Real Kato Blog: Day 2 With TiVo

I was significantly more impressed with my TiVo today.

Okay. To solve my analog/digital conundrum, I switched to having TiVo use analog cable via the RF input. Then I told it that I had a satellite TV box on my line inputs, but that I only received satellite channel 111. TiVo is probably thinking, "You've got the LAMEST satellite service in existence." But see, since I connected my digital cable box to the line inputs, TiVo can now watch and record digital cable and analog cable; I just have to tune the digital cable box manually, and tune TiVo to channel 111.

And here's a neat trick: my digital cable box can be programmed to change channels at a scheduled time. It was designed to be used with dumb old VCRs, so they added a "VCR Timer" programming feature to it. So now, as long as I program the TiVo to record channel 111, and I program the cable box to tune the actual desired channel, I can do scheduled digital recordings. So I think I've got everything I want. The only downside is that TiVo downloads a lot of channel information that I don't need (for my nonexistent satellite service), and that it doesn't get program information for any of the digital cable channels. But I think I can live with that.

Now here's a really cool thing: today, I scheduled a bunch of shows to be recorded... OVER THE INTERNET, while I was at work. And TiVo even emailed me to confirm that my DVR had received my scheduling requests. That's a huge improvement over the hit-and-miss TitanTV service. And sure enough, when I got home, there were "Everybody Hates Chris" and "E.R." sitting on my "Now Playing" list, just as I'd requested. Sweet.

So overall, the TiVo scored major points with me today. Next step: transferring shows to my computer, and burning them to DVD or VCD.

Permalink 4 Comment

Posted by Ken in: techwatch

Comments

Comment #1 from Bake Town (Guest)
2005 Sep 23 - 10:56 am : #

You are such a geek! :-)

Comment #2 from Ken (realkato)
2005 Sep 23 - 11:16 am : #

Oh, you don't know the half of it. :)

Comment #3 from Nicholas (Guest)
2005 Sep 23 - 3:21 pm : #

We have a Time Warner rental DVR. It is difficult to search for things to tape. You have to scan through the schedule thing. Things can supposedly be found alphabetically. But there are soooooo many shows. Doing it on the internet sound much