 "Much Better than cable company DVR" | 2009-11-17 |
| - Reviewed By baiju20 |
I purchased a Tivo almost 2 months ago. So far I am very happy with it. Here are the features that I really like:
1. Ability to schedule shows over the web, much easier than trying type with a remote control.
2. The fact that it does not record the same show over and over when you select you only want new episodes
3. Tivo Suggestions - We have found programs that we like to watch based on the tivo suggestions
4. Ability to record Season Pass on Web Videos. It it much nicer to watch Web Videos on the TV versus the computer. Also much easier for multiple people to watch them on the TV.
5. Finding and recording programs through the Tivo is easier than the cable DVR.
6. The games on the Tivo, they are fun to play as a group. Although the person with the remote is in ultimate control
7. Web viewing like You Tube, Amazon, etc..
8. I like the fact you can upgrade the hard drive through the external drive, I have not upgraded yet, but plan to.
9. Now you can purcahse a 3 year warranty for $40 from Tivo. I was quite nervous about reliability after reading many reviews, but for $13 per year I feel like it was a good investment.
Things that I think need improvement:
1. With the cable DVR when you were searching for programs that you want to watch the TV program would show in the upper right. With the Tivo you only see the Tivo stuff.
2. The overall interface seems a bit dated, but still much better than the cable company box.
I purchased a refurb unit (200), 3 year warranty (40) and lifetime service (400), so I am in for about $640. Saving about $14 per month on the cable company DVR, this factors in cable card rental, pay back is just short of 4 years. So does it make great financial sense, not really, but the features it has are quite nice and worth the upfront investment.
If you don't like the cable company DVR, Tivo is a good way to go.
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| "HD Tivo works great" | 2009-11-13 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2PN8AI53VRE3L |
| I had to switch to a digital-compatible set when my cable company made the switch to all digital signals. i was annoyed, but this unit is easy to use and has several features my year-old Tivo did not. A nice step up. |
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 "TIVO service plans have big problems" | 2009-11-10 |
| - Reviewed By User: A13FU7B96Y5GUX |
A TIVO DVR like the TiVo TCD652160 HD Digital Video Recorder is useless without a TIVO service plan.
There are some very nasty features of TIVO service plans that you should be aware of.
If you buy a $300 3-year TIVO service contract up front LOOK OUT! After three years you are back at square one on TIVO service pricing. You will then have been paying an average of $8.33/month over the last 36 months, but going forward, you will pay 12.95/month. Like a new customer, you can buy another three-year plan for another $300, but there is no month-to-month option to extend the price you have been paying. Suppose your cellular provider said your rate will go up more than 50% after your first 3-year service contract completes!
Watch out for another major TIVO service plan problem. Currently, you can buy a lifetime TIVO service plan for $400, BUT it is for the lifetime of a particular machine. When that machine is no longer viable, you may forfeit your whole investment and be back at square one, buying a new machine AND a new service plan.
If you start out with a three-year service plan, hoping to upgrade later to a lifetime plan, that will cost you an additional $400--that's right, there is no upgrade path to lifetime service! Your machine-specific lifetime contract will then have cost you $700.
TIVO can be very expensive and the real cost may be difficult to predict. |
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| "Love the service, wish I could assign names to channels" | 2009-11-10 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3GY0NEFOEDJ05 |
This product performs as I expected. This is my first DVR, but it is performing well. The system does not have a compatible remote code to work with my TV (a Viore brand TV purchased from Amazon as well), which is somewhat inconvenient.
It would be nice if the individual tuners had a channel-recall function, sometimes swapping between tuners to find the channel I want can be annoying.
My cable company sends the HD signals for local TV stations over the cable, but does not publish the channel lineup on the Tivo service, so if I want to record HD programming from these stations, it is a bit of a runaround. First, scan all channels to see what channels have a signal. Then, check each channel to see which one's *really* have a signal. Then, figure out which channels correspond to the local stations. Then, set up a Season Pass to record a specific channel at a specific time. This doesn't allow me to automatically record all HD broadcasts of, say, my favorite football team... but it does work for regularly scheduled programming.
I plan to buy an external hard drive to extend the storage capacity of the unit, but I intend to use this for a long time - I bought the lifetime Tivo service contract, which was a big initial sticker shock ($399) but pays for itself after about 3 years of service.
The Netflix Instant Queue compatibility is another bonus - the ability to remove titles directly from this list without needing to go to [...] is a nice touch. In addition to my recorded content, with the push of a button I now have my whole Instant Queue from Netflix immediately available.
I reccomend this product to anyone looking for a reasonably priced HD DVR. I have no complaints about the hardware itself, beyond the inability to assign a "channel name" to channels not in the "official" cable lineup, which makes browsing inconvinient, but no more so than channel-flipping without the Tivo. |
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 "Love my new TiVO" | 2009-11-10 |
| - Reviewed By User: AR9Z463TMGEC7 |
| My husband and I bought this TiVO to replace our cable b/c it was cheaper. We usually watch the local channels most of the time anyways and with the TiVO we can record live TV and still watch our shows when we want to. We also got TiVO because it has most of the same features as our cable (music channel and other features that are really neat!) and the TiVO will sync with netflix which has all the seasons on dvd that we watch and we can watch our shows by logging onto netflix and download it to our tv. We are able to watch all the latest movies for $10 a month and we don't have to leave our home where cable was costing around $80 a month and all we got was a bunch of channels we either did not watch or never had time to watch. |
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 "Not worth it" | 2009-11-10 |
| - Reviewed By User: AHRH6CWWM69XD |
| When it works the Tivo HD is great. The picture and sound is much better than my old Tivo series 2. Unfortunately the HD is not as reliable as the series 2. I bought my series 2 about 5 years ago and have never had a problem with it. The HD unit looses its picture showing only a gray screen and needs to be rebooted every couple of days to get the picture back. Tivo has admitted that it is a software problem with the tuner for analog channels. My first tivo was so reliable that I believed Tivo would send out a software update to correct the problem but I have owned the HD for a year now and still no fix and customer support is no help. I don't believe tivo is really working on the problem they probably expect the problem to go away on it's own with the switch to digital television. But the problem won't be going away that quickly my cable provider plans on continuing broad casting some channels in analog for at least 2 more years. I can't wait any longer what good is a DVR if I can't rely on it to record my programs. I'm now trying to decide if I just go back to a series 2 or use my cable company's DVR. I wish I could recommend this product because when it's working Tivo really is the best DVR's but right now the HD has too many bugs and they don't seem to be getting resolved check out the tivo support forms it's ridiculous how long the same problems have been going on with no hardware or software updates made to correct them. |
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