A few more comments... I have had a Tivo for a few months now, and satellite / antenna integration is suprisingly one of the best features. However, you quickly get used to never watching crap on tv (that includes not watching commercials). I rarely even watch live tv anymore.
As far as crashing, I have never had my unit (the smaller of the two) crash on me. However, I have had a few problems where my satellite receiver stops responding to the serial input and I need to restart that.
A few things that are missing from the Tivo:
CT mentioned how you can rewind live tv. That is because the Tivo is constantly recording into a half hour buffer. This is a great feature, but there is no way to save this buffer. If I'm 10 minutes into a good show that I didn't tell the Tivo to tape, and I want to save it to show my fiancee, too bad. If I hit the record button, it starts the recording starting at the time I hit the button, not at the beginning of the show (which I could rewind and watch).
A couple of extra navigation buttons. ReplayTV has a 30 second fast forward button. Press it and you instantly move forward 30s. Since most commercials come in 30s blocks, it would be nice to just hit the button 3-5 times (depending on the network) and be back at the show, rather than using the fast forward button. Also a button that would take you to the start of the recording buffer would be useful (there is already one to go to the end).
Tivo records things that it thinks you may like on tv. It records these at the default quality setting (which in my case is Best). These shows are deleted first if the unit needs more recording space. It is possible to save these programs for longer, but you can't lower the quality setting (if it is using the Best quality for a cartoon it is wasting a lot of space). I don't know how they compress the video, so this may not be easily possible.
An expansion port. ReplayTV used to have (but no longer does) a firewire port that you could hook up an expansion hard drive to. This would be great. Hook up a hard drive to the firewire, tivo sees that it needs to be formatted to "Tivo" (whatever format that is), and offers to do it. At the end you get a message saying you now have 30 more hours of recording time.
This has been mentioned before, but I would also like to be able to give priority to certain shows in season passes.
If you like any of these suggesions, send them to Tivo (info@tivo.com) and tell them that you would like them implemented. Several of these require hardware changes, but some of them could be implemented on the units that already are in use, with a software upgrade during the dialin process.
Also, if you are getting shows like cartoons you don't want after asking the Tivo to record a cartoon or two, all you need to do is go to the show you asked it to record originally and give it a Thumbs-Down. When you record a show it automatically gives it one Thumbs-Up. If that is the only program you've rated then it only thinks that you like cartoons. This will get rid of the cartoon "preference" from the Tivo. That reminds me -- another feature I would like is to be able to get a list of all the Thumbs-Up and Thumbs-Down preferences that have been given. At one point I actually reset my Tivo, because my father-in-law had given Thumbs-Up to all kinds of old western movies and that was all the Tivo was recording. It would have been nicer just to let me see all the shows that have been rated, so I could re-rate them.
All in all, the Tivo is a wonderful gadget and I find it indispensable simply for its ability to merge satellite and antenna tv. It would be nice to one day have one that didn't have visible compression on the lower settings and supported things like an optical dolby digital connection, but we will probably have to wait for much larger hard drives.
I really wanted this capability this weekend. I was away visiting family, and I forgot to turn off some programs before I left (I have the low-end Tivo and I have it record a lot, just in case I want to watch it). However, the Tivo doesn't have a way to automatically prioritize the order in which shows are deleted except for the order in which they were recorded.
Slashdot Mirror
A few more comments... I have had a Tivo for a few months now, and satellite / antenna integration is suprisingly one of the best features. However, you quickly get used to never watching crap on tv (that includes not watching commercials). I rarely even watch live tv anymore.
As far as crashing, I have never had my unit (the smaller of the two) crash on me. However, I have had a few problems where my satellite receiver stops responding to the serial input and I need to restart that.
A few things that are missing from the Tivo:
CT mentioned how you can rewind live tv. That is because the Tivo is constantly recording into a half hour buffer. This is a great feature, but there is no way to save this buffer. If I'm 10 minutes into a good show that I didn't tell the Tivo to tape, and I want to save it to show my fiancee, too bad. If I hit the record button, it starts the recording starting at the time I hit the button, not at the beginning of the show (which I could rewind and watch).
A couple of extra navigation buttons. ReplayTV has a 30 second fast forward button. Press it and you instantly move forward 30s. Since most commercials come in 30s blocks, it would be nice to just hit the button 3-5 times (depending on the network) and be back at the show, rather than using the fast forward button. Also a button that would take you to the start of the recording buffer would be useful (there is already one to go to the end).
Tivo records things that it thinks you may like on tv. It records these at the default quality setting (which in my case is Best). These shows are deleted first if the unit needs more recording space. It is possible to save these programs for longer, but you can't lower the quality setting (if it is using the Best quality for a cartoon it is wasting a lot of space). I don't know how they compress the video, so this may not be easily possible.
An expansion port. ReplayTV used to have (but no longer does) a firewire port that you could hook up an expansion hard drive to. This would be great. Hook up a hard drive to the firewire, tivo sees that it needs to be formatted to "Tivo" (whatever format that is), and offers to do it. At the end you get a message saying you now have 30 more hours of recording time.
This has been mentioned before, but I would also like to be able to give priority to certain shows in season passes.
If you like any of these suggesions, send them to Tivo (info@tivo.com) and tell them that you would like them implemented. Several of these require hardware changes, but some of them could be implemented on the units that already are in use, with a software upgrade during the dialin process.
Also, if you are getting shows like cartoons you don't want after asking the Tivo to record a cartoon or two, all you need to do is go to the show you asked it to record originally and give it a Thumbs-Down. When you record a show it automatically gives it one Thumbs-Up. If that is the only program you've rated then it only thinks that you like cartoons. This will get rid of the cartoon "preference" from the Tivo. That reminds me -- another feature I would like is to be able to get a list of all the Thumbs-Up and Thumbs-Down preferences that have been given. At one point I actually reset my Tivo, because my father-in-law had given Thumbs-Up to all kinds of old western movies and that was all the Tivo was recording. It would have been nicer just to let me see all the shows that have been rated, so I could re-rate them.
All in all, the Tivo is a wonderful gadget and I find it indispensable simply for its ability to merge satellite and antenna tv. It would be nice to one day have one that didn't have visible compression on the lower settings and supported things like an optical dolby digital connection, but we will probably have to wait for much larger hard drives.
I really wanted this capability this weekend. I was away visiting family, and I forgot to turn off some programs before I left (I have the low-end Tivo and I have it record a lot, just in case I want to watch it). However, the Tivo doesn't have a way to automatically prioritize the order in which shows are deleted except for the order in which they were recorded.
ReplayTV costs about $200 more than Tivo. A lifetime subscription to Tivo costs $200. See any difference?
The press release is correct. The poster is incorrect. What the various sites posted on agrees with the press release:
Connectix is NOT shipping Red Hat Linux with Virtual Game Station, they are shipping it with VirtualPC, a program that emulates x86 on PowerMacs.