First impressions of the Australian HD TiVo
This new TiVo is a very nice beast.
I recklessly purchased one from Harvey Norman on the Gold Coast on Thursday. I even had to wait while they opened up the shipping crate to get one out – it was the first one they had sold.
For anyone familiar with the OzTiVo there are no surprises, everything looks pretty much the same onscreen but with quite a few extra options.
The biggest improvement is in picture quality, as the output is in Component Video instead of the AVI on the old ones. The difference is remarkable even on an aged 42” low def Plasma.
The other major improvement is twin digital High Definition tuners fitted internally.
Setup is very simple, but will not start until you have registered your purchase by Serial number, along with your personal details, on the website. Otherwise, no dramas, although it missed NBN (Gold Coast CH8) on the first tuning run (it picked it up OK on a subsequent run).
There is much more information accessible onscreen than the old one, but one thing missing – there appears to be no network access to the machine by web browser or telnet. However, even their website is not fully functioning yet, and no doubt someone will report how to get into it in due course.
The new peanut remote is a bit longer than the old one, but has only 4 extra buttons with 3 extra functions.
There is little information supplied with the unit, and I already have a pair of OzTiVos in the same room. The new remote uses the same code set as the old one, so I went to the OzTiVo HowTo on controlling 2 or more TiVos in the same room. The two OzTiVos are on Control channels 1 & 2, so I set the new HD one to channel 4 and VOILA! Thank you very much RonDavis for your HowTo written way back in July 2003!
The final step was to integrate the command set into my Sony RM-VL900 remote, and the whole operation works seamlessly. Each TiVo is selected by a different macro, and the whole thing is so simple I didn’t even have to teach my better half how to drive it – just which macro was required to select it.
TiVo rocks, and this version is even better than the old one :)
First impressions of my first and then second Australian HD TiVo...
I'm a Tivo first-timer. I bought one last Tuesday week. I was just asking questions about it when they offered to sell it, I thought the launch date was fixed in stone. I brought it back the next day and swapped it for another and kept that. Am almost completely happy with it so far.
First impressions before powering on were that it looked and felt cheap and badly put together (my first one rattled - it is definitely not a Sony). The channel scan was disappointing - it registered all channels but didn't display any 7 or 9 channel. My Samsung TVs inbuilt HDTV tuner reported 7HD signal strength at 84 to 88. Moving the aerial cable over to the Tivo and the Tivo reported 7HD at 48 to 50. That's why I brought the first one back, that and the audio from the Tivo was twice as loud as my other TV input devices (VCR and DVD). Had the same signal level and audio issue on the second Tivo so I kept it and am getting Mr. Antenna to visit. I'll live with the overly high audio level I guess.
To summarise, I'm happy enough but I wish it didn't have the following issues;
* the Tivo TV tuner SEEMS to be inferior to my old Topfield STB and my new Samsung TV, and that's based on my experience of 2 Tivos
* the Tivo audio SEEMS twice as loud as other TV input devices, and music doesn't sound all that good via the Tivo, sounds a little mangled, and it was the same on my first Tivo
* you can mark which channels are your favourites but you can't re-order them (something you can do on a Topfield STB and on a Samsung digital TV). In Australia the channel order is all over the place, I'd like to have ABC1 and ABC2 next to each other and at the beginning of the channel list)
* you can't bring up a channel list to select a channel to change to (OK you can use the guide for that but even that shows a scroll list)
Other than all of the above, I'm a fairly happy little Tivo-mite. But one new problem became apparent as the days passed and as I began to watch the recorded shows. The audio level changes during playback - it fades down and just as I'm about to reach for the volume control it goes back up again.
And another bad point - although I can control the TV volume using the TiVo remote, the volume button does not repeat the command when you hold it down.