[OT] TIVO

[Duane Morin]

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.

> compatible is TiVO with cable boxes? (From the TiVO site, I do see that
> it is compatible with my cable box - has anyone got it working well with

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.

> Cable--->Cable Box--->TiVO--->TV

Yup.  This is why Tivo is reliant on telling the cable box to please 
change the channel, since it's information only comes from what the cable
box is sending (and it's own internally stored tv guide).

> Cable-+->TiVO---->TV (aux).
>       |
>       +->Cable box--->TV
> 

They tell me that'll work.  I wanted the opposite, to be able to Tivo
all of my subscription channels but potentially flip over to a regular
channel and watch sometihng else simultaneously, but that turned out
to be a nightmare (that would have involved using the channel-changer
on the VCR, to add confusion).

DUane