# What's a TiVo, the music video!



## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

I was just looking at a few videos on You Tube and came across this:






It does a fairly good job of advertising a series 1 TiVo and what it does!


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Its brilliant.

If they had used a UK version of that instead of the ridiculous VCR video I have sitting over there they might have sold hundreds of thousands of units in the UK.

What might have been............................................


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## Ashley (Apr 20, 2002)

Interesting to compare it with a 1976 promo for Betamax. It had to explain how a video recorder could be useful!


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Ashley said:


> Interesting to compare it with a 1976 promo for Betamax. It had to explain how a video recorder could be useful!


OK but I think a video recorder is really a far simpler concept to convey as it was just the film version of a tape sound recording machine.

A PVR of the Tivo sort is a whole new way of thinking.


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

I prefer 




One can only dream about such things in a backward country like the UK 

Automan.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Is it the same lady in these various Tivo Tour guides preloaded on the Series 2? I think she looked sexier in the black and white pencil top:-

See

www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-N5E1dVDvg

and

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtBloAwCFG0

etc

No I think the THX video must have her more attractive younger sister although the two voices do sound very similar. They also should have chosen the white/silver version and not the Black version of the S3 remote to make it match the box colour better.


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## 6022tivo (Oct 29, 2002)

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tivo+startup

I thought the UK tivo start up was Tivo Worldwide. I did not relalise it was for the UK thomsons only.


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## Ashley (Apr 20, 2002)

Automan said:


> I prefer
> 
> 
> 
> ...


She looks as if she's about to walk out of that dress


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## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

6022tivo said:


> http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tivo+startup
> 
> I thought the UK tivo start up was Tivo Worldwide. I did not relalise it was for the UK thomsons only.


It was pretty much universal for version 1 TiVos. I have a Philips US TiVo in the attic and the startup sequence is identical and is actually continued in the entire background theming of the menus. Our startup has a harsh jar into the cloudy blue background whereas all the US version 1 TiVos continued with images of cogs turning in the background (with the occasional TiVo Guy scooting past on a slide - all very non-obtrusive in the background). I think you get to see this briefly in the "what's a tivo" song video.


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## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

Whatching that series 3 promotional video upsets me.

Why are Sky so intent in keeping us in the 20th century with Sky HD when I KNOW their hardware is capable of doing at least what TiVo can do - and possibly much more with a bit of ingenuity (which I also know they have in NDS as I know some people who work there - some of the most talented people in the industry).

I understand their argument that keeping it simple will make it easier for more people to migrate from Sky to Sky+/Sky HD but at the end of the day, we need to move on.

I hope at some point Sky will see the light and give us something with a lot more functionality than the lego EPG we currrently have with virtually no searching abilities. I know they can do it if they wanted to - I just hope they do it sooner rather than later.

with regards to Sky, getting TiVo on it is a pipe dream to be honest, unless someone can stand up and get some form of anti-competitive ruling to stand (unlikely). All I want is a box that has functionality that comes close to TiVo. I'm using Sky+ a lot more these days now that my TiVo has its own Sky box to play with and record from - mainly because I plan to get a Sky HD box in the next 6 months and I'm trying to aclimatise myself with the reduced functionality. Ok, I also get a noticeably sharper picture too with far less artefacts on my plasma TV, but I was prepared to put up with that in the past to get the functionality of TiVo.

I hope the cable petition works - but for me that's also a pipe dream as cable will arrive here around the same time as cold fusion engines become the norm in cars (and I'm only 5 miles from an area that gets cable).

sigh.

rant over - new CSI episode to watch.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

A warning to others - the "What's A Tivo" jingle is horribly catchy because of all the rhyming in it and has been going round and round in my head since a little snooze I had earlier this evening due to rather a poor night's sleep last night. I suppose I did watch it a couple of times to make sure I didn't miss anything in it.

It strikes me as ironic that they kept on going on about giving "your VCR the heaveho" as it rhymes when what a Tivo really does even better is to give the much more recent and supposedly cutting edge DVD-R the heaveho.


