TiVo Series2 Digital Video Recorder (*TiVo Service Fee Not Included)
Good product...but a bit steep learning curve
All the other reviews talk about how this will change your life, and, for the most part, they're true.  You will find yourself free to watch whatever you want whenever you want for very little effort (well, plus a the monthly fee).  However, it is not quite perfect.  Given the unit is drop dead simple to set up (nice clear labels on the inputs/outputs...good visual instructions on what to do..ect) unless you had a less modern cable box/satellite hook up.  In this case, you need to put these infrared emitters in front of your cable box/satellite hook up to be able to use the Tivo (it uses these emitters to change the channels).  In my case it took a bit of fine tuning to get this correct.  Once I got it hooked up, I was surprised that you really can't use it immediately...It has to phone to Tivo central for about 20 minutes and then it needs to format hard drive or something (it basically says, come back in 10 hours).  Then you need to program the channels you do or do not to be available (but you can select to program all channels very easily)...I found this an extra bonus since you can use your Tivo as your main viewing device and just select the channels you really want to be available...so now instead of having to click through 160 channels, most of which I don't care at all about, I can now flip through just the 40 or so I know I like...and you can still access the unprogrammed channels by punching in the actual channel number instead of using the channel up/down button.<br />But my biggest problem is the remote.  It just sucks.  Given the Tivo has no buttons on the unit and is operated only through the remote, and Tivo is set up on the premise that you will be using it as your primary TV interface, this is a serious issue.  The remote is long and relatively thin...so there are actually very few buttons near where you grap the remote, so either you need to shift your grip or use two hands.  Tivo needs to look at some Samsung remotes to get a good idea of what remote should be.  My thumb was aching after the 30 minute button fest I did setting up my channels and programming choices.  Also the 60 hour measurement is at the lowest resolution setting, and if you have a digital TV, this is really going to look bad (it looks not great on analog TVs, but its not so obvious)...So if you like a good picture, you only going to have 18-28 hours of recording time.  Also on the remote, Tivo caved to all the advertiser complaints and removed the 30 second skip button...so now you have to fast forward through ads instead of not seeing them at all.  Nice to see paying a fairly steep monthly fee gets you that kind of service and customer care.<br />Other than that, my only other problem is that it has a hard time picking out repeats of certain type shows.  It is smart enough not to record the same episode of \\"Enterprise\\" in a given month because the show has some title listing information attached to it and Tivo can figure out which episode are repeates and which are not.  For shows like \\"the daily show\\", which don't have any title listings, you either have to program each episode you want or it will record that day's show four times or it will record it once a month, depending on how you've worked your settings.  Tivo needs a option that says something like \\"only record this once every 24 hours\\" and this problem would be fixed.<br />So it is a great item, but it will take you a bit of time to set it up and actually start using it.