TiVo TCD652160 HD Digital Video Recorder by TiVo
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Digital camera reviews of TiVo TCD652160 HD Digital Video Recorder
Digital camera Review: A Must for any HDTV
Summary: 5 Stars
As a former TiVo customer, I always enjoyed TiVo. When I bought a new HDTV, I decided to try the Cox Cable Company's HD-DVR cable box, that was a mistake...Not all DVR's are created equal! Within a week, I ordered my new TiVo HD. Now I'm back to enjoying the best DVR with a new HDTV - nice combo!Digital camera Review: A bit of a let down
Summary: 3 Stars
I put off getting a tivo for years in large part, cause I don't record TV all that often and didn't like the idea of monthly fees. To that end I had a Philips DVDR3576H DVD Recorder with 160GB Hard Disc and Built-In Tuner which I reviewed else where on this site. That unit had its own problems but for the time its worked I actually liked it. Unfortunately after a couple of years, and the malfunctioning of two remotes, the dvr stopped working. Phillips was the last electronics brand too offer a dvr in North America. They are readily avaliable in Europe and Asia, from every major manufacturer, but here in the US, we get nada, thanks largely to legal issues and lawsuits.
Since the Phillips unit is no longer available, nor are any other dvrs, I'm left with only cable/ satellite dvrs or a tivo, I bit the bullet and got the tivo. Unfortunately my hunch was correct and I'm not all that impressed. First of all I'm coming from a dvr that made video thumbnails of everything I recorded, an you could scroll over those thumbnails and watch them play with audio, before selecting them. I really grew to love this feature. You get no thumbnails with tivo, just names of shows and dates. The tivo's two tuners are a little slow to changes channels as well. The speed is acceptable, but it lags behind some of other devices with a tuner, by about a second.
Of course to use anything on the tivo other then its tuners, you have to have a subscription. If you have one, you must also have a connection to the Internet, either through a wireless router or a wired connection. You can also use a phone line to connect, but this ties up your phone and is very slow on top of that. So if you aren't able to connect an Ethernet wire to the tivo, plan on spending an extra fifty bucks to get tivo wireless adapter, which is only g rated by the way.
Once everything is set up, tivo gives you a TV guide program to search the channels for things to record. You can also to some really fancy type searches, utilizing search words, like actors names, and similar shows, etc. However, most the features won't appeal to you unless you want to record allot of shows. You can just hit record without using the menus to a select a show or movie, but then you will also need to stop it,
If you don't connect to tivo, for about a month, the unit gives a message every time you change the channel, that you need to connect, It did however start letting me manually record shows, without subscription, but it would automatically stop after 30 mins, and you would have to hit record again. This worked until I connected again, and the dvr ceased to work without a subscription. I'm not sure if it will do this everytime you fail to connect for a month, or if it was a one time deal.
So what do you get for your monthly fee? A TV guide menu similar to the one you might get from your cable box, and some fancy search features. If aren't anticipating recording allot of shows, see if your cable company offers, a free or very cheap dvr unit.
This particular unit doesn't come with the better remote and has a smaller hardrive. If you really plan on recording and saving allot, either spring for the XL model or plan on getting the western digital external hardrive add on. The XL model features, a larger hardrive and the better remote. You can purchase the remote seperately for about another 50 bucks.
Still if there was any other option, any dvrs avaliable without a subscription, I would ditch the tivo and jump on that in a heartbeat.
Digital camera Review: A chastened Tivo lover
Summary: 3 Stars
I had a series 2 Tivo and loved, loved, loved it. But I also wanted HD, so I upgraded. Looks great, and I'd be v. happy if the box didn't keep resetting. It will go for a few days without a glitch, then suddenly reset twice in one evening. I can be watching TV, or not, on both channels, or not. I can't see what's causing it, and there's a lot of debate on the forums about whether this is a hardware or software problem. No one seems able to get a straight answer from Tivo, but if it's hardware, then they obviously installed a lot of bad disks. If it's software, they really need to fix it. Or maybe it's firmware, like another reviewer suggested. Just fix it, Tivo, please, so I can love you again and resume recommending you like crazy to my friends.
I'd recommend holding off until the next model comes out, because it's a real drag to lose 3 minutes in the middle of your recordings on a regular basis.
Digital camera Review: A great DVR...that's in need of a makeover.
Summary: 4 Stars
The Tivo HD, like all of its Tivo predecessors, is an excellent DVR...very easy to use, easy to learn, easy to set up (even with a Cablecard), and extrememly stable. This alone makes it better than most other DVRs (eg. Directv's horrid HR2x series of DVRs) that are out there on the market. The additional, more recent features like their Amazon video marketplace support, Nextflix streaming, and Tivo Desktop solidly put Tivo into a class of its own.
However, the only problem I see with these new-ish HD Tivo boxes is that, while the content you're watching may be in glorious high definition, the Tivo menuing system/UI is in a much lower resolution. I don't understand why Tivo would have released an HD receiver whose UI was running at a MUCH lower resolution than 1080p (looks like its ~ 640x480). Hopefully the next generation of Tivo boxes will address this.
Thankfully, this is the only issue I have with this Tivo. If you have the option to incorporate a Tivo in your home A/V system (ie, you're not on Satellite), then I HIGHLY recommend the Tivo HD.
Digital camera Review: A major improvement from Series 2
Summary: 4 Stars
We had our cable provider install a multiplexing CableCard (M-card) in our TiVoHD within a day or two after the TiVoHD arrived at our door. This review, therefore, is specific to the TiVoHD plus M-card combination.
We had owned a TiVo Series 2 for more than two years, and were familiar with the TiVo service before we got our TiVoHD. The greatest annoyance with the TiVo Series 2 was that it was not possible to watch one program while recording another program, which had been one of the greatest conveniences of our earlier VCRs. In addition, when recording on the TiVo Series 2 at lower quality recording options, the picture was similar to VHS at EP recording levels, but when recording at best quality, the advertised "40 hour" recording capability was reduced to well under 10 hours.
The TiVoHD solves both problems nicely. With the M-card, we can actually record two programs simultaneously. The TiVoHD has an antenna input as well as a cable input so -- using a switch in the cable from an external antenna and the television set's own Input selector -- it is even possible to watch a third over-the-air broadcast while recording two cable programs. The TiVoHD also has much greater storage (recording time) than the TiVo Series 2, even when recording HD material, which consumes multiples of the disk storage space required to record standard definition programs.
CONS: We receive the same broadcast material from multiple sources: most broadcasters are simultaneously broadcasting in analogue and on multiple digital subchannels, and we receive those over the air through an antenna. At the same time, cable sends us duplicates of all of those. Some channels that we receive only over cable come in over two channels, SD and HD. While the TiVoHD allows designation of "favorite" channels in set-up, when selecting programs to record, all programs on all channels are displayed, and the channel on which a title will be broadcast often runs off the right side of the screen. So if we wish to record a specific program from its HD digital cable channel broadcast, we sometimes have to "select" -- and then choose not to record -- all of the apparently identical program listings one-by-one to avoid recording the cable SD/analogue, cable SD digital, over-the-air analogue, and over-the-air SD digital listings. Also, although the TiVoHD's ATSC (digital) tuner is quite good, the the TiVoHD's NTSC (analogue) tuner is merely fair to adequate in converting analogue input from cable (and, presumably, from antenna) to 480p for delivery to the digital inputs of the television set. These problems should become irrelevant or at least should be greatly reduced after February 17, 2009.