I am seriously looking into getting a TiVo machine. I very much would like to easily timeshift TV, catch things automatically (without juggling tapes and cable channels), and “pause” my…
I am seriously looking into getting a TiVo machine. I very much would like to easily timeshift TV, catch things automatically (without juggling tapes and cable channels), and “pause” my live viewing whenever Little Miss Entropy decides she needs attention.
The concerns I have …
We have digital cable. The research I’ve done indicates this should not be too much of a problem — the systems are designed to be able to control the digital cable box, assuming that the local information is available for download. That’s research I have to do. The channel changing might be slower than the (already laggardly) speed it already is, but OTOH it would also allow control for recording purposes, which our current arrangement does not.
I’d have to run a phone line over to the entertainment corner (to download schedule info). This shouldn’t be too huge of a problem, since there’s one on that wall, but it’s annoying that I did not think of this when we were constructing the whole bookcase/entertainment unit thang.
Cost. The unit (a few hundred bucks), maint contract (maybe, unless I wanted to immediately upgrade the hard drive myself, which violates all warranties — but also costs money), and the monthly service. Need to get real figures on this.
Convincing Margie (hi, hon) this would be a Good Thing. Like … it would allow us to timeshift the shows we want to watch to after Kitten’s bed time (which subject started to come up a few days ago). Margie’s concerned it would add to our overall TV watching, which would probably be a bad thing. It’s one of the areas we have (a small amount of) unresolved friction on.
It does look like it would work. And I think it would be extremely cool. And I’m a lot less concerned that Micro$oft is going to dominate the market than I was a year ago, since UltimateTV has really died down quite a bit.
This may replace the digital camera on the Christmas Gift list.