TiVo Series2™ (80 Hours) (80 GB) 80-Hours Video Recorder

How I got Hooked
It was about a year ago that my husband said "I think we could get a DirecTV satellite with Tivo for less than we pay Comcast for normal cable." My reply was something to the effect of "What's the catch?" We looked into it, and I was shocked to realize that there was no catch. Even after the special start-up deal was over, this would be cheaper than Comcast, so we took the plunge. They came and set us up for free. I think we might have actually paid for the Tivo unit itself. It's hard to remember though. If we did pay for it, we didn't pay full price. Anyway, that's how and when we aquired the Tivo. We pay an extra $5 a month for running the Tivo, but it's well worth it. (Overall, now that the introduction deal is over, we save $10 a month compared to what we used to pay Comcast for basic cable without the Tivo.)

Ease of Use
This TV watching device has a learning curve. If you are easily confused by your VCR remote, this could be frustrating at first for you. The good news is that I am easily confused by my VCR, and I have mastered the Tivo. I use it more regularly, so it's not as easy to forget stuff in between uses. The buttons are clearly labled. I was able to use the Tivo for basic watching and recording functions right away, and as I used it for those reasons I started to pick up the helpful little tricks that made things happen more smoothly. There are often directions on the screen that tell the most simple way to do things. There are probably still a few thousand things that this machine does that I still don't know about. Every now and then I discover something else, and it's always really cool to have that kind of surprise. The point that I'm taking way to long to relate is that it's confusing at first, but because I was able to make it function rather quickly, I think everyone else should too. It was slightly easier to figure out than my old cable remote.


Season Pass
My favorite feature on the Tivo is the season pass. One of my favorite shows is Stargate SG-1, so I'll use that as my example. I add the show to my season pass list. This sets the Tivo to record every single episode of Stargate that shows up on the schedule. Stargate is on the Sci-Fi channel TONS on reruns though, so I was getting a good 10 episodes a week, and since I had seen most of the reruns the first time through, I decided to edit my season pass. I went into the "Season Pass Manager" section, picked Stargate, and then it gave me a list of kinds of things I could edit. I chose to record first runs only and to only keep up to three episodes at a time. Now I always get my new Stargate episode, but I don't get all the ones I've already seen.

When you have a lot of different programs on Season Pass, you can create a hierarchy of shows, so that shows you like more get saved longer than shows you don't like as much. I'll talk about the whole deletion process later.

Other Ways to Record
I'm sure you're wondering what happens when you don't want to record an entire season. Well, you can choose to record single episodes, and you can search using times, channels, category or wishlists. When searching by time or channel, you just pick a time or channel and a list of everything coming up at that time or on that channel appears. To search by category, you pick a category, for example, baseball. Then all the upcoming baseball games show up and you can pick which one you are looking for. To search by a wishlist you get to enter a word or title or name, and anything that is related pops up on a list that you can browse through. So, for example, if you are interested in movies directed by Julie Taymor, you can enter her name as a wish list and every now and then check that wish list to see if she has anything coming up. Tivo can also suggest things to record, but I turned this feature off because I already record a lot of stuff and didn't usually like their suggestions.

Scheduling Likes and Dislikes
I REALLY like the fact that the Tivo is smart enough to determine first runs and reruns, and just record the shows I tell it to. My sister has a no-name DVR, and hers isn't as smart. She has to pick a timeslot to record, so if Stargate is usually on at 9PM on Friday, she has to set it to record on Sci-Fi at 9PM on Friday. If there is a week with a movie instead of a Stargate, or a rerun instead of a first run, she still records that hour. My Tivo ONLY records the shows I tell it to. However, it is not always absolutely perfect. For example, if the Simpsons starts 10 minutes late because of a football game, this is an event that is not planned ahead of time so we get 10 minutes of football and miss the last 10 minutes of the Simpsons because the Tivo was scheduled to record the Simpsons during the time they were scheduled. I can set the Tivo to record 1 to 5 minutes extra at the beginning and end of a show, just in case, but that wastes space on my hard drive. We do often schedule an extra minute at the beginning or end though.

Tivo has the ability to schedule two things at once. This means that I can record two different shows at once, or record one while watching another. Two is good. Three would be better, but two is still good.

