years to come.)


Who cares. barely used them for 6 years, not going to miss them now.



lrhorer said:


> Fine grained search criteria including boolean expressions. ( Directed by John Ford _and_ starring John Wayne _and not_ starring Maureen O'Hara)


Who cares. Title and keyword is more than enough. If I'm searching, I know what I'm looking for before I search.



lrhorer said:


> User replaceable / upgradable components. User ownership. (The ability to do whatever one damned well pleases with the unit.)


Yes, but the flip side is that Comcast manages all the updates and is responsible if the thing fails.



lrhorer said:


> The list goes on.





lrhorer said:


> For anyone who actually knows what a TiVo is and how well it can enhance the viewing experience, in a very good spot. No offense, but you sound very much like a lot of people out there who have very little clue of what the TiVo can do and how to take advantage of its features. On the down side, this applies to the average potential DVR sub. OTOH, that same potential sub won't see any advantage in an HTPC, either.


I had one for 6 years, I played with Wishlist and Suggestions, to quickly realize they are stupid. I can see the advantage of a PC-based solution, it's just a little overkill for my needs now.



StringFellow said:


> After that, I refuse to go back to DTV. Oh and lets not forget all the lies I caught them weaving during this whole process.


You agreed to the commitment and the lease of the box. It's well known how those agreements work. If you didn't like them you shouldn't have signed up in the first place.



cwoody222 said:


> I manage over 80 Season Passes on my TiVo. There's no way a cable co DVR could juggle all that reliably. At least none that I've ever seen.


You watch too much TV.



cwoody222 said:


> Does the cable co. DVR even have a list of what it won't record? Can you view episode titles and numbers? Can you set up Wish Lists based on episode titles to catch something you may have missed?


Who cares about wish lists. Yes, it has the same guide data.



cwoody222 said:


> Can you download shows to your iPhone to take on a plane? Can you watch Netflix on it?


The Blu-ray play can do Netflix and Amazon, and if I want something on the computer, I just download it on the computer in the first place, as that's much faster than TTG. If TTG was worth anything I'd revive the S2 to use it, but I barely used it.



cwoody222 said:


> Is the remote the best you've ever used, bar none?


Nope, but it's pretty good, and it gets the job done.



cwoody222 said:


> Is the UI attractive, easy to understand and just fun to use? I'm gonna be living in this UI the better part of my evenings... I don't want some ugly 4:3 piece of crap that I have to hunt and peck to find things.


I want to get out of the UI as quickly as possible and get to my show. That's what the Comcast DVR does with it's butt ugly but lean, mean, and efficient UI.



lrhorer said:


> They promised alomost nothing and delivered a great deal. The S4 announcement was certainly nothing but hype, but then they didn't promise anything.


They promised to revolutionize TV, and all they did was introduce another standalone DVR.


----------



## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Bigg said:


> Apple sues people who do things that are clearly illegal, even if it is fun to read about the new Apple products before launch. TiVo is suing a sort of competitor because they have no real business plan left and are desperate.


 DISH was a direct competitor then. at the time of the infringement most cable companies did not have a DVR - so you got a TiVo series 1 on cable if you wnated DVR. DISH tried to make a DVR but failed and thus talked to TiVo - then pulled the plug on talks and kept the prototype box from TiVo. The DVRs that DISH made VERY SOON after that are the ones in the suit and they were found to be infringing the patent in a court of law.
Your obvious avoidance of the actual facts of the matter after you have been made aware and no longer can be considered ignorant of them is now simply showing your agenda to bash TiVo and all else after this part of your post is simply to try and do that,

people should simply stop reading your biased, flame posts at this point

PS what DISH did was illegal. as proven in a court of law


----------



## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Wishlists might be stupid to you Bigg, but I guarantee they are useful to some. I have multiple ARWL's set for sports that I like, and don't worry about when or what channel they're on - Tivo just finds and records them. Stuff like NASCAR where you only want the race and not qualifying or practice is easy to do with the boolean search capability in WLs.

You might not care, but this kind of stuff is what owns in my house. You don't have to micromanage them like you do a small-capacity, limited cable DVR.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> DISH was a direct competitor then. at the time of the infringement most cable companies did not have a DVR - so you got a TiVo series 1 on cable if you wnated DVR. DISH tried to make a DVR but failed and thus talked to TiVo - then pulled the plug on talks and kept the prototype box from TiVo. The DVRs that DISH made VERY SOON after that are the ones in the suit and they were found to be infringing the patent in a court of law.
> Your obvious avoidance of the actual facts of the matter after you have been made aware and no longer can be considered ignorant of them is now simply showing your agenda to bash TiVo and all else after this part of your post is simply to try and do that,
> 
> people should simply stop reading your biased, flame posts at this point
> ...


If you're counting DISH as a competitor to TiVo, then you're counting blasting a DISH box with a TiVo as competition to DISH, which is pretty thin, considering that DISH's box didn't work on cable, where most S1's were used.

Ok, then that proves that the patent law is just broken.



slowbiscuit said:


> Wishlists might be stupid to you Bigg, but I guarantee they are useful to some. I have multiple ARWL's set for sports that I like, and don't worry about when or what channel they're on - Tivo just finds and records them. Stuff like NASCAR where you only want the race and not qualifying or practice is easy to do with the boolean search capability in WLs.
> 
> You might not care, but this kind of stuff is what owns in my house. You don't have to micromanage them like you do a small-capacity, limited cable DVR.


I don't micromanage the thing. I do micromanage when sports are on, since DVR'ed sports are pretty dumb.


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## daveak (Mar 23, 2009)

Wishlist feature. :up::up::up:

Never having to use a guide to find programming. Priceless.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Bigg said:


> If you're counting DISH as a competitor to TiVo,


the courts counted DISH a competitor to TiVo, the money awarded TiVo was in large part based on subs the court estimated TiVo lost when people picked DISH and its infringing DVR versus wanting a DVR and DISH not being able to supply a good one if it had not copied TiVo and still had no workable DVR. TiVo competes with every broadcaster that supplies a DVR. But this is just another example of you ignoring the facts to serve your own illformed opinion.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Bigg said:


> Ok, then that proves that the patent law is just broken.


