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TiVo Series2 40-Hour Digital Video Recorder

TiVo Series2 40-Hour Digital Video Recorder

List Price: $199.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Buy it...then Hack it
Review: I have one Series 1 and one Series 2 TIVO. They are great. The only negative which really isn't one, since it is probably price prohibitive would be that it only records one channel at a time. While the DirectTIVO can record 2 shows at once.

Anyway, buy it and hack it to over 200 hours (I did and it's quite simple). Go to .

Also remember you have to pay $$$ extra for the guide data. Or a monthly subscription fee...don't recall the amount.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: record it and warch it later
Review: I love this thing because most of the time when there would be something good on TV I would be bissy doing something, but now that I got this tivo set i can set it to record what i want to watch. another one is when i do get a chance to watch something someone else is watching something,so if thats the case I have it set to record it a head of time so I can watch it later.its so convenute i can even set it to record something days before it gets on.
When the tivo records something its self it does'nt take up any of your 60 hours. the only thing is they should be cheaper.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: record it and watch it again
Review: I thought this product was great because there would be shows and movies on TV that i would want to watch but was to bissy and miss them, but now that i got tivo i can tell it when to record it and watch it later. I can even program it to record it days before it comes on. sometimes it records things its self if it thinks I like it and does'nt take up time, so i would still have 60 hours.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Piece of worthless junk.........
Review: I bought my Tivo awhile back and have had nothing but problems with it. I have since switched to Brighthouse and couldn't be more pleased. I get 50 hrs of recording, can record 2 shows while watching another one. No cost for equipment. SERVICE IS SPECTACULAR.

With TIVO, service was no existant. I had to buy my own equipment and the reception from the satellite company that was recommended was terrible, especially when it rained.

Even worse was the customer service people. These people could have cared less about me.

Tivo lost my respect and my business.

Jeers to TIVO.

Cheers to Brighthouse.

Tivo is a piece of worthless junk.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Waste of money~~~~Waste of time
Review: Seriously folks, who wants to spend this much money on a device that turns you into a couch potato, doesn't work right, has a horrible guarantee and reduces your income and mental stability by watching crap like soap operas and other junk

Tivo should rename this product and call it The Automatic Income Reducer.

WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: TiVo rocks.
Review: It has changed my leisure time. The only "live" TV I watch anymore is Fox & Friends and the Weather Channel. The way it fast-forwards through the commercials then knows where to start again when I hit the play button is fantastic. I save several segments of favorite programs then watch them in succession during one evening like a couple of movies. I think that a better set up than this, however, would be to get it integrated with your satellite box so that you could watch one program while recording another. (You can do it with cable and non-premium channels but not with satellite.) Set it up to find your favorite actors or actresses and you'll see them in lots of stuff "before they were famous." Jack Nicholson on Andy Griffith? (Played the role of a 19 year old on trial, Aunt Bea was on the jury.) Wow, what a hoot. I find the quality to be more than adequate but I might not feel that way when the plasma screen gets installed. On my current old 23" I can't tell the difference between recorded and live - picture or sound.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Great concept, problems with product, lots of hidden gotchas
Review: I never had a DVR (aside from my computer) before, so when I finally managed to get my Tivo all hooked up, I was really impressed. I especially love the "Season Pass" feature which will pick out all the times your favorites program airs, and let you schedule recording for all of them in a few clicks.

But then the headaches began...

(1.) First of all, how many of us have the telephone line near our TVs? Normally, the TV and electronic gadgets are on one side of the room, and the phone is on the other - right? Tivo needs a phone line to get it's program information - at least initially. So if your house is configured like mine, be prepared to have phone line extensions strewn all across your living room while you spend up to a day downloading and installing all the program information by phone.

So of course, I almost began to drool when I read in the Manual that you can actually connect the Tivo to your local or wireless network.

(2.) Problem is, you most likely will NOT be able to connect your Tivo to your local or wireless network. I took Tivo's own approved list of hardware (direct network adapters or wireless receivers) to my local geek toy store, and bought the top recommended networking connection on the list. That didn't work, so I returned it and bought the next recommended item on Tivo's list. That didn't work either, so over the course of the next two weeks I tried three (yes, 3) more. Nothing. I finally gave up, and had to buy a long extension cord for my phone line and install it more perminent-like.

(3.) The main reason I'm here today, is because I found this page while searching for an explanation to the weird high pitched whistle noise my Tivo began making last night (after only 2 months of ownership). Turns out this is apparently an increasingly common problem - which I never heard of until today - and even more unfortunately seems to indicate that my Tivo will be totally dead in the next few days. Right now, it's literally delaying everything I do (trying to view my cable box's program guide, etc) by 30 seconds or more (the normal lag time should be around 1 or 2 seconds)

So, since I've already paid for the lifetime membership, I'm now searching for a relatively cheap way I can fix the problem myself. Do I need to replace the harddrive, the case fans, ..or what? By the way, if Tivo goes out of business, how will I get my program guide? Tivo doesn't grab the FREE TV Guide data from your cable like the no-subscription-required Panasonics can.

