Question From a Newbie

[skiitz]

HI all,
I am new to this and have a few questions to ask.

1) How hard is it to actually get a tivo from the USA up and running?
2) How long does it take?
3) What is the approx cost of a tivo shipped to aust?
4) What happens about the different power?
5) Is it possible to buy a DVR here in aust and have it record foxtel digital?
Finally
6) Is it possible to buy tivo allready set up here in aust (second hand mabye?)

Thanks

[Kinetic]

I just bought a tivo in the last fortnight - and i'll try to answer your questions from one newbie to another :P I LOVE MY TIVO!! :)

1) How hard is it to actually get a tivo from the USA up and running?

A: Not very. Follow the Guided Setup doc at:
http://minnie.tuhs.org/twiki/bin/view/Howtoinstall/GuidedSetup30

2) How long does it take?

I would have spent a few hours all up...maybe half a day.

3) What is the approx cost of a tivo shipped to aust?

OK - I shipped mine from George at Eksys.com and the frieght was 1/3 the total cost (but I wanted it quickly :)

Total cost of the tivo in AUD: $370 - about $120 of that was freight (5-7 days). Get the ethernet card.

4) What happens about the different power?

The tivo can take aus 240v no worries - but you need to buy yourself a figure 8 appliance type cord from dick smith or tandy etc. Most video's use the same sort of cord. They are about $10.

5) Is it possible to buy a DVR here in aust and have it record foxtel digital?

Dont know - I dont have foxtel.

Finally
6) Is it possible to buy tivo allready set up here in aust (second hand mabye?)

Maybe - but I doubt it. Once you get a tivo you want a second one ! (no one would *ever* sell one after they've used it! :)

All up i've spent about $500-$600 - including a new 120GB hdd (usa supplier sells them without hdd), cables, remote, hdd bracket etc.

Check this for basically what I did (this thread made me buy it!) :
http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/oztivo/2004-May/013084.html

Good luck!

[elarbee]

As yet another newbie, I'd agree with everything Kinetic wrote.

I got mine from george at eksys as well and couldn't recommend him highly enough. Awesome service!

To answer number five > Yes you can. But the DVR's here in Australia don't have an integrated electronic program guide. So it's like a VCR, you have to tell your DVR when to start recording and when to finish ( plus you need to ensure your foxtel STB is on the correct channel )

My Phillips TiVo from eksys came with an IR repeater so the TiVo automatically changes the channel on my foxtel STB as needed!

If you also want to receive FTA channels then you will need to replace the NTSC tuner from your American TiVo with a PAL one. Here is a link to the HowTo

http://minnie.tuhs.org/twiki/bin/view/Howtohardware/TunerModSamsungHowTo

The author, Darren King, can configure your TiVo for you and replace the tuner for you as well! This guy rocks and if you're like me and think it's all too daunting, then email Darren and he'll explain the process and cost for you.

Hope that helps
:)

[skiitz]

thanks for the help guys :)

[skiitz]

HI,
one more question for Kinetic if you are still looking at this.

you said you got your tivo from eksys.com and i saw that they have series 1 tivos. do you know what is the difference between a series 1 and a series 2 tivo?

Thanks

[curto]

Pretty simple.

The S1 works in Australia the S2 does not (yet)

Basically the Series 2 Units are a lot smarter (read faster processor and more memory) than the Series 1 - however the guys have not gone very far along the road of cracking them yet.

Stick with the S1 and if there is not enough grunt for you buy two of them !!

Craig

[skiitz]

thanks for the help so far guys, i have one more question (i hope) and then i think that i will mabye look at gettin one.

Q) Does the tivo connect to directly foxtel cable or does it connect to the foxtel decoder and then from the tivo into the TV? Can you watch and record different channels?

Thanks for all the help so far :D :)

[Kinetic]

All I can tell you is my setup:

I've got my external antenna plugged into the vcr.
vcr video out goes into the tivo.
Tivo video output into the TV.

I haven't bothered getting the actual PAL tuner mod (yet...as described above), so i cannot plug my external antenna straight into the tivo.

