For your Tivo to download the data over your cable line, that would mean that your cable provider is broadcasting that data, right?
What do you think would be easier (and cheaper) for Tivo to do?
1: Convince every cable provider in the nation to please, please, please send this data over their cables - which won't do a darn thing for those customers using a stand-alone unit with a satellite or rabbit ears.
2: Provide the service themselves via internet and dialup outlets.
Tivo depends on 'calling home' for a bit more than just setting the clock. It also downloads updated schedules, as well as other bits of information such as the network and programming highlights.
Re:And I Thought...
on
iWarez
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
What Best Buy do YOU go to?
If I stop for more than 30 seconds in a store, I end up having to beat a sales person off with a stick.
I'd much rather they stopped following me around the store trying to sell me stuff, and instead ran the registers so you don't end up standing in line for 20 minutes.
Re: dubbing. Yeah, in the past, English dub jobs for anime have been pretty bad. However, that is slowly changing. Bebop, Big O, and Outlaw Star all have excellent English voice casts. I've watched Big O in both English and Japanese, and prefer some of the American voice actors over the Japanese ones.
2: Editting of anime for US TV. Yeah, it sucks. However, it has been getting better. Bebop, for instance, was hardly editted at all. Yes they did drop an episode after the 9/11 incident, but they've since re-run the series with this epiosde put back in. Lots of TV and movies were affected by 9/11, so this isn't an isolated incident.
Personally, I commend CN for putting a show like Bebop on the air at all.
What state is China? How about Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong...?
I've noticed I get *very* little spam from Singapore (like, 2 pieces a year) - and never any repeat offenders. Apparentally there's something to be said for getting your bare ass whipped in public for breaking the law.
I doubt most people's systems are set up to deal with the doublebyte character sets used by most Asian languages. Yeah, you can use romanized language (eg. "Please erase your spammer" => Japanese => "Spammer o keshite kudasai" ) but that assumes you actually know the language...
Worse still, Chinese has no single romanization method, since each dialect pronounces everything differently. Yeah, if I *could* enter zhongji into my email client, I guess I could try saying "Spam bu hao! Ni bu hao!" but that wouldn't really get the point across... (and don't think I haven't tried sending that to Mainland China.)
Ignoring the language problem, there's another problem with dealing with these ISPs - they have no valid admin address. No abuse, postmaster, hostmaster, root address or aliases, and if you look stuff up in APNIC, most of those addresses are bogus or no longer work. Heck, most Korean ISPs list APNIC as their admin! (APNIC, btw, doesn't read its email, despite being located in Australia.) So even if you could send a message which explains what spam is, why it's bad, what an open relay is, and how to fix it, in the language and character set of the local admin, you still won't be able to do anything.
I've sent complaints in plain simple English (no idioms, abbreviations, etc.) to China and Korea for years. Sometimes I'd even get a response written in decent enough English...which was pretty useless since I never saw a decrease in spam from them (or even a decrease in repeat spam.)
I think it's clear they know the problem exists, but are either too complacent or corrupt to do anything about it.
Let them rot in my filters. When(IF) China gets a clue and decides to be a good internet neighbor, they're going to have to get a new TLD, since I doubt very much anyone will want to receive email from.cn anymore.
Many of these lists have a good memory, and getting RE-listed means the ISP will have a harder time getting delisted again - assuming they can even get delisted.
My ISP won't subscribe to any lists, nor will they do any blocking of any email. Fortunatly, they don't have a problem with me setting up my own filters with procmail...
Some blacklists, I agree, are just overly sensitive. My ISP got mailed about being listed due to a resolved incident *6 months old* regarding the formail.* exploit. The list's webpage basically said "we might delist you, maybe not, you've already shown yourself to be a poor admin once, why should we give you another chance."
Sites/lists like that tarnish the whole anti-spam movement in my opinion. (and, IMHO, those who would use such a list probably isn't worth talking to anyways...)
I do like lists like SPEWS and MAPS-RBL since they're designed to get people to STOP providing spam services, albeit through negative re-enforcement.
As for the whole idea of shared lists, better to be put onto a list like MAPS or SPEWS, than to end up on 100s (or 1000s) of private lists maintained by admins around the world. Unlike the larger lists, an independent admin isn't likely to remember that he's started blocking an IP range after he stop seeing spam from it.
As it stands, I very much doubt large chunks of Asia will ever be allowed to send email to The West ever again, unless they get new IP#s and change their TLD... For instance, it's going to take an awful lot of convincing before I'll start accepting packets from *.cn again...
