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Tivo Tivo Tivo
How I Love My Tivo ...
Ok - a Bit of backstory ..
We were day one launch owners of Sky HD back in May. So (for various reasons) we thought, 'OK - lets mothball tivo and try Sky Plus'. We have had a Tivo (heavilly hacked, modded and expanded) since August 2000.
Now for those that weren't aware, all of Tivo's (basically non existent) marketing back in 2000/2001 was done by Sky, as was/is the telephone customer support (yes IS - its still there and is suprisingly good - and Tivo US have renewed there promise that the service will continue indefinitelyin the UK). Basically Sky used the contract to get lots of access to Tivo and used that access to come up with Sky Plus (I won't say that they reversed engineered the software cos I have no proof) - so unsuprisingly never put much effort into the Tivo marketing and at they time no one new what PVR's were. In fact the episode of 'Sex In The City' where Miranda's Tivo broke down did more for Tivo's brand recognition in the UK than all of Skys marketing. Unfortunatley Tivo died in the UK and was pulled off the shelves just as Sky announced there Sky Plus boxes (I also won't say anything about the timing). Ongoing issues with sky have meant that Tivo have been hesitant to return to the UK (which I think is a shame as now people do infact understand PVR's where as in 2000 people had no idea how much difference they make to viewing habbits) and the new Series Tivos with DVD recorders are a joy - but the US ones wont work here. That said there is still a very active Tivo community in the uk of of over 30000.
Anyway .... We have been using the SkyPlus for six months and its software is so basic it is infurating to anyone who has used tivo for any amount of time.
Data only a week ahead, no way to search for programs by name, series links that only work on one channel, no way to search accross genre's etc etc etc. The software is basically the same as it was when they launched in 2001 and it was primative compared to Tivo even then. This is my main gripe - whilst Tivo are pledged to supply the program guide forever there has been no software updates for 4 years on UK tivos, but the software is so much better than Sky its amazing - sky are showing no interest in improving there software as they dont have to, they have a captive market.
Anyway - I got sick of only being able to record around 20 hours of HD on the box so I replaced the 300GB drive in the HD with a 500GB drive (which is astoundingly easy) and have more than doubled my HD recording space (remember on Sky HD you only have 160GB of recording space - the other 140GB is reserved for the video on demand over skybroadband which is coming 'soon' so i have gone from 160 GB to 360GB recording space). I also decided that I would put the tivo back in to use it for all non HD content - I can record around 200 hours of normal TV at DVD quality on Tivo's 600GB's of space. I have a samsung DVD/HDD recorder PVR but that's got pretty basic software too - i just use it for transfering programs to the HDD, editing the ads and burning to DVD. Now the Tivos back i'll just dump to pc, edit the ads out and store on my server for play back on the KiSS.
Its been a joy of rediscovery.
Being able to find programs coming up with only four or five button presses. On screen program overlay and loads of other stuff I'd forgotten (not to mention web access to Tivo to both set recording from anywhere in the world and of course being able to extract the shows to MPG2 to my PC for divx conversion with no loss of quality).
If anyone is considering getting a PVR, Get a Tivo .... Theres a few on Ebay constantly (basically a few enterprising individuals have snapped up loads and offer all kinds of things for them) ...
Also check http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=14 which is a help full active comunity and also http://www.tivoheaven.co.uk/ and http://www.tivoland.com/ amongst others if your worried about support ...
I think its time to restart my Bring Tivo Back to the UK campaign ... We are both happy again ...
Ok - a Bit of backstory ..
We were day one launch owners of Sky HD back in May. So (for various reasons) we thought, 'OK - lets mothball tivo and try Sky Plus'. We have had a Tivo (heavilly hacked, modded and expanded) since August 2000.
Now for those that weren't aware, all of Tivo's (basically non existent) marketing back in 2000/2001 was done by Sky, as was/is the telephone customer support (yes IS - its still there and is suprisingly good - and Tivo US have renewed there promise that the service will continue indefinitelyin the UK). Basically Sky used the contract to get lots of access to Tivo and used that access to come up with Sky Plus (I won't say that they reversed engineered the software cos I have no proof) - so unsuprisingly never put much effort into the Tivo marketing and at they time no one new what PVR's were. In fact the episode of 'Sex In The City' where Miranda's Tivo broke down did more for Tivo's brand recognition in the UK than all of Skys marketing. Unfortunatley Tivo died in the UK and was pulled off the shelves just as Sky announced there Sky Plus boxes (I also won't say anything about the timing). Ongoing issues with sky have meant that Tivo have been hesitant to return to the UK (which I think is a shame as now people do infact understand PVR's where as in 2000 people had no idea how much difference they make to viewing habbits) and the new Series Tivos with DVD recorders are a joy - but the US ones wont work here. That said there is still a very active Tivo community in the uk of of over 30000.
Anyway .... We have been using the SkyPlus for six months and its software is so basic it is infurating to anyone who has used tivo for any amount of time.
