What is TiVo?

So how does it all work? You plug your incoming cable signal (whether regular cable or DirecTV or Dish Network or satellite) into the Tivo, then plug your Tivo into your TV. From then on, everything you see is coming from the Tivo hard drive - even live TV, enabling you to "pause" TV. Live TV is buffered onto the hard drive and temporarily stored there, allowing you to rewind what you just saw, or pause live TV while you get a snack or put the kids to bed. Un-pause, and you are back where you left off, while everything you missed has been recorded to the hard drive. In this strange way, you may be several minutes "behind" live TV, since you are actually now watching it off the Tivo box and not off any live broadcast.

And this is what makes Tivo so great - you are now free from normal TV schedules and time limitations. This is called "time-shifting", meaning you watch programs when you want, instead of when the networks want. Now that you control live TV, you also control everything that was on in the past via simple recording options. Tivo connects via a phone line to a central computer that contains DETAILED listings of every program on TV/cable. Periodically, it dials in, downloads the entire schedule, and stores it. You can then search by program title, subject, star, etc. and find any upcoming show. You can also browse live and upcoming schedules, reading summaries of each episode and seeing at a glance what is on every channel at every time. Find something you like, click the RECORD button on the remote, and it will be recorded. Choose a Season Pass, and every episode of that show is recorded automatically. Amazingly simple, tell it to record your favorite 10 shows, and they will all be there waiting for you when you want to watch them.

The Tivo remote control brings up options for Live TV or What's Playing on Tivo (for recorded shows). Shows are stored by most recent recordings, with an option to store episodes of the same show in little folders, so all your General Hospital episodes are in a folder called "General Hospital" and so on. Just click what you want to play, and off you go. Again, you can pause and resume any show you are watching. Another favorite button is the 8 second rewind - punch it once or a few times to jump back if you missed something. You can also fast forward or rewind at 3 different speeds, and the little beeps and pops sound effects will soon be like music to your ears as you blast around from program to program.. Most people love to breeze past 2 minutes of commercials in about 10 seconds - you'll find you can watch an hour show in about 45 minutes! And Tivo has an interesting smart feature during high-speed fast forward - it knows you have a little delay in your brain between the time you WANTED to hit play and the time you ACTUALLY hit play and skips back a few seconds so you don't overshoot the point you wanted to start watching again - amazing!

Tivo boxes come in various capacity sizes, ie. 40 hours of programming, or 120 hours of storage (usually at lowest quality setting). Other versions now contain a built-in DVD-Recording (Humax) unit so you can burn your favorite shows to DVD for permanent storage (build your own complete seasons of whatever!). Things like the Hughes DirecTV HDTV receiver come direct from the provider. Some cable companies like Comcast provide Tivo functions - see what is available in your area.

Complaints?

There are also concerns about privacy, since Tivo knows everything you watch, when, what ads you skip past, etc. However, most people find it is worth it, and once they get it, they are hooked Tivo fanatics!

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