First of all, I love my TiVo. I bought an HD-XL right here in Woot a while back for $180 & can't imagine going back to the old DVR. That said, beware of your sneaky cable company. I'm in FL, with Brighthouse (= Time Warner).
I started with just the dual cable card & had no problem getting it to work. It needed a tech visit (they wouldn't let me do it myself), but there was no extra charge, only the inconvenience of taking the day off.
6 months later I lost 80% of the digital channels & was told I needed the separate tuner. For additional rent of course. Between the fees for TiVo & the card, I was already paying $1 over Brighthouse's own DVR, so I seriously considered going back, but stuck with TiVo instead (yes, it's that good).
With the tuner I got all my channels, but the tuner itself died a couple of months later & it took about 8 more visits to have it replaced twice! For some reason Brighthouse insists only their senior techs can replace tuners, but then will send a regular tech over, or a senior one without equipment. They won't let you exchange tuners at the local store either. It was a nightmare & I wrote letters to both TiVo & Brighthouse, because that smells too much of harassment in order to get people to switch to their DVR.
As much as I wish I had access to On Demand stuff or could save a few extra bucks, I'm sticking with TiVo. Cable companies are supposed to support it, regardless of how reluctant they may be about it & I refuse to let anyone annoy me into giving them extra $. For any newbies out there though, be aware that you may have to stand (loudly) for your rights.

The TiVo's recording features are sweet, & my favorites are:
* TiVo will automatically record shows that conflict with others as long as they repeat later.
* You can save personalized searches (ie: favorite actor, summary) & have them record automatically. Very useful for Shark Week & favorites appearances in talk shows.
* TiVo sends you messages when there's a channel lineup change & will adjust recordings if necessary.
* Lots of options on what to record, how long to keep it, how many episodes to keep.
* You can filter the menu to show only the channels you get or only your favorites.
* You can also filter the menu for a specific date, no need to scroll over & over to find next week.
* Ability to search & tag for recordings online.
* Ability to jump through the commercials in 30-second leaps.
* Lots of free music channels.

My older model doesn't have the nice picture-in-picture or the 4 tuners, but I can't justify buying a new one just for that. The HDD is double the size of mine, but I can use an external eSATA drive when I run out of space.

Happy TiVo'ing!

Comcast On-demand is now available in some markets including mine which is another reason I'm considering this. Or wait for S5 tivo and skip S4 generation?

tewkewl wrote:sooner or later, TV shows... ALL TV shows will be available on a view when you want basis. Why the hell would you want to record shows that you can watch whenever you want?

Two reasons:

1) Internet is not perfectly reliable. And I worry that the limited number of last mile internet providers might interfere with video streaming services.

2) Hulu Plus is the only example (that I know of) that provides same week access to broadcast shows. And they force non-skippable commercials on you. Which brings home the point that you give too much control to the streaming provider when you rely exclusively on streaming.

Your analogy of the netbook is interesting, but I don't see streaming services killing DVRs the way that the iPad killed the netbook.

Tivo's software (after all this time) is still a little buggy. I have all of my subscriptions and season passes set to First Run Only, but Tivo regularly ignores this and records every episode of a Mythbusters marathon, for instance. They claimed they fixed the bug that would record every single showing of The Daily Show even when set to First Run Only, but no, I still have to have a manual recording for Comedy Central from 10 to 10:30 p.m. Deleting the tons of extras you don't want because it thinks they're new episodes is a time-consuming pain.

I tried using Tivo Suggestions when I got my first unit but it's pretty useless. If you thumbs-down each of your subscriptions and passes, your Tivo won't make or record suggestions. Again, this is a time-consuming pain (you used to have to thumbs-down something only once; now you have to do that for every episode of every show).

Even with those bugs, I've had Tivo for 12 years now and can't live life without it. But I also can't imagine ever wanting to record four shows at the same time. Even the Octomom doesn't need that.

lwang wrote:So if I don't pay the subscription fee, is this thing just a paperweight? Or can I press the record button to recording things manually?

Previous to having cable (and many channels being non-encrypted) I used the cable from the cableco and just scanned the channels (tivo has a guide for OTA or cablecard, but not scanned). You can set to record by time/channel and set repeat recordings etc... it is semi cumbersome but if you are living without a cable box already it isn't that big of a deal.

