# OK, Who wants a new TiVo now?



## ColinYounger (Aug 9, 2006)

Interesting story from BetaNews: TiVo FF Popup Ads 
I certainly wouldn't be happy with this kind of feature...


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

CoinYounger said:


> Interesting story from BetaNews: TiVo FF Popup Ads
> I certainly wouldn't be happy with this kind of feature...


On the other hand you would probably be happy to live in a country where you at least have the option of buying a Tivo Series 3.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

I would be happy to have option to buy a Series 3.... living in the USA would be another matter entirely


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

blindlemon said:


> I would be happy to have option to buy a Series 3.... living in the USA would be another matter entirely


I could do another year or two in the USA having lived there for 6 months long ago. But I couldn't take a life sentence living in the USA.

Some remote but safe (apart from earthquakes may be) little Greek island is more my idea of living abroad long term.


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

Pete77 said:


> On the other hand you would probably be happy to live in a country where you at least have the option of buying a Tivo Series 3.


As long as that country isn't America  My 6 year visa just ran out and I was asked if I want to get a green card and/or citizenship. God no! It was fun taking their money for a while but I wouldn't want to spend the rest of my days there. Glad to be back in europe permanently now  :up:


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## smatson (Mar 14, 2001)

Whats bad in the America not that i have been there


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

smatson said:


> Whats bad in the America not that i have been there


Where to start. I was in New York. Living in the #1 terrorist hotspot (contrary to the view on "24" where it's always LA  ). The noise, the smell, the summer heat, the winter cold, the traffic, the TV (unless you're TiVoing), the low standard of living, the valueless dollar. It all adds up. Not that I'd live in London either now.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

smatson said:


> Whats bad in the America not that i have been there


And why do you live in Jersey. Tax exile or born there?


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

Pete77 said:


> I could do another year or two in the USA having lived there for 6 months long ago. But I couldn't take a life sentence living in the USA.
> 
> Some remote but safe (apart from earthquakes may be) little Greek island is more my idea of living abroad long term.


Living near the Alps in Germany is quite nice too. Very high standard of living, the Autobahns, the warm/long summers, the snowy white christmases, the beer, the British TV via Sky. Came here for an 8 week contract in 1993, and apart from a stint in the states, still here  I miss the coast though. Would quite like a little vacation cottage by the sea in England too.


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## smatson (Mar 14, 2001)

My dads jersey


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## frogster (Jan 4, 2006)

smatson said:


> Whats bad in the America...


Getting in.

Getting out.

And the bit in between.

"Homeland security". What a joke. Even if they gave away a free series 3 Tivo I wouldn't set foot in the US.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

b166er said:


> Would quite like a little vacation cottage by the sea in England too.


I reckon one by the sea in the Med is more sensible though. The English sea is always too dirty and cold to swim in.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

frogster said:


> "Homeland security". What a joke. Even if they gave away a free series 3 Tivo I wouldn't set foot in the US.


I increasingly have those feelings about the United Kingdom to be honest under the current sorry government. The main thing against the USA is that most of the people there live to work rather than working to live.

But no doubt bumming around in the Med loses its appeal after the first year or two. I would just like to try it out for long enough to make sure that actually applies in my case.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

smatson said:


> My dads jersey


Well if you will fail to update your location info.

Where are you now?


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

Pete77 said:


> no doubt bumming around in the Med loses its appeal after the first year or two. I would just like to try it out for long enough to make sure that actually applies in my case.


I feel the same about winning a 100 million rollover on the euro milllions lotto. They say money doesn't make you happy, and I can believe that in principle, but I'd like to prove it for myself


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

Pete77 said:


> Well if you will fail to update your location info. Where are you now?


I guessed he meant he's in jersey because his dad's from there, but I could be wrong.


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## smatson (Mar 14, 2001)

Yes i do live in jersey


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

I quite like the rural and small town bits of Northern California and New England, and San Francisco and Boston are quite nice for short-stay cities. Why people go to places like New York or Los Angeles, I've no idea. My idea of a holiday or a weekend break was always to drive away from the crowds.


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

iankb said:


> My idea of a holiday or a weekend break was always to drive away from the crowds.


Sounds like Montana and Wyoming would suit you. Jackson Hole is quite nice  Gotta visit the rest of these one day


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

iankb said:


> Why people go to places like New York or Los Angeles, I've no idea. My idea of a holiday or a weekend break was always to drive away from the crowds.


