Rating: 
Summary: Would be great if it worked
Review: I bought the Tivo in November, it worked great until the end of December when it began freezing our TV and eventually just died. Fortunately, we did not purchase the life-time service plan because it would not have been transferred to our replacement Tivo. Also, to exchange the Tivo we were expected ship the defective Tivo back to California (from Boston) at our own expense.
If your cable service offers an on-demand option, I highly recommend it above Tivo. The customer service is better, it is more reliable and it does pretty much all the same stuff.
Rating: 
Summary: Picture Quality
Review: I have seen that a few people are concerned with picture degradation when playing your TV through the DVR. My recommendation is to make sure you connect the video using the s-video port rather than using the standard rca composite cables. Series 2 certainly has an S-video port. I have heard that series 1 does not. I don't know for sure. When I first got Directv I connected it to the tv with the compsite cables and the picture was awful. I was disappointed because I expected nice clarity through the digital sattelite. I bought an s-video cable and connected that way. That certainly did the trick. The picture improved considerably. I connected the Tivo I recently bought the same way and have experienced no degradation. When I first swapped out the composite for s-video on the sattelite receiver I was at first still a little disappointed. I realized what happened was I was used to watching DVDs on a prog scan player and a HDTV. Of course there is no way normal boradcast tv is ever gonna look that nice. However I want to reiterate that using the S-video cable makes a world of difference.
Rating: 
Summary: BEWARE TIVO REBATES!!
Review: The TIVO works great. I like everything about it -- EXCEPT the TIVO rebate process. As could be predicted, along with about 75% of all other Rebate offers, mine got "Oops!" -- REJECTED. Why? I don't know. I looked over the forms again. I looked over my Model number and dates of purchase and receipt and EVERYTHING and it all looked great. When the date (12/1) came and went and I didn't receive my $50 rebate checks (yes, I bought two) from TIVO -- I finally decided to do some research. I looked on the form, and you are told to go to: http://www.web-rebates.com/tivo/ to check on your status. I got an error message saying that mine had been "Incorrectly Submitted." I then called the Tivo Rebate phone number (800-352-1075) -- and provided them with all my information and VOILA! Suddenly my rebates are on their way again -- but with an additional 4-week delay. The jury's still out on whether I'll really receive a rebate check without more hassles. I'd just like to submit this comment as a FAIR WARNING to Tivo Purchasers to: * KEEP A RECORD OF EVERYTHING * MARK YOUR CALENDAR AS A REMINDER * WRITE DOWN THE TIVO REBATE PHONE NUMBER
(800-352-1075) 'CAUSE YOU'RE PROBABLY GOING
TO NEED IT. My Conspiracy Theory: Big Companies offering "rebates" know that most people forget they are due a rebate check -- and OOPS! somehow consistently mess things up (seemingly as a matter of policy). Don't be a sucker and get tricked out of your money -- and, in this case, by TIVO.
Rating: 
Summary: So Easy, Anyone Can Use Tivo
Review: I have been a Tivo subscriber for over 3 years and use both the first and second generation Tivo recorders and can't understand the people that seem to have problems with it. Both of my units work flawlessly. When recorded in the "best" picture mode, you can't tell if you are watching live TV or Tivo. I don't care how good your VCR is, you could never make that statement, especially on a 50"+ TV. And this has to be among the most intuitive products ever made. I can teach a babysitter or my mther-in-law how to use it in ten minutes or less.
As for those that say they suffered from a picture degradation when watching through the Tivo tuner, I must admit that the pictures color is slightly more washed out when watching live TVthrough the Tivo tuner, but this can easily be overcome by adjusting your set. You also can (and I recommend this if you want to record one show while watching another) use a cable splitter hooking one end to Tivo and the other to your TV to insure that you can get a premium picture for certain shows.
All in all, this has been one of the best purchases I have ever made.
Rating:
Summary: Transformational product! Too cool for school
Review: First:
Spend the extra money for the larger (80 hours) recorder. It's worth the extra investment.
Second:
The recording time indicated is the maximum available using the lowest (of three) quality settings. Max quality is about 25% of this.
Third: Service plans are monthly or "lifetime". Lifetime refers to the lifetime of the recorder. (...)
