- 225 channels featuring movies, sports, and pay-per-view programming
- Up to 30 hours of storage capacity
- 8-second instant replay feature
- Pause, fast-forward, and rewind
- Jump-to-live button on remote
I'd recommend the 30hr unit over the 14hr if you can afford it. After you start searching the two week guide by program name, channel name, favorite channels, or by time of day you'll quickly find plenty of things you want to record.
DirecTV viewers will especially find this useful...it makes all those channels much more manageable, and I prefer the TiVo on-screen guide to the one my DSS box provided.
All of the TiVo menus are well thought out, attractive, and *very* easy to use. They include lots of cables including S-Video, a phone jack splitter (nice touch), and other goodies so almost anyone will find everything they need to hook TiVo up right out of the box. The User's Guide is helpful too, for people who are a little less sure of themselves around stuff like this.
I picked TiVo over ReplayTV because of their close alliance with DirecTV (DirecTV has invested in them), and from reading other people's comments in newsgroups and other forums. After I spent about half an hour going through the program guide and giving various programs 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' ratings (one of the cooler features of TiVo), it came up with a whole bunch of other programs it suggested I might like.
I'm probably sounding like a company spokesperson, but I'm not, I'm just a *very* happy new user of TiVo!
Buy Philips HDR312 TiVo 30-Hour Digital Video Recorder Now
I have spent the past 30 days evaluating both a ReplayTV and a Tivo personal digital recorder and this is a brief review of my experience.If Tivo did not exist, I would probably tell you that ReplayTV was the coolest gadget that I have ever used. However, Tivo has done such a superior job designing their user interface and their remote control that there is no comparison between the two, Tivo is the hands down winner.
ReplayTV's major problem is that they have no sorting system to help you pick the shows that you might want to record. To find the shows that you want to record you must painfully sift through an on screen channel guide one time slot at a time. Tivo in comparison gives you numerous ways to choose shows that you might want to record. You can view the upcomming two weeks of programming in catagories such as Movies, Sports, by channel, or by show name. Tivo will even automatically record shows that it thinks you might like based on shows that you have rated with their thumbs up or thumbs down rating system. At first I was skeptical that I would like this feature, but after a week I found that I loved it. I would get home from work and get a whole list of programs that Tivo went out and recored by itself while I was sleeping and while I was at work.
With Tivo I can scan through hundreds of Movies on my premium channels and in minutes tell it to record all the ones that I want to record for the next two weeks. With ReplayTV it took me so long to do this that after the first few days I found myself only recording shows that were on a regular schedule, like Seinfeld or the X-Files.
ReplayTV basically has a frustrating user interface that forces you to constantly look at the remote control to do every simple task. With Tivo almost all of your options are on screen, so if your sitting in the dark while you are watching TV you don't have to strain your eyes on what button you need to push.
My ReplayTV seemed to often (at least once a day) have a playback glitch. The fast forward or rewind would get stuck and I would have to power the unit on and off to get it to stop.
One last thing, a major one for me, ReplayTV gives you no indication of where you are when you are watching a show. You can't tell if there is 10 minutes or an hour left. I was watching Shindler's List a few days ago and I found this extremely frustrating. With Tivo you get a very helpfull progress bar that appears on the bottom of the screen whenever you fast forward, rewind or press slow motion. (ReplayTV has no slow motion or single frame advance.)
I just returned my ReplayTV and Tivo 14 hour unit, I ordered a TIVO 30 hour unit. My advise is to buy a 30 hour unit, you will probably record everything in a higher quality setting, resulting in about half the recording time of either units advertised recording capacity.
Read Best Reviews of Philips HDR312 TiVo 30-Hour Digital Video Recorder Here
I'm now a two TiVo family! Iput my model 112 in my bedroomand hooked up my model 312 tomy living room televison.My new 312 looks identical to the112 but does weigh a few morepounds.I now have enough storage capacity to record just about everything I'd wantto see that comes out of thecable company's wire!The onlythings I watch live anymoreare news and sports.I use my312 to record mostly movies and documentaries.I use my112 in the bedroom to recordStar Trek and 20/20.I lovewatching an episode of Trekevery night before slumbering.The 312 is everything the 112is but double the recordingcapacity. Be warned that thisis not really a 30 hour unit!The lowest record quality (basic) will yield 30 hours ofrecording but the quality stinks! Basic quality is best-suited for recording radio! The three higher video qualities designated medium,high,and best all look goodon my 32 inch TV.I use mostlymedium and high,so my "30 hourunit" gives me 14 to 18 hoursof space.The big model,312,isvery-much the one to get ifyou want to grab movies offpremium channels,like I do.If you have a big projectionTV,you might want to use "best" video quality for movies.You would stille get9 hours of space with the 312.The small unit would only hold4 hours at "best" quality,noteven enough space for two longmovies.I have a Super VHS VCRand TiVo equals or surpassesit in every respect.The onlything I use it for is to duba program off TiVo that I wantto keep,ocassionally.I no longer care what time showsor movies run in.Networkschedules are irrelevant to me.TiVo puts me in charge.TiVo comes with more cablesthan any other audio/videodevice I've ever bought.There's no way you'llhave to run to the store fora cable.S-video,RCA type,IRblaster,serial (to controlsattelite or cable box),50feet of telephone wire,justabout anything you might need,it's included!Buy TiVo if youwant to grab all the bestprograming off your TV serviceand watch it at your convience.Buy the big unit,model 312,if you need space torecord movies.If all you wantto do is record a few shortshows a week buy the littleunit,model 112.If you're anaudio vidiot like me buy both!Take control of your TV withTiVo, you'll be glad you did!Want Philips HDR312 TiVo 30-Hour Digital Video Recorder Discount?