Does running a full page color ad for a game that's also reviewed in the same issue count as being "paid to review"?
Actually, now that I think about it, I've never seen a magazine totally slam a game that's advertised. Only the smaller titles (many of which I'm sure do really suck) tend to get the really bad marks. Everything else gets a mediocre/OK score or better.
If you read the book 'The Running Man', they have some "throw away" references to other gameshows of the time. One of which involved putting a man with a heart condition onto a treadmill and asking him trivia questions. If answered the questions correctly, and didn't fall off the treadmill (or otherwise fall over), he'd win healthcare for life. Unfortunatly, he had a heart attack, and only got the consolation prize - a free burial.
(ob 9/11: why hasn't anyone arrested Stephen King for writing about a plane crashing into the network skyscraper?)
Obviously, both The Chair and The Chamber aren't designed to kill or otherwise injure their contestants...but I figure it's only a matter of time...
If the networks think sex sells, wait'll they find out what live violence does to their ratings!
(btw, is that a roast beef sandwich with yellow or brown mustard..?)
Why is a phone line a problem? Yeah, if they have cable modem + cell phone, that could be a problem...but most people I know (even geeks) still have a landline.
For the average consumer, why is this a problem? Tivo is even packaged with a long phone cord, and if you need a longer one, I would think your average consumer is smart enough to go to their local Wallmart or Radio Shack and BUY a 50 or 100 foot cord for $10, and a phone jack splitter for $.40.
* DirecTivo - built into a Direct TV receiver. Costs $99 if you get it with a Direct TV subscription. Has no receiver of its own, can record up to two separate channels simultaneously by writing the raw satellite feed to disk, so no MPG compresion hardware needed either.
* Stand alone Tivo - Has a TV receiver and MPG compression hardware. Will work with basic cable, digital cable, and any satellite system (the latter two require you to have your Tivo control your cable box or satellite decoder box.) Costs around $2-300 for a "30 hour" (at highest compression) model.
Normally, when folks say "Tivo" they're refering to the standalone model, not the DirecTivo model.
It may be an easy concept, but it's not so easy to describe.
When I got a Tivo, my roommate walked by, looked at the thing for a second, shrugged and said "Why bother?"
A week later, he hears me watching 'Invader Zim', walks by says "They're playing Zim *now*?" "Tivo." I replied.
A few days later I came home late and he says "didn't you want to watch South Park?" "Tivo" I replied.
At that moment, you could literally see the light bulb go off over his head.
Even Tivo's in-store demo fails to show you why Tivo is a good thing. They really need to let you play around with the thing yourself to see not only how easy it is to use, but just how powerful of a tool it is.
Tivo can control external cable boxes (either via serial connection or IR-blaster) but you're right, this would mean that you wouldn't be able to watch one thing while Tivo records something else.
However, I postulate after a few weeks of using a PVR, you won't be watching "live" TV anymore. You won't need to.
As for watching the contents of Tivo in another room, there are some solutions for this. Tivo has multiple outputs, but each output will see the same thing (think "Satelite Receiver" and you got the right idea.)
Replay4000 seems to be better than Tivo in that you can stream shows between units connected by a LAN (eg. Replay unit A can display a show recorded by Replay unit B in the other room) but as you mention, Replay's are pretty pricey.
DIVX needing a phone line was the LEAST of its flaws.
Anyways.
Tivo does need a phone line to download the guide data. It makes a 5 minute phone call about once a day.
HOWEVER
Tivo does not need to make the phone call at a specific time, nor does it need to make a call every day. You can tell your Tivo to make the call "right now" if you want, so you don't even need to leave the phone line connected all the time.
Furthermore, Tivo checks to see if the phone line is in use before making its call. If it is, or if it gets interrupted (eg. call waiting, you pick up the phone to make a call) it just reschedules its call. No big deal.
Tivo stores roughly two weeks of TV schedule, so it's not a big problem if it can't get dial in every day.
I don't see what the big deal about plugging in a phone line. Your cable or satelite box needs a phone line if you order PPV movies.
If you've already got a phone jack in the room that's being used by another phone/fax/etc. just buy a $.40 splitter. Problem solved.
I wasn't paying attention to my TV once, and they played a Tivo commercial. When I looked up, all I saw was the Season Pass screen, which confused me, since I hadn't hit the button on my controller.
