TiVo TCD540040 Series2 40-Hour Digital Video Recorder
Tivo is excellent, but has one potentially serious flaw.
I purchased and returned an 80-hour Tivo this past week (this new silver model).  For the most part, Tivo actually lives up to the incredible hype.  In just a few short days, it really did make watching TV easier.  It remembers your location in a show so you can switch between which show you're watching if you want to and come back to the same spot later (also handy if two family members are watching two different shows).  The interface has a \\"Star Trek\\" level of simplicity to it.  It really frees you from having to know or care exactly when a show is on, or whether it's a repeat or not, or whether its time has been moved or the show is preempted for that week or whatever.  It gives you lots of control as to how many episodes of a particular show will be saved, whether it can overwrite a show when it gets full, etc.  The \\"recommended\\" shows it records were actually mostly stuff I might want to watch (and are based on which shows I've given thumbs up or down to), and the recommened feature can be disabled, and never interferes with either the recording or storage of shows you specifically tell Tivo to record (in other words, Tivo only uses empty space on the drive to record  recommended stuff, and it will overwrite those shows if it runs out of space before touching the shows you requested).  Oh, and everyone probably knows this, but you can watch one show as another is being recorded, or watch and pause a show AS it's being recorded, come back to it later, etc.  The guide is fantastic too.  Technically it's probably all available for free online, but it's a heck of a lot more convenient to have it displayed on your TV as you're flipping through channels, or deciding on what shows to record. <br /> <br />Other stuff: Tivo worked fine for me with over the air broadcast TV, so it's not just for people with cable, etc. (it doesn't handle flaky channels QUITE as well as my VCRs, but it's fine).  Tivo has 4 quality settings.  A unit that says it's \\"80 hours\\" is only 80 hours on the \\"Basic\\" setting.  I found Basic to be good enough for stuff without much movement-Charlie Rose, the McLauqhlin Group, etc.  But the pixilation/artifacting is horrible if there's much movement.  Quality is worse than a (good quality) VCR on it's lowest setting.  Medium is decent, and I was  using that for Days of our Lives, and is maybe slightly worse than a (good quality) VCR's lowest setting, or at least it's different.  High is very good, and on my 80-hour unit was supposed to provide between 30-40 hours storage space, if I'm remembering correctly.  I never bothered using the best quality. <br /> <br />Here's the deal killer for me.  I bought a Tivo to replace a VCR that had died in my bed room.  As it turns out, Tivo never actually shuts off.  The only way to get the hard drive and fan to stop spinning is to physically pull the plug on the unit.  Even the \\"standby\\" mode does virtually nothing.  It shuts off the front light (if you didn't manually shut it off in the menu), it disables the video output to the TV, and it lets the RF connection to the Tivo pass through to your TV.  That's it.  It doesn't shut down the drive or the fan, and it even keeps recording the 30 minute TV buffer.  While this model Tivo is actually quieter than a running VCR, or game system, or computer, I still found it very distracting when I was trying to sleep or read in an otherwise silent room.  Please consider where you're going to put your Tivo and how much stray noises bother you before you buy one, to figure out if this is going to be an issue for you. <br /> <br />That's the only reason I returned mine, and I *do* miss it.   <br /> <br />Here's some other nitpicky stuff about Tivo that could be improved, but isn't a deal killer.  You can add time to the beginning or end of a recording, but that will cause Tivo to not record a show you might have scheduled for right after that recording.  In other words, if a show is from 7-8pm and you tell Tivo to add a minute to the recording time, Tivo then won't record a show you have scheduled from 8-9pm, even though it would only be missing the first minute.  My Sony VCRs handle that situation correctly (they finish the current recording and then go to the next).  You can get around that by manually scheduling a recording (record on this date, time, etc.), but that kind of defeats some of the purpose of having a Tivo.  The internal clock gets updated every time it dials in for the program guide, so it's not TOO big of a deal because it almost always gets the whole show without adding a minute or two to the beginning or end, but it's strange that the software doesn't handle this better. <br />I found skipping commercials to be slightly more difficult than on my Sony VCRs.  My VCRs have a \\"smart cue\\" button which with one press begins fast forwarding through the tape, and when you see the start of the show, a second press of the button rewinds a set number of seconds, so it's usually just a matter of hitting a single button twice to skip a commercial.  With Tivo it's not quite so simple.  Hitting fast forward once goes 3x speed (slower than my VCRs fast forward).  Hitting it twice goes to 10x speed (faster than my VCR), and three times goes to 20x speed.  When fast forwarding at 10 or 20x, hitting the play button causes Tivo to jump backwards a few seconds and begin playing.  It's SIMILAR to what my VCR does, but it requires more button presses (hitting fast forward twice, then hitting play at the right moment), and I found it VERY difficult to comfortably hit the play button in time.  10x is just a little too fast for me, and it doesn't jump backwards at all in 3x mode (and that's a little too slow).  There's a hidden feature it's possible to enable that causes Tivo to jump forward in 30 second increments with the press of a button, but I found that even more annoying than the fast forward/play method. <br />It's harder to record for just a short bit-like sometimes with a VCR I may want to tapea 5 minute segment of a show, and Tivo would pretty much end up grabbing the whole 30 minute buffer, or the rest of the show, which is USUALLY what you'd want, but not always.  There's also no great way to quickly skip to a certain part of a show.  Like on my VCR if I see something I want to show someone else, I can make a note of where the tape counter is, and then just move the tape to that point later, whereas on Tivo I'd have to fast forward through the whole show and try to spot it. <br />Last, as of the time I'm writing this, there's no way (officially at least-there might be some unofficial way around it) to transfer shows to a computer or burn them to DVD.  That shouldn't be much of an issue, because Tivo has announced a feature that's supposed to be released fall 2004 called TivoToGo (it will be added for free as a software update when the unit dials in for the program guide).  TivoToGo is supposed to allow you to network your Tivo to your computer, copy shows over, watch them on your computer, and burn shows to DVD (so that you should be able to watch them on DVD players too).  It sounds like there may be a one time charge for some of the software needed on the PC, and it remains to be seen how user friendly or restricted TivoToGo will be, but it SHOULD be a great feature. <br /> <br />At any rate, aside from the noise issue, I highly recommend Tivo!  I'm just hoping they implement a real standby/off mode in a future model.  I'll be buying one the second they do.