TiVo Series2 Digital Video Recorder (*TiVo Service Fee Not Included)
Transformational product! Too cool for school
First:<br />Spend the extra money for the larger (80 hours) recorder. It's worth the extra investment.<br />Second:<br />The recording time indicated is the maximum available using the lowest (of three) quality settings. Max quality is about 25% of this.<br />Third: Service plans are monthly or \\"lifetime\\". Lifetime refers to the lifetime of the recorder. (...)<br />Fourth: Tivo's main method of phoning home to the Tivo mothership (for programming information from your satellite/cable provider and for software updates) is via phone (modem). But: if you are running a wireless or wired broadband network, you can request an additional download that will then enable all future updates to take place via TCP/IP.<br />Fifth: Setup is pretty easy, the documentation is excellent. THe biggest challenge will probably be navigating through your exisiting mess of A/V cables! After install, the ease of use is simply amazing!<br />Sixth: If you are a sports fan...you are now in control of when to take another look. Very cool and fun.<br />Finally: If you buy the lower capacity set, there is a brisk aftermaket in (unauthorized) upgrades. This is because the hard drive is a standard IDE unit (like in your PC), and Tivo runs Linux. (...) If you're a real geek, and are confident with booting into Linux on an external PC, you can do it yourself!<br />How did we ever watch TV without Tivo?