Now you are an attorney? What was done by Dish was "clearly illegal", as determined by the courts, any bit as much as what apple sues over being "clearly illegal." No doubt, Dish knew what they were doing was shady.

I seem to remember Apple launching some suits against New York City for their "Big Apple" logo. Was New York using a logo of an apple "clearly illegal?"


----------



## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> the courts counted DISH a competitor to TiVo, the money awarded TiVo was in large part based on subs the court estimated TiVo lost when people picked DISH and its infringing DVR versus wanting a DVR and DISH not being able to supply a good one if it had not copied TiVo and still had no workable DVR. TiVo competes with every broadcaster that supplies a DVR. But this is just another example of you ignoring the facts to serve your own illformed opinion.


The only way DISH was competing with TiVo is if people wanted to blast a DISH box with an S1. That's a pretty small market. That's really nitpicking, however, when we're looking very clearly at a broken patent system. What's next, a patent for the application of a thick substance containing peanuts to one slice of bread, and a sugary fruity substance to another, and sticking them together?

EDIT: Content update


----------



## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

Bigg said:


> Apple sues people who do things that are clearly illegal


That's fatuous nonsense. The only thing that is "clearly illegal" is that which a court of law rules is illegal. As far as any patent suit is concerned, the unauthorized manufacture or distribution of any device covered in whole or in part by a patent is in violation of federal law.



Bigg said:


> The S2 was a good machine for SD.


'Not compared to the S1 it wasn't. The S1 made good and efficient use of the technologies available when it was designed and introduced. The S2 added almost nothing of significant value, and removed a number of features of significant value, while failing to make use of advancing technologies. Inexpensive Ethernet chipsets were readily available when the S2 was introduced, yet they failed to implement one on the S2. It was easy and fairly inexpensive for the user to add Ethernet networking to the S1, but not the S2. Most S1 DirecTiVos had dual tuners. Most S2s did not. Etc.



Bigg said:


> Now it's just outdated.


The point is, for the time it was introduced, the S2 was already more outdated at its introduction than the S1 when the S1 was introduced, or indeed in many ways more outdated / limited than the S1 at the time the S2 was introduced. The S2 was for the most part a step backwards from the S1.



Bigg said:


> We have Moto, not Sci Atlanta on our system.


The Motorola (especially the software usually loaded on it) is much better than the Cisco, but that's not saying much, at all.



Bigg said:


> That's all a TiVo is really useful for. It's streaming functions don't work very well, and can be easily replicated/replaced by other boxes anyways.


There's a lot wrong with that statement, as well, but the main thing is it ignores the TiVo's recording features, the number and quality of which simply blow the Motorola off the map.



Bigg said:


> The menu navigation, volume, and channel buttons are in the center, which are pretty useful.


Not so much. I don't use the menus very much, at all. Once every two weeks I bring up the list of HD movies to be broadcast during the next two weeks. I do bring up weather and traffic whenever weather is inclement and I am about to leave the house. When a movie comes out in the theaters I would like to see, I create a wishlist for it. Other than that, I use the NPL, and that's about it.



Bigg said:


> With TiVo, you always have to use the 4-way D pad at the top of the peanut to navigate the menus.


Well, first of all, there's more than one Peanut. The S3 Glow Peanut is definitely superior to the S1 / S2 Peanut. Even so, with a TiVo, one needn't navigate the menus that often, certainly not on a daily or by no means on a moment-moment basis. One can, of course, but the TiVo provides much better ways to handle management, if the user takes advantage of them.



Bigg said:


> Never used or wanted either or those on TiVo. Don't care, don't care, don't care.


IOW, you are ignoring the most important and powerful features of the TiVo, I suspect because you have never bothered to even find out what they do for the user. Your initial statement in this thread:



Bigg said:


> What limitations?
> 
> Why wouldn't techies want to use it? It is literally the ultimate DVR, pretty much all PC-based, full Win7, you can add monster hardware to it if you want. You'd want Windows to handle all of the online content, and MCE's 10 foot experience is superb.


This strongly suggests what you seem to think is a highly technical outlook, yet you pooh-pooh the most advanced technical aspects of the TiVo while espousing limiting it to being nothing more than a fancy VCR. It's one thing to say one will not purchase a Ferrari because one does not need the vastly superior power, speed, handling, and responsiveness of a Ferrari, but it is ridiculous to suggest the Ferrari does not possess any features superior to a Ford station wagon. Your statements suggest you think the TiVo offers nothing other DVRs do not.

The list of why one would not want to use a Ceton card is very long indeed but the very top one is: Win7.



Bigg said:


> In the HD world, if I'm not going to watch it on the HDTV with 5.1 surround, I'm just going to iTunes/torrent/stream it anyways.


Not unless you have a device attached to the TV that does this. You conveniently left the cost of this device and its repair and maintenance out of the calculations for the cost of the leased DVR solution. That's disingenuous. Certainly everything I watch is HD 5.1, unless the original content lacked it. (I do watch a lot of old movies.) Whether it is, or not, however, I use one of the TiVos to watch it.



Bigg said:


> The Comcast box has series recordings that are functionally equivalent to SP's.


The Season Pass is the most limited and simplistic of the recording features on the TiVo, yet it generally surpasses the analogous features of most of its competitors. One could easily do without the Season Pass utility on the TiVo (although it does have its place) without losing any functionality. A limited number of the least advanced features on the TiVo is all the other DVRs have, at all.



Bigg said:


> It doesn't have hardware upgradability, but also no responsibility. If it breaks, it's not my problem, we drive over to Branford and they give us a new one.


This has nothing to do with the TiVo. It is a fundamental aspect of the decision matrix for any product one may wish to lease or rent vs. own. The same is true of cars and of houses. Do you rent or lease your house and your car, as well? Some people do, and for good reasons of their own. It doesn't mean rental houses or cars are fundamentally superior to ones one may purchase.



Bigg said:


> You have to use the guide to see what's on.


No, one does not. Clearly you have never truly used a Tivo, the fact you may own one notwithstanding. Using the guide is nothing but a waste of time. Indeed, if one actually uses a Tivo, one needn't know what is on, at all. It does not offer the user any advantage. I neither know nor care, and have absolutely no reason to waste the considerable amount of time it would take to find out what is on, when, or on what channel. There's no reason for me to seek this information. The TiVo knows, and is in general far better than I (or any human) at sifting through all the garbage to find and schedule the programs I would like to see. All I have to do is sit down and press <Play>. There is no good reason for anyone to see what is on, unless they just like wasting time.



