Tivo

[drthundr]

So I have been mulling over getting a Tivo. We currently have the shitty Time Warner Scientific Atlanta box that we rent from TW for $6 a month, coupled with it's remote that we rent for $4 a month. Currently i can get a 40 hour tivo for $205.39, that's $49.99 for the box and $155.40 for one year of service

Comments

[johndove]

yeah, i just looked at my twc bill for the first time in ages (autopay) and remembered that i'm paying like $15/month just for the dvr part. sheesh! i use it enough to justify the cost, i suppose. but it'd be 100 times better if i can schedule recording over the net.

[drthundr]

Yeah, those figures I quoted were what we initially paid for the DVR, it wouldn't suprise me if we pay more now. If we actually pay $15 a month for the remote and the box, then Tivo makes all the more sense to me for the $49 one time price.

[michaelallroy]

after using a series 2 box (shipped with 40GB drive, upgraded to 120GB) for nearly three years, i can recommend real tivo without reservation, especially if you're only viewing SDTV. i was up to like 130 season passes and auto-record wishlists...it was so rad. i dunno about nhl center ice, but i was able to get ppv fights with no issues. i use comcast's dvr now, because i require dual HDTV tuners, and the overall user experience is not even close. we don't have TW here, but everyone i know that's had a chance to use both the TW box and real tivo have said the same thing - it's like night and day. tivo is cheaper than ever now, so unless a switch to HDTV is in yr immediate future, i say go for it. if you are handy, you can even swap the HDD out and give yrself a ridonkulous amount of recording capacity.

[drthundr]

thanks, it was actually your post about you NOT needing the HD Tivo that sent me off investigating the cost of the series 2 box and service, since I do not have a high def set, and won't for a long time.

As for the pay-per-view, did you just have to order via the phone then, or could you use the remote?

[michaelallroy]

assuming you usually authorise ppv via yr cable box's on-screen display, you'll still do that. you can set tivo to record the event, authorise using the cable box, and you're golden - you'll have the same functionality with the program that you would with "free" content on any other channel. getting a ppv event was one of the few times i ever picked up the remote for my cable box after tivo joined the family - the tivo interface is so sweet you'll just do all yr tv viewing thru it.

[drthundr]

alright, so this may sound dumb, but I will still need a cable box?

[anabug]

I love Tivo. Literally I have no idea how I ever lived without it. It's wonderful and completely worth it. I have Comcast, so I don't know how Time Warner interacts with Tivo, but I've never had any problems with Comcast (and In Demand still works.) It has also never broken or anything like that (I've had it for a year).

[drthundr]

That's how I feel about the somewhat janky DVR we have now. I don't think I could go back to TV with no DVR, especially with Scout. With the DVR we can watch all our primetime faves after she is asleep.