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## katman (Jun 4, 2002)

Automan said:


> I prefer
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Interesting that it is now referred to as a DMR Digital Media Recorder rather than a PVR Personal Video Recorder.

That is such a cool bit of kit.

GRRRRRRRRRRRR to no UK Tivo3


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

katman said:


> Interesting that it is now referred to as a DMR Digital Media Recorder rather than a PVR Personal Video Recorder.
> 
> That is such a cool bit of kit.
> 
> GRRRRRRRRRRRR to no UK Tivo3


PVR always seemed stupid as there isn't a video tape anywhere in sight in a PVR.

A PTR (Personal Television Recorder) would have been more logical although also means a Pre-Trial Review in the context of something called the LVT (Leasehold Valuation Tribunal) that I have also recently been involved in. But there again LVT means Land Valuation Tax to another group of people I know........................


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## katman (Jun 4, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtBloAwCFG0 Tivo Tour 2


I thnk that clip explaines EXACTLY what Tivo can do ans shows how easy it is to use. that should have been running as a continuous loop in UK stores except for when actual live demos were being carried out.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

katman said:


> I thnk that clip explaines EXACTLY what Tivo can do ans shows how easy it is to use. that should have been running as a continuous loop in UK stores except for when actual live demos were being carried out.


Yes if there had been a demo loop running showing exactly how you hooked a Tivo up to an OnDigital box and a cable box as well as a Sky box with the IR leads and then all the great Search by Name and Season Pass features (no Wishlists of course back in 2000) and Save Until I Delete and Save Until Expiry Date etc I would have bought one there and then back in 2000.

Instead of which as the pristine Tivo box from the guy in Crawley giving away his unmodified Tivo showed (my Tivo only came in a brown box with a white Tivo sticker on it as a Day One store demonstrator) the marketing only prominently displayed a logo showing Sky Digital compatibility. And when I asked the guy in the Currys store in 2000 how a Tivo worked with OnDigital he simply didn't seem too sure about it or whether it could or not referring me to the Tivo 0870 number.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Many tivo owners still never venture further than the analogue tuner for channels.
That's a great loss IMO.

It's not immediately obvious that tivo integrates so well with freeview/sky/cable digiboxes,
i.e. includes the sky/cable channels in the tivo EPG and uses the digibox as a dumb tuner.

But then digiboxes of any kind weren't anywhere near as common at release time in 2000 anyway,.


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## katman (Jun 4, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> Yes if there had been a demo loop running showing exactly how you hooked a Tivo {snip} I would have bought one there and then back in 2000.
> 
> And when I asked the guy in the Currys store in 2000 how a Tivo worked with OnDigital he simply didn't seem too sure about it or whether it could or not referring me to the Tivo 0870 number.


When I went into Dixons it was a similar story. They just said they couldnt demonstrate it because they didnt have a subscription 

I got mine during the Powerhouse £99 clearout. I was staying at my Mums in Lancaster and drove to Powerhouse in Preston. they didnt have one but they rang Bolton and they had one so I reserved it and drove to Bolton 

Wish I had bought two


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## katman (Jun 4, 2002)

mikerr said:


> Many tivo owners still never venture further than the analogue tuner for channels.
> That's a great loss IMO.


It depends on what channels people watch. Many people are still happy with the 4 or 5 terrestrial channels.

When Tivo was the family PVR most of the recordings were off Terrestrial as that is what we mainly watch. I deliberately DIDNT and still dont have Sky 101,102,103,104 selected so that the digibox remains available for viewing SKY when Tivo is recording from channels available on Terrestrial. (Ch5 terrestrial isnt watchable here unless you are a fan of blizzards!)

Now that SKY+ is the main family PVR, Tivo has once again become MINE...All ^H^H^H mostly MINE and most of its recordings are now from the SKY 520+ range on discovery/NatGeo/History channels


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

My experience of the internal tuner was that it was horribly grainy compared to my Freeview or Sky boxes. But then I am a long way from the local transmitter. By contrast the digital pic is either on or off (or rather on or pixellating).


