Philips HDR312 TiVo 30-Hour Digital Video Recorder
Response to KeithKi on TiVo
Anyone that is thinking of purchasing a TiVo unit from Phillips or Sony should completely ignore the review submitted by KeithKi.  He apparently has no idea how to use his TiVo unit or did extremely poor research prior to purchasing it.  I wold like to answer each of his points;<br />And now for the drawbacks of tivo (which far surpasses the good things). <br />1. Unless you have a newer tv with 2 video inputs, you can't record one show, while viewing another.<br />Correct, and you can't do it with a VCR either.  No where does TiVo make the claim that you can record one show while watching another.  What you can do is watch a recorded show while another one is recorded.  Can a VCR do that?  NO!<br />2. You can only rewind live tv back to the point where you changed the channel. This means that if you change the channel to Leno and just barely miss the punchline... too bad, you can't rewind.<br />Obviously the unit can only buffer the last 30 minutes of the channel you have been watching, if you expected it to buffer every channel you have on the off-chance you might channel surf over to it you made another huge mistake during your research. <br />3. You can only pause for a max of 30 mins.  <br />Well if you are pausing for 30 minutes perhaps you should be recording it instead.<br />4. You can only rewind to a max of 30 mins, UNLESS the show is being recorded, in which case you can rewind all the way to the beginning of the recording.<br />Again, you clearly have no idea how this unit operates.  It buffers the last 30 minutes of the channel you are watching.  What you stated is true, whats the problem?<br />5. If you are watching tv behind real time and want to change the channel for a few minutes, when you come back to the show you were watching, it'll resume at real time and you can't rewind, so you'll have missed however much time you were behind.<br />See response to #2 and add you have no idea how this unit works.<br />6. The &quot;Season Pass&quot; function issupposed to record the selected show no matter what time it plays and no matter what channel. I got a season pass for Spin City, but I had to set 2 Season Passes... one for channel 13 and the other for channel 7 in order for it to work correctly.<br />The new version of the TiVo software offers much broader control over the Season Pass, and whats the problem with two Season Passes?  When you select the Season Pass it clearly states which channel it will be recording from.  The new software allows for recording only first run episodes or all reruns as well.  YOu can prioritize Season Passes should there be a conflict between several shows so TiVO will record the higher priority show.<br />7. The Thumbs Up/Down system doesn't work very well. For some reason I end up with more Fresh Prince of Bel Air (3 thumbs up) than Spin City (which I have a season pass for). Also, my tivo likes to record practically every movie on Sundance even though I give every single one of those movies 3 thumbs down.<br />It takes several weeks for the Thumbs Up/Down feature to begin to accurately predict what you may like/dislike.  You can also tell the unit not to record the suggestions but rather review a list of them and decide which ones you want to record and delete the ones you don't want.<br />8. Since the tivo box is ALWAYS on, there's no way for it to tell if you're actually there watching tv. So in the middle of a show a message will pop up asking to change the channel so that it can record a &quot;tivo suggestion.&quot; Sometimes this is a hassle to find the remote and select &quot;cancel recording and stay on this channel.&quot; Also, if you're listening to the tv, but not actually watching it, you may miss the pop up message, in which case it will automatically change the channel and start recording. This means, that you have to cancel the recording, and then switch back to the channel you were on, therefore missing part of the show you were listening to.<br />Again,  turn off the Suggestions from being recorded.  You really need to learn how to use the TiVo unit.<br />9. Sometimes you'll be watching a show (which is not being recorded) and something really spectacular or funny will happen. You would think that you could rewind and then hit record, so that you could show it to somebody later. But when you hit record, it'll start recording from live tv to the end of the show. This is also the same problem if you have live tv paused. Let's say the phone rings, so you pause the show you're watching. You realize that you're going to be on the phone for longer than 30 mins, so you hit record. When you go back to watch the show, you'll find that it didn't record from the point it was paused at, but rather the point of live tv when you hit record.<br />The new version of the software allows you to record the buffer and begin recording the show, problem solved!<br />10. Shows are recorded based on the tivo programming guide which is downloaded over your phone line. This means that many times you will miss the intro or last joke of a recorded show. Or if a game goes into overtime, yep, that's right you miss the whole overtime. Of course you can always record manually by setting a time period, but that's kind of a hassle.<br />The new version of the TiVo software allows you to pad the recording time in order to capture shows that may run over, like Survivor running over by 2-3 minutes.  Of course nobody can predict if a sporting event will go into overtime so you're going to miss the overtime with a VCR or a TiVo.<br />I am extremely happy with my Sony Tivo, it performs as advertised and makes watching TV a new experience.  If you just take the time to fully learn what TiVo can do you will see that it far surpasses both VCRs and its own advertising.<br />I hope this clears up the inaccuracies in the review posted by KeithKi.<br />Bruce