Once I finally had listing data using TV/Tivo got a lot nicer (and full of a lot more TV watching) which was a good sign for the device, bad sign for my life

Sheena3745 wrote:First of all, I love my TiVo. I bought an HD-XL right here in Woot a while back for $180...
I can't justify buying a new one

I wooted an HDXL for that same price in July 2010. Since then I've added a Premeire to my home in addition to the HDXL. And I prefer the premiere. The HD menus are really quite nice, although with kids, I use the SD menus so that I can continue to use kidzone - which is not yet available in the HD menus. As soon as that happens, I'll switch to the HD menus.

The new netflix and youtube apps are much better. And I wish I could upgrade my HDXL to a premier so that I could use multi-room streaming rather than mutli-room viewing. The latter transfers the whole program from one tivo to another. But you can't FF past the transfer point. Where w/streaming you can FF to anypoint w/o having to wait for it to transfer.

I used to have a TiVo and I miss the functionality of it, but I had such a hard time with their customer service when I was a customer, that I am concerned about going back to it. I had been a customer for about 7 years and when I wanted to upgrade, they wouldn't give me any kind of deal on a new box. Nothing off at all. But they would give good deals to new customers. And in my opinion that was very poor customer service.

mvsopen wrote: But watch out for what service you select. Lifetime is still a better deal, but it means "lifetime of the unit", not you.

Tivo Rep indicated that lifetime can be transferred to new unit. Deactivate old, activate on new.

lbolduc wrote:Comcast On-demand is now available in some markets including mine which is another reason I'm considering this. Or wait for S5 tivo and skip S4 generation?

I don't think these will do Comcast on-demand everywhere, just stuff like Netflix and Amazon and Hulu Plus.

Comcast does have a Tivo DVR in testing in CA and MA that will do on demand. In those markets a Premiere Tivo should do on-demand.

Anybody know if the UI will display multiple streams at the same time - either live or recorded? Like a PiP or side-by-side?

lojac963 wrote:Where would one even get a single card that can tune 4 separate signals??

An M-card can handle at least six streams. The old S-card could only handle a single stream.

gantt wrote:Anybody know if the UI will display multiple streams at the same time - either live or recorded? Like a PiP or side-by-side?

No can do.

lbolduc wrote:Comcast On-demand is now available in some markets including mine which is another reason I'm considering this. Or wait for S5 tivo and skip S4 generation?

I would personally wait for the S5. But I already have an S3-based HDXL which is still going strong after four years. My next box will have the lifetime rather than paying yearly for the sub, however.

lojac963 wrote:I only see one cable card slot. My TivoHD now has 2 single stream cards (2 card slots) because the multi cards the tech brought out were defective. I have only heard of the multi stream cards doing 2 tuners and even at that when I called Cox Communications they acted like I was speaking alien when I told them I needed a cable card for my Tivo.

Where would one even get a single card that can tune 4 separate signals??

TivoHD only supported single-stream cable cards. a later update made them compatible with mult-stream cards, but could still only utilize one decoder on each card.

Tivo Premiere fixed this issue, and are completely compatible with multi-stream (M-Stream) cable cards, which support up to 5 simultaneous decoders.

As the owner of a TivoHD and a previous employee of Comcast, i can assure you the premiere will work fine with M-Cards

investr wrote:and...we're still waiting for the DirecTivo...

Actually it was released several months ago....

sanfordturbo wrote:Tivo Rep indicated that lifetime can be transferred to new unit. Deactivate old, activate on new.

There was a time when that was allowed. I transfered the lifetime sub from my old first gen Tivo to an HD Cable Tivo (still going) for a modest fee. That deal has not been offered in years and I would be surprised if it can be done now - no matter what they told you.

On the question of Tivo versus a Windows-based HTPC, maybe somebody can give me some input on this. When I built up a Windows 7 HTPC a couple of years ago, I also had a Tivo HD connected to the same TV. I found that the HTPC recorded video was always a little "soft". It was definitely HD, but while the Tivo recordings looked as good as the source cable signal, the HTPC recordings had lost a bit of crispness. I tried two different tuner cards (Hauppage and ATI) and both nVidia and Radeon video cards. I looked for any video card or WMC setting I could find that might control compression level, but found nothing. That was one reason I decided to stick with the Tivo solution.

