Comments on: Tapping Your TiVo's Hidden Talents

By: Tapping Your TiVo Hidden Talents Katherine Boehret The | Wood TV Stand

Tapping Your TiVo Hidden Talents Katherine Boehret The | Wood TV Stand — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:28 +0000

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By: Bill Calamita

Bill Calamita — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:02:23 +0000

You state that Tivo’s “bubble-popping sound effects and grinning, animated mascot help users forget how much it costs to use.”

I disagree about the cost of Tivo. I pay Time Warner Cable $17 per month for my HD DVR rental and the DVR service. That’s $612 for three years of use.

An HD Tivo, on the other hand costs $299 plus $299 for three years of service plus $3.50 per month to Time Warner for two CableCards. That makes Tivo $733 for three years. This is only $112 more than TWC’s HD DVR, for three years or an extra $3.11 per month.

Assuming the Tivo doesn’t die in the first three years (the warrantee is very stingy), the extra features and functionality (like you describe above) is well worth the extra three bucks per month. The only disadvantage is that you have to pay for everything (except the CableCard rental) upfront instead of monthly.

By: Chris Meisenzahl

Chris Meisenzahl — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:14:17 +0000

Great info, thanks! Are you aware of anything similar for the Dish Network DVR?

By: Eric Welch

Eric Welch — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:10:57 +0000

Another great feature for Mac users who have Toast Titanium is that you can move videos from a TiVO HD to your Mac and then burn the shows to disk. It’s quite slow network-wise, but works very well.

No doubt PC users have a similar solution from Roxio and other software vendors.

The biggest grip I have about my TiVO HD is that Time Warner Cable is dragging their feet making their system work with cable cards properly, which they have been required by law to do since this past July. Nothing like a few bugs in the system to dodge the law.