Data only a week ahead, no way to search for programs by name, series links that only work on one channel, no way to search accross genre's etc etc etc. The software is basically the same as it was when they launched in 2001 and it was primative compared to Tivo even then. This is my main gripe - whilst Tivo are pledged to supply the program guide forever there has been no software updates for 4 years on UK tivos, but the software is so much better than Sky its amazing - sky are showing no interest in improving there software as they dont have to, they have a captive market.
Anyway - I got sick of only being able to record around 20 hours of HD on the box so I replaced the 300GB drive in the HD with a 500GB drive (which is astoundingly easy) and have more than doubled my HD recording space (remember on Sky HD you only have 160GB of recording space - the other 140GB is reserved for the video on demand over skybroadband which is coming 'soon' so i have gone from 160 GB to 360GB recording space). I also decided that I would put the tivo back in to use it for all non HD content - I can record around 200 hours of normal TV at DVD quality on Tivo's 600GB's of space. I have a samsung DVD/HDD recorder PVR but that's got pretty basic software too - i just use it for transfering programs to the HDD, editing the ads and burning to DVD. Now the Tivos back i'll just dump to pc, edit the ads out and store on my server for play back on the KiSS.
Its been a joy of rediscovery.
Being able to find programs coming up with only four or five button presses. On screen program overlay and loads of other stuff I'd forgotten (not to mention web access to Tivo to both set recording from anywhere in the world and of course being able to extract the shows to MPG2 to my PC for divx conversion with no loss of quality).
If anyone is considering getting a PVR, Get a Tivo .... Theres a few on Ebay constantly (basically a few enterprising individuals have snapped up loads and offer all kinds of things for them) ...
Also check http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=14 which is a help full active comunity and also http://www.tivoheaven.co.uk/ and http://www.tivoland.com/ amongst others if your worried about support ...
I think its time to restart my Bring Tivo Back to the UK campaign ... We are both happy again ...
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I was hoping to get a second hand SkyPlus box and "mod" that one with a bigger HD without ruining the warranty on my newish (pre-HighDefinition) one.
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Also as 90 % of PVR problems are drive issues i'd just put another drive in - if the drive fails under warrenty thats not sky anyway.
I think I would have been happy with sky plus if I hadn't had Tivo first. I have friends who think SKy plus is wonderful - they then come and stay at our place fo a day or so an see Tivo in operation and the first thing they say is 'Why cant Sky DO that if Tivo software is 6 years old?'
Its a case of you dont miss what you havn't had. But once you have it you really miss it.
As far as the HD Mod is concerned - you literally can just drop in a new 500 GB drive and it works - you can in fact leave the old drive in plce and just conect a sata cable to the sata socket and run the cable out side the box to an external array/caddy so can infinatly swap drives - The HD box build the planner when you reboot. If you want to keep your programs you can us ppbbc's Copy+ program (google it) to copy them to the new drive (you also need to use copy+ if you are using larger than 500GB - some people have put 750 drives inside).
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How do you do that? Do you play them on the tv and re-record them on the PC or use a network card or something else?
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And I dont use the tuner - I use the RGB Scart input from the Sky box. Tivo quite happily changes channels on the Sky HD (which doesnt affect the HD recordings)...
We just dont watch live TV anymore - the closest we come to it is wating things about 10 mins after they start so we can fast wind the ads ...
Do a google on Tivo Cachecard and TyTools
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BTW - google TivoWeb and TivoWeb plus ... also excellent features you wont find anywhere else - Tivo basically is a Linux PC ...
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My parents have a Thompson DHD4000 which is far from perfect, but the EPG is free and it can record two Freeview channels at once (except when you record two programmes on one channel back-to-back and it overlaps them). I've been planning to get a PVR for myself at some point but I'd ideally like one with three Freeview tuners and a way to extract the video to a computer.
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And I dont use the tuner - I use the RGB Scart input from the Sky box. Tivo quite happily changes channels on the Sky HD (which doesnt affect the HD recordings)...
We just dont watch live TV anymore - the closest we come to it is wating things about 10 mins after they start so we can fast wind the ads ...
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We really should have done it years ago ... we have paid out what around 360 in monthy payments I guess ...
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So I'm setting my home TiVo to record Ruby In the Smoke, Derren Brown and the Christmas Lectures. All through a nice friendly web interface (OK, I installed that myself, but part of the point is that I could).
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I gave up on the Sky+ box when I found the UI too hard to bother with.
We're going to ship the current Media Centre to Seattle when we move but I'm actually going for a HD PVR from the Local Cable provider there for the day to day stuff. I'll religate the Media Center to player of Downloaded TV.
Interesting, our new Home Theatre system I've bought also has DivX codecs built in, which I am rather curious about.
I'm also curious to see how much I'll bother with downloading versus timeshifting through PVRd TV.
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But youstill cant beat the Tivo for simply looking after your casual viewing habits ..
If your living stateside I really suggest in investing in omne of the DVD recorder Tivos (and I mean Tivo Brand) The EPG and the extra features such as Tivo web, TyStream and TyTools realy make it worth while.
wish list TIVIO
I know when the sky + is about to die.. it dies just as soon as I have amassed a full disk and I have all the parts of a really good series to watch on a rainy weekend...