Has anyone else noticed any softness in WMC recordings?

Thanks....

shane86 wrote:TivoHD only supported single-stream cable cards. a later update made them compatible with mult-stream cards, but could still only utilize one decoder on each card.

That's not entirely accurate. The TiVo Series 3, which was released prior to the HD, can only utilize one decoder on each card. The TiVo HD can use both tuners with one multi-stream card.

gantt wrote:Information I've seen is that an M-card will support 6 streams - and that was a card cable providers were supplying 2 years ago.

Might want to verify that with your cable provider. When picked up a m-card for our HDhomerun the cable folks said the cards only supported 3 streams... don't know if they were clueless or if there are different cards and companies get to decide how many streams a card will handle.

artwire wrote:As a happy owner of more than a few (nearly obsolete) HDD recorders, I might be in for one of these, IF I can (a) get comcast to provide a working M card and ( b) could offload some of the content I recorded to DVD ? Is that even possible with the Tivo? My magnavox recorders have a built in DVD player/burner which makes it really easy to high speed dub content from the hard drive if you want to save it to disc. What kind of output options are available on the Tivo? With hard drives that large, I probably wouldnt need to export much, but it's nice to be able to export the content to save or watch on a different device.

Assuming the no-copy flag isn't set on a particular recording, you can use the TiVo Desktop software to copy recordings to a networked PC, you can log into the TiVo web server and download the recording, or use a command-line utility like curl. With the S3-based boxes, it's damn slow to copy files.

You'll then have a .TiVo file that needs to be decrypted into standard MPEG format, search for "tivodecode" to find the software to do this.

Once you have a standard MPEG-formatted recording you can burn it to DVD/Blu-Ray, copy it onto a USB stick, etc.

ultrawolf wrote:On the question of Tivo versus a Windows-based HTPC, maybe somebody can give me some input on this. When I built up a Windows 7 HTPC a couple of years ago, I also had a Tivo HD connected to the same TV. I found that the HTPC recorded video was always a little "soft". It was definitely HD, but while the Tivo recordings looked as good as the source cable signal, the HTPC recordings had lost a bit of crispness. I tried two different tuner cards (Hauppage and ATI) and both nVidia and Radeon video cards. I looked for any video card or WMC setting I could find that might control compression level, but found nothing. That was one reason I decided to stick with the Tivo solution.

Has anyone else noticed any softness in WMC recordings?

Thanks....

How old are your tuner cards, I think that at one time in the past they had some "HD" tuner cards that actually only did 720p which might appear HD but softer than 1080i on your TV... could that be the issue? My current HTPC setup gives me a picture as clear as the one I get from a cable box.

I owned both series 1 and series 2 TiVos. Maybe the current series units have finally fixed the laggy as crap interface, but both would wait a good second or so prior to registering whatever I pressed on the remote. It was incredibly frustrating.

I was happier with the Comcast DVR and have been VERY happy with my HTPC. I know they are struggling to make ends meet, but it's ridiculous how expensive the monthly charges are for their "service."

cltmhorn wrote:I wooted an HDXL for that same price in July 2010. Since then I've added a Premeire to my home in addition to the HDXL. And I prefer the premiere. The HD menus are really quite nice, although with kids, I use the SD menus so that I can continue to use kidzone - which is not yet available in the HD menus. As soon as that happens, I'll switch to the HD menus.

The new netflix and youtube apps are much better. And I wish I could upgrade my HDXL to a premier so that I could use multi-room streaming rather than mutli-room viewing. The latter transfers the whole program from one tivo to another. But you can't FF past the transfer point. Where w/streaming you can FF to anypoint w/o having to wait for it to transfer.

you could look into streambaby it will allow you to stream content from a pc on any s3+ model of tivo's if you use the tivo to go feature or kmttg to upload from the tivo to a home pc/server. http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=35
the link has all the info on tivo addons development

thomas998 wrote:How old are your tuner cards, I think that at one time in the past they had some "HD" tuner cards that actually only did 720p which might appear HD but softer than 1080i on your TV... could that be the issue? My current HTPC setup gives me a picture as clear as the one I get from a cable box.

