23 Ways to Turbocharge TiVo

I'm a heavy DVR user, and from your comments and questions, I get the feeling that a number of you are the same as me. And so I love it when I get to chew on a nice page full of tips for hacking my TiVo to make it even more capable.

In this spirit, Satellite Sweeper offers 23 cool tips for improving your DVR experience. Some are absolute must-dos (the 30-second skip, for example) and some are a little more involved (adding a second hard drive to your DVR). Here are a few of my favorites, and of course you should check out the full story for additional details and more tips.

• (#11) The 30-Second Skip - Use the skip-to-hash button (looks like "->|") to jump forward 30 seconds at a time instead of 15 minutes. The utility of this hack should be obvious. This page is a permanent bookmark of mine.
• (#18) Advanced Wishlists - Gives you much more flexibility in setting up wishlists by letting you search for director-actor combos and more.
• (#16) Rename Recorded Shows - Using the TiVo Web Project to give your TiVo a web interface, you can change the title of any recording.
• (#14) Play Downloaded Shows Directly on Your Computer - The vserver hack mentioned here lets you do TiVoToGo-like functionality without saving the files on your PC.
• (#7) Save Files Directly to TiVo - TiVo will be rolling this feature out legitimately in the near future, but here's the hack to do it today.
• (#15) Caller ID on Your TV - Pretty cool hack to show you who's calling (assuming your TiVo is hooked up to a phone line); requires extra software.
• (#3) Add a Second Hard Drive - Double your storage in a snap!

As mentioned above, many of these hacks require quite a bit of expertise, but even if you don't intend to put them into practice, I still think it's fun to read them to see exactly what a humble DVR can do when you push it to the limit.