(4.) Oh, and also wanted to warn people about one more thing that only starts happening after you've had your Tivo for a few weeks - which is actually intentional on the part of Tivo - but which isn't mentioned anywhere in any of their manuals or documentation, for obvious reasons...

After a few weeks (if your Tivo still works), you'll start to get little on-screen pop-up alerts RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF YOUR FAVORITE PROGRAM which stay there for atleast 30 seconds until you click it or patiently wait for it to go away. And what are these prompts? ADVERTISING which actually is made to look like a really important subscriber announcement from Tivo. Maybe it's important to THEM, but I'd rather NOT see it in the middle of my TV screen. Actually, that's yet another example of Tivo's dumb implimentation: You'll only see this advertising if you're watching live TV instead of the recorded programming... and since most people with Tivos are watching the recorded programs instead of live TV, Tivo's sponsors are paying for ads that few people will ever see... Great business ideas - yes?)

In addition to these on-screen ads which interrupt your viewing, when you go to your Tivo menu, you'll find atleast TWO links to advertisements. The really bad thing about these links in particular is that they are positioned in the place where your other normal Tivo menu options are listed. So instead of selecting your "To Do List" or upcoming recordings, you might accidently find yourself watching a series of advertisements - WHICH YOU CANNOT DELETE OR REMOVE.

OK, so that's all I have to say at this point. Seems to me that Tivo had a great idea, but terrible implimentation. I don't know about their customer service, but I probably also won't even bother, if it's going to cost me $100 to $150 to ship them back their own defective product anyway.

If I can't fix the Tivo, and I'm not in the mood to pay double-or-triple in trying to get it fixed, then it's apparently just become one nice looking but useless paperweight... to which I have a lifetime subscription.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: aviod at all costs!!
Review: I got this for christmas, my first reaction was "awesome i've wanted this for awhile now!" so me and a friend started to hook this up the other day we started at 3:30 PM we finally got it hooked up at 8:30!! yep 5 hours, and i had to drive to radio shack to buy a bigger phone cable, because we brought the tv and the tivo into the kitchen to try and hook it up there but we couldn't because we needed the digital cable box... ok fine so we started over and it still didn't work! at this point im starting to get really angry we head to radio shack and get everything we need and finally we hook it up only to find out the six button on the remote doesn't work! then i tried to fast forward threw the commercials its so slow that buy the time you did you miss half of the program your supposed to be watching!! i can go on forever about this bad product... just skip it

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A "100" on a scale of 1-5
Review: TiVo is just the best thing (literally) since sliced bread. It is EASY-EASY-EASY and it is the smartest 'DVR' on the market (I have owned one of ALL types of DVR's). It is the simplist to use and has more features than any other DVR. It is the only DVR that is smart enough to follow a show if it moves to different time-slots or day-of-the-week when you have a "Season Pass" which records all the shows in a series (shich means it knows to get the 2-hour season premiere AND finale without you lifting a finger). You can also tell the smart little TiVo to skip reruns.

Another feature we love is the "Wish List" which allows you to use a keyword, title, type of show, or favorite actor to constantly scan your TV programming for that specific item and then records it automatically. For example, if I wanted all shows pertaining to "ABC" actor, it searches and records them - oh, and you can say record only 'movies' specifically. Or if you like a particular sports team, just type the name in & anything on TV related to that team will get recorded. Pretty nifty.

In addition to all the cool recording options, we also love the fact that our little boy can watch "Blues Clues" at 6pm or 6am - or anytime we wish for that matter. With the functionality of a hard-drive instead of tapes (or even DVD's) we can stop a show in the middle and watch the rest later without the bother of tapes or DVD media going in & out of the player. If you so desire, you can hook a TiVo to a VCR or DVD Recorder and 'save' your stuff to VHS or DVD if you like.

The 'rating' system allows TiVo to 'learn' what types of shows or what actors you like & if there is ever any "empty" space on the Tivo, it fills it up with things you might also like. This feature does NOT ever give priority to a 'suggested' show over anything you've told it to record - so it always deletes these items first. Additionally, if you do run low on space with your TiVo, it has an simple 'icon system' to let you know what might be deleted if the space is needed - and you can always change the setting on all or just some of your shows telling the TiVo to 'never delete unless I tell you'.

The easy and flexible functionality of this product is truly revolutionary - and best of all it's for EVERYONE from kids to Grandma's. It's almost like hiring a "TV-guy" to sit on your couch & take notes and make sure you have all the stuff you want, right on your TiVo!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Greatest thing since sliced bread!
Review: I know most people rave about their Tivo, and I am just another one of the masses! I won't go into all the features and benefits in my review. However when you hook Tivo into your home network and download a small program to run on your computer, you are able to publish your music files and play them through your Tivo! Now I wouldn't normally play my music through my televisions speakers, however add my kickn' surround sound system in the mix and I make the neighbors complain! Tivo also has new music from Best Buy available, which is usually about 80 songs from various artists. The only problem I have is that I can not take it with me when I travel! I get frustrated when I can not rewind something I missed or pause a show to use the bathroom! I don't know how I watched TV without it! I LOVE MY TIVO!!!!


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