Bigg said:


> Guide surfing is the new version of channel surfing. If there's something on tonight, it's often easier to just get it in the grid guide than to search for it.


Both are a complete waste of time to no advantage whatsoever. What is "on" is what is in the Now Playing List. Anything else, the Tivo will handle exceedingly well. A typical CATV lineup consists of perhaps 250 channels showing perhaps 4,000 programs a day or more. Going through the schedule for even one day's programming can easily take 20 - 30 minutes at a minimum. Even limiting it to the evening (why on Earth would one do that?), one still has perhaps 750 - 1000 programs to browse, the vast majority of which are of no interest to the viewer at all. Another large chunk of them are duplicates of shows already aired, and presumably possibly already selected for recording or else already recorded. Sorting out all that junk takes a very long time, but even if the user artificially limits his recording to a handful of channels (again, why?), it still takes a minimum of 15 minutes to apply a very ragged and ineffectual selection of programs to record each and every night. Yet even if by some miracle the user could limit his time commitment to 5 minutes per night, at the end of a 55 year adult TV viewing career, the user will have spent more than 69 days - better than 2 whole months - of his life doing nothing but wading through many hundreds of thousands of uninteresting program listings in order to record and watch a few hundred programs. A more realistic number is probably 7 or 8 months, at the very least, and in many cases perhaps well over a year. Note reducing the number of recordings selected does not inherently reduce the amount of time wasted, either. Compare that with the amount of time I will spend skimming the guide: zero. None one, single, solitary second in the last 11 years, and I expect not one second in the years to come.

I also almost never search for a program. That would be almost as much of a time waster on average as using the guide. My time is valuable. I dislike wasting it, especially when there are much more efficient and effective means of getting something done.



Bigg said:


> You have to get to a list of the hard drive at some point to play back DVR recordings.


Yeah, that's not the point.



Bigg said:


> It works pretty well.


So does a tricycle. Very well, indeed. Do you ride a tricycle to work?



Bigg said:


> It also helps that since it's a smaller box hours wise, other people (my parents) can't junk the thing up too much, so it's easy to find stuff in a short list of programs.


All that means is there probably isn't very much on it one would want to watch. No wonder you don't understand the value of a TiVo. First of all, if it is "junk", then why was it ever recorded in the first place? The DVR should only ideally hold things one wants to watch. While not quite perfect, the TiVo is exceedingly good at making sure what gets recorded is interesting to the user. More to the point, however, you haven't even bothered to think through what you are doing or saying. Let's suppose the NPL has 100 recordings in it, every one selected based upon some set of viewing criteria that seeks to insure the entire list is composed of things deemed enjoyable by the family who owns the TiVo. All 100 are instantly available. The guide, OTOH contains something like 1000 programs for the evening with no filter whatsoever. How is it that a list of 100 pre-selected, high quality programs every one of which is instantly available and virtually every one of which one might at some point like to see you call "junk", while a list of 1000 programs, all of which are either already in progress or not yet available and none of which have had any sort of filtering applied (actually one of the TiVo's features allows the user to filter the guides based on genre preferences, but the guides are still a waste) are somehow preferable to the NPL? It's absurd in the extreme.



Bigg said:


> If we don't watch it in a week or two, it's not going to get watched.


Which is one of the areas where the TiVo shines. It will delete old programs for you, but there is no overriding reason for the user to do so unless it is necessary. It's true that if one has not watched a program during an extended period, then it is less likely that one may wish to view it than some newer material, which is why the TiVo deletes older content of lesser priority while keeping older content of higher priority when making room for new recordings, but until the space is necessary, there is no advantage to deleting older recordings. There is an advantage to deleting programs one has no desire to watch, but this has little to do with when the program was recorded and everything to do with the content itself.

BTW, I often am unable to watch any TV for 2 or 3 weeks at a stretch, so the 2 week number would be absurd in any case. The point, however, is that there are some programs on my TiVos that are over 18 months old that I still might like to watch whenever the whim strikes me. When I do, it's there. The odds of it being in the guide are just about zero.



Bigg said:


> If we wanted to endlessly hoard, we'd get an MCE box with a giant RAID array. Some of what we do with the DVR too is to watch something 13 minutes after it starts recording, and then you can zap the commercials.


One may certainly do that. Indeed, if something is in the NPL but just happens to be recording, I may well select it. I avoid channels with commercials, but in the odd case where the channel does have commercials, I certainly may use the <FF> key.



Bigg said:


> We don't hoard TV shows.


There is no generally acceptable definition of the term "hoard" of which I know that can reasonably be applied to a DVR in any sane usage of the device. If a program is one I have no desire to watch, I delete it, although such management is not an actual requirement. It's just more efficient. Otherwise, when I sit down to watch TV, I may select it to watch. When it was recorded is irrelevant. How many programs are recorded is only relevant in the (very important) sense that my mood and consequently my taste for viewing at any given time will be quite variable. A list of 1 or 2 comdies, 1 or 2 tragedies, 1 or two Westerns, 1 or 2 documentaries, and 1 or 2 mysteries just doesn't cut it, to say the least. This situation is greatly compounded when there are 3 or 4 people watching. When my family and / or friends come over for movie night, it can be difficult to find a movie everyone likes even when there are many hundreds available. With 8 or 10, it's just about impossible.



Bigg said:


> First, you're lazy


Of course I am. Virtually all technical innovation comes as a result of seeking an easier way to accomplish some task. Being successful is all about being lazy.



Bigg said:


> second a 400 disc changer???? That's nuts.


What , you think I am the only one who owns one? Multi-disk Jukeboxes are very popular. That's why Sony, Pioneer, and several higher echelon manufacturers have produced not one but several different models of jukebox ranging from 200 disks on up. They are available in CD, DVD and Blu-ray models for moderately reasonable cost.



Bigg said:


> Can anyone get off their butt and switch discs. Single disc is the way to go, keeps it nice and neat, as you have to put the disc back in it's correct box when you want to watch another one.


