Yeah, I Tivoed That... Tivo... Learn It. Know It. Live It.

Let’s start with some simple concepts before we move on to greatly detailed ramblings.

First, Tivo rocks. If you don’t need a lot of information, and just want to know if you should get one or not, just head out to the store now.

Second, there are probably lots of technical things that could be known about Tivo, but whatever they are I don’t know many of them, so don’t expect to learn about them.

On the technical side of what I do know, there is installing it, and there is how much you can record with it. Installation works something like this. Tivo comes in the box with four different options for connecting it to your television. My television has four different possible ways to connect ‘input’ to it. I may not be real electronic savvy, but this struck me as a marriage made in heaven. Plugs were plugged, and my Tivo works. That’s about what I know on the subject. Seriously though, Tivo can be connected to just about any television on earth, and the instructions are very clear. The book that comes with it includes instructions (with pictures) for a host of connection possibilities. You also connect the Tivo to your cable box so that you use your Tivo remote to control what happens, which is fairly obvious, because otherwise it wouldn’t be much use. By the way, the vast majority of ‘really cool’ universal remotes are Tivo compatible.

As to how much you can record, this model is called 40 hour, but that’s some manner of wishful thinking. There are four ‘modes’ of recording: Basic, Medium, High, and Best.

Basic gives you somewhere around 40 hours of total time (I think it might actually be even a bit higher, making the model label even more curious). It’s also horrible. I’ve noticed that it’s pretty good for recording anything animated (this is one of the things the guidebook suggests recording in this mode). You can also use this mode for recording sit-coms you really don’t care about, or maybe soap operas. But, let anyone move around to any degree, and you’re going to be looking at a pretty awful picture.

Medium gives you something like 25 hours. What a difference one step can make. This is what I use to record almost everything. The only thing I don’t record with this is movies. I also wouldn’t suggest recording sports or anything similarly with a whole lot of movement, but I don’t actually record a lot of sports.

High gives you a little under 20 hours (I think). I’ve really never used this mode except in doing a bit of initial testing. I haven’t really seen a lot of difference between this and medium. I’m sure it’s there, but it doesn’t seem a worthwhile sort of difference. Basically, if there’s something I want to look good I just go right to Best.

Best only gives you about 11 or 12 hours. It hasn’t really posed a problem for me though, because I really only use this for movies, and I just watch them and get rid of them.

You’ve also got to keep in mind that your total time is always minus one Best quality half-hour. That’s because Tivo is constantly recording whatever is on and keeping it up to half an hour. It may sound slightly odd, but this is one of the best features Tivo has. This is how you get your live TV pause and instant replay. You can pause what’s on at any time, and come back right where you left, or rewind any show you’re watching up to 30 minutes. Also, as long as you haven’t changed the channel, you can decide to record and keep a show after it has already started.


So, what’s the real deal with Tivo, why’s it so great, and aren’t you just some sort of TV junkie nut?

Well, let’s go step-by-step, and no, I’m not a TV junkie nut.

The first thing you do is pay for your subscription to the Tivo service. This is $12.95 a month or something like $250 for a lifetime subscription. Unfortunately, the lifetime is the life of the unit, not your lifetime, so it doesn’t exactly seem like the best deal to me. If I want to upgrade to another unit someday, I’d have to buy another lifetime.

Once your subscription goes into effect, and your Tivo (hooked up to a phone line like it is) downloads its initial programming (or whatever it does), you set up your Tivo by telling it what channels you actually get. If you don’t get HBO, those channels don’t come up on the Tivo guide, whatever. This is convenient for the Tivo Suggestions, because then if you see something suggested, you know you can actually watch it. As opposed to flipping through your normal cable guide and seeing something you like, only to realize that you have crossed over to Showtime or what have you.

Now you’re ready to start telling Tivo what to do, and there are possibly too many options for me to remember them all.

You can search for programs to record via an impressive number of options. You can search by name, various categories, or you can use the Showcases which are channel specific highlights of programs that are coming up soon. You can also see what Tivo ‘recommends’. You see, Tivo has a rating option for you. The Tivo remote has a green thumbs-up button and a red thumbs-down button so you can tell it you do or don’t like certain shows. Whenever a show is on you simply hit that button and Tivo stores your rating. The Tivo recommendations come from the shows you’ve rated positively, and shows Tivo thinks are similar.

Tivo also has a potentially interesting feature that comes up with live broadcasts. When you’re watching TV and an ad for an upcoming show comes on, Tivo will frequently put a little green thumbs-up on the screen, and by hitting that button on the remote you can instantly setup Tivo to record that show. Remember, I’m saying it’s potentially interesting.

