I have an HD TiVo which I purchased around four years ago. Tivo is a really great device for a number of reasons. First of all, I enjoy being able to own a DVR as opposed to leasing it from the cable company. If something goes wrong with their box or if there is a flaw in their hardware, I'm potentially responsible for it. Cable/satellite dish companies pretend as if their DVR boxes are somehow made of gold as they quote prices of 500 or more dollars for some models.
One nice aspect to newer TiVos is that you can finally attach an external hard drive to them without voiding your warranty. TiVo has a similar philosophy to Apple as far as pricing different models based on their level of storage. They pretend as if the hard drive of the item makes it cost significantly more. On my Series 2 Tivo, I swapped out the stock internal hard drive for one that is around four times as large.
TiVo is quite user friendly and idiot-proof for the most part. It makes great suggestions through a really solid rating system and it is often very accurate about what your interests are. If you've got space to spare, TiVo will attempt to record something it thinks you will like. Sometimes there's an odd item or two thrown into the mix, but this is to be expected because it is not a mind reader. I've encountered some quirks where I cannot fathom why TiVo records some items for me over and over; I don't know why, but TiVo keeps recording the movie The Accused. I really want to know what I'm watching that would make TiVo think I'm interested in watching a courtroom drama regarding a case of a horrible sex crime. The Accused is not really known for being a very feel-good movie and I will admit to having a number of kid's shows that I have rated highly because I like nostalgia. There's Jem, G.I. Joe, Transformers, Fraggle Rock, each given 3 thumbs up (which is the highest rating possible). I'm not really sure where The Accused factors into this equation.
Although I love TiVo, one problem that I have with this device is a very big fault in the software that could easily be fixed-- TiVo won't let itself stay on the main menu screen. This means that if you don't feel like watching something but you want to have your TV turned on, TiVo only temporarily stay on that main menu screen for a few minutes. Eventually it will turn itself to a channel whether you want it to or not. It is as if the machine has a mind of its own. This is a huge problem sometimes if you are a person like me; I might not feel like watching something at the time or having something spoiled for me, but TiVo doesn't care. If it's a football game that I really wanted to watch at a later time, if it is currently playing, TiVo will go out of its way to show it to me if I'm not watching a prerecorded program at the time. You'll have to manually hit the TiVo button to go to the main menu, and then you will have to make sure to be aware that it will turn itself to a channel that is being recorded. This is very annoying. Basically, you'll have to work around TiVo if you don't want it to spoil something for you.
This problem is something that could be easily fixed by a firmware update, but TiVo is choosing not to fix it. I've found that TiVo is not really that well-supported, which is quite unfortuante. There are numerous bugs and glitches that stay broken and unfixed because TiVo seems to abandon its models very quickly. There are only really a few different models of TiVo that one can purchase so it doesn't seem like it would be a lot of work to fix them, but it might be TiVo's aim to encourage people to switch over to something new (this is also quite reminiscent of Apple's releasing firmware that slowed down the iphone 3g dramatically, but of course, nowhere near as bad as what Apple did).
Over the past six years I have become quite used to using TiVo, and it is extremely unlikely that I will abandon it at any time soon.
Tivo, I hope you don't spoil anything for me anytime soon.
Because I have done this blog post using voice recognition, I have frequently had to change TiVo from Tebow.
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