Philips HDR312 TiVo 30-Hour Digital Video Recorder
TiVo best thing since sliced bread!
I've had a TiVo for over a year now.  I don't know how I'd watch TV without it.  Let me address some items from an earlier review:<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 />True. But even my older TV has 2 inputs.<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 />Well if you started recording anything after it started how could you go back to before then?  TiVo would need to be recording every channel you received at the same time to do what you are complaining about here.<br />3. You can only pause for a max of 30 mins.<br />True.  If you are going to pause for longer just hit RECORD.<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 />True the live buffer is 30 min.  If you hit RECORD the new software will record back to the beginning of the live buffer so you're covered.<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 />True, again TiVo can only record one thing at a time.  How would it know you wanted to come back?  You did change channels right?<br />6. The &quot;Season Pass&quot; function is supposed 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 Seasons Pass needs to be setup for each channel.  This is a feature so you can get the programs from the source you want.<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 />Suggestions (thumbs up/down) take awhile for TiVo to learn.  Give it some time and it works great.  Also over use of thumbs down will really hose you up.  <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 />How else is it supposed to know if it can change channels?  I think this was very well implemented.  Would you rather tell it to record like a VCR?  You can do that if you like by using the manual recording method.<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 />This has been changed with the new software.  It will record from the beginning of the buffer forward.<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 />Missing of intros or program ends is NOT TiVo's fault.  The networks are starting early or ending late to get people into the next program.  Complain to the networks about this. As to a game how would TiVo know a game was going into overtime?  If you know this in advance you are an amazing person!<br />Also, the DirecTv Tivo's (a DirecTv reciever with TiVo built in) have dual tuners.  At present only one of them is active but a software upgrade that is due out this summer will allow you to watch one program while recording another.  Or better yet, record two programs at the same time!  <br />You have nothing to lose TiVo has a 30 day money back guarentee.  So give it a try.  You'll not know how you lived without it.