To the uninitiated, TiVo owners can seem a bit cultlike. And if you're still living in the Dark Ages of analog tape recording, having yet to experience the divine Renaissance afforded by the video hard-disk recorder, or HDR, then the devotion might seem a bit absurd.
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I, too, used to be a skeptic, listening in silence as people gushed about TiVo's fabulous capabilities: “You can pause and rewind live TV!” and “It records all of your favorite shows — automatically!” But now, after living with one for the past few weeks, I get it. TiVo is not merely a piece of gear — it's a cultural phenomenon.
The recorder I used, the Humax T2500, has a 250-gigabyte (GB) hard drive and boasts the highest capacity of any TiVo recorder currently available: up to 300 hours at the lowest-quality setting. Don't feel bad if you haven't heard of Humax (I hadn't), but the Korean company has been around since 1989 and is one of the world's largest makers of digital satellite TV receivers.
SETUP Installing the T2500 was straightforward thanks to the clearly written owner's manual. A big plus is that just about everything you need for basic hookup is included. You don't get a two-way cable splitter, but you'll need that only if you want to watch one live show while recording another since the T2500 has only one tuner.
A phone connection is required for the initial setup, which takes about 30 minutes. This includes telling the unit about your cable provider, the channels you receive, how your system is connected, and so on. Then you wait 4 to 8 hours for TiVo to download program information.
I used an S-video cable to connect my cable box to the T2500. The only other con nection options are composite-video via stand ard RCA jacks or an RF (antenna) input. There are only analog audio inputs and outputs — disappointing since many movies on HBO and other channels have Dolby Digital surround sound you can enjoy only with a digital audio connection.
USING TIVO All of TiVo's trademark features are here, including Season Pass, Wish List, and its famous smart recording (Tivo Suggestions). Tell TiVo you like a TV series, and the Season Pass mode will find and record every episode. If the show moves to a different time slot, no problem: TiVo will automatically update its recording schedule and ignore reruns, unless you tell it otherwise. Want to catch every show featuring a favorite actress or director? Or maybe you know the title of a movie but have no idea when or where it will be broadcast? The Wish List will track 'em down for you.
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If you like, TiVo will automatically record programs it “thinks” you'll enjoy based on the kinds of shows you've recorded and on how you rate programs using the Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down buttons on the remote control. My love of animated shows like The Simpsons, Futurama, and King of the Hill fooled TiVo into thinking I'd also enjoy kiddie cartoons like Rug-rats and Hey, Arnold.
Recording quality — and storage time — is variable from Best (just over 82 hours) to Basic (about 302 hours). Basic quality was very poor, with images that were grainy and broke up into mosaic-like blocks of color whenever there was any movement. Medium mode (about 173 hours) was much better, but the picture was still grainy and somewhat soft. For example, the lines of a mowed baseball outfield — cleanly and clearly visible in Best mode — blurred together into smudges of different shades of green. I ended up using the High mode (about 132 hours) most of the time, reserving the Best mode, which produced a near-identical copy of the original source, for sports and movies.
NETWORKING TIVO All new TiVo recorders carry the Series2 designation, which means they support network connectivity. (There's no longer any extra charge for networking capabilities, called Home Media Features.) Strangely, though, none of the TiVo-branded units on the market have an RJ-45 Ethernet jack for direct connection to a network. Instead, they have a USB connector (two on this model). So instead of simply plugging in a Cat-5 cable, you'll have to buy a USB-to-Ethernet adapter. TiVo recommends Linksys adapters and sells both wired ($44) and wireless ($65) versions through its Web site (tivo.com).
One benefit of tapping into a home network is that, after initial setup, you won't need a phone connection to receive program guide updates and other routine TiVo downloads — it's all done through the Internet. Then you get to the really cool things you can do, like schedule a recording up to 20 minutes before start time from anywhere you may be, as long as you have a computer connected to the Internet. You can also transfer recorded programs from one TiVo box to another. Record a program in the living room, say, and watch it in the bedroom at the touch of a button, or start a program in one room and finish watching it in another. These features worked as advertised when I patched two T2500s into my home computer network.
More networking goodies: TiVo's digital music player lets you play MP3 music files (no other formats are supported) from any PC or Mac on the network, and its digital photo viewer lets you similarly fetch and display pictures stored elsewhere. You have to download and install TiVo's desktop software, available for free on the TiVo Web site. Watching a slide show of photos of my 2-year-old niece, Kinsley, on our 61-inch HDTV was all it took to win my wife over. Unfortunately, you can't show pictures and play music files at the same time, but TiVo plans to offer this capability sometime in the future.
An exciting new feature that just received approval from the Federal Communications Commission (and will likely be available by the time you read this) is TiVoToGo, which will allow you to transfer programs from TiVo's hard drive to a PC, including a laptop, so you can take your favorite TV shows on the road. You'll even be able to make DVD copies if your computer has a DVD burner. TiVo-ToGo requires a Content Security Key that will be available “this fall” via download to TiVo subscribers at no extra cost.
My main audio/video system includes a Scientific-Atlanta Explorer 8000HD cable box/hard-disk recorder that can save not just one but two HDTV channels simultaneously. Both it and the Humax/TiVo T2500 offer HDR functions — pausing and “rewinding” live TV and so forth — as well as electronic program guides (TiVo's guide covers the next 14 days, the cable box's only a week), but the cable box isn't set up for networking. What's more, its interface and recording options aren't nearly as sophisticated as TiVo's.
When I instructed both units to record every episode of HBO's Da Ali G Show, the cable box recorded several weekly repeats while TiVo was smart enough to skip them. Also, while the cable box looks for shows only on the channel you specify, TiVo is a bloodhound, searching out the programs you want wherever they may be.
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Another example of TiVo's superiority is its ability to search for a movie by title — no such feature on the cable box. And then there's the giant hard drive, which allowed me to keep recordings longer without having to delete stuff to free up space for new recordings. The cable box's 80-GB drive filled up quickly, especially when I was recording shows in high-def. Finally, the cable box has only one recording mode. Although its picture quality matched TiVo's Best mode, I missed the flexibility of trading picture quality for storage space.
Ultimately, though, the allure of being able to record high-def programming with digital surround sound tilted the scales in favor of the Scientific-Atlanta cable box. Still, TiVo is the clear-cut winner when it comes to overall user friendliness, recording flexibility, and the ability to integrate its operations with your home network.
BOTTOM LINE TiVo's intuitive recording features are perfect if you're not a big fan of VHS tape or tend to shy away from time-shift recording because of your VCR's cumbersome setup and hit-and-miss programming procedures. If HDTV recording isn't important to you, the Humax T2500 TiVo provides a no-fuss, no-muss way to record your favorite TV shows.