Pros: I could list all the Pros of a normal DVR; like the ability to set a season pass and then literally forget about what channel the show is on, or what time it plays. Who cares? You're shows will start appearing on the TiVo play list. Play them on your schedule. Fast forward through the commericals. Do this for years, and suddenly you find yourself not knowing what any of the commercials are; and that people actually are talking about them.... leaving you in the dark. That's okay, I'd rather not spend 8 minutes of every 30 minutes watching commercials. No, this stuff doesn't make TiVo great, this makes a DVR great.
TiVo is great because of it's software / user interface. I have another cable company DVR for HD programming. The picture quality is much better, but the User interface is aweful (e.g. Hit the wrong button when you're fast forwarding and you suddenly are watching a different program). It is really just a glorified VCR with bad programming. Where TiVo, no this is another box all together. The software is intuitive to use. Buttons don't throw you where you don't want to be.
Hook to your home network, and the second best thing about TiVo becomes apparent. Watch your digitial pictures on TV that are fed through your network sourced PC. Or, listen to music from that same source, or maybe another PC. Use TivoToGo and burn a DVD with shows to take with you on the road. Or, with a laptop, just copy the shows to your harddrive and watch them on the plane.
There is another less often advertised advantage to TiVo on the broadband. You can actually save shows to your PC and then copy them back to TiVo at a later date. This makes the 80 hour limit of the VCR (at low image) less of a problem. Just copy your shows to your home computer; and delete them from TiVo. Later, when you're ready to watch them from your big TV, copy them back.
Cons: Series 2 is not High Definition. Frankly, after watching HDTV, the regular TV signal just sucks. Yes, you can buy an HDTV TiVo now (Series 3) but that is way too expensive for not being satelite ready.
So, I'd like to throw the cable company out and go with a Satelite system. But, the most important tool in the home video collection, the TiVo unit, won't talk to the Satelite dish. To make this work, I'll have to put up a regular antenna to receive network programming that can be recorded to TiVo. Hey TiVo guys, you're holding me back from the latest and greatest of technologies.
Finally, the Series 2 box only has one tuner. Yes, you can watch a recorded TiVo program while recording another live show. Or, if you actually watch live TV (who does this anymore?), you can hook TiVo a cable splitter; then routing TiVo to your TV as a seperate source (e.g. Video 2 using S-Connector). The problem is when the networks compete, they may all have a great show - you can't be 3 places at once. Dual tuner would be great.
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