I've had my tivo working since tuesday (now thurs) and its already proved really handy :)

[fixxer37]

Q) Does the tivo connect to directly foxtel cable or does it connect to the foxtel decoder and then from the tivo into the TV? Can you watch and record different channels?

Hey - I jumped into Tivo even though I wasn't 100% about getting program guide data here in NZ, but had read all I could about the Oz set up - and that was good enough for me. (Subsequently some hard working guys in NZ have created this guide data, so it's a fully working system just like you'd have in Aus. From order to setup it took 3.5 days!
I have a satelite STB decoder (sky) and this outputs the decoded signal via AV cables - which in normal circumstances would go to 1) VCR 2) TV you take the AV cables that would go into the VCR and take it to the tivo, which has composite (rca) or S-video connectors - 1 lot in and 2 lots out. The Tivo then connects to the TV by the composite or Svideo output.
I think foxtel CABLE rebroadcast the FreeToAir channels like sky does, so if you have your FTA channels coming via the foxtel box so in this case you won't need the PAL tuner bit. You can't watch 2 different LIVE channels at the same time, as your foxtel box only can output 1 at a time, but you can watch something that's been recorded and be recording at the same time. That's what I do. And I can watch any of NZ's 4 FTA channels live also, just by going via the aerial tuner into the TV (I just can't record them also).
Hope this helps, I know it's not specific to Aus, but there you go!

[DavidSymons]

Hi Skiitz,


Does the tivo connect to directly foxtel cable or does it connect to the foxtel decoder and then from the tivo into the TV? Can you watch and record different channels?You connect the output from your Foxtel set top box (decoder) to the TiVo input.

You can't watch and record different Foxtel channels that are being broadcast at the same time - the TiVo will record whatever your Foxtel set top box is tuned to.

What you can do is watch a previously recorded program from the TiVo while it's recording something else.

Cheers, Dave.

[elarbee]

What you can do is watch a previously recorded program from the TiVo while it's recording something else.

Cheers, Dave.

This feature is awesome!

At first I was thinking "bummer, you can't watch live tv while it's recording something else" BUT once you actually start using TiVo you'll probably find that you don't watch much live TV at all!

Go for it, bring that little bundle of joy into your house and you'll never look back ;)

[Kinetic]

Hi Skiitz,

What you can do is watch a previously recorded program from the TiVo while it's recording something else.

Cheers, Dave.

I'm going to try this at home tonight - is there a trick to it to make this work? Or is it just a matter of starting the recording, hitting the tivo button and changing to 'now playing' and choosing your stored previous recording to play?

Other cool thing I found out this morning is that the tivo seems to record live tv (on the channel you are watching live) all the time, so at any time during a live tv broadcast, you can hit pause, rewind, play etc....then fast forward to "catch up" to the live broadcast again. This would be handy for watching sporting replays etc when channel 9 doesn't show them :)

[DavidSymons]

Hi Kinetic,


is there a trick to it to make this work? Or is it just a matter of starting the recording, hitting the tivo button and changing to 'now playing' and choosing your stored previous recording to play?No trick. It's just as you've described. Unless you actually tell it to stop recording it will continue to record while you watch other stuff or work with the TiVo menus. A good way to think about it is that the recording and playback functions work separately - unlike a VCR.

BTW for me it's so ingrained that it's bad for the tape to pause a VCR that I can't help but feel the same way when I pause the TiVo :).


Other cool thing I found out this morning is that the tivo seems to record live tv (on the channel you are watching live) all the time, so at any time during a live tv broadcast, you can hit pause, rewind, play etc....then fast forward to "catch up" to the live broadcast again. This would be handy for watching sporting replays etc when channel 9 doesn't show themYes - it will store up to 30 minutes of live TV. There are other benefits too - if you switch on your TV and it's 15 (say) minutes into a program you're interested in you can rewind back and watch it from the beginning.

Or you can hit the Record button and it will store what it's got so far (up to the last 30 minutes) and continue to record the program.

WRT replays - there is a button that will skip back 8 seconds and another that switches the TiVo to slow advance. In combination you can do your own slow motion replay.

But wait, there's more ... :)

I've had mine for 4 months and still marvel at the wonderment of it :).

Cheers, Dave.

[skiitz]

once again.............
thanks to all those who have helped