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## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

When TiVos were first released, the instruction manual giving wiring for DTT (On Digital) was plain wrong.

Essentially the diagram showed TiVo as the first element in the chain connected to the aerial, with the DTT set top box between TiVo and the TV. The fact is that having the TiVo in the way deteriorates the signal by weakening it and also possibly adding extra interferance.


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## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

katman said:


> When I went into Dixons it was a similar story. They just said they couldnt demonstrate it because they didnt have a subscription


They were supposed to have one shop model that ran a special introduction show reel which talked about (but not really demonstrated) the product. and allowed the vewer to have some interaction with the remote. Truth is though that a lot of shops never even set this up, just leaving the TiVo as a silver brick (with no knobs on it, which didn't help) under one of the TVs.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

aerialplug said:


> They were supposed to have one shop model that ran a special introduction show reel which talked about (but not really demonstrated) the product. and allowed the vewer to have some interaction with the remote. Truth is though that a lot of shops never even set this up, just leaving the TiVo as a silver brick (with no knobs on it, which didn't help) under one of the TVs.


My Currys demonstrator model purchased in Dec 2002 complete with the original box (only brown cardboard with white Tivo stickers in the middle of the top and on the sides) had the shop demo reel you mention on it and there was an option at startup of the reel to exit it and turn it into a regular Tivo which I of course soon implemented. Mind you I had a huge amount of trouble registering it for subscription as according to their database the Tivo Service number simply did not exist (i.e. it was not considered a for sale model not that this ever stopped DSG Retail Ltd ever flogging off their used equipment). Unfortunately though it didn't come with a Status 11 Evaluation Sub.

However when I went to Currys to buy the Tivo after locating it on their central stock computer it was just a languishing under a widescreen tv and was not attached to it or priced or in use.

No doubt that was why it had failed to sell apart from also having a couple of marks on the case and the remote.


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## ColinYounger (Aug 9, 2006)

I am unashamedly late to the party. I'd never heard of a TiVo until about 2 years ago! Shows how good the advertising was.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

ColinYounger said:


> I am unashamedly late to the party. I'd never heard of a TiVo until about 2 years ago! Shows how good the advertising was.


Colin,

Correct me if I'm wrong but even though you are clearly a senior and experienced IT developer you are not also running a Windows MCE recorder of any kind?

A less technically minded person might well have found Windows MCE a hassle to set up and maintain for TV recording compared to using a Tivo but as that clearly would not apply in your case and as you only came to Tivo in 2005 what would be your reason for preferring Tivo to Windows MCE?

Is it because as a developer you saw far more possibilities for doing development and hacking on a Tivo than with Windows MCE?


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## ColinYounger (Aug 9, 2006)

Pete - flattery gets you everywhere. 

I don't run MCE, mainly because - at the time - kit was too expensive and 'young' IMO. My first TiVo cost £80. I connected via PPP.

Also you forget my inner geek. A TiVo is a computer in reality and I work with Windows PCs all the time (as clients to *nix machines). TiVo offered the opportunity to a) have a 'household device' that I could tinker with and b) without the family being aware. Oh, except when I get it wrong and TiVo reboots. 

As others have often mentioned in their own lives, TiVo is the only bit of technology my wife has tried to understand, and likes.

TiVo is quite simply a stunning piece of design.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

ColinYounger said:


> TiVo is quite simply a stunning piece of design.


Size of box not withstanding


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## ColinYounger (Aug 9, 2006)

Yuh - but you'd expect that in a piece of kit from 2000. 

I really meant the interface, not the kit.


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## Automan (Oct 29, 2000)

Of course if our highstreet shops had new Series 3 units on show one could now look and the wonderful dot matrix display on the unit front and play the odd THX jingle 

Plus a learning remote control!

What will they think of next 

Automan.


aerialplug said:


> They were supposed to have one shop model that ran a special introduction show reel which talked about (but not really demonstrated) the product. and allowed the vewer to have some interaction with the remote. Truth is though that a lot of shops never even set this up, just leaving the TiVo as a silver brick (with no knobs on it, which didn't help) under one of the TVs.


