Rating: 
Summary: Beware hard drive faults
Review: My only complaint with the Philips unit that I bought was that it has become faulty after one year (just after my guarantee ran out). The picture & sound is 'sticky' which seems to indicate a hardrive problem. I was advised by Tivo to buy a new unit as it would cost a lot to repair this :(On a more positive note I would strongly recommend buying some kind of personal tv recorder. They are fantastic and I cannot live without one now. I seldom watch live TV (except for the news). I have told Tivo exactly what I want to watch and it records it. I would recommend a buy BUT make sure you get some kind of service plan with these units. A friend bought a Sony and his became faulty after 3 months (same problem). Maybe it is a bit of a design flaw to have these units contantly recording 24 hrs per day! The other thing to check is the privacy policy of the service provider (Tivo/Ultimate TV). My Tivo box sends details of everything I have watched, when I have changed channel and other viewing habits. This greatly concerns me. Tivo did assure me that no customer identifier is sent with this but I still feel like this is a move towards Orwell's 1984. I would have given these units a 5 were it not for mine breaking! Have fun and get one!
Rating: 
Summary: Believe the hype -- it will change the way your watch TV!
Review: No more scheduling your time around TV programs! A friend had gotten his months earlier, and I didn't believe what he was saying. Finally when I needed a VCR replacement, I decided to get the HDR212. This is an amazing product. I've had mine for over a year now, and I simply cannot imagine watching TV again without it. Pause when you have to run into the kitchen, or tend to something else at home. I normally start watching TV about 20 minutes after a program has started just so I can FF through commercials. $[money] a month for the TiVo service is worth the money. The TiVo guide is easy to use, and beats trying to grab a TV Guide or the newspaper to figure out when your program is on, and the season pass is just extremely convenient. This is the way TV was meant to be -- arranged around _our_ time. Downsides:
1. Watching TV again _without_ TiVo is a real pain!
2. Phillips warranty is pathetic -- 90 days parts & labor... beyond that, $[money] for a repair.
3. 6+ hours at Best quality (20 hours... yeah, whatever...) isn't enough. If you travel all week, by the time you get home, something's bound to have been erased. No problem though -- I bought an 80GB HD and upgraded the TiVo myself, and now I have 31 hours at best quality! (Check out the TiVo Hinsdale How-To guide on how to upgrade your TiVo). On the positive(?) side, my cable provider's quality is [bad] enough, that I often couldn't tell the difference between Best quality (6+ hours), and High quality (9+ hours) using the original (before upgrade) TiVo capacity. Now, if only TiVo could do something about the [bad] service from my cable provider! My building doesn't allow external antennas, unfortunately ...
Rating:
Summary: I love my TiVo
Review: NOTICE: This review relates to TiVo, not this specific hardware device. I have a Sony SAT-T60 DirecTV/TiVo combination receiver.
My wife and I became addicted to TiVo within 1 month after installing it. We have gone from watching 90% live TV/10% recorded (VCR) to 90% Tivo/10% live TV! We hardly watch anything anymore at its regular time. We simply pull up the "Now Playing" menu, which lists all the shows I have previously recorded, and watch whatever we're in the mood for - drama (Law and Order or Once and Again), comedy (Friends, South Park), reality TV (Survivor, Fear Factor), or sports (Illinois basketball, cliff diving). There are so many cool things about TiVo, but these are my THREE FAVORITE things:
1) Season Pass, which once you set it up, allows you to record a particular show EVERY time it's on or all shows with a particular actor or subject,
2) Easy to record (simply choose the show, not the time and channel) and easy to find and play (scroll through "Now Playing" list of prerecorded shows and choose "Select" to play),
3) Record two shows at once (like Survivor and Friends, which both start at 8:00 on Thursday) with a DirecTV/TiVo combination receiver, which we have. We started with the monthly subscription and moved to the lifetime after just a month (it's good for the life of the box, not you). We have a Sony model, and I've found Sony to always be reliable (two TVs, one VCR). I bought a 4-year warranty as a safety precaution (new technology and insurance against the lifetime subscription). DirecTV customer service is decent, but not great (they handle the TiVo side as well). The BEST resource for TiVo is the TiVo AVS forum, which you can link to from the Buzz section of the TiVo Web site. It's a "must read" prior to buying this unit. But I am not exaggerating when I say that this is the coolest, most liberating invention to come out since the World Wide Web. No joke! You will fall in love with your TiVo too.