Thanks. They were probably purchased in 2010 sometime. I'll check specs on them when I get home later today.

Can I use this TiVo with Dish network HDTV?

kdavis9164 wrote:Can I use this TiVo with Dish network HDTV?

Negative

So $800 for this thing + lifetime service? I think I'll just stick to Hulu.

dignan17 wrote:I've been a FIOS customer for five years and a Tivo customer for about 12. Since being a FIOS customer I've used the Series 3 and now this Premiere Elite, and both have worked flawlessly. In fact, I now pay slightly less to FIOS per month, because the Series 3 needed two cable cards and the Premiere Elite only needs one multi-stream card, so now I'm only renting one card.

So yes, you still have to rent something from Verizon to have service at that TV, but the card is only something like $3-4/month, as opposed to whatever they charge for their top-end DVR which is something like $20-25/month, isn't it? And I can tell you for certain (I know someone with all the FIOS boxes) that the Tivo interface is MUCH better.

I love my Premiere Elite, and can't imagine going back. I went away for a two-week trip, with the Tivo recording around 6 hours of HD programming every day, and when I came back the storage meter went from about 20% to 50%. I don't think I'll need anything more than that, and I watch a TON of TV.

Thank You!!

I had an analog TiVo, and a year ago got the Premiere (2 tuners and smaller HDD). The TiVo remote is really easy to use and they have an iPhone app that I prefer to manage seasonal shows. This seems a good deal but you must pay for a subscription also. I got the "lifetime" subscription (lifetime of the unit, not you) because it breaks even around 2.5 years I think.

I have both the Comcast Basic Cable and an antenna feed into the TiVo and its schedule understands both, which is really convenient. Even my TiVo with smaller HDD never gets close to filling up, this one, with larger HDD, must be a monster.

To skip adverts there's 30-sec jump forward and 8-sec jump backward buttons, and the usual fast-faster-fastest scan forward and backward buttons.

Anyway TiVo is a great DVR, highly recommended!

daaper wrote:So $800 for this thing + lifetime service? I think I'll just stick to Hulu.

$700 if you already own a Tivo that is active, or use code PLSR online when buying the lifetime sub...

Some advice - only buy if you are familiar with and like the Tivo interface. Switching from a "regular" DVR to a Tivo can be infuriating.

For example, there is no "Exit" button on a Tivo remote. Yep. You want to exit a menu or playback? You can't "Exit". You have to hit "Guide" or "Live" or some other non-intuitive button, depending on context.

cltmhorn wrote:Another very significant difference between the XL & the XL4 is that the XL supports ATSC decoding, while the XL4 supports only QAM and cablecard. Which means that this tivo is *only* useful if you subscribe to cable. It is not able to decode over the air HDTV.

WOW. Just WOW. How the hell can this unit be so awesome and have every possible feature I want, except NOT support free OTA digital TV!?!?!

Everything else looks awesome, but I guess it's gonna be a mythbox build after all, cos I'm done paying Verizon for TV. Um, I'll keep the fios internet tho.

drizzo4shizzo wrote:WOW. Just WOW. How the hell can this unit be so awesome and have every possible feature I want, except NOT support free OTA digital TV!?!?!

The HD Tivo (an older model) and the Premiere modesl all can do OTA recording for 'free' but you still have to pay Tivo a monthly or one time lifetime fee. They have the smaller drive tivos on clearance for $80 or so and had some refurb XL (1tb) Tivos for $150 the other day. All the other Tivos are dual tuner.

My first reaction is to agree - ask your cable provider - but they likely are clueless, and especially so at a walk-in location.

The CableCARD concept sounds good, but the reality is something else, as evidenced by all the reports of activation problems.

