DVR's

ALL OF THE TIME.

If it broke, my wife and 2-year old child would send me out for a new one.

Grammy was here this weekend, and our daughter asked to watch one of her shows. Grammy asked 'is it a movie?', 2-year old says: 'no, it's on Tivo'.

Only possible issues:
1) Big Screen TV means recording at highest quality (fewest shows) so it won't pixelate when there's some action on the screen (but the quality is way better than tape);
2) If you have satellite, you need 2 tuners (or a dual tuner), or Tivo will always want to change the channel.

 

I have had a ReplayTV for a few years now and it is great. Like Cohen, we use ours all the time. It is set up to record all of the shows we generally watch. And with a click of a button on the remote, it skips forward 30 seconds at a time (or backward 7 1/2 seconds). Incredibly easy to bypass commercials.

With a VCR, if there is a program you are taping that starts at 8:00 and you get home at 8:15, you have to wait until 9:00 to watch it (after it finishes taping). With Tivo (or ReplayTV), you can start watching from the beginning at 8:15, skip forward during commericals and finish up at 9:00 since there are generally around 15-17 minutes of commericals in a 1 hour program.

I recommend a DVR to anyone who watches/tapes TV on a regular basis.

It is also great for watching a baseball game. You can generally zip through a 3 hour game in 20-30 minutes.

 

Yeah, all this is nice, touch of a button recording, skip commercials, etc... BUT what about the monthly fees? Isn't there a subscription charge for the guide and is there a lifetime fee you can pay once?

 

Luckily, ReplayTV used to NOT charge any monthly fees and I am grandfathered in so I pay nothing.

I believe there is a monthly fee of around $9.95 but you can also pay a one time fee which chsould cover you forever. The question is - does it cover you if you upgrade your player.

You can always manually record shows if you choose not to subscribe to the guide.

 

I paid the lifetime fee.

For us it pays for itself in time alone. Recording is tooo easy. You waste less time watching shows, whether it's skipping quickly through commercials, jumping ahead in 15 minutes increments, or not searching for tapes or changing them. Show descriptions are on recorded shows, so you can quickly zap one's that you've seen. etc etc

 

I thought that you only needed to pay the subscription fee if you were using their online services? Can't you use it manualy with out the subscription?

 

I don't know if you guys down in H-Town have it, but Time Warner in NYC (as of last month) introduced a DVR digital cable box for rent. After using both ReplayTV and TIVO, I gotta say that the Time Warner DVR box is pretty damn good, if not better than the other competitors. It does everything a TIVO can do. Record a season of a TV show, pause live TV, record straight from the guide, slow-mo, instant replay, etc. (ie. ALL the basics of a good DVR). I've found the recording quality to be fantastic and doesn't exhibit the anti-aliasing problem I was having with both TIVO and ReplayTV (which, yes, did have to do with the record quality options available on the other units). Plus, the DVR interface is very n00b-friendly (see: wife can operate said machinery), probably more so than even TIVO.

Furthermore, the Time Warner box has a second tuner built-in, which gives me the ability to record a show AND watch something different at the same time (a freaking godsend). (You can actually record 2 shows at once, too.) Plus, the built-in second tuner allows you to do PIP (with 2 different screen size options). Three other advantages: 1) You don't have to dial into a central server to download the upcoming week's TV guide, 2) You don't have to shell out cash and waste space for a second cable box (wires, wires, everywhere!), and 3) You don't have to deal with those annoying IR cable channel-flipping doo-hickeys (which NEVER worked with my TIVO).

The negatives: 1) The TW DVR box doesn't give you a keyboard to "type" in names of shows to search for (you have to scroll by letter instead). 2) There's no option to change recording quality. 3) You're only limited to 35 hours of recording. Also, the box sometimes resets itself (which may or may not be a bug).

All in all, I like what Time Warner has done. For $6 more a month, I've got my perfect stop-gap solution until I can finally move out of NYC and get DirecTV...

 

TiVo recently introduced a free "TiVo Basic" service which allows basic DVR functionality (pause, VCR-style recording, browse through three days of the guide). What it doesn't give you is the more interesting functionality like Season Passes (ie: wherever and whenever a show airs, record it) and wishlists (ie: record every current "Houston Rockets" game).

The best deal right now is DirecTV with TiVo. The boxes are ~$100, and the service is either free (if you are a top-tier customer), or $5.00/month (for other packages).

 

The boxes are $100 for a TiVo? Where??

 

DirecTV TiVo. It ONLY works with DirecTV.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1051826213650&skuId=5434568&type=product