TiVo TCD540040 Series2 40-Hour Digital Video Recorder
Can't live witout it now
Update- 6/18/2007  Still working and going strong, still love it and can't live without it. We now have the dual tuner TIVO and this is in the living room.<br /><br />Anyway, the original review (4/2005) follows....<br /><br />Bought the TIVO a couple months ago before I went on vacation because we didn't have enough VCRs to handle all the first run programs we would miss and I like it better every day. The downside for me was the high pitch noise that it makes which probably isn't bad if you have it in your living room, but in the bedroom it was a pain when trying to sleep, although it did not seem to bother my wife at all as she could barely hear it.  So maybe different people  will have different results. But like living near the train tracks,airport or highway, you get used to it to the point where it no longer bothers you.  It took me about a month to get used to it.<br /><br />It takes a week or two to get used to programming it, however the menus are very easy to follow.  I didn't realize (and I'm not sure if its in the manual) until about a month later that you can watch stuff that you've recorded while its recording something else which is a great feature.  Unfortunatly, you can't change the channel from something you're recording to watch something else unless you put the unit in standby mode and watch TV the 'normal way'  This can only be done if you've connected TIVO with coaxial cables, a downside for those with video jacks or svideo cables, so keep that in mind.<br /><br />Another plus is the networking capabilities.  We do not have a phone jack upstairs in our house so we had put off buying TIVO for a long time.  With the USB connectors, I've connected tivo to my wireless network so that it can get its programming info.  I can go online anywhere (from a friends house maybe) and tell Tivo to record something.  Also, I can transfer TV shows to my computer and (with extra software) burn them to DVD.  Make sure you check the website for  compatible wireless network items, as we found that the wireless G would not work with tivo, a select few wireless b items do work, but they're getting harder to find now.<br /><br />Tivos not perfect but if you can live with some of the drawbacks then give it a shot.ss network items, as we found that the wireless G would not work with tivo, a select few wireless b items do work, but they're getting harder to find now.<br /><br />Tivos not perfect but if you can live with some of the drawbacks then give it a shot.