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## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

My "first" tivo was actually a converted Philips box that had been modified with hybrid software so that it download a special reduced channel lineup Sky Digital service data (early 1998). Admittedly, this wasn't at my house at the time but at my place of work - a demo model provided to show TiVo in varous shows and open days. It then required a PAL to NTSC standards converter so that it could record off the Sky box.

The first TiVo to spend some time at home was also a converted Philips box (though the hardware inside by now may have been early Thompson). It was the first one I'd seen with SCART output, though the case had been crudely sawn to provide the holes for them to poke out. This also had specially written hybrid prototype software, but this behaved just like a standard TiVo in that it recorded and played back PAL. It was an obsolete prototype - TiVo disabled the account soon aterwords and asked for it back   The serial number was completely unrecognisable compared to ours so an attempt to re-activate (without further mods) would have been impossible.

My first proper TiVo (also provided by work at the time) was a prototype without a front panel (known as a "trialist TiVo" given to a 100 or so where I work as long as we filled in questionaires once a month about our use of our unexpected but quickly beloved toy). Despite its ugly looks, I soon got addicted! It had 25GB hard drive in it so about half the capacity of real UK ones. This too had a bizarre serial number which caused problems when contacting Customer Services - but when pressed, this did indeed turn up on the system.

Since then I got a proper lifetime TiVo, which has been my workhorse TiVo since the Christmas just before 2.5.5 was launched (it wasquickly requisitioned part of the beta trials "that never happened" )


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

aerialplug said:


> Since then I got a proper lifetime TiVo, which has been my workhorse TiVo since the Christmas just before 2.5.5 was launched (it wasquickly requisitioned part of the beta trials "that never happened" )


Was that Christmas 2001?


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

IIRC the beta trials were around then; so Fred told me.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

TCM2007 said:


> IIRC the beta trials were around then; so Fred told me.


Got my box in Dec 2002 and after upgrading from shop demo loop to version 1.something of the Tivo software (which kept rebooting every 20 minutes or so for no obvious reason other than that it was totally obsolete in relation to the current Guide Data) and then eventually (after a week of nagging Tivo customer services) to 2.5.5 I got the general impression in various places that 2.5.5 had not been out more than a few months.

It was from that I was judging that Dec 2001 must be the time of which aerialplug spoke.

Of course I never did get a further software upgrade after 2.5.5 and yet the American Tivo S1s are running a later software version. How can that make sense or be right when we are supposed to have the same Lifetime Service as them   :down: :down: :down:


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Service is still working isn't it?


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

TCM2007 said:


> Service is still working isn't it?


Yes it is. But I would expect an S1 unit in either the UK or USA to have its basic software functionality upgraded to the same level as each other until such time as no further S1 units were being sold in the shops and so further Tivo S1 series software upgrading was discontinued.

I expect Tivo's argument is that S1 units were sold in the shops in the USA until a later date than in the UK though?

Does anyone know what the enhancements are in the last version of the US Tivo S1 software that we haven't benefitted from? And would they be of any practical benefit to UK based users if they were made available?


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## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

Pete77 said:


> Was that Christmas 2001?


Sounds about right. I definitely had a TiVo for Christmas 2000 as I remember bringing it (and a Sky box) back to my mum's place in South Wales.

Edit: I attach a picture of my portable dish. I haven't used it for a while now apart from one evening last week to set up the multi-room box for the TiVo while waiting for the aerial installer to arrive. He was impressed when he saw it>>>


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Pete77 said:


> Does anyone know what the enhancements are in the last version of the US Tivo S1 software that we haven't benefitted from? And would they be of any practical benefit to UK based users if they were made available?


Most of the current must-have hacks are actually no use without the network interface.

Software features of use to a standalone series 1 tivo:

Folders in now playing (thats a series2 feature though)
Soft padding (endpad-like) 
Larger live buffer (30mins is too small)
Mode0

All the MP3/picture/Video sharing etc came in with series2 and its usb slots,
series1 machine don't officially have network functionality...

The UK software has been long frozen though.


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