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TiVo HD
Introduction
TiVo has been an interesting company from day one. Founded in 1997, it brought the first TiVo to CES in 1999. But while the company has produced quality devices for eight years, it's struggled to capture a significant market share. TiVo has produced three different series of DVRs. The original TiVos (now referred to as Series 1) were equipped with a single analog cable TV tuner and IDE hard drives, which had a capacity of up to 60GB. Series 2 was equipped with USB ports, one or two tuners (depending on model), and hard drive capacity of up to 140GB. The Series 3 units have been a long time coming. TiVo originally unveiled the Series 3 at CES 2006 (and unofficially talked about it at CES 2005), but had no expected release date in sight. The unit, costing $800, ended up shipping in September 2006. The price was a barrier for many people. The TiVo HD is the mainstream consumer Series 3 TiVo. At $300, the device is more palatable to consumers who balked at an $800 price tag. The box has a smaller hard drive than the original Series 3 box, and doesn't come with OLED screen, THX certification, or a fancy case. So how does a $300 HD set top box work? Well, I will say it wasn't boring.  First Looks I opened the TiVo box and was pleasantly surprised to discover that they had included a ton of cables with the device. Except for an HDMI cable. Really, is an HDMI cable too much to ask? Oh well. Also included with the TiVo are several instruction sheets on how to hook the TiVo up to your TV, how to authorize it, and directions for your cable installer on how to install the cable cards (not that my installer used it - maybe he should have).     The TiVo device is somewhat plain. The box is black with a silver TiVo guy on the left side, and a silver rectangle on the right. The lower part of the front has a flip down panel to hide the cable card slots. This is a major advantage over the original Series 3 device because, if you need to reinsert or replace your cable card, you don't have to disconnect the device, turn it around to see the backside, and then replace the cards. Inside the TiVo HD is a 160GB hard drive that can store up to 180 hours of SD programming, and 20 hours of HD programming.     The back of the TiVo HD has two coax inputs, one for a cable and one for an antenna, along with two USB ports, an eSATA port, an Ethernet jack, an HDMI port, component output, s-video and composite, digital audio out, and a phone jack. The remote that is included with the TiVo HD differs from the remote included with the original S3. It isn't as nice and it's not programmable, although it does accomplish all the functions you need, including altering the aspect ratio with one button, without any problems.
Page 1: Introduction & First Looks
Page 2: Installation Page 3: DVR Functionality & Extra Features Page 4: Conclusion 
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Add Comment
2 User Comments 1 - Posted by
jim
on September 3, 2007 - 10:27 pm Pretty fair review, though obviously colored by the ineptness of your cable installer. If your installer knows what they are doing, two cards can be installed in about 15 minutes.
2 - Posted by
Anthony
on September 4, 2007 - 12:00 am Yea, but my story about the ineptness of the cablecard install doesn't seem to be that far out of line if you look at the TiVoCommunity forums. And sadly, most places dont allow self-install. And just like a cell phone, the phone might be great but if the reception sucks, its no use. Its a package deal. Add Comment To add a comment without being a member, you may omit the password field, but you must enter your name (or nickname) along with your comment. * Denotes required fields. |
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