First of all, since I am partially paralyzed, I can assure you it is very likely that getting off my butt is not only much more difficult but also much more painful for me than for you. Nonetheless, there is nothing more "nice and neat" about removing DVD cases from a shelf and putting them back one at a time than having a disk carousel store them permanently with out ever again being touched by human hands. 'Even less so for DVDs ripped to a hard drive. It's not a matter of what one would term, "Laziness", however. The simple fact is, when faced with a choice of two paths of action whose outcome is of equal value, virtually every creature, including a human being, will choose the one that involves less effort, even if only by a tiny amount. Changing from one source to another and from one UI to another is a choice that is simply left behind whenever one seeks to select a set of videos to watch. Now that my DVDs are all on the TiVo, we are once again watching them. It wasn't a conscious decision not to watch them that prevented us from doing so.



Bigg said:


> Comcast is overpriced, but cheapish DVR's aren't exactly sleazy. DISH and DirecTV do it a lot more. Apparently, though the DVR actually costs $15 since supposedly they wouldn't charge us the box fee if we had CC's. Still a 3-year payback for TiVo though.


I don't know what you are trying to say. A Cisco DVR costs a large MSO like TWC or Comcast $450, without software. Abeve that, the MSO has software, shipping, storage, and repair costs for the DVR. Since Dish and DirecTV both manufacture their own DVRs, they no doubt cost them respectively less, but they still will without fail recover the cost of the DVR from the average consumer. If they do not recover those costs directly in up-front fees, then they recover them by inflating the cost of their service to cover the deficit. The sleazy parts of the latter are it forces the consumenr to pay for a DVR (or two to three), even if they do not use one. It is also sleazy in that it makes the 3rd party device artificially unattractive, since going with the 3rd party device forces the consumer to pay for TWO DVRs, one owned by the MSO, the other by the consumer, even though the consumer only uses one. Of course, if the DVR is offered for no additional cost whatsoever, there is nothing preventing the consumer from getting the CATV DVR as well as the 3rd party unit.



Bigg said:


> We pretty much keep everything for quite a while.


I doubt you do so if you are leasing it. Regardless, the decision to keep a device beyond what you consider to be its useful like is entirely yours, and the fact it further devalues the unit's resale value is part and parcel of that decision. You must derive some perceived benefit from keeping the unit, or else why do you keep it?



Bigg said:


> ??? You can record and play back shows on a 160GB hard drive with no problems, as long as you don't hoard them.


There is that word again. The primary purpose of a DVR is to hold videos one wishes to view. A DVR mostly void of desirable videos has no immediate value to the owner, no matter what he paid or what his future plans may be. The more desirable videos on the DVR, the more value.



Bigg said:


> MRV is very significant if you have more than one TV.


Not true. I have more than one TV. I also have more than one TiVo.



Bigg said:


> We basically only have one, so it's a non-issue here.


I have more than one TiVo. In fact, I have three. I don't use MRV. I don't heavily discount its value to people who do use MRV, however.



Bigg said:


> Who cares. Didn't use them for 6 years, not going to miss them now.


That's got to be among the most fatuous statements I've seen in a while. If you have never used something, then of course you won't miss it. It does not change the fact it is perhaps the very most powerful DVR feature ever devised. You purchased a Ferarri, and never bothered to get it out of 3rd gear, or go over 45 MPH.



Bigg said:


> Who cares. Title and keyword is more than enough. If I'm searching, I know what I'm looking for before I search.


Now that statement is just utterly, knuckle-dragging, poop slinging-stupid. No wonder you never enjoyed your TiVo. The most important utility of a DVR, by orders of magnitude, is to have the things you want *WAITING FOR YOU*. In over 11 years, I have searched for perhaps 30 or 40 titles, at most. The TiVos record dozens of programs every day. The content quality is better than 80%. Exactly what is superior about you spending time searching for a handful of programs and missing hundreds of better ones? You appparently have not only not gotten out of 3rd gear with your Ferrari, you're getting out of the car, getting behind it, and pushing it everywhere.



Bigg said:


> I had one for 6 years, I played with Wishlist and Suggestions, to quickly realize they are stupid.


Not wasting potentially more than a year of your life is stupid? Boosting the quality of the programs you watch by as much as 70% or more is stupid? I suspect you did not "play with them", I suspect you played at them. You certainly did not use them.



Bigg said:


> I can see the advantage of a PC-based solution, it's just a little overkill for my needs now.


That statement is nonsensical.



Bigg said:


> You watch too much TV.


Perhaps he does, but it is not your call to make. It's his. What's more, just because he juggles a lot of Season Passes, etc, does not necessarily mean he watches, comparatively speaking, a lot of TV, although he may. The most fruitful and by all means most important task set before the DVR user is to minimize the volume of low quality incoming video, thus maximizing the value of the recorded content. Fortunately, the TiVo has a large array of flexible tools to make this task easier. I have a similar number of wishlists and season passes, not to mention a carefully managed set of thumb selections. Some weeks I watch no TV at all. Others I may watch more than 20 hours, although this is not usual. The quantity is not important, however. What is of utmost importance is the quality, and the very most important avenue to that end is having a large and highly diverse palette from which to choose. That means filling the TiVos and the video server. Some of the videos I have may never be viewed even once. It doesn't matter, because having them means I can *CHOOSE* not to view them, or on any moment's slightest whim to view them.



Bigg said:


> Who cares about wish lists. Yes, it has the same guide data.


Evidently you haven't a clue. Wishlists don't have any data, at all. They are a set of filters - an exceedingly powerful set of filters. A wishlist in and of itself does not contain any channel or guide information whatsoever. One may create a wishlist against a completely empty guide database. What's more, the programs that will be selected by the wishlist do not have to be in the guide data. They don't even have to exist, yet. Had the TiVo existed in 1977, I could have created a wishlist for a movie that would never exist, one starring, say, Steve Martin and Humphrey Bogart. Since Bogart died when Martin was only 12, they could never be in a movie together - until Carl Reiner made one.