Rating:
Summary: I love my TiVo
Review: NOTICE: This review relates to TiVo, not this specific hardware device. I have a Sony SAT-T60 DirecTV/TiVo combination receiver.
My wife and I became addicted to TiVo within 1 month after installing it. We have gone from watching 90% live TV/10% recorded (VCR) to 90% Tivo/10% live TV! We hardly watch anything anymore at its regular time. We simply pull up the "Now Playing" menu, which lists all the shows I have previously recorded, and watch whatever we're in the mood for - drama (Law and Order or Once and Again), comedy (Friends, South Park), reality TV (Survivor, Fear Factor), or sports (Illinois basketball, cliff diving). There are so many cool things about TiVo, but these are my THREE FAVORITE things:
1) Season Pass, which once you set it up, allows you to record a particular show EVERY time it's on or all shows with a particular actor or subject,
2) Easy to record (simply choose the show, not the time and channel) and easy to find and play (scroll through "Now Playing" list of prerecorded shows and choose "Select" to play),
3) Record two shows at once (like Survivor and Friends, which both start at 8:00 on Thursday) with a DirecTV/TiVo combination receiver, which we have. We started with the monthly subscription and moved to the lifetime after just a month (it's good for the life of the box, not you). We have a Sony model, and I've found Sony to always be reliable (two TVs, one VCR). I bought a 4-year warranty as a safety precaution (new technology and insurance against the lifetime subscription). DirecTV customer service is decent, but not great (they handle the TiVo side as well). The BEST resource for TiVo is the TiVo AVS forum, which you can link to from the Buzz section of the TiVo Web site. It's a "must read" prior to buying this unit. But I am not exaggerating when I say that this is the coolest, most liberating invention to come out since the World Wide Web. No joke! You will fall in love with your TiVo too.
Rating:
Summary: TiVo on the Cheap
Review: Philips is going to hate me for writing this, but I have found TiVo to be useful even though I am not a subscriber to their service. I hesitated to buy this for a while becuase I thought either a small monthly charge or a large one-time payment went with the cost of the recorder. I read in the documentation that the recorder would have "limited capability" without the subscription to the service, but that amount of capability was really what I was looking for, so I don't plan to EVER subscribe to their service. Without subscribing, I can pause live TV, do an "instant replay" of it, and record by time and channel. TiVo is more convenient for doing these operations than a VCR because I don't have to fool with tapes and cue them up to find the beginning of a show. Because TiVo is digital, the video quality is better than a tape. On the highest quality setting I have the same level of digital quality of my satellite dish. The thing that I've found the most useful is that I can watch a recorded show while making a recording of another, which a VCR can't do. I realize that some people like the features that come with the TiVo subscription. If people choose to pay for those things, that's their choice. I can't use the TiVo guide to look through the listings and select by name a program to be recorded. TiVo doesn't make suggestions for me based on the shows I've previously selected, and it doesn't automatically record my favorite shows if the time changes. But I know which shows I want to record every day, and DirecTv has a good guide that I can search through to find other shows to record. When I come home in the evening, I still have good shows to spend my limited TV time on, and I still have the money that I would have spent on the service.
Rating: 
Summary: Product description
Review: Problem; your product description says "a 2 GB hard drive". This is in error.
Rating:
Summary: Cannot watch TV without it.