I'm not a big city lover either ian but I really think that Manhattan has a certain buzz and atmosphere and unique character that most cities don't have that give it almost as much character as Paris or Venice (the latter being my favourite City). The Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty also have enormous character and there is a unique buzz to the whole place.

I'm with you that Los Angeles as a city has almost zero to recommend it. The only point of interest there are the movies studio tours and they aren't up to much.

The Grand Canyon on the other hand I found truly remarkable and really was one of the wonders of the world.


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## dponsford (Oct 23, 2005)

smatson said:


> Whats bad in the America not that i have been there


I think Oscar Wilde put it best.

'Lots of wide open spaces ... full of teeth'


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

Pete77 said:


> I'm not a big city lover either ian but I really think that Manhattan has a certain buzz and atmosphere and unique character that most cities don't have


Absolutely. I recommend everyone visit NYC in their life at least once. It takes a long exposure to it before the negative things start to add up.



Pete77 said:


> The Grand Canyon on the other hand I found truly remarkable and really was one of the wonders of the world.


The sunset flight over the Grand Canyon from Vegas is amazing value. I can highly recommend that. I got co-pilot seat in a 4 seater  Speaking of Vegas, WOW. I promise myself each year I'll go back but somewhere we've never been to before always manages to take priority


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

b166er said:


> The sunset flight over the Grand Canyon from Vegas is amazing value. I can highly recommend that. I got co-pilot seat in a 4 seater  Speaking of Vegas, WOW. I promise myself each year I'll go back but somewhere we've never been to before always manages to take priority


My flight was actually from an airstrip next to the Grand Canyon somewhere and not from Vegas. A 15 seater plane (an aisle but only one seat per row) and very scary once we were up due to huge down drafts and other things going on despite it being an apparently sunny day. Mind you the plane seemed to be an ancient rust bucket, which I think was the real problem. I enjoyed driving along the Canyon and inspecting the view from various different places on terra firma to be honest.

Vegas didn't do a lot for me to be honest. I found that intensity of gambling very sleazy even though I do go to the odd horse racing event and always have a small bet on every race at those.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

But if you can resist the temptation to chuck your money into a slot machine, the casinos are pretty good value places to stay


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

blindlemon said:


> But if you can resist the temptation to chuck your money into a slot machine, the casinos are pretty good value places to stay


Not when we were there but I believe there was some major doctors convention in town at the time.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

I probably wouldn't mind New York if I actually tried it. However, when I was working many years ago in Lexington near Boston, while my colleagues would go into New York at the weekend, I always headed for places such as Maine (Bar Harbor, Acadia National Park), Vermont, Montreal, Rhode Island, Cape Cod, etc. That was one of the best parts; the fact that the roads were fast, if you kept out of the cities and watched out for Smokey.

I'm not a great fan of public transport so, if I can't drive there, I expect to walk there. Not that I found walking across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausolito in a high wind much fun, since I get vertigo and speeding cyclists expect you to jump out of their way over a very-low parapet.  One gets the impression that you can only walk in prescribed areas within the States.


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

Sorry to drag this back on topic 

To answer the original question: me


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## Pugwash (May 23, 2003)

We've just moved to the sticks in Lincolnshire. We're 20 miles from the nearest town of significance, right on the edge of the Wash, and connected by some very straight narrow roads with no speed cameras. Excellent on the bike!
Other benefits are the 8MB broadband, perfect Freeview reception, 2 pubs and quiet village life.

p.s. I want a multi-tuner freeview box with TiVo-a-like software and a free EPG. I guess that's not uncommon.
I had a twin tuner Windows MCE2005 box I built myself, but frankly it was crap compared to TiVo. It's been disconnected and used as a kid's desktop PC instead.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

You could get yourself a Topfield Freeview box, which is more modifiable than any other software wise but frankly its crap compared to Tivo and pretty expensive.

Wait till next year when dual tuner Freeview Playback boxes with Series link and Metadata in the EPG become available.


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

Pugwash said:


> on the edge of the Wash


Not worried about getting invaded by rising sea levels? I keep seeing world maps 30 years in the future and a huge part of that area ain't there anymore. I'll be glad I'm at 525m above sea level if all the predictions come true.


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## Pugwash (May 23, 2003)

It's a 2 floor house...


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## OrangeDrink (Feb 10, 2004)

b166er said:


> Where to start. I was in New York. Living in the #1 terrorist hotspot (contrary to the view on "24" where it's always LA  ). The noise, the smell, the summer heat, the winter cold, the traffic, the TV (unless you're TiVoing), the low standard of living, the valueless dollar. It all adds up. Not that I'd live in London either now.