My activation didn't go smoothly, as I recall, but didn't require a service call, either. However, there's an ongoing issue where a "In order to start cable service for this device, please contact your cable provider" screen pops up and persists for 5 minutes or until it's manually cleared. It doesn't affect recording, but it's a pain in the butt - and I dread the TiVo/cable company ping-pong that's likely to happen when I call about it.

thomas998 wrote:Might want to verify that with your cable provider. When picked up a m-card for our HDhomerun the cable folks said the cards only supported 3 streams... don't know if they were clueless or if there are different cards and companies get to decide how many streams a card will handle.

investr wrote:and...we're still waiting for the DirecTivo...

DirecTv does have a TiVo option, you just have to get it from DTV.

Offer: Get a free 6-month subscription to Hulu Plus, when you activate a new TiVo service subscription between 6/4/2012 - 8/31/2012. Offer ends August 31, 2012. TiVo reserves the right to terminate this promotion at any time without notice. This offer is limited to one per household. Must be redeemed by 6/1/2013. Hulu Plus only available on broadband connected TiVo Premiere boxes with active TiVo service subscriptions.
Hulu Subscription terms: Hulu Subscription terms: It may take up to 5 business days after activating your TiVo box to be able to redeem your 6 month free subscription for Hulu Plus. 6-month free subscription offer is for the Hulu Plus regular monthly fee plus applicable tax. Credit card required. If you do not cancel your Hulu Plus subscription at the end of your complimentary period you authorize Hulu Plus to charge your payment method each month for the subscription fees plus applicable tax until you cancel the Hulu Plus subscription. The Hulu Plus web address can only be redeemed once and can't be redeemed for cash, resold or combined with any other special or free offers. Please read the Hulu Plus subscription terms and conditions at hulu.com for more details on activating and using your 6-month free subscription provided in this offer

editorkid wrote:Tivo's software (after all this time) is still a little buggy. I have all of my subscriptions and season passes set to First Run Only, but Tivo regularly ignores this and records every episode of a Mythbusters marathon, for instance. They claimed they fixed the bug that would record every single showing of The Daily Show even when set to First Run Only, but no, I still have to have a manual recording for Comedy Central from 10 to 10:30 p.m. Deleting the tons of extras you don't want because it thinks they're new episodes is a time-consuming pain.

I've noticed that TiVo does this extra recording when episodes don't have a name. It seems to ignore the (R) for repeats. Every couple of weeks I used to clean my To Do list & delete all the extras for Mythbusters, MAD, Daily Show, etc.

These days though, if you wait a while, the menu *will* update & TiVo will clear the extra episodes on its own.

I don't bother with the clean up any more & only rarely get an extra episode recorded. In the wish list suggestions at TiVo I've requested they look at the (R) tag when the episode title is missing, so hopefully there will be a useful software update in our future.

drizzo4shizzo wrote:WOW. Just WOW. How the hell can this unit be so awesome and have every possible feature I want, except NOT support free OTA digital TV!?!?!

Everything else looks awesome, but I guess it's gonna be a mythbox build after all, cos I'm done paying Verizon for TV. Um, I'll keep the fios internet tho.

Only the Premiere Elite (now rebranded as Premiere XL4, which is why they're getting rid of these) with 4 tuners has no OTA recording capability. You can still get a Premiere or Premiere XL and record 2 OTA shows at once.

dwynne wrote:The HD Tivo (an older model) and the Premiere modesl all can do OTA recording for 'free' but you still have to pay Tivo a monthly or one time lifetime fee. They have the smaller drive tivos on clearance for $80 or so and had some refurb XL (1tb) Tivos for $150 the other day. All the other Tivos are dual tuner.

An option is to buy a used Tivo HD with lifetime off ebay. The lifetime subscription transfers to the new owner. Several have sold recently for around $300, or maybe $350'ish with an upgraded 1TB hard drive (yes, you'll have bid on a few to get the best deal). An upgrade to a drive up to 2TB is easy using tools available online. The Tivo HD has 2 tuners, and supports ATSC and cable. I have three of them in my house and like them. The Premier and Elite have additional features and a new HD menu system, but the old Tivo HD is fine for my needs.

daaper wrote:So $800 for this thing + lifetime service? I think I'll just stick to Hulu.

That's certainly an option, but it's apples and oranges. They're extremely different things.

IMO, if you watch a TON of TV, there's no better option than a Tivo.