Yeah, there's things that will let you use your computer like a VCR, but that's not what Tivo does.
Tell Tivo to record 'Enterprise' and it will record every instance of the show. Optionally, you can tell it to only record first-run episodes, so you don't get reruns.
Tell Tivo you like movies with "Arnold Schwarzenegger" in them, and Tivo will record that showing of The Terminator that aired at 2am this morning.
Tivo sees that you like sci-fi shows like Enterprise, so it records an episode of Farscape one day to see if you like it...
Tivo detects that two of your shows will overlap, so it takes the one you gave a higher priority to. Tivo also detects that one show reruns at 1am, so it grabs that instance instead.
There is no PC-PVR software package out there that does these things.
Sure, you can tell your PC to record channel 44 at 7pm on Monday, but that still requires you to do the processing of the TV schedule and work out the conflicts yourself. The big deal about Tivo is that *IT* does the work - not *YOU*. You just sit back and watch stuff.
I'm watching more TV/week - but I'm doing it faster.
Blowing through commercials turns an hour of TV into ~45 minutes.
This means, if you watch 10 hours of TV a week, using Tivo you'll save 2.5 hours.
And remember - you're no longer tied to the TV schedule. You don't have to be home to watch your shows - they're being recorded for you. As I've mentioned in other posts, I don't even know when my shows are on anymore.
No subscription with Replay...but you're still using their service.
I think Tivo should ditch the "subscription fee" and just increase their prices by $250.
Besides, from what I've heard, they're soon going to be requiring the service fee anyways, so might as well roll it into the price you pay at Best Buy or where ever, like ReplayTV does.
Besides which, didn't Ultimate TV have a whole bunch of problems, and never worked properly?
I hear complaints all the time on the PVR newsgroups from UltimateTV owners who really, really want to like the thing...but find it hard to when the thing hangs, loses data, requires a weekly reboot, etc.
A "30 hour" Tivo costs $300, throw in the lifetime fee, and you're up to $550. This model comes with a 30GB hard drive.
Based on my salary, my time is worth around $80/hour.
I figure that at best I'd be looking at 3 hours of labor to build the physical box, get the software installed and configured.
Now then, tell me how I'm going to build a box for around $350.
This is my first point.
Is a Tivo more expensive than a PC? Considering the physical components used, yes it is. It's based on a slow Motorolla chip, and has a small amount of RAM. But when you consider the *time* needed to build a Tivo-like PC, the price doesn't seem so bad anymore.
Now consider ease of use.
You want me to manually put stuff into Cron? Are you kidding? That's neither "easy" or "elegant."
So far, Tivo is the only software solution I've seen that allows you record shows without needing to know when they're on. If you tell it to record "ER", it will go and find all instances of "ER" in its database and schedule them. Since it runs Linux internall, I'm sure this is actually an entry into Cron somehow - but I don't have to know that. All I care is that the thing records what I tell it to. Other solutions require you to scan a TV-guide like grid. While this isn't too hard to use, it does mean you could potentially miss shows and movies you want to see unless you diligently scan the grid every day, every hour, every channel. Tell Tivo you want to watch "Terminator", and when it airs, it'll be recorded. You don't even need to know what channel it's going to be on, much less what time.
Combine this search & find ability of Tivo with its ability to resolve conflicts in your schedule. Say two shows you want to watch overlap. Tivo lets your prioritize your shows, and since many shows rerun at a later time (say, 1am) you can even tell Tivo to pick an alternate recording time.
In this way, Tivo continues to save me time.
Yeah, yeah, I could probably write a program to grep through downloaded TV data and moreorless recreate Tivo on my PC...and while I'm at it, why don't I build my own Playstation and code my own version of GTA2 for it too?
Slashdot Mirror
For your Tivo to download the data over your cable line, that would mean that your cable provider is broadcasting that data, right?
What do you think would be easier (and cheaper) for Tivo to do?
1: Convince every cable provider in the nation to please, please, please send this data over their cables - which won't do a darn thing for those customers using a stand-alone unit with a satellite or rabbit ears.
2: Provide the service themselves via internet and dialup outlets.
Tivo depends on 'calling home' for a bit more than just setting the clock. It also downloads updated schedules, as well as other bits of information such as the network and programming highlights.
What Best Buy do YOU go to?
If I stop for more than 30 seconds in a store, I end up having to beat a sales person off with a stick.
I'd much rather they stopped following me around the store trying to sell me stuff, and instead ran the registers so you don't end up standing in line for 20 minutes.