Fourth: Tivo's main method of phoning home to the Tivo mothership (for programming information from your satellite/cable provider and for software updates) is via phone (modem). But: if you are running a wireless or wired broadband network, you can request an additional download that will then enable all future updates to take place via TCP/IP.
Fifth: Setup is pretty easy, the documentation is excellent. THe biggest challenge will probably be navigating through your exisiting mess of A/V cables! After install, the ease of use is simply amazing!
Sixth: If you are a sports fan...you are now in control of when to take another look. Very cool and fun.
Finally: If you buy the lower capacity set, there is a brisk aftermaket in (unauthorized) upgrades. This is because the hard drive is a standard IDE unit (like in your PC), and Tivo runs Linux. (...) If you're a real geek, and are confident with booting into Linux on an external PC, you can do it yourself!
How did we ever watch TV without Tivo?
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful product
Review: I've had this thing for one night and I'm in love. Instant replay of what I want, no more missing Seinfeld when Jeopardy is on, all the shows I want to see waiting for me when I get home from work. This is the system to have. Set up was so easy and quick! Get one now!
Rating:
Summary: makes TV a whole new thing
Review: TIVO is like Disposable diapers...Once you move to this nobody will ever go back.
Rating:
Summary: close, but a few major flaws
Review: I was very excited about this when I got one for Christmas, but there are too many problems for it to work for me. I had planned on plugging my incoming TV signal into the Tivo, and then feeding it from the Tivo to my TV, essentially using the Tivo as a tuner and not relying on my TV for anything but actually showing me what I'm watching. There are too many problems, I can't do that. I had no intention of subscribing to a service ($13 a month? Now really, that's a little much. Sure, you don't need it for Tivo to work, but in legal speak, the manual basically tells you that you shouldn't expect anything to work unless you do subscribe to the service.). So I thought that it wouldn't be a problem that I don't have a land phone line, only a mobile. Well, you can turn the unit on without a phone line, but that's about it. There is a setup process that you need to go through before you can use the thing, and part of that setup process is making 2 phone calls. Bad for me, I had to take it to a friend's house just to get the thing to work. Sure, it is broadband capable (I guess, I've ordered a router and USB ethernet adapter for it, I'll let you know if that actually works once all the stuff comes in), but you still can't turn on the broadband until you've completed the phone setup process. I don't have cable. I have no intention of getting cable. However, I live in an apartment and the person who lived here before me had cable. The cable is still there, and I use it to get my TV. As a result, a few channels come in that I wouldn't get over the air with a normal antenna, and a few networks are in a different place than they would normally be. Part of the tivo setup lets you specify how you get your channels. I don't have cable, but it's not through an antenna either. I picked antenna because it most closely represented what I have. Tivo only shows you channels that it knows about, channels that are on the predefined channel list that you select. You can hide channels that you don't like/get, but there is no way to add channels. Sure, I can punch in the channel number on the keypad and it will take me there, but I can't browse to it with the channel up/down button, and worse, I can't record it. That is not cool. Keep that in mind if you have any variation from local cable/satellite/antenna service - like universities, condos/buildings with their own version of cable, etc. Further, my Tivo isn't showing me any channels at all above channel 13. I'm on the phone with Tivo support about that problem - actually I'm on hold with Tivo support about that problem, as I have been for the last 30 minutes, and likely much longer. It's not a toll free call either. Good thing my mobile phone has free long distance. I'd like to return it, but I stupidly threw away the box. I'm either stuck with it, or selling it on eBay or something.
Rating:
Summary: The subscription IS required.
Review: I copied the following text directly from http://www.tivo.com. "TiVo service is required and is available for $12.95 per month or $299 for Product Lifetime." I don't know how much more clear you can get. The subscription IS required.
Rating:
Summary: Very Noisy
Review: I love this thing. It has changed the way I view television. But be careful. It makes a lot of noise. I put it in our bedroom, and it grinds away all night. It drives my wife and I crazy. I checked, and there is nothing wrong with it. It's normal noise for the type of hard drive they use (a cheaper version that the quiet ones that might have added a little to the components cost).
| 
