Well it's been a sort of crazy week or so and I haven't been able to update my thoughts on using TiVo. So finally I'm going to sit down and post my thoughts.
I'm still disappointed with the fact that TiVo doesn't have a two tuner input so that you can record one show and watch another. There is apparently a bypass feed so that you can use your TV as the second tuner and that's not so bad, but you lose the funcationality of being able to pause the show you are watching, but not recording. Whatever did I do before I could do that?
Overall it's been a very good experience. I wish the $150 rebate was easier to get, but I suppose part of the reason companies give rebates is that they know a lot of people will be too lazy to fill out all the stupid forms required to actually get the money in 6-8 weeks and so they'll never have to give it back. (I think they learned this from Health Insurance companies.)
So far the only thing I am honestly disappointed with is the TiVo Desktop software. One of the big reasons I got this was to be able to easily transfer shows to my computer and then eventually be able to burn them to DVDs. I haven't tried the DVD feature yet, but I have transfered a number of shows. The first problem is the speed of the transfer. It takes over 45 minutes to transfer a 30 minute show if recorded at high quality. I suppose I could record at lower quality, but why would I want to? (Honestly though the quality doesn't drop that huge if you do.) The transfer speed is livable though. I usually pick what shows I want to transfer and then just let it go while I'm eating dinner, or while I'm sleeping.
The biggest problem is just the reliability and speed of the software itself. For some reason it has a really hard time loading. I will get a warning message atleast once that says Tivo Desktop is taking an unusually long time to load and offers to let me retry or cancel. From a quick search around the TiVo forums this is not uncommon. Usually if I just hit retry it will eventually load. I don't think it's an issue with my computer, but could be. Haven't taken the time to really dig into it that far as I can eventually get it loaded and do what I need to do.
Watching programming on the computer isn't too bad. It can use Microsoft Windows Media Player for the viewing so that's not too bad. If I ever get around to saving up to get a larger monitor I will probably use this feature more as I'll have more room to put windows side by side so that I can keep working while watching sitcoms on the side. Yes I'm a TV junkie.
Well I think that's enough about TiVo for now. I'm sure I'll post more thoughts on this in the future as I play with more of the in depth features.
-Kent
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