 "The reliability issue" | 2010-04-11 |
| - Reviewed By J.S. Banks from Mountain View, CA |
We got our Series 3 in February of 2007. It has given us over 3 years of flawless service. I won't go into how superior it is to other DVRs; that has been covered. I will just say that Comcast issued us our cable cards with no trouble (!) and this box has delivered trouble-free service ever since. Must re-start every few months when it gets slow. Additionally, The external SATA Western Digital drive we bought at Costco installed easily and has worked without trouble.
I looked at some of the one-star reviews. People are more likely to review when something goes wrong because anger is a great motivator. Obviously, there is a chance you'll get a lemon, but given the preponderance of 5-star reviews, It is well worth the gamble.
A note: the Comcast installer who hooked up our (thankfully temporary) Comcast HD DVR used composite cables and proudly presented us with a standard def. picture. Where do they find these guys? Rather than complain, I just hooked up an HDMI cable after he left. |
| |
 "I love Tivo" | 2010-01-04 |
| - Reviewed By Joe User from Hartford, CT |
| I'd rate this a 5, except my HDMI port died. Evidently this happens quite a bit. I'll have to use component output. |
| |
 "Think twice" | 2009-06-08 |
| - Reviewed By ResellerRatings.com CEO from USA |
The TIVO HD is a piece of junk. It's sluggish, channel changes are slow, and the Internet features work poorly.
What's worse: I bought it, returned it, canceled the Tivo service (if you don't call to cancel they will keep charging you $14/mo!), but they kept charging me even though I haven't owned the hardware for 5 months! I called to cancel again months later and they want to charge me a $150 early termination fee. For what? They gor their hardware back 5 months ago and I'm paying for nothing! Avoid. Go with DirecTV HD DVR! |
| |
| "Unreliable. One unit died after 1.5yrs, another after 9 months." | 2009-05-12 |
| - Reviewed By Formerly Happy Tivo Customer from Phx., AZ |
| Multiple units have proven unreliable. We ordered this product and transferred an old lifetime service (for $150 tranfer fee) to this machine. The hard drive died in about a year and a half. Tivo replaced with a refurb. model (for ~$100 fee) and transferred lifetime service. New unit lasted about 8 months and Tivo now (as of 5/09) charges a $200 "transfer fee" for lifetime service that they will not waive (plus $49 +s/h for the replacement unit), even though the reason for the transfer is a substandard product. Have been very happy and long-term Tivo customer (have 3 other non-Series 3 units in the house) until now, but are switching the Tivo HD DVR to a DVR provided by our cable provider. Tivo sells an unreliable product that breaks down in <2 years and has the audacity to charge the customer additional fees to obtain the same service on the same unreliable product. Disappointing. |
| |
| "A PREVIOUSLY loyal TIVO customer..." | 2009-01-31 |
| - Reviewed By Tellurian from NJ, USA |
We bought a HD TIVO in November 2008. We have 3 standard definition TIVOs, networked, throughout our home, and LOVE the interface. But I had always wanted one capable of recording in HD. We finally saved up enough money, and....
TIVO HD was nothing but a nightmare from day one. Half of this was due to the cable company and CABLE CARDS. CABLE CARDS ARE A HORRIBLE WAY FOR THE MOVIE/TV INDUSTRY TO "PROTECT" THEIR CONTENT. The CABLEVISION (NJ) tech that came out was cynical about how the card would work, and he was right. 50% of the HD channels simply did not work with the TIVO HD. We returned the useless CABLE CARD, and sent back the TIVO HD unit.
TIVO (the company) was the other half of our problem. Once I had returned the TIVO HD, I forgot about the 1-year service contract. HUGE MISTAKE. Three months later, I remembered to cancel the service. Because it was outside the trial period, THEY COULD NOT REFUND ANYTHING, and they did us a "favor" by not charging us an early cancellation fee. After an hour on the phone, we finally got 41 dollars back. They kept 59 dollars, for nothing.
Every day now I think about cancelling ALL our TIVO service and living with the lousy CABLEVISION DVR. At least I know they're going to screw me... |
| |
| "Will never go back to the cable company boxes" | 2009-01-16 |
| - Reviewed By MJH from Canada |
I purchased the Series3 a few months after it was first released.
It took a few days of waiting for Comcast to arrive to install the cableCARDs (at the time, they required a service call), and some initial trouble when the technician clearly didn't understand how to install cable cards. But once it was up and running, the TiVo is an amazing device.
The search, scheduling and recommendation functionality is just amazing and much better than the standard DVR's being offered by Comcast.
Never again do I need to wait around for a show to air - in the 2+ years I've been using this, it has never "missed" a show - it always records them reliably.
I expanded my unit by buying and plugging in an external 1TB eSATA hard drive. Now there is MUCH more storage and my recordings are saved for longer. A highly recommended and easy upgrade.
The only downside is that some menus in the system are a little slow to load (i.e. when searching), and TiVo seems to insist on sticking little advertisements in various menus which shouldn't be there (I'm paying a monthly subscription fee - I don't want to see advertisements on a subscription-based system!).
Keep in mind that in addition to buying the TiVo, you'll need to pay a monthly or annual subscription fee to keep it running (the fee is for guide data and online account management).
Also, on-demand services from your cable company are not currently supported, but this is something that I have never personally wanted to used. TiVo (in partnership with Amazon and Netflix) now offers many on-demand services at more reasonable prices than the cable company, so this is not a problem. |
| |
Expedited Available