Both are light years ahead of VCRs, both have ups and downs, either will change your idea of how television is watched. They both pause live TV, find and record your favorite shows without the hassles that tapes create. They both allow you to pay service costs up front (actually Replay _requires_ it), and if you do they both cost the same.Tivo advantages: Suggestions. You give shows you like or don't like up to three thumbs up or thumbs down, and Tivo will look for things that match those preferences. Note that your preference information is never shared with Tivo Inc. It never leaves your house, the box makes the suggestions itself.
Recording by date, time, and channel. Useful for lengthy shows you only want a part of, events that may run past the scheduled end time.
Replay advantage: Theme areas which will record things based on keywords or actors. Tivo doesn't yet have this, but will by at least Halloween, probably sooner. As with Replay, software upgrades for Tivo are done automatically during the nightly call so existing Tivo owners will get it free.
Where Replay scared me off was it's labyrinth of complex scheduling and show retention rules and it's disk management, which essentially chops up the disk into separate areas for each show. If you make the shows "guaranteed" (which does not actually guarantee the show will record), those areas won't share space with each other, even if they aren't using it. For "non-guaranteed" shows space is shared, but no warning about schedule conflicts is given so you never really know what's going to be recorded. Even Replay doesn't know if a show will pass all the tests until moments before it's on, so it can't tell you in advance. Think that Frasier "show" area will catch double episodes? Nope, show areas only catch one showing per day. NBC shows Frasier at 8:00 one night instead of 9, but you're covered, right? Nope, show areas won't find a show if it moves more than one slot away from it's normal time. So you use a "Theme" area for Frasier instead of a "Show" area, another way to do automatic recordings. Set it for an hours worth of programming and you're set! Double episodes, hour long episodes, no problem, right? Except that theme areas grab shows from every channel on the dial, and your UPN affiliate shows two syndicated episodes of Frasier every night (this isn't hypothetical, mine does), so your Frasier theme area gets those too. So what, you say, they'll just get overwritten when the prime-time episodes run? Nope. Replay theme areas won't throw away a show until it's a day old, so when Frasier comes on NBC at 9:00, Replay finds the hour-long Frasier area already full of shows it can't delete yet so it doesn't record _any_ prime time episodes, even if there is space somewhere on the disk. The solution is to up the Frasier area to two hours so it can hold both the syndicated episodes you don't want and any hour long or double episodes you do. You actually have to manage and allocate space yourself, and to do it effectively you have to be aware of when channels you don't care about show episodes you don't want since they can prevent Replay from recording or keeping what you _do_ want. Even VCRs don't demand that much care and feeding.
A Tivo "season pass" handles this neatly and simply. It only records from the specific channel you set it to, but it doesn't restrict the times or number of episodes that will be recorded and it doesn't restrict shows to sharing a tiny portion the disk, so you'll get long, double, or moved episodes (unless a moved or extra episode conflicts with something else neither Tivo or Replay can record two things at once, so something won't get recorded if that happens). Tivos to-do list shows you everything it will record through it's 10 days of programming data, and because Tivo projects it's space requirements throughout those 10 days, it knows it advance when a new recording would exceed it's capacity, and offers to delete some shows earlier than planned or cancel the recording.
With Tivo you know what will be recorded, you know what effect additional recordings will have on Tivos spaces schedule, and recordings are kept as long as disk space permits. The Replay and Tivo forums at avsforum.com are an excellent source of information.
Tivo comes with all kinds of hardware. Everything except a coax splitter which you need to buy if you want to continue using the tuner on your TV. (Which I think would be just about everybody because you have to do this if you want to watch live TV while Tivo's recording).
The Season Pass records all showings of a particular show no matter when or what channel it's on. However if you pick a show that's in syndication or a cable show that's repeated often, you'll get many more than you actually want. It'd be better if a Season Pass was only good for one channel and time period. Also be nice if it were smart enough to not record additional showings of the same episode. Another bad thing about this is that it will not allow you to create other Seasons Passes if it thinks it interferes with the first one. (Like say you only want a Seinfeld season pass for a 4pm showing but Seinfeld also runs at 9pm on some other channel; I can't set up a season pass for some other 9pm show without disrupting the first). Of course the way around this is to record by time but I think some improvements can be made.
When watching live TV, it keeps the last 30 minutes UNLESS you switch channels or a new show starts. This means that if I stop watching (without pausing) near the end of a show and a new show starts in the meantime, I'll have lost the ability to go back and watch the end of the show I was watching. I don't see why they blow away the last 30 minutes when a new show starts, particularly if it's on the same channel.
As other people mentioned, it'd have been nice to have a skip-forward feature so you could skip forward in increments of 30 seconds or something.
It'd be nice to have a menu option to have a less conspicuous play bar (or to put it at the top of the screen instead of the bottom). It covers up things like Who Wants to be a Millionaire questions until it times out and disappears.
Sometimes the sound loses its top frequencies such that it sounds like a bad speaker. S sounds sound like static. This might be a function of the broadcast but live TV doesn't sound that way.
It'd be great to have a VHS record list feature so you could record multiple programs to videotape all in one go. Sometimes I make tapes for my overseas friends and having to record one 1/2 hour program at a time is a pain in the rear.
When scrolling through program listings, it makes you wait a second before bringing up the next screen. It should be pre-loading each screen in advance so it doesn't have to waste this kind of time.
Due to program scheduling, many times it will miss the last 30 seconds or so of a broadcast (so you might miss that last joke while the credits are scrolling). It should give you an option where it will always record a couple of minutes before/after a program (if there isn't another program scheduled to be recorded immediately afterwards).
I guess that's about it. Don't let all this scare you away. It's an awesome product and now that I have it, I wouldn't watch TV any other way.
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