Tivo Expectations

[AJOS31]

Ps. How do you rate the Tivo?.. live up to your expectations etc?

[Smegger]

Hi Andrew

I have been reasonably impressed with the TiVo. I'd give it an 8 out of 10.
The 8 points are all for the ease of recording, playback, timeslip, etc. It's just so easy to pick a show from Now Playing when you want to watch a recording. Being able to watch the start of a show while recording the end of the show is really useful. Picking shows to record from the Program Guide is terrific and much easier to do than a VCR. The quality of the recordings are also very good
There are a couple of downsides:

My TiVo won't change the channels on my STB (Teac DVB300) so at the moment I can't program the TiVo to record using different channels. I was just unlucky here and hopefully I will be able to capture my STB IR codes for use with the TiVo.

When the action is fast moving and the camera is panning quickly there is some pixellation but I think this might be an issue with all Digital recorders using compression/decompression.

A couple of times my wife has wanted to watch the recording in another room in the house - oops sorry dear you can't do that.

Overall though I wouldn't go back to a VCR. By the way the help I have received from this forum and the OzTiVo mailing has been fantastic.

How are you going with your TiVo?

[AJOS31]

Thank you for the feedback Smegger.. it’s interesting to get a real end-user’s opinion.. and 8/10 isn’t bad!

My Tivo, according to USPS, arrived in Australia this morning, so I guess it won’t be long now.. I’ll have to go buy a 200GB HDD and appropriate screwdrivers tomorrow.. Everything else is ready to go..

I mostly purchased the Tivo in lieu of a HDD/DVD recorder (I’d been eyeing the LG 80GB HDD/DVD recorder $1299! :eek: ). The EPG and IR Blaster are a real bonus; all though the storm brewing over EPG source data copyright etc is somewhat worrying.

Rdgs
Andrew

[tenty]

Sorry. Didn't mean to intrude, but I decided that these posts needed a thread of their own. Feel free to Continue ;)

[AJOS31]

The Tivo arrived to day from George. Ordered 4:00pm last Thursday, and here it is Wednesday..

Setup was easy enough, all went as per ‘GuidedSetup30’.. The Tivo is now ‘indexing’ (indexing what I don’t know – I understand there is now no EPG data - re copyright issue).

The Foxtel Digital STU channel changing appears to be working fine, but slow..

Some (perhaps negative) observations –

1. A slight motion stagger or judder – even with slow moving objects (nb not pixilation or ‘blocking’). This is a bit of a worry. I’m hoping it has something to do with the CPU ‘indexing’. I’ll have to see what it’s like in the morning…

2. The Tivo is 1/3 of a second behind live TV (which is understandable)

3. Tivo appears to ‘turn-up’ the colour (can this be adjusted?)

All in all very very happy, I’d get it 8/10 also, maybe more once I get over change resistance.. (and baring the current EPG problems).

Nb. This is after 30 minutes experience.

[AJOS31]

Yikes, scrub 1 above! I just read “The TiVo will display the time wrong and give you a jittery picture until you have rebooted.’

I should have RTFM’d to the end.

[tenty]

2. The Tivo is 1/3 of a second behind live TV (which is understandable)

Yep. It'll do that because it has to take in the input and then encode it. The encoding process (my understanding) creates the delay.


3. Tivo appears to ‘turn-up’ the colour (can this be adjusted?)

You will need to telnet into your TiVo and type "palmod_conf" (let me confirm that). It will give you a menu which allows you to adjust brightness, contrast and a third thing that slips my mind.



All in all very very happy, I’d get it 8/10 also, maybe more once I get over change resistance.. (and baring the current EPG problems).

Nb. This is after 30 minutes experience.
Once you find cool little features like letting TiVo suggest what shows you watch based on what you currently watch, and the "30 second skip hack" (yes I call it a hack because the "->|" button on your remote is a "Skip to end" button.) it makes TV more friendly. Some people dislike TiVo suggestions and turn them off. I on the other hand don't mind it :D

I'd give mine a 9 outta 10 purely because I don't use wishlists and haven't bothered to get myself a turbonet or cachecard yet :P
*note to self* (hrmm... looks like I need to make and install a face for the guy poking out his tounge) ;)

[Charliektm400exc]

The slight delay is because the TiVo is writing the live program to hard disk, and then reading it back off to show you. The TiVo is always recording if it's switched on, not just the stuff you ask it to.

Don't be to hasty going for the 30 second skip. I think most people prefer to leave it the way it is, and just use the fast forwards, with automatic skip back. Plus there are some possible issues that the 30 second skip seems to cause with modified TiVo's like we have here that appear to mean the TiVo needs rebooting every few days.


Charlie

[AJOS31]

I’ve played with the Tivo a little more (3 hours).. and upgrade ‘my rating’ to excellent; the UI, functionality, responsiveness, ease of use, EPG etc. etc. is excellent (not that I have any experience with other PVR systems).

Man, I hope the OzTivo community can come up with a workaround for the EPG copyright issue.

Well done and thank you to the smart people who developed/moded/hacked TIVO for Australia!
:D

[Smegger]

Well I'm adjusting my rating to 9.5/10.

Now that my TiVo can controll all my Free to Air STB channels. It's magic!

It is amazing how quickly they can be delivered from the US. Mine came from George as well and it made it in 6 days which included a US Public Holiday and one here as well.

:)

[AJOS31]

Hi

I used [TiVo [p0] /sbin]# ./palmod_config to adjust the colour as outlined by Tenty above

Other than rebooting is there some way to immediate apply the changes?

Rdgs
AJ

[curto]

Sorry no easy way - hard when you are trying to compare the results of something

Craig