DBZ == Cowboy Bebop??
Must have missed something...
Ignore the name, try an episode or two of Bebop.
Now, DBZ == Yu Yu Hakusho, I can understand...but Bebop??
Bebop is one of the more original things I've seen in years.
Re: dubbing. Yeah, in the past, English dub jobs for anime have been pretty bad. However, that is slowly changing. Bebop, Big O, and Outlaw Star all have excellent English voice casts. I've watched Big O in both English and Japanese, and prefer some of the American voice actors over the Japanese ones.
2: Editting of anime for US TV. Yeah, it sucks. However, it has been getting better. Bebop, for instance, was hardly editted at all. Yes they did drop an episode after the 9/11 incident, but they've since re-run the series with this epiosde put back in. Lots of TV and movies were affected by 9/11, so this isn't an isolated incident.
Personally, I commend CN for putting a show like Bebop on the air at all.
My point is that what good are laws when the perps aren't in the same country?
So you live in Washington state and get some spam that origianted from China.
Ok, now what? Ask your Attorney General to prosecute someone who lives 1000s of miles away, and isn't even an US citizen?
Yeah, I'm sure the Chinese government will be willing to cooperate...
There are laws in a lot of states.
That's really great.
What state is China? How about Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong...?
I've noticed I get *very* little spam from Singapore (like, 2 pieces a year) - and never any repeat offenders. Apparentally there's something to be said for getting your bare ass whipped in public for breaking the law.
Setback? Not really.
Spam is damage on the net. Blocking damage means the net will continue to function.
Taken to its logical conclusion, you'll end up with two "internets" - one that's spam friendly, and one that still works.
I'll let you decide which one you'll want to be on.
I doubt most people's systems are set up to deal with the doublebyte character sets used by most Asian languages. Yeah, you can use romanized language (eg. "Please erase your spammer" => Japanese => "Spammer o keshite kudasai" ) but that assumes you actually know the language...
.cn anymore.
Worse still, Chinese has no single romanization method, since each dialect pronounces everything differently. Yeah, if I *could* enter zhongji into my email client, I guess I could try saying "Spam bu hao! Ni bu hao!" but that wouldn't really get the point across... (and don't think I haven't tried sending that to Mainland China.)
Ignoring the language problem, there's another problem with dealing with these ISPs - they have no valid admin address. No abuse, postmaster, hostmaster, root address or aliases, and if you look stuff up in APNIC, most of those addresses are bogus or no longer work. Heck, most Korean ISPs list APNIC as their admin! (APNIC, btw, doesn't read its email, despite being located in Australia.) So even if you could send a message which explains what spam is, why it's bad, what an open relay is, and how to fix it, in the language and character set of the local admin, you still won't be able to do anything.
I've sent complaints in plain simple English (no idioms, abbreviations, etc.) to China and Korea for years. Sometimes I'd even get a response written in decent enough English...which was pretty useless since I never saw a decrease in spam from them (or even a decrease in repeat spam.)
I think it's clear they know the problem exists, but are either too complacent or corrupt to do anything about it.
Let them rot in my filters. When(IF) China gets a clue and decides to be a good internet neighbor, they're going to have to get a new TLD, since I doubt very much anyone will want to receive email from
Yeah, some sites do just that.
Many of these lists have a good memory, and getting RE-listed means the ISP will have a harder time getting delisted again - assuming they can even get delisted.
My ISP won't subscribe to any lists, nor will they do any blocking of any email. Fortunatly, they don't have a problem with me setting up my own filters with procmail...
Some blacklists, I agree, are just overly sensitive. My ISP got mailed about being listed due to a resolved incident *6 months old* regarding the formail.* exploit. The list's webpage basically said "we might delist you, maybe not, you've already shown yourself to be a poor admin once, why should we give you another chance."
Sites/lists like that tarnish the whole anti-spam movement in my opinion. (and, IMHO, those who would use such a list probably isn't worth talking to anyways...)
I do like lists like SPEWS and MAPS-RBL since they're designed to get people to STOP providing spam services, albeit through negative re-enforcement.
As for the whole idea of shared lists, better to be put onto a list like MAPS or SPEWS, than to end up on 100s (or 1000s) of private lists maintained by admins around the world. Unlike the larger lists, an independent admin isn't likely to remember that he's started blocking an IP range after he stop seeing spam from it.
