TiVo TCD648250B Series3 HD Digital Media Recorder (2008 Model)
Tivo series 3 delivers as expected
Our local cable company rents a Motorola HD-DVR  <br />as its high-end box. This is hands-down one of the most  <br />poorly usable products that I'm ever had in my house. <br />Its amazing that millions of cable customers all over  <br />the world are not revolting against this engineering disaster. <br />And its not only the slow and confusing remote that <br />frustrated me, but also poor quality hardware. Being <br />an R&D engineer myself, I do appreciate a good design, <br />and the Motorola not. For example, it gets very hot,  <br />even in the 'off' position. It burns no less that 30  <br />Watts day and night, frying the collection of antique  <br />VHS tapes in my multimedia cabinet. <br /> <br />So, does the Tivo series 3 fix these issues, and is it <br />worth the steep $1000+ dollar premium for the box + service?  <br /> <br />I think it is. <br /> <br />It offers the familiar excellent usability of the Tivo <br />DVR, while adding HD and a large 250G harddrive.  <br />The box is sleek, well-designed and literally, as <br />well as figuratively 'cool'. The HD playback is  <br />smooth, and simply works as you'd expect.  <br />The menus respond slightly faster to commands than the  <br />series 2 Tivo that I have. The menu is much clearer <br />in HD, thanks to the fact that the unnecessary conversion <br />to an analog signal has been eliminated. Picture quality <br />is probably as good as it gets given the inputs. <br /> <br />Otherwise, this series 3 works just like the series 2 <br />minus a few web features due to cable card copyright issues.  <br />Since I wasn't using that anyway, I do not care.  <br /> <br />The set-up was easy: I plugged in a network cable and <br />the HDMI cable, and it worked basically out-of-the-box. I <br />had to call Comcast for the cable cards and pick up <br />their sorry Motorola box.     <br />Comcast had some trouble dealing with the dual cable <br />cards. The installer had never seen a Tivo before, but despite <br/>that, the cards worked fine. The main issue was <br />that they did not know how to charge for the service.  <br />This was only resolved after long consultations with <br />supervisors (the first cable card is free, and the second  <br />is $1.50 per month).    <br />  <br />In summary, this is a good HD version of the conventional <br />2-tuner Tivo series 2. The Series 3 offers no surprises:  <br />its well engineered and simply works well. It enabled me  <br />to get rid of that crappy hot Motorola HD-DVR box. If you  <br />can live with only cable service and a $1000 hole in  <br />your pocket, this is is probably the best you can get at  <br />this time.