Hardware Sounds like most of your menu problems were caused by the hard drive. I don't know why there are so many bad units but rest assured you were not alone. We were very lucky in that our unit worked flawlessly right out of the box. The only problem we had was that the batteries in the remote unit had exploded during shipping. Tivo was more than happy to FedEx us a new remote, free of charge.
Cost You paid $699? Shame on you! We paid $515 + S/H for ours before the $100 rebate from DirecTV. We got ours through Pro Active Electronics which we found via Nextag. (Current price direct from ProActive is $575. If you go through Nextag you can certainly get a better deal.)
South Park The quick and dirty fix to your South Park issue is to not delete the episode from your hard drive until the others have passed. I admit that it is a kludge but it works. Well, it works most of the time. If the episode numbers are wrong in the program info (the stuff you download every night and that Tivo buys from a third party, Tribune) are wrong then all bets are off.
The ultimate solution to this problem would be for TiVo to keep better track of what you've already watched. There's no reason for it to not keep a database of which shows you've watched recently. It should probably track TV shows for about a month and movies for 6 months or so.
A more common problem for us is that future episodes that should get recorded don't because Tribune reuses episode numbers when they should not. The support people at Tivo know all about this and have yelled at Tribune on my behalf on several occasions.
Power Puff Girls This is definitely a problem. Version 2 will have a systematic way of prioritizing season passes. There's currently a workaround for this as well.
The Simpsons I don't have a workaround for this. This, too, is supposed to be fixed in Version 2.0.
What you left out One of the features that sold me on the whole thing was the automatic software updates. As part of your nightly phone call you receive patches to the Tivo software. Version 1.3 is currently being rolled out and should be coming to a Tivo near you in the next several weeks. (They don't give it to everybody at once in order to do load balancing.) Version 2.0 (big rewrite, lots o' fun stuff) is due out Q3.
Bottom Line If you're serious about TiVo you need to read the TiVo forum at AVS Forum. There is a major TiVo community there; loads of user-to-user goodnes. Also, TiVo has a full-time rep who hangs out there and other places.
The quality of the video signal depends on how much compression you use. At highest quality it is very good. We record most things at medium quality. At medium quality there are some noticeable artifacts on fast transistions or "flickery" scenes. Mostly this is good enough for watching TV. If we were to record a movie or something we'd probably do it at a higher setting. Best quality is very, very good.
I felt *exactly* the same as you did. Then my wife made me buy one. I don't want to overdramatize things here but it has radically changed the way we watch television. Not only is it easier to program than a VCR, but imagine a VCR that always has a tape ready and knows to tape stuff that you like.
It's one of those things you have to see to really appreciate. The "TiVolution" will start slowly but it's going to grow.
There's a good article at TeeVee.org that talks about Tivo.
How many "look and feel" lawsuits does Apple have to lose before they finally give it up? Apart from the use of the Apple logo this isn't a case of their copyright being infringed -- it's a case of a huge corporation using their litigious might to squash the theme creator who not only isn't hurting Apple's revenue in any way but also isn't making any money off of the alleged infringement.
If it were Microsoft doing this (and I don't doubt that they would) people would be all over them for it. It's time to wake up and smell the coffee -- pound for pound Apple is just as evil as Microsoft, maybe more so.
The very idea of "Open Source" Windows frightens me. The last thing I want to have to deal with (as a Windows programmer) is six or seven different flavors of Windows. Just imagine the increased hell for the poor install teams everywhere.
What I'd really like to see -- and I've been saying this for years now -- is for Microsoft to give us all:
equal access to the source code and
COMPLETE and ACCURATE documentation for the entire Win32 API.
I'd be happy with that. Let them put reasonable restrictions on it if they want. Hell, nobody wants to take their code and build on it anyway.
If they did, sooner or later somebody would start a lawsuit claiming "unfair business practices" etc. Seriously, though, if MS thought there was a profit to be mad in it I suspect they would do it. Somebody (Borland maybe?) used to sell an "entry-level" compiler (C? Pascal? Don't remember) available only to college students. Don't know whatever happened to that. --john
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like most of your menu problems were caused by the hard drive. I don't know why there are so many bad units but rest assured you were not alone. We were very lucky in that our unit worked flawlessly right out of the box. The only problem we had was that the batteries in the remote unit had exploded during shipping. Tivo was more than happy to FedEx us a new remote, free of charge.
Cost
You paid $699? Shame on you! We paid $515 + S/H for ours before the $100 rebate from DirecTV. We got ours through Pro Active Electronics which we found via Nextag. (Current price direct from ProActive is $575. If you go through Nextag you can certainly get a better deal.)
South Park
The quick and dirty fix to your South Park issue is to not delete the episode from your hard drive until the others have passed. I admit that it is a kludge but it works. Well, it works most of the time. If the episode numbers are wrong in the program info (the stuff you download every night and that Tivo buys from a third party, Tribune) are wrong then all bets are off.
The ultimate solution to this problem would be for TiVo to keep better track of what you've already watched. There's no reason for it to not keep a database of which shows you've watched recently. It should probably track TV shows for about a month and movies for 6 months or so.
A more common problem for us is that future episodes that should get recorded don't because Tribune reuses episode numbers when they should not. The support people at Tivo know all about this and have yelled at Tribune on my behalf on several occasions.
Power Puff Girls
This is definitely a problem. Version 2 will have a systematic way of prioritizing season passes. There's currently a workaround for this as well.
The Simpsons
I don't have a workaround for this. This, too, is supposed to be fixed in Version 2.0.
What you left out
One of the features that sold me on the whole thing was the automatic software updates. As part of your nightly phone call you receive patches to the Tivo software. Version 1.3 is currently being rolled out and should be coming to a Tivo near you in the next several weeks. (They don't give it to everybody at once in order to do load balancing.) Version 2.0 (big rewrite, lots o' fun stuff) is due out Q3.
Bottom Line
If you're serious about TiVo you need to read the TiVo forum at AVS Forum. There is a major TiVo community there; loads of user-to-user goodnes. Also, TiVo has a full-time rep who hangs out there and other places.
--john
--john
--john
It's one of those things you have to see to really appreciate. The "TiVolution" will start slowly but it's going to grow.
There's a good article at TeeVee.org that talks about Tivo.
--john
If it were Microsoft doing this (and I don't doubt that they would) people would be all over them for it. It's time to wake up and smell the coffee -- pound for pound Apple is just as evil as Microsoft, maybe more so.
What I'd really like to see -- and I've been saying this for years now -- is for Microsoft to give us all:
equal access to the source code and
COMPLETE and ACCURATE documentation for the entire Win32 API.
I'd be happy with that. Let them put reasonable restrictions on it if they want. Hell, nobody wants to take their code and build on it anyway.
If they did, sooner or later somebody would start a lawsuit claiming "unfair business practices" etc. Seriously, though, if MS thought there was a profit to be mad in it I suspect they would do it. Somebody (Borland maybe?) used to sell an "entry-level" compiler (C? Pascal? Don't remember) available only to college students. Don't know whatever happened to that. --john