As it stands, I very much doubt large chunks of Asia will ever be allowed to send email to The West ever again, unless they get new IP#s and change their TLD... For instance, it's going to take an awful lot of convincing before I'll start accepting packets from *.cn again...
Does running a full page color ad for a game that's also reviewed in the same issue count as being "paid to review"?
Actually, now that I think about it, I've never seen a magazine totally slam a game that's advertised. Only the smaller titles (many of which I'm sure do really suck) tend to get the really bad marks. Everything else gets a mediocre/OK score or better.
If you read the book 'The Running Man', they have some "throw away" references to other gameshows of the time. One of which involved putting a man with a heart condition onto a treadmill and asking him trivia questions. If answered the questions correctly, and didn't fall off the treadmill (or otherwise fall over), he'd win healthcare for life. Unfortunatly, he had a heart attack, and only got the consolation prize - a free burial.
(ob 9/11: why hasn't anyone arrested Stephen King for writing about a plane crashing into the network skyscraper?)
Obviously, both The Chair and The Chamber aren't designed to kill or otherwise injure their contestants...but I figure it's only a matter of time...
If the networks think sex sells, wait'll they find out what live violence does to their ratings!
(btw, is that a roast beef sandwich with yellow or brown mustard..?)
Tivo accidentally recorded "The Chamber" instead of Futurama once (stupid Fox switched their schedule at the last moment.)
I was eerily reminded of the gameshows like those in 'The Running Man.'
The Tick was actually pretty good. A bit different from the comic and animated series, but still quite funny.
Between The Tick and Futurama, FOX is sending a clear signal that they don't want me watching their station anymore.
That's a good point.
Then again, if you're under 18, you also wouldn't be able to participate in an auction of said game items now would you?
Why is a phone line a problem? Yeah, if they have cable modem + cell phone, that could be a problem...but most people I know (even geeks) still have a landline.
For the average consumer, why is this a problem? Tivo is even packaged with a long phone cord, and if you need a longer one, I would think your average consumer is smart enough to go to their local Wallmart or Radio Shack and BUY a 50 or 100 foot cord for $10, and a phone jack splitter for $.40.
There are two major types of Tivo:
* DirecTivo - built into a Direct TV receiver. Costs $99 if you get it with a Direct TV subscription. Has no receiver of its own, can record up to two separate channels simultaneously by writing the raw satellite feed to disk, so no MPG compresion hardware needed either.
* Stand alone Tivo - Has a TV receiver and MPG compression hardware. Will work with basic cable, digital cable, and any satellite system (the latter two require you to have your Tivo control your cable box or satellite decoder box.) Costs around $2-300 for a "30 hour" (at highest compression) model.
Normally, when folks say "Tivo" they're refering to the standalone model, not the DirecTivo model.
It may be an easy concept, but it's not so easy to describe.
When I got a Tivo, my roommate walked by, looked at the thing for a second, shrugged and said "Why bother?"
A week later, he hears me watching 'Invader Zim', walks by says "They're playing Zim *now*?" "Tivo." I replied.
A few days later I came home late and he says "didn't you want to watch South Park?" "Tivo" I replied.
At that moment, you could literally see the light bulb go off over his head.
Even Tivo's in-store demo fails to show you why Tivo is a good thing. They really need to let you play around with the thing yourself to see not only how easy it is to use, but just how powerful of a tool it is.
Tivo can control external cable boxes (either via serial connection or IR-blaster) but you're right, this would mean that you wouldn't be able to watch one thing while Tivo records something else.
However, I postulate after a few weeks of using a PVR, you won't be watching "live" TV anymore. You won't need to.
As for watching the contents of Tivo in another room, there are some solutions for this. Tivo has multiple outputs, but each output will see the same thing (think "Satelite Receiver" and you got the right idea.)
Replay4000 seems to be better than Tivo in that you can stream shows between units connected by a LAN (eg. Replay unit A can display a show recorded by Replay unit B in the other room) but as you mention, Replay's are pretty pricey.
DIVX needing a phone line was the LEAST of its flaws.
Anyways.
Tivo does need a phone line to download the guide data. It makes a 5 minute phone call about once a day.
HOWEVER
Tivo does not need to make the phone call at a specific time, nor does it need to make a call every day. You can tell your Tivo to make the call "right now" if you want, so you don't even need to leave the phone line connected all the time.
Furthermore, Tivo checks to see if the phone line is in use before making its call. If it is, or if it gets interrupted (eg. call waiting, you pick up the phone to make a call) it just reschedules its call. No big deal.
