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