I was writing to today about TiVo - here's what I ended up writing about it...


This morning, at least, TiVo has again put up for sale factory renewed
Series2 DVRs. These have the full warrenty on them.

The 40 hour model is listed at $149 - with a $50 rebate! That gets
you started at $99 . Then, the ongoing program listing service is
$12.95 a month (or a one time cost of $299).

The 80 hour model is $199 after rebate.

I bought a floor model TiVo at Best Buy at about this same price.
Another TiVo owner, with a bit of experience, helped me upgrade my
40 hr hard drive to a 157 hr hard drive. I still hope some day to
get with my friend to add a second hard drive to the system.

The only thing that would be better than TiVo
in terms of a) watching shows in less time, and
b) watch shows when I want to, without having to keep meticulous
notes on what was on which video tape, etc.,
would be if the various cable stations would join together to create a
video on demand service for all their programming, with the disk farm
being on their end.

Until that day - which probably isn't all THAT outrageous of an idea (anyone
want to invest in such a project?) I find that TiVo, with its
o extensive broadcast programming database,
o ability to create almost regular expression searching and
automatic recording of shows,
o season pass recordings that are pretty good at tracking changes
to show days/times that are announced
at least 24-48 hrs in advance
(and if you use a directv satellite setup or maybe broadband,
then I believe this time drops to less than 30 minutes),
is so much more valuable to me than my VCR was.

An example of how 'insidious' TiVo can become arose today
at lunch. I was mentioning that my kids were really
getting a kick out of watching the reruns of the old
Dilbert animated series. I was asked "Oh, when is
that on" and I had to reply that I'd no idea - tivo
finds it and records it whenever it comes on.

Similarly one of my kids were actually lamenting the
fact that they seldom saw all the 'neat' new
commercials their friends talk about at school - we
just do several 30 second skips and move on with
the show, resulting in seeing an hour show in about
45 minutes or so...