Tivo stores roughly two weeks of TV schedule, so it's not a big problem if it can't get dial in every day.
I don't see what the big deal about plugging in a phone line. Your cable or satelite box needs a phone line if you order PPV movies.
If you've already got a phone jack in the room that's being used by another phone/fax/etc. just buy a $.40 splitter. Problem solved.
I wasn't paying attention to my TV once, and they played a Tivo commercial. When I looked up, all I saw was the Season Pass screen, which confused me, since I hadn't hit the button on my controller.
:)
Watching Tivo commercials with Tivo is weird...
Free clue: There is no "tivo-like" software.
Yeah, there's things that will let you use your computer like a VCR, but that's not what Tivo does.
Tell Tivo to record 'Enterprise' and it will record every instance of the show. Optionally, you can tell it to only record first-run episodes, so you don't get reruns.
Tell Tivo you like movies with "Arnold Schwarzenegger" in them, and Tivo will record that showing of The Terminator that aired at 2am this morning.
Tivo sees that you like sci-fi shows like Enterprise, so it records an episode of Farscape one day to see if you like it...
Tivo detects that two of your shows will overlap, so it takes the one you gave a higher priority to. Tivo also detects that one show reruns at 1am, so it grabs that instance instead.
There is no PC-PVR software package out there that does these things.
Sure, you can tell your PC to record channel 44 at 7pm on Monday, but that still requires you to do the processing of the TV schedule and work out the conflicts yourself. The big deal about Tivo is that *IT* does the work - not *YOU*. You just sit back and watch stuff.
I'm watching more TV/week - but I'm doing it faster.
Blowing through commercials turns an hour of TV into ~45 minutes.
This means, if you watch 10 hours of TV a week, using Tivo you'll save 2.5 hours.
And remember - you're no longer tied to the TV schedule. You don't have to be home to watch your shows - they're being recorded for you. As I've mentioned in other posts, I don't even know when my shows are on anymore.
No subscription with Replay...but you're still using their service.
I think Tivo should ditch the "subscription fee" and just increase their prices by $250.
Besides, from what I've heard, they're soon going to be requiring the service fee anyways, so might as well roll it into the price you pay at Best Buy or where ever, like ReplayTV does.
Besides which, didn't Ultimate TV have a whole bunch of problems, and never worked properly?
I hear complaints all the time on the PVR newsgroups from UltimateTV owners who really, really want to like the thing...but find it hard to when the thing hangs, loses data, requires a weekly reboot, etc.
No wonder Microsoft is ditching it.
A "30 hour" Tivo costs $300, throw in the lifetime fee, and you're up to $550. This model comes with a 30GB hard drive.
Based on my salary, my time is worth around $80/hour.
I figure that at best I'd be looking at 3 hours of labor to build the physical box, get the software installed and configured.
Now then, tell me how I'm going to build a box for around $350.
This is my first point.
Is a Tivo more expensive than a PC? Considering the physical components used, yes it is. It's based on a slow Motorolla chip, and has a small amount of RAM. But when you consider the *time* needed to build a Tivo-like PC, the price doesn't seem so bad anymore.
Now consider ease of use.
You want me to manually put stuff into Cron? Are you kidding? That's neither "easy" or "elegant."
So far, Tivo is the only software solution I've seen that allows you record shows without needing to know when they're on. If you tell it to record "ER", it will go and find all instances of "ER" in its database and schedule them. Since it runs Linux internall, I'm sure this is actually an entry into Cron somehow - but I don't have to know that. All I care is that the thing records what I tell it to. Other solutions require you to scan a TV-guide like grid. While this isn't too hard to use, it does mean you could potentially miss shows and movies you want to see unless you diligently scan the grid every day, every hour, every channel. Tell Tivo you want to watch "Terminator", and when it airs, it'll be recorded. You don't even need to know what channel it's going to be on, much less what time.
Combine this search & find ability of Tivo with its ability to resolve conflicts in your schedule. Say two shows you want to watch overlap. Tivo lets your prioritize your shows, and since many shows rerun at a later time (say, 1am) you can even tell Tivo to pick an alternate recording time.
In this way, Tivo continues to save me time.
Yeah, yeah, I could probably write a program to grep through downloaded TV data and moreorless recreate Tivo on my PC...and while I'm at it, why don't I build my own Playstation and code my own version of GTA2 for it too?