Commercials
This is the best part of Tivo. I almost never watch commercials anymore. I fast forward through them. When I've been over a friend's house watching TV, I have actually laughed out loud numerous times at commercials, because I see them so rarely that they are actually entertaining when I do see them. Even when I happen to watch live TV (which is rare) I pause the action for 20 minutes or so, just so I can fast forward through the commercials. (I can also fast forward parts of shows that I feel are stupid... like introductions in game shows...)

Space on the Hard Drive
We got the smaller of the two options. 40 hours seemed like a whole lot of TV programming. I think the one thing we would do differently if we were doing this over again is get the bigger hard drive. Sometimes when a show is really good, we like to keep it around for a while to show others. That takes up space. Everyone in the house has found a different show they like. That takes up space. Movies take up space, and don't get watched right away. Often, there are shows we haven't had a chance to watch before they are deleted to make space.

Deleting Old Shows
At the end of a recorded program it will ask you if you want to delete the show or save it for now. Usually, we don't keep a show once we've watched it unless it's extra special. On the list of shows that are waiting to be watched, there are no dots next to some, yellow dots next to some, yellow dots with exclamation points next to some, and green dots next to some. This is a nifty coding devise that tells me what is scheduled for deletion when. A green dot indicates that I told the Tivo not to delete the program until I personally delete it. This allows me to keep certain shows indefinitely, so that it doesn't get automatically deleted before I get to see it. The yellow dot with the exclamation point tells me that the show will be deleted very shortly. A yellow dot is not quite as soon, and no dot means that I have a few days before that gets scheduled for deletion. This system allows the Tivo to make room for new programs, and usually by the time a show gets deleted it was pretty obvious that no one was ever going to watch it anyway.

How Tivo Has Changed My Life
Sometimes, especially when I'm feeling under the weather, I feel like vegging. When I feel that way, there isn't always programming I like on, so I used to watch stuff I didn't really enjoy because it was there. Conversely, sometimes I watched TV when I felt like being more active just because my favorite show was on and I didn't want to miss new plot developments. Now, the shows I want to watch are always on, so I watch TV when I feel like it and don't watch when I don't feel like it. I think in the end, I actually watch less TV than I used to. I also don't find myself hooked to a lot of new shows because I'm not browsing as much and I'm not watching a lot of the commercials. I do periodically choose to give a new show a try, but it's a show that actually looks interesting and not a show I stumbled upon, kind of liked and now am hooked to even though I only kind of liked it. I also never feel reluctant to make plans with people just because my favorite show happens to be on. I can also stop watching a show at the drop of a hat and come back to it later. I never realized how much I scheduled my life around TV until I no longer scheduled my life around TV. Also, we spend less money renting movies, because we always like what's on our TV, and we record movies too.

At this point I probably sound like a TV addict, so I need to take a minute to say that I really don't watch all that much. It's just that now I ONLY watch shows I actually like and I watch them when it's convenient for me. Now that an hour long show only takes 40 minutes to watch because I can fast forward through commercials, I actually spend less time watching these shows I enjoy.

Possible Complaints
Every now and then, when I'm fast forwarding and then hit play, the sound and lips don't sync up. I'm not sure what causes this, but I've found that rewinding for a couple seconds and then hitting play again fixes this problem. Also, because this is in conjunction with satellite service, we had an issue and someone had to come fix the satellite. (They did this for free, however, because it was a problem with the way it had been installed.) That was more a problem with the satellite than with the Tivo, so I'm not even sure that counts. To get the deal we get, we did have to have a satellite dish attached to our house, so there is that too.

Unless you "hack" your Tivo remote, you can't skip commercials at 30 second intervals the way you can on my sister's DVR. In other words, when fast forwarding you have to watch the commercial in fast motion. There's a show my husband likes called The Screen Savers that covered how to hack your Tivo not long ago. I let my husband take care of that stuff, so I'm not sure how to do that or I would share, but you can probably find out on the web-site for the show.

Conclusion
I cannot express how much I love having a Tivo. I cannot imagine watching TV the way I used to. It just seems like such a waste of time now. TV is so much more enjoyable when you only watch what you like and when you don't have to watch commercials. My final recommendation is this: if you are willing to invest enough in your TV viewing to get at least basic cable, then you NEED a Tivo.