No1 Terrorist hotspot? 3 attacks ever?? 2 of them were technically the same attack as well! Baghdad's having 4 or 5 a day since the seppos took over!


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

OrangeDrink said:


> No1 Terrorist hotspot? 3 attacks ever?? 2 of them were technically the same attack as well!


I can't think of another American city that's had more.


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## OrangeDrink (Feb 10, 2004)

b166er said:


> I can't think of another American city that's had more.


Which says mountains for the "war on terror"...


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

They are building a bigger and taller replacement for the Twin Towers......................


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

OrangeDrink said:


> Which says mountains for the "war on terror"...


I'm not saying NYC "got it bad" in comparison with anywhere else in the world you care to mention. I'm saying how it felt being there and that being a large reason for wanting to not be there anymore. I saw the towers burning on 11/9 and knew somebody that didn't make it out. We had bomb alerts in our building for months after that. The great power cut of 2003 (I think it was) where everyone thought it was a terror attack. The Anthrax mail situation (my mail came from that Trenton sorting office). The constantly raised alerts every 4th of July with "imminent attacks due", the "tape up your windows and doors with duck tape" warnings, the foiled subway bombings and failed to materialize Sarin-Gas subway attacks. Tell me I'm paranoid, but the media in America sure made it look like all of these threats were about to happen and you might not make it home from work if you venture out that day. Not to mention the security checks getting in and out of the place with shoe bombers and liquid bans. Add to that the worry of people back home (family in England, girlfriend in Germany) when they can't get hold of you for 6 hours during some of these things. One day on patrol in Basra might be 10 times worse than all of this, but it doesn't mean it was a picnic.


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## ericd121 (Dec 12, 2002)

b166er said:


> Tell me I'm paranoid, but the media in America sure made it look like all of these threats were about to happen and you might not make it home from work if you venture out that day.


I can imagine how that would make you, and me, feel. 

The only exposure I have to US News networks is via The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which obviously picks out the most ridiculous examples.

However, it's obvious that the nature of US 24 hour news is that they will hammer even the smallest, or non-existent, story into the ground.

The most recent example was the gas smell in New York, where the News networks were actually suggesting that it could be a "terrorist strike", and telling viewers to "leave the area" (What? New York??), and "don't touch the light switches"!

You can see the Daily Show segment detailing this non-sense by going to 
*http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/videos/jon_stewart/index.jhtml*
Click on any video to get the video player window popup, then search in the tiny Search Field at the top for "*smell*".

This will find the segment, which is called "Daily Show: NY's Funny Odor"

Having said all that, I'd like to add;
yes: I, too, would like a new Tivo.


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

The Daily Show is just about the only show that offers a sane analysis of events :up: I went to an episode taping, great fun


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## chimaera (Nov 13, 2000)

This thread must be in the running for the most completely off topic content percentage-wise ever


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## b166er (Oct 24, 2003)

chimaera said:


> This thread must be in the running for the most completely off topic content percentage-wise ever


Speaking of which, what about this storm ... We're at our peak right now in Bavaria. Sounds like there's going to be nothing left outside in the morning. I don't think I want to look.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

b166er said:


> Speaking of which, what about this storm ... We're at our peak right now in Bavaria. Sounds like there's going to be nothing left outside in the morning. I don't think I want to look.


Still no power here after 16 hours of outage since 4.15pm yesterday. I could only even get through to our supplier to discuss what was going on this morning.

Main damage here was just that a load of older rotten trees fell over on to far too many overhead power lines. No damage to buildings directly from the wind so not a hurricane in my view.

Phones still on hence this post but just about to exhaust second carefully conserved laptop battery and start using third and last battery shortly. I have HP's incompetence to thank for now having so many batteries for this laptop I can use.


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## Padawan (Jul 28, 2002)

Well Done HP.

Another show of great forward planning and cost reductions... Just like making me and my mates in the local customer support teams redundant. Me... Just like the Murphy's

Still. Back to the real off topic adventures. We have had the fence go down yesterday. The house is still standing and we have power.

Cheers
Padawan


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Padawan said:


> Well Done HP.
> 
> Another show of great forward planning and cost reductions... Just like making me and my mates in the local customer support teams redundant. Me... Just like the Murphy's


Would you like to explain more. Who is HP. And are you talking about unnecessarily protracted power cuts by the clowns at the power companies?