OK, getting away from a slightly ridiculous example to a very real one, I have a wishlist that has been on one or the other of my TiVos ever since they created the wishlist. It is for Scavenger Hunt, one of my favorite films and of the members of my family. Unfortunately, it has not been broadcast on any channel (that I receive, anyway) since the TiVo was introduced. I could have spent the last 10 years searching endlessly every week for the movie in the title search, or worse yet in the guide, or I can have done what I did instead: I created the wisthlist and forgot about it. Iron Man and Star Trek have been there about a year. The Mummy was there for quite a few months, as well. There are a couple of dozen more. None have been there longer than Scavenger Hunt (it was the first wishlist I ever created), but some have been there longer than Iron Man.

Please explain to me how it was "stupid" for me to set up those wishlists? Explain how it would have been "smarter" for me to spend 40 minutes or more every week searching for all the movies I want to see but do not know whether they are one one of the channels or not, yet?



Bigg said:


> I want to get out of the UI as quickly as possible and get to my show. That's what the Comcast DVR does with it's butt ugly but lean, mean, and efficient UI.


I turn on the TV. I select a movie to play. I press <Play>. How much more quickly do you suggest it could be done? I spend ZERO time searching through a guide for stuff to record. I spend ZERO time managing the space on the drives. I spend ZERO time worrying about what is or is not on, when, or on what channel. How much leaner can it get?



Bigg said:


> They promised to revolutionize TV, and all they did was introduce another standalone DVR.


And you believed the announcement? First of all, that's not a promise. That's just hype. A promise is, "We will be introducing a gigabit interface on the new TiVo." A promise is, "We will be introducing the new DirecTiVo on March 2." I wasn't impressed by the announcement, but it didn't set any expectations for me, so despite the fact I cannot recommend the Premier, it was in no way a disappointment. It definitely fails to qualify as a broken promise. The only disappointment I have had with TiVo was their failure to deliver the (promised) M-Card support on the S3.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Bigg said:


> Apple sues people who do things that are clearly illegal, even if it is fun to read about the new Apple products before launch. TiVo is suing a sort of competitor because they have no real business plan left and are desperate.


You are either a Dish employee or totally ignorant of both Tivo's business plan and the facts involving the current litigation.

Tivo is anything but a patent troll. The amount of profit (and sub base) that Dish has achieved directly attributed to what has since proven to be little more than outright theft (followed by an all-too-typical-ethically-challenged gaming of the legal system).


----------



## HellFish (Jan 28, 2007)

Thanks for the fun thread. I've laughed, I've cried, I've wanted to pull my hair out, all while reading these hallow posts.



Bigg said:


> Apple sues people who do things that are clearly illegal.


A link to the previously mentioned NYC vs Apple 2008 squabble: http://www.pcmech.com/article/new-york-sues-apple-apple-sues-new-york/

Why do you make a Flyers fan defend NYC? WHY????? Of course, Apple Computers was born in litigation, so maybe they just think it's a way of life



Bigg said:


> I've taken apart my dead TiVo, and it's not that much different than a PC from a few years before it's time. They basically took the CPU, RAM, and video card and flattened it onto a motherboard, and then took a caseless PSU and a hard drive, and stuck it into a desktop case with some plastic on the front to make it look nice. Highly innovative there. Sheesh.


You're a silly goose.


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## HellFish (Jan 28, 2007)

First of all, lrhorer,
It's nice to agree with you for once 



ZeoTiVo said:


> then wishlist got that major overhaul and had better categories. Now I have a simple Holiday wishlist that runs year round - kids are watching some other recorded show and go - hey the Great Pumpkin is on tomorrow, oh wait this recorded 3 days ago, awwhh.
> No problem - the Holiday wishlist recorded it, lets watch it next. yyyaaayyy!


ZEO, Do you have a link that explains this, or can you provide more details on how you set this up? I have to admit, I'm a WL novice.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> the courts counted DISH a competitor to TiVo


It doesn't matter if they are a competitor, or not. Just because Matel is not a competitor of Chevrolet does not mean Matel can take a Chevrolet patent of GMs, modify it to work in a toy, and sell the toy without GM's authorization. A patent covers any use and distribution of an item, regardless of the uses to which the item is put in practice or in what industry it is employed.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

mattack said:


> I don't deny that, but one of the Tivos is a S1 that I should probably unplug some day, but it is sometimes useful recording from the few analog channels we still have.


My sister's only source of broadcast programming is a Sony SAT-60 DirecTiVo I gave her for Christmas in 1999. Well, actually a lightning storm took out that TiVo in early 2000, and Sony replaced the unit under warranty. It's been going strong ever since. I have a 1999 unsubbed Phlips S1 TiVo I still use for making screenshots from my S3 and THD TiVos.



mattack said:


> I have no proof it won't die, but you have no proof it is "likely" to die either. My S1s have been running for I think 9 years (err, one is unplugged.. so one has)..


I upgraded the drives in both TiVos, but since the fried unit in 2000, they've both been running just about continuously.



mattack said:


> My S3 & TivoHD have been running a few years.


The S3 Tivo I bought in September 2006 had its Ethernet port die after 2 1/2 months, and was also replaced under warranty. Other than drive upgrades (5 of them), the replacement unit, the S3 I bought in June 2007, and the THD I bought in December 2007 are all still doing fine. BTW, if I had gone with TWC leased DVRs ( gag!!), it would have cost me $2271 to date. With the MSDs, my TiVos cost me $2185, so I have better than broken even, and I still have three fully functional TiVos to show for it, each of which could easily sell for $200 on ebay. From now on, I'm saving $35 every month (after including the CableCard lease) by not having TWC owned DVRs. Had I waited a few months before buying my first S3, I could have saved considerably more, but there was no way on Earth I was going to put up with that @#%[email protected]% 8300 HD another minute longer.



mattack said:


> Plus, the thing most likely to die is the hard drive, which can be easily replaced.


Especially if one upgrades the stock drive and sits it on the shelf. The next most likely item to fail is the power supply - also easily replaced.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

HellFish said:


> First of all, lrhorer,
> It's nice to agree with you for once


Will wonders never cease?


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

FYI - that comcast DVR you're so proud of... you're supporting TiVo still.

TiVo doesn't sue Scientific Atlanta, Motorola, etc., BECAUSE they've licensed TiVo's (and ReplayTV) patents. Everyone BUT Dish has paid TiVo (and ReplayTV) licensing fees.

Want to not support TiVo? Get rid of that DVR, and get a MythTV box, or Windows Media Center box, both of which ARE NOT in violation of the patent (and never have been). And because of that, neither has paid any license fees to TiVo, nor has TiVo gone after Microsoft or anyone else for it.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

lrhorer said:


> That's fatuous nonsense...........
> .........


