Virgin Media Tivo

DaveyM69

Have any of you UK CPians tried Tivo yet? I'm seriously considering it but would appreciate some educated, non-partisan opinions!

Dave
Binging is like googling, it just feels dirtier. Please take your VB.NET out of our nice case sensitive forum. Astonish us. Be exceptional. (Pete O'Hanlon)
BTW, in software, hope and pray is not a viable strategy. (Luc Pattyn)

OriginalGriff

I absolutely loath it. But that is just based on the advert, I've never tried the kit (we don't get mains gas round here, never mind cable)

Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."

Lost User

Not from UK nor do I have TiVo but I have had DVRs and I will never have paid TV without it again. There is just too much crud on around what I want to watch. I recently convinced my father of the same. He was shocked to realize that "Two and a Half Men" only actually has about 12 min shows. I will say this though. In general the DVRs provided by the cable/sat company are not as good as independent ones. The reasoning is simple. Cable/Sat get commercial time. They still want you watching some of those slots. So they dont give you the ideal programming for skipping the garbage. One of my buddies has had TVReplay for years. The commercial skipping on that system is awesome. It does it automagically and rarely is off. And even if it is, very easy to compensate manually. I think TiVOs gimmik has always been about learning your tastes and records stuff that it thinks you will like. Personally, I doubt any prgrammed system can figure out my deranged mind.

Computers have been intelligent for a long time now. It just so happens that the program writers are about as effective as a room full of monkeys trying to crank out a copy of Hamlet.

DaveyM69

OriginalGriff wrote:

I absolutely loath it. But that is just based on the advert

:laugh: I already use their broadband and phone service, but use Sky for TV including HD, movies, documentry.science channels etc. With F1 going mainly to Sky Sports next year I've been having a look and I can get everything I get now plus Sky Sports (and a 1TB box) for less than I'm paying them separately without Sports! What is it that you loathe? I have to admit I'm not keen on their colour scheme but Sky's isn't great either!

Dave
Binging is like googling, it just feels dirtier. Please take your VB.NET out of our nice case sensitive forum. Astonish us. Be exceptional. (Pete O'Hanlon)
BTW, in software, hope and pray is not a viable strategy. (Luc Pattyn)

OriginalGriff

I think it's "smarmy-little-git-with-an-undelete-button" syndrome. :laugh: I also use Sky - in the guise of Sky+ - and have yet to fill up the (pretty tiny) HDD in the box. But then I also have a 1TB media player which holds my DVD's as AVI files so Sky only records the (infrequent) good stuff on TV.

Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."

Lost User

When do you plan to watch the 500 hours of recorded programs? And yes, I agree with others' comments about the smarminess of the ad.

Unrequited desire is character building. OriginalGriff

DaveyM69

Richard MacCutchan wrote:

When do you plan to watch the 500 hours of recorded programs?

Trust me, the Mrs will have no problems! We have a Sky HD box now and we constantly have to delete stuff we would prefer not to as space is running low.

Dave
Binging is like googling, it just feels dirtier. Please take your VB.NET out of our nice case sensitive forum. Astonish us. Be exceptional. (Pete O'Hanlon)
BTW, in software, hope and pray is not a viable strategy. (Luc Pattyn)

Lost User

I have one (in Australia) and it is pretty good. It's user friendly and the interface is very very slick. Not sure what the setup is like in the UK but here there is no subscription fee, just the cost of the unit. Some negatives are that it will only record from terrestrial channels (not cable) and there is no easy way to transfer the recordings onto another device. We dont use it much now as our cable provider gave us a PVR that will record all channels

JHizzle

UK and I got it and it's pretty good in that it'll do what you want, the suggestions thing gives you some nice surprises and the database linking works well. I only have a couple of quibbles - Interface lag. There is a notable pause between button press and actual action. Enough for you to retry thinking that you hadn't pushed the button. No page up/page down on the TV guide. Yes you can scroll but because of the aforementioned lag, this can get quite tedious.

DaveyM69

Thanks - just the kind of info I wanted :thumbsup:

Dave
Binging is like googling, it just feels dirtier. Please take your VB.NET out of our nice case sensitive forum. Astonish us. Be exceptional. (Pete O'Hanlon)
BTW, in software, hope and pray is not a viable strategy. (Luc Pattyn)