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[OT] TIVO



Duane Morin wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> 
>>One question on TiVO.
>>I was looking at TiVO, and I saw that it makes nightly phone calls. How
> 
> 
> Yes.  To get tv-guide information, system updates, and so on.  Though
> now I believe with their new upgrade you can use USB/ethernet.  I've
> never had a problem with it.  If you pick up the phone while it's
> dialing it just hangs up and tries later.  You can also check Tivo's
> status to find out when it last called, whether it was successful, and
> when it plans to call again.

The new Series2 TiVO boxes can use Ethernet. Their main competitor, 
ReplayTV, has had Ethernet-based nightly updates for a while now.

> The most annoying part of Tivo is the way it is forced to deal with the
> cable box (I have digital comcast, as well, so I expect you are in a
> similar situation).  Tivo must tell the cable box what channel to be on.  
> It does that, for most boxes, via a little IR blaster that you attach with
> sticky tape to the front of your cable box.  So it's as if Tivo has its
> own little remote control clicker.  It is not 100% reliable, and depending
> on your particular setup you may come home to find that your favorite tv
> show did not record because "038" became "03" and you got an hour of
> Petticoat Junction.  There are lots of techniques to minimize this,
> but everyone I spoke to (I participated in a Tivo focus group) cited
> this as a major problem.

The situation is better if you have satellite rather than cable, because 
you can get satellite receivers with integrated TiVO capability. They 
get you better picture recorded picture quality as well, because they 
record the MPEG-2 data directly from the satellite feed without decoding 
and re-encoding it.

ReplayTV boxes have a serial port on the back that can interface to some 
satellite receivers and cable boxes, which is more reliable than IR 
blasting. I don't know if TiVO offers the same thing. And, of course, it 
does you no good if your cable box doesn't have a compatible port.





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