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## Padawan (Jul 28, 2002)

HP... Hewlett Packard. That 'great' manufacturer of PC and storage equipment but better known for its printers, inks and paper alonside their cameras.

Nothing to do with your plight with power (or lack of). Everything to do with wind and weather.

edit for musspolling HP's name


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## HappyHiker (May 20, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> You could get yourself a Topfield Freeview box,.. frankly its crap compared to Tivo ...with Series link and Metadata in the EPG become available.


thats not really fair, I have a toppy and a tivo and in some ways I prefer the toppy after its been modded (MyStuff 5.1 is the dogs b*). Its much easier to browse the EPG by time and channel and its a better picture quality(even after bit mode 0)

Also the series link meteadata is already available on the toppy in a somewhat beta form.

Of course on the tivo I don't browse the EPG it just records stuff, occasionally I record by title.  And of course the tivo will record sky which is the killer app compared to any freeview pvr.


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## algordon (Apr 1, 2004)

HappyHiker said:


> thats not really fair, I have a toppy and a tivo and in some ways I prefer the toppy after its been modded (MyStuff 5.1 is the dogs b*). Its much easier to browse the EPG by time and channel and its a better picture quality(even after bit mode 0)
> .


A year or so I bought a Topfield having got completely fed up with the unreliability of my Tivo at that time.I absolutely couldn't stand the Topfield. I found it very unintuitive - you had to get advice from the website as to how to check your timers, for godsake! - and I hated its onscreen layout just as much, which Ok is a personal thing, but both my partner and I found it really ugly.

I hated even more the fact that people seemed really impressed by how much it could be modified by the user - no-one seemed to wonder why all these great mods hadn't just been provided out of the box.

Apart from anything else, modding the thing might be OK if you're very computer savvy which I suppose from reading this forum lots of you seem to be - but I am most definitely amn't.

We lasted about two weeks with it before we went back to our lovely, cuddly Tivo, nursed it back to full health and haven't strayed from the Tivo (the one true) path since.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

algordon said:


> We lasted about two weeks with it before we went back to our lovely, cuddly Tivo, nursed it back to full health and haven't strayed from the Tivo (the one true) path since.


I thought your Tivo was an unreliable and untrustworthy beast that was always letting you down and this was why you bought the Topfield? 

What exactly happened to change your mind on this point. Did you reposition your IR wands or something or use a different IR code to control your set top box?


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## HappyHiker (May 20, 2002)

algordon said:


> you had to get advice from the website as to how to check your timers, for godsake!


Yeah getting to the timers in the original Software was really stupid, it was hidden down 3 levels of Menus !

The toppy comes in to its own when you load modded software on to it. This is as simple as copying pictures of a digital camera (ie download the software, plug in a USB cable and hit copy) even my Mum can do it so you don't have to be that computer literate(where as I haven't even dare try to network the tivo) In its vanilla format I don't think theres any comparison between a tivo and a toppy.

But the toppy community is a thriving and productive one....oh dear now I sound like a fan boy, sorry. 

I do think the tivo forum give the toppy a bad image which it doesn't really deserve though, I'll shut up now and go watch something recorded on the tivo...


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## algordon (Apr 1, 2004)

Pete77 said:


> I thought your Tivo was an unreliable and untrustworthy beast that was always letting you down and this was why you bought the Topfield?
> 
> What exactly happened to change your mind on this point. Did you reposition your IR wands or something or use a different IR code to control your set top box?


What exactly is the point of a post like this? Anyway,I see from other threads that I'm not the first person to take exception to one or more of your posts. I assume you have very low self-esteem which you try to deal with by trying to make other people look stupid. Well, I suppose posting juvenile replies on this forum might be cheaper than therapy but we could take up a collection for you, if money's a problem?


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

algordon said:


> What exactly is the point of a post like this? Anyway,I see from other threads that I'm not the first person to take exception to one or more of your posts. I assume you have very low self-esteem which you try to deal with by trying to make other people look stupid. Well, I suppose posting juvenile replies on this forum might be cheaper than therapy but we could take up a collection for you, if money's a problem?


I merely wondered how your view of Tivo changed from it being an unreliable beast that you would readily desert in favour of a Topfield to it suddenly being cuddly again. This seemed a pretty reasonable question in view of the apparent logical inconsistency in your own original post.

I see no reason at all for this to generate a series of hostile and highly personal and derisive comments out of all proportion to the content of my original post. This approach on your part would perhaps suggest that you are in fact the one with the low self esteem problem in need of trying to boost it by making other people look stupid?


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