Tivo!
Posted on July 26, 2004
Filed Under Misc.
So hubby sees my blog and after laughing about it, tells me that of course he got the hint weeks ago (was I _that_ obvious?) and was planning to pick one up this week. We were running errands yesterday and as patience is not a virtue of mine when it comes to technology, we stopped and picked up a 80 hour unit for a decent price. Not as cheap as the refurbished ones, but not bad for a new one I think.
I decided to put it on the bedroom TV. First of all, because installation would be much easier without running wires around the entertainment center and relocating everything. Second, I didn’t want to miss out on something I wanted to record because the kids were watching something else. Cablevision is coming out with a PVR for their digital cable service so we’ll probably get that for the den.
Even though the guided set up warned it would take 4-8 hours until I could set up wishlists, season passes, etc. it was ready in about 3 hours. I set up a season pass for Amazing Race & Big Brother (completely stupid, I know) and Eric set one for Last Coming Standing so now Tivo thinks I want to watch A Simple Life and Extreme Dating. Um no, I don’t think so. 
I found “this page”:http://www.sethb.com/TiVo/ which if you stroll down you can see a tip for enabling 30 second skip. Essential for getting past commercials quickly.
Now I just have to get the USB to Ethernet adapter to put the Tivo on our home network for updates. We’re getting Vonage soon and updates won’t work through the phone once the switch-over happens. I read the “TiVo Community”:http://www.tivocommunity.com forums and learned that if a choice is possible, a wired solution is faster than wireless. When we were redoing the house I made the decision to put cable/RF and Cat-5 Ethernet ports in every bedroom & the den. Very happy with that decision right now.
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4 Responses to “Tivo!”
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I wouldn’t worry about speed when you’re looking at a wired vs. wireless decision. They’re both way faster than a dialup connection and I never noticed any performance issues with dialup. Basically, the TiVo only spends time talking to TiVo when it needs program data, which it does late at night and without affecting the UI. You never see it connecting, so you don’t really care if it takes five minutes or two hours.
For what it’s worth, I just got a wireless USB/Ethernet adapter for my TiVo and I’m very happy with it. One less cable out of the TV stand!
TiVo will run your life. It’s great - I can hardly stand to watch live TV anymore. With the 30-second skip hidden feature, commercials are a thing of the past.
My only complaint is having to watch all the reality shows my wife gets passes for. I feel like Alex in “A Clockwork Orange”, forced to watch so much that at some point I start to enjoy it and need to watch it….
LOL. I went with the wired adapter because it’s a bit cheaper (got it for $39 with free shipping from Amazon.com) and if I do get a 2nd Tivo for another TV down the line, transferring shows from one to the other is supposedly painful when it’s done via wireless compared to wired.
Ah…I didn’t even think of a second TiVo. There’s only one of me, so I guess my TiVo’s wireless adapter won’t have to transmit shows to anything else any time soon.