That (post #73) is the longest post I can remember seeing!  Just sayin'

I bet it was fun to be one of your employees, you micromanaging SOB.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

lrhorer said:


> 'Not compared to the S1 it wasn't...


Just because the S2 didn't use the technology as efficiently as the S1 doesn't mean it was a bad product. It still worked very well for it's day.

It was very easy to add Ethernet to an S2. It's called a USB adapter. Had one, and it pushed as much data as the poor TiVo could (about 10mbps max).

TiVo doesn't have any better DVR functionalities than the Moto box. They both reliably record and play back shows, have series link, etc. In many ways the Moto interface is faster, leaner, and more efficient.

You need menus to select and manage recordings, times, etc. No DVR, not even TiVo is smart enough to get it right all the time, especially when football starts ****ing up the schedules.

The S2 Peanut was the most amazing remote I've ever used. The Comcast one is very good, but nothing will match the old Peanut. I sort of dream of using some software to map that thing through an MCE 7 box. Never used the Glo one, so I'm not familiar with it.

All DVR's are fancy VCR's. They add random access, watching one show while recording another, a guide interface instead of time, and smartly dealing with schedule changes.

What device are you talking about? I already have a laptop and an older desktop, both of which can torrent and play video back.

Season Pass is what TiVo is all about. Heck, even the VCR had a primitive recurring recording. To say that Season Pass is insignificant is to say that TiVo is insignificant.

I said it was a tradeoff, not a fundamentally better system. We could buy a Win7 MCE box or TiVo and maintain it, or we could rent a cableco box. It's a tradeoff.

If I didn't use the guide once in a while, I wouldn't ever know what was on, and I wouldn't know about new shows that I now like. It's the newer, smarter way to channel surf. I don't guide surf or even use the TV every day, but when I do, I sometimes find interesting stuff that's worth my time of surfing.

I can guide surf in a couple of minutes. I don't surf SD channels, and we get a total of 38 HD channels, of which I actually care about maybe a dozen. I don't urf sports channels, since I know when games are on based on the teams' own websites.

We often do use the NPL equivalent, and it always has something good to watch. However, I don't turn the thing on looking for something to watch, I know what I want to watch, and when I'm ready to watch it, I go look for it on the DVR. I don't need 1000 programs to do that. 5 or 10 is plenty.

I don't want an episode to be deleted. I want to watch it. I will watch it, and then delete it. Simple enough.

What channels don't have commercials. The only ones I can think of are QVC, and the TV Guide channel, and I don't watch either of those.

Movies? OnDemand, Amazon, and Netflix have that covered. Recording old movies off of TV and having to zap the commercials ever 10 minutes doesn't appeal much to me when there are much better options.

Blu-ray changers aren't very popular now, and there's a reason. Sony is the only company to make them.

Just put the Blu-ray player next to you, and get a long cable from Monoprice to run to the TV. My grandfather, who is elderly, and can barely walk, did this with his entire A/V rack, and he controls it all, even without the remote from his easy chair. Works great for him. His is all SD/analog, but there's no reason it wouldn't work with HDMI and digital equipment.

Oh great, pay a ton of money to permanently store a bunch of stuff I'm probably never going to watch again. Good plan there.

All the providers are subsidizing their DVR's. Comcast is doing it less than DISH and DirecTV.

The DVR time shifts, and, if used properly, holds stuff for a few hours or days until it is convenient for the user to watch.

Wishlists are pointless. I want it to record what I want it to record. It shouldn't be telling me what to watch. I tell it what to record.

First of all, why you're recording crappy TV movies is beyond me, but Scavenger Hunt is easily available as a VHSRip on bittorrent.

How about spend 30 seconds searching for it, and download it, and call it a day?

No, I didn't believe the announcement, although I was kind of hoping for a whole home DVR.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Bigg said:


> TiVo doesn't have any better DVR functionalities than the Moto box.



thanks, saved me having to read the rest of the nonsense


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

dlfl said:


> That (post #73) is the longest post I can remember seeing!  Just sayin'


Yeah, I know. Goofy, ain't it? His previous post was just so wrong in so many ways.



dlfl said:


> I bet it was fun to be one of your employees, you micromanaging SOB.


Actually, not at all. I manage every aspect of every device I own - after all, I own them, don't I? I don't own my employees, though. I create the designs, hand them over to the techs, and let them rip and tear. There are QC procedures in place, of course, but I school myself never to look over their shoulders. I make myself instantly available (as much as possible) if they ever need help, but I never offer unsolicited advice. I inform them of any deadlines and set up a notification schedule when appropriate, but I never interrupt them demanding a status report. When an outage is underway, I never bug them to try and find out when service will be restored.

Of course, as an engineer, I do make sure my designs are complete literally right down to the very last nut and screw.


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

Bigg said:


> Wishlists *Suggestions* are pointless. I want it to record what I want it to record. It shouldn't be telling me what to watch. I tell it what to record.


FYP.

Wishlists are about seeking out something you want to watch.
Miss an episode of a TV show? Set an auto record wishlist with the show title and episode name and forget about it. The Tivo will record it if it ever re-airs.
I did this with an episode of Lie To Me.
I also had a long standing (about 2 years) wishlist to record All in the Family.
I totally forgot about it until I started seeing episodes in my NPL recently.

AND I somewhat disagree that Suggestions are pointless. If you use the thumb rating system that TiVo has put in place, you just MIGHT see something that is of interest.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

steve614 said:


> FYP.
> 
> Wishlists are about seeking out something you want to watch.
> Miss an episode of a TV show? Set an auto record wishlist with the show title and episode name and forget about it. The Tivo will record it if it ever re-airs.
> ...


Suggestions are pointless too. But getting a show is called a Season Pass.


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## innocentfreak (Aug 25, 2001)

Bigg said:


> Suggestions are pointless too. But getting a show is called a Season Pass.


So is setting a wishlist. A wishlist is more of a catch-all though whether it is multiple channels or for shows that aren't in the guide yet.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Bigg said:


> Suggestions are pointless too. But getting a show is called a Season Pass.


do you have any idea how a TiVo actually works?