Review: Sales people talk about pausing live TV. If you are really using TIVO you do not watch any live TV. (You cannot fast forward in live mode because that part of the program has not arrived.) TIVO is used to RECORD the BEST of the BEST of the BEST programming on your set of channels and have it ready for you. (The best of 35 channel is better than finding somthing in real time on 200 channels) TIVO Comes down to time management. There is not enough time to watch all the TV there is, so you only want to watch YOUR BEST shows, TIVO will have them. Check now playing and watch what is there. If you have set thing up correctly there should be better programming in Now Playing than on all your tapes. If not you have other things in your life than TV. Tis better to watch a good show you have not seen than rewatch one have. People talk about how channel surfing is slower. With TIVO you should not be channel surfing at all. It is a waist of time (TIVO has found lots of good shows on channels I never watched before. They did not have enough shows I like to make reading the guide worthwhile). You should never wait for anything. You should spend very little time (5 min. per week is a lot) deciding what to record or how much space is on the disk (TIVO keeps what it can as long as it can). Leave your season passes in, that way when battel bots comes back next season TIVO will have it for you. Most one hour shows can be viewed in 40 min. and rewound in 60 seconds if you do not use the skip to 15 min. mark or skip to end function. I shave at least on hour off a football game, even with my own instant replays.
I have the 49ers on a wish list. I get all the games, that is easy but if they have a spot on NFL films TIVO will record that for me too.
Can you imagine TV without a VCR? Replacing your VCR with TIVO is a bigger improvement than adding a VCR to your TV. I have 3 Super VHS VCRs, which I paid more than $400 each, and 500+ tapes. I used the VCRs to "time shift". They can all change cable box channels just like TIVO. Unlike TIVO tape cannot play and record independently at the same time.
I have not used any of the VCRs in the last year. My grand son has played some of his tapes. I quit renting movies, TIVO has more good stuff than I have time to watch. My first TIVO is over a year old and still working fine. I added 2 more units 2 mo. after the first one.
The last addition is a second TIVO remote for in our bedroom. That way I can have a remote of my own to fast forward or turn the TV and Sound system off after my wife has fallen asleep.
Last night she was still gripping the thing 3 hours after she fell asleep.
Rating:
Summary: Installation was not so simple
Review: Setting up the Tivo was simple to plug everything in, but the software was quite out of date upon installation. I was so anxious to use the Tivo, but was considerably delayed. I had to let the Tivo make it's daily call and download the updated software and then install it. Took about an extra hour to download and install and then another 5-6 hours to be able to fully use the unit. My advice: after getting the Tivo going, force it to make it's daily call to download the updated software before doing anything else. This will save you a minor headache. Otherwise, this thing is great. If you have a lot of shows or movies that you would like to regularly record, you should purchase a larger unit. I have DirecTV and the recording at basic quality is not that great, but it's tolerable. So far, medium quality does just fine. I've found the 'Tivo Recommendations' to be useless with this unit because there is such limited storage space to begin with.
Rating:
Summary: Time to replace your DVD & VCR Players!
Review: We bought one last year and have found out that we are not using our DVE/VCR players almost at all except if we want to keep some program for a very long time. Then you can transfer it to your DVD/VCR to keep. It is best to pay the flat fee up front that is a fee for them to send special programing to your machine and if you have cable it is 10x greater. This is because you will get more programs to choose to record from. Also do not record in best quality because you do not get as many hours as it says. You get about 10 less and the difference is not that much that you could really tell. Or if you want to record more then buy the 30 hrs. I know you will love it we do!
Rating:
Summary: We love this product!
Review: We bought Tivo two years ago and don't know how we ever survived without it. My husband and I feel like we should be on their payroll for as much as we talk about Tivo to our friends. It makes life much easier if you have kids. There is no more missing the last five minutes of your favorite show! You just hit pause or record to save whatever you are watching. We highly recommend this to anyone who watches TV!
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