TiVo Series2 Digital Video Recorder (*TiVo Service Fee Not Included)
I Hate TV But Love TIVO
...TIVO connects via phone line to the TIVO service ($300 lifetime or about $12.95 per month). The service provides, among other things, a program listing for your area,. If you then want to record all future Conan shows, you can make that selection and TIVO will do it. (TIVO, but not your TV, must be on to do this.) I understand that this charge is not negligible to many. In the first year you can spend the entire coat of TIVO on the service charge. However, TIVO, with no service charge, always records any program that you manually tune or schedule, so if $ are important and time is short, just skip all the monthly charges, and use it to skip all the commercial interruptions or to do a late night recording.<br />Setup takes 30 minutes (an hour if you are not a tech type), and almost every possible TV setup is covered, including all of the cables.<br />TIVO is of course capable of much more - for example schedule it to record many programs in advance to be played at any time that you choose. I use this only to record \\"Late Night With Conan O'Brien.\\" Imagine if I liked TV and wanted not to miss four or five hit shows. (I have never seen a single episode of Seinfeld or Sex and the City.)<br />Buy it without subscribing to the TIVO service. Try it and then decide if you want the monthly (or lifetime) service. There is no reason to make up your mind until you see if TIVO is attractive to you.<br />Technically, TIVO is a big hard drive with all of the features of a VCR plus the extra smarts of a computer that knows what you want and searches a data base of program listings downloaded via a phone line. TIVO capabilities and features are often enchanced via downloads but only for those who subcribe to the TIVO service. Replay quality (selectable) seems as good as the original on the highesr setting.<br />I am giving this to both of my adult kids for Christmas.