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

I've been using TiVo for approximately 10 years and I've had 4 models. I've never used Suggestions. I just don't see the point. I record plenty enough on my own


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

cwoody222 said:


> I've been using TiVo for approximately 10 years and I've had 4 models. I've never used Suggestions. I just don't see the point. I record plenty enough on my own


yes, I have turned off suggestions as well. With the better wishlist control they introduced a few years ago I can setup my own, much better focused "suggestions"


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Bigg said:


> Suggestions are pointless too.


This is bogus, they are simply pointless to you. Like Amazon recommends books, and Netflix can recommend movies, I use suggestions to a very high level.

I don't read magazines or sites about new shows, and I miss most previews/commercials. So, for me, suggestions are a great way to find out about a new show. If we like it, i'll set up a season pass, if not, give a quick thumbs down and let the TiVo pick something new for me to explore (or delete).


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> do you have any idea how a TiVo actually works?


Did you read the part about me having a TiVo for over 6 years? I know darn well how they work, and how Suggestions and Wishlists [don't] work.

FYI, it was an S2, if that makes any difference, so no, I am not familiar with a Premiere.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Bigg said:


> Did you read the part about me having a TiVo for over 6 years? I know darn well how they work, and how Suggestions and Wishlists [don't] work.
> 
> FYI, it was an S2, if that makes any difference, so no, I am not familiar with a Premiere.


I know people who have owned and driven cars for decades. They still don't know how to drive properly and likely never will. Some because they think they now everything others because they are too lazy - which results in the same problem - they refuse to take the time and/or make the effort to learn proper driving skills.

Thanks,


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Bigg said:


> Did you read the part about me having a TiVo for over 6 years? I know darn well how they work, and how Suggestions and Wishlists [don't] work.
> 
> FYI, it was an S2, if that makes any difference, so no, I am not familiar with a Premiere.


yes, I have read your posts and you seem to be confused between suggestions and wishlists - both of which are present on the S2


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

We have Suggestions turned on to serve as our free space indicator primarily but I have on occasion when my wife has gone to bed found things to watch in them and also on used wishlists to catch missed episodes and movies and find both very useful.

Scott


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

atmuscarella said:


> I know people who have owned and driven cars for decades. They still don't know how to drive properly and likely never will. Some because they think they now everything others because they are too lazy - which results in the same problem - they refuse to take the time and/or make the effort to learn proper driving skills.
> 
> Thanks,


We used the TiVo pretty hard, it was constantly recording stuff, some of which we decided was junk and deleted, some of which we watched, but we were not underutilizing it in the least.



ZeoTiVo said:


> yes, I have read your posts and you seem to be confused between suggestions and wishlists - both of which are present on the S2


I know the difference, I just forget sometimes since I haven't been in those menus in years. I treated them as one in the same- useless junk. I want my DVR to do what *I* want it to do, not what it wants to do.


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

Bigg said:


> I know the difference, I just forget sometimes since I haven't been in those menus in years. I treated them as one in the same- useless junk. I want my DVR to do what *I* want it to do, not what it wants to do.


WishLists never do things you don't tell them to.

I use WishLists in three primary ways:

As Season Passes for shows that are on multiple channels (usually HBO and SHO) because it helps with conflicts and prioritization if TiVo has more options to record episodes.

As NON-Auto Record WishLists for when I want to see if my favorite actors have upcoming appearances in shows/movies/talkshows. I find appearances like this all the time and select specific episodes to record at my choosing.

As an Auto-Record WishList for an upcoming show/episode that isn't in the Guide yet but that I want to make sure I don't forget about.

Those uses are nothing at all like Suggestions.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

I also use a wishlist to capture repeated seasons of shows that change their title each year. This would include items such as "the amazing race" or "survivor" as they would need a new SP for each season. For sports, they can work wonders as well.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

I just used SP's. They worked fine.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

For my two examples, and many others, you need to set up a new SP for each season. The Amazing Race 17 would only capture that season of the show.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

jrtroo said:


> For my two examples, and many others, you need to set up a new SP for each season. The Amazing Race 17 would only capture that season of the show.


Any reality show that has 17 seasons is not worth watching anymore.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Bigg said:


> Any reality show that has 17 seasons is not worth watching anymore.


I love how when you are shown how you are wrong you reach in your bag for this "well no one should watch that anyway" argument. You should realize how immature that makes you look.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> I love how when you are shown how you are wrong you reach in your bag for this "well no one should watch that anyway" argument. You should realize how immature that makes you look.


Ok, fine, then take 5 seconds to make a new season pass so you can waste your time on garbage that's in it's 17th season. I've made new SP's for 2nd or 3rd or maybe 4th seasons of stuff before, it doesn't kill me. Did it on TiVo, will do it on Comcast. But not for the 17th season.


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## 1999cobra (Nov 10, 2005)

Bigg said:


> Ok, fine, then take 5 seconds to make a new season pass so you can waste your time on garbage that's in it's 17th season. I've made new SP's for 2nd or 3rd or maybe 4th seasons of stuff before, it doesn't kill me. Did it on TiVo, will do it on Comcast. But not for the 17th season.


4 pages of nonsense about you dumping Tivo - Who gives a rat's *ss what you do/did - and or why - and most importantly why are you still posting here if that's what you did?

Go away you are only showing up as a trouble making troll - I doubt you ever had Tivo - just a Tivo want to be but can't cause you can't afford it, go TF' away ...!!!


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

Hook, line, and sinker!


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## Aero 1 (Aug 8, 2007)

ZeoTiVo said:


> I love how when you are shown how you are wrong you reach in your bag for this "well no one should watch that anyway" argument. You should realize how immature that makes you look.


he tried to tell me in another thread that my harmony "one button activity" sucks and that having a table full of remotes is, listen to this, better than having a universal because they wont have the "specific buttons" that are meant to be there.


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## 1999cobra (Nov 10, 2005)

Aero 1 said:


> he tried to tell me in another thread that my harmony "one button activity" sucks and that having a table full of remotes is, listen to this, better than having a universal because they wont have the "specific buttons" that are meant to be there.


He's either 11 years old or on drugs or just another *DRUNK*...!!!


