Your life will never be the same…

If you are watching TV without Tivo go out and get it. Right now! Your TV watching life will be forever changed – for the better. Your entire relationship to your television is changed in a fundamental way when you have Tivo. If it isn’t already, their advertising should say “TV on your terms”. I’ve read that Tivo suffers from that fact that it’s not easy to explain how it works and why it’s so great. And that’s kinda true. So, just take my word for it and get Tivo. And while your at it get a service, like DirecTV, where you can have a two tuner installation allowing you to watch one channel and record another at the same time.

Ok, I’ll try to explain why it’s so great. But if this doesn’t make sense to you, just go out and get it anyway. You’ll thank me later.

The TV Guide type of information (show/channel/time) comes via Tivo and is presented on your TV screen. It’s called the “grid” and shows what’s on every channel now and in the future. You highlight a channel/show and with a click or two it’s scheduled to be recorded. Could not be easier. Select “Season Pass” and you’ll record every non-repeated episode regardless of what time or channel it’s on!

When viewing a recorded show you can easily skip commercials with the “30 second advance”. If you overshoot you can back up eight seconds at a time. The advances are instantaneous. No more commercials!

It’s always recording even when it’s not recording. A 30 minute recording of both tuners is kept. This is so cool. If the phone rings during your favorite show you hit pause, answer the phone, come back and hit resume and you don’t miss a thing. This also allows you to back-up. If you miss a line, or for whatever reason want to do a quick replay, there is a 8-second replay button. It’s amazing how often this feature comes in handy. (Now when I’m watching a movie on DVD and there is a distraction and I miss something I begrudge the lack of a 8-second replay button on the DVD player.)

As a show is recording you can watch any part of it that has been recorded. So, let’s say your favorite show is on from 8:00 till 9:00, and you know it is laden with about 20 minutes of commercials. At around 8:00 you hit “record” and go have dinner. When done with dinner you start watching the show from the beginning, advancing over the commercials. By 9:00 you will have seen your entire show, had dinner, and avoided 20 minutes of commercials! (If you start watching the show within the first 30 minutes and you have no need to record it for posterity you don’t even need to record it. You simply use the 30 minute built in buffer that is always there.)


If you start watching a show and you decide you’d like to view it later instead of viewing it now, you simply hit the “record” button. No fussing with start/stop times. And, since Tivo already has 30 minutes saved, your complete show will be recorded (if you hit “record” within the first 30 minutes of the show) not just from the time you hit “record”.

Excellent record quality. In the case of DirecTV the format of the Tivo recording onto its hard drive is the same as the format of digital feed from the satellite. This means that there is no loss in quality between the live viewing and the recording. Is it live or is it recorded? You’ll never know from the picture quality. And when you pause Tivo the paused picture is rock steady. None of that jitter that you get when pausing a VHS tape. Same steadiness for slo-mo and fast forwarding too.

Tivo will allow you view television on your schedule, completely divorcing yourself from the times that shows are actually aired. No more real-time viewing if you don’t want to. You can, for instance, once a week pull up “the grid” and select the shows you want to see for recording. The grid has a synopsis of the show/episode, actors, guests, etc. This makes it easy to identify shows you may have seen or want to avoid, and to determine those shows that are of interest to you. Then you can watch them ON YOUR SCHEDULE while advancing across all the commercials. Life is good with Tivo.