Real Kato Blog: Day 1 With TiVo

A few notes about my new TiVo.

Well, the TiVo is here.

It's a smartly put-together package. Things are labeled neatly, and connecting everything up was pretty simple. The instructions are pretty easy to follow. They even put a TiVo sticker in the box... you know, for kids.

But during setup, I immediately ran into the first issue: you can't easily set it up so it can record both analog cable channels AND digital cable channels. I set it up to tune channels through my digital cable box, but that means I can't watch other digital channels while it's recording. If I switch the setting to use analog cable, I'll have no way of recording digital channels (unless I route the cable signal back through the RF coax connection, and tell TiVo to record channel 3, and that would require manual intervention whenever I want to do it).

TiVo allows you to set up analog cable and satellite TV simultaneously. But to a TiVo, the only difference between a satellite box and a cable box is the channel lineup. So it's certainly technologically possible to make this thing do what I want. This is clearly an artificial limitation, probably put in by request from the cable companies. Grrr.

Second issue: it took several hours to get through its initial setup. No device should require that much time just to crunch through program data. What's it got, a 1MHz 6502 processor in there?

Third issue: if my cable box ever gets turned off (due to a power glitch, or from me accidentally turning it off out of habit), TiVo won't record a show. It can't tell that the power is off, so it doesn't know to turn the box on. That's another reason I might have to just switch to analog recording by default; it won't be dependent on the cable box. Or, I'll have to get a UPS for this. (It might be a good idea to do that anyway.)

So, overall, I'm finding it's not a perfect solution. But it's still better than dealing with videotapes. I'll have to give this analog/digital conundrum a little more thought. That's the main thing that's bothering me. I'll report back if I come up with any bright ideas.

Permalink 4 Comment

Posted by Ken in: techwatch

Comments

Comment #1 from Timothy Ross (Guest)
2005 Sep 22 - 12:31 am : #

My advice is to let TIVO have the analog input and keep your cable box seperate. This was you can still "flip" channels with your cable box when you just want to surf around. Surfing with a TIVO can be frustrating due to the time it takes to change stations.

If your TIVO support the option to manually record a show on LINE-IN you can always use that to record digital shows.

Comment #2 from Ken (realkato)
2005 Sep 22 - 12:40 am : #

Yeah, that's what I'm leaning towards. Except that I think I have to trick the TiVo by telling it I have a satellite box; otherwise it won't let me use the line-in and the RF input at the same time.

Comment #3 from John C (Guest)
2005 Sep 22 - 7:14 am : #

I need ammo to tell my friends it is not worth it. This one guy badgers me endlessly to get one. It all goes in the ammo chest

Comment #4 from Bake Town (Guest)
2005 Sep 22 - 10:21 am : #

I can't live without my Tivo.

Comments are closed for this post.

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