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

1999cobra said:


> 4 pages of nonsense about you dumping Tivo - Who gives a rat's *ss what you do/did - and or why - and most importantly why are you still posting here if that's what you did?
> 
> Go away you are only showing up as a trouble making troll - I doubt you ever had Tivo - just a Tivo want to be but can't cause you can't afford it, go TF' away ...!!!


I started the thread so that people would know the difference between TiVo and Comcast's DVR. It boils down to: Comcast DVR good for most people, if you need MRV and can't get it from Comcast, TiVo is the way to go.



Aero 1 said:


> he tried to tell me in another thread that my harmony "one button activity" sucks and that having a table full of remotes is, listen to this, better than having a universal because they wont have the "specific buttons" that are meant to be there.


I'd much rather spend 5 seconds just doing whatever I need to do on the OEM remote than trying to figure out what button Harmony mapped to what. Those were the coolest products on paper, until I actually tried to use one, and then I realized how bad they are.


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## Krandor (Jun 10, 2004)

Bigg said:


> Harmony remote was one of the best investments I ever made.
> 
> I love throughout this whole thread that just because YOU don't like somethign or don't use something, it is junk and useless for everybody. Or you don't like the 17th season of a show so nobody should. That just comes accross as very arrogant.
> 
> I like and use LOTS of features in the TiVo that are not in Comcast. You may not and may find them junk and that is your opinion. I do use them so a Comcast DVR would be very inferiour for many reasons beyond MRV.


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## HellFish (Jan 28, 2007)

> I'd much rather spend 5 seconds just doing whatever I need to do on the OEM remote than trying to figure out what button Harmony mapped to what. Those were the coolest products on paper, until I actually tried to use one, and then I realized how bad they are.


Err, before dismissing universals, you realize it's the user that does the mapping with harmony remotes, right? For the few buttons that don't have hard buttons on the Harmonys, you can add them to the touchscreen, and name them whatever you want. Listening to how you have your TV setup, your parents would probably benefit from a universal. They wouldn't have to worry about the inputs settings on the TV, Receiver, etc when deciding to watch Cable or a DVD.



> I started the thread so that people would know the difference between TiVo and Comcast's DVR. It boils down to: Comcast DVR good for most people, if you need MRV and can't get it from Comcast, TiVo is the way to go.


If that's what you have learned in the past 100+ posts, so be it. Wishlists, added capacity, ability to switch between providers, preferring to own vs rent, etc be damned!


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## 1999cobra (Nov 10, 2005)

HellFish said:


> Err, before dismissing universals, you realize it's the user that does the mapping with harmony remotes, right? For the few buttons that don't have hard buttons on the Harmonys, you can add them to the touchscreen, and name them whatever you want. Listening to how you have your TV setup, your parents would probably benefit from a universal. They wouldn't have to worry about the inputs settings on the TV, Receiver, etc when deciding to watch Cable or a DVD.
> 
> If that's what you have learned in the past 100+ posts, so be it. Wishlists, added capacity, ability to switch between providers, preferring to own vs rent, etc be damned!


Glad to see someone else has figured out this is a KID ...!!!


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Bigg said:


> I started the thread so that people would know the difference between TiVo and Comcast's DVR. It boils down to: Comcast DVR good for most people, if you need MRV and can't get it from Comcast, TiVo is the way to go.


it boils down to you have no idea how to use your TiVo, kid.


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## Aero 1 (Aug 8, 2007)

ZeoTiVo said:


> it boils down to you have no idea how to use your TiVo, kid.


Or a universal remote.


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## A2Tivo (Sep 11, 2004)

An HD Tivo does provide a better user experience than a cable DVR, it offers more features, and it generally pays for itself after about 3 years. However, the Tivo costs are front loaded. If you have short term vision (like a college kid) or are a technophobe and don't want to own the equipment, then the cable DVR makes more sense for you. It's all about choice and making the right choice for your situation.

The bigger decision for me is what I do when my 3.5 year old S3 craps out? I have to admit that while I love the record/playback features of the Tivo, they have a very poor implementation of streaming services, and absolutely no capability for the likes of Hulu.

I'm seriously considering ditching my cable TV when the Tivo goes. I can get Amazon, Netflix and Youtube on my PS3, and even Hulu, TV.com, etc. via a Playon server on my PC. Coupled with the $70 HD TV card on my PC, I can also record OTA content. Granted, the various UI's needed to access all of this content is annoying, but I don't face any of the glitches (freezes, pixelation, etc.) that streaming on the Tivo presents, and the price is right.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

A2Tivo said:


> ...
> The bigger decision for me is what I do when my 3.5 year old S3 craps out? I have to admit that while I love the record/playback features of the Tivo, they have a very poor implementation of streaming services, and absolutely no capability for the likes of Hulu....


If your S3 does craps out it will likely be a hard drive. I would replace the hard drive, dump cable and use it for OTA, add Netflix and/or a Roku box and be done. This of course assumes you have Internet access that isn't tied to your cable sub, if you do it might be just as cheap to keep basic cable to get their bundle discount.

Good Luck,


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

HellFish said:


> Err, before dismissing universals, you realize it's the user that does the mapping with harmony remotes, right?...
> If that's what you have learned in the past 100+ posts, so be it. Wishlists, added capacity, ability to switch between providers, preferring to own vs rent, etc be damned!


I know you can custom map stuff, but the remote doesn't physically have the same hard buttons that the OEM remotes do. Plus, the OEM remotes have the advantage of basically no setup (just punched the Onkyo code into the Comcast remote for volume), and they are price included.



A2Tivo said:


> An HD Tivo does provide a better user experience than a cable DVR, it offers more features, and it generally pays for itself after about 3 years. However, the Tivo costs are front loaded. If you have short term vision (like a college kid) or are a technophobe and don't want to own the equipment, then the cable DVR makes more sense for you. It's all about choice and making the right choice for your situation.


I am actually more averse to monthly fees than to up front costs, but the flexibility to switch providers with no penalty and additional features of the Comcast box in that case make it make sense. The second point here is that TiVo is in a tough position, as if you need more features and capacity, and want to frontload the cost, then MCE 7 is the obvious choice. If we needed more space and were willing to be locked into Comcast, I would build an MCE 7 box long before a TiVo, as then I can load it up with a pair (or more) of $99 1TB drives, and add any Windows software to the system.


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