The next option you have is the Season Pass. For shows you always want to make sure you get, you just tell the Tivo to give you a Season Pass, and Tivo will record that show every time it comes on automatically. You can set several options for the Season Pass also, including telling it how many episodes to keep at a time, and what quality to record the show with. From there you move to your Season Pass Manager. Don’t worry, none of this is complicated. The Season Pass Manager is where you can keep track of what shows have Season Passes, and what priority the shows have. What if two shows are on at the same time? Well, it depends on which has a higher priority in the Manager. There are also certain tricks to the Season Pass. One option allows you to choose to only record first runs of a show, while the other lets you record all shows whether new or reruns. Now, one drawback of the Tivo is that recording something while you watch something else is a slightly complicated affair. It’s possible, but there are A/B switches involved or something. But, if there are two shows you want that air at the same time, you can set them both up with Season Passes and just put one on first run only at the higher priority, while you set the other to record all shows. In the end you’ll get them all recorded. It’s not as complicated as it sounds.

So, apart from pausing live TV, and the ability to search shows, you might just think it’s a slightly glorified VCR with not so much going for it. Well, first of all, pausing live TV and the Season Pass are worth quite a lot, but beyond that, the incredibly easy recording is well worth the price. There’s no end to the convenience. If I stumble across a movie that’s half over I can just give it the thumbs up, and then jump over to Recommendations. Tivo will always recommend anything that you’ve rated positively, so I’ll always be notified whenever that movie comes on again.

The fact is, I almost never watch live TV anymore. If, hope against hope, something good happens to be on just at a time that I want to watch TV, I’ll just let it be recorded and watch something else I’ve already recorded. That way, I never have to watch a commercial.

It may sound complicated, but it’s really a total snap. The remote is very similar to most cable remotes, so with only a little bit of familiarization you should settle right into using all the available functions. You’ll want to look through the book to get acquainted with the concepts, but after that everything is so intuitive that you’ll find your way around with ease. Your saved shows (where you’ll be spending a lot of your time) are all under one heading in order of how long they have been saved. You simply select the title and start playing. Another handy feature which I have been glad of on several occasions is that if you stop watching a recorded show (by hitting the Tivo button or the Live TV button) the Tivo remembers where you left off on that show so that when you select to play it again you start right where you stopped. If you’re watching TV, Tivo also prompts you when it is about to change channels so that it can record something. It then gives you the option to stay on the channel you’re watching and cancel the scheduled recording.

Now, beyond this list of features, you can’t forget that your subscription is getting you constant updates through your telephone line. The programming to the system is constantly, potentially, being updated to change or add features, the programming guide and special listing selections naturally change all the time, and Tivo can give you special messages. So far I’ve gotten a message telling me that I was getting three new channels (and of course, what they were), even before my cable company told me, and a message about possible recording problems in connection with the finale of Friends. That may sound strange, but the problem was in connection with another feature Tivo has. When you choose to record something, Tivo gives you a ‘buffer’ option. What that means is that you can set the Tivo to start recording on the proper channel ten minutes before the show actually starts, and end ten minutes after the scheduled end. I suppose this is for sports mainly, because I’ve never found a real use for it. I suppose sometimes shows go off schedule and so on. At any rate, a warning message came on the Tivo a day or two before the finale of Friends to make sure people knew that another Friends was airing before the finale. Thus, if you happened to have your Tivo set up with the buffer, you would only end up recording the first one because the buffer time frame would cut into the finale airing. Something like that anyway. At any rate, though it had nothing to do with me, I thought it was pretty nice that they would warn of the possible problem.


Finally, Tivo has another service which I do not partake of. For another $50 or therabouts, you can get the home connection option (or something), which basically lets you hook up your Tivo just as you would hook up a computer to a wireless router type connection. See how jargony I am? At any rate, the basic benefits of this idea are that your Tivo can talk to your computer in order to enable certain functions. For one, you can use your Tivo to view digital pictures stored on your computer. You can also use this sort of connection so that you can set your Tivo to record shows through the internet. You just go to the Tivo website, look through the guide, and tell your Tivo to be recorded in certain ways. Your computer then tells your Tivo what to do. It’s not a lot more money, but I just don’t see that I would really get anything out of it.



So, let’s sum up. You’ve got to get it. Are all the shows you want to watch on at odd hours, or do you find that some of the channels you rarely check have great stuff on, but you never think about until its too late? Would you like to watch half-hour shows in six minutes? Want to be in charge of what parts of the game you watch over and over? Even if you want to record onto VHS (or DVD if you’re really cool), Tivo has a Record to Tape option as well, which makes that process as simple as possible. I will say this though, if you plan to record much in the way of sports, you probably want to spring for the 80 hour model, because you’re going to want to record a lot of that on at least High.

See, in the end, it actually doesn’t matter how much television you watch. What matters is that you’ll only be watching the shows you really want to watch, and with practically no effort at all, you’ll be watching them whenever you want. Season Pass for The Office, Coupling, Black Adder, and on and on. You can also set up a Season Pass for a few of your favorite kids shows, but set the Season Pass to only keep one episode for each. You’ll have programming you really like them to watch handy for when you need to go and pull out some of your hair, that’s constantly updated to the newest show that airs, without taking up much room, and without having to buy DVDs. Seriously, some of the better shows, in my opinion, are on at the strangest times, some only once a week. Jakers! The Adventures of Piggly Winks is on at the damnedest times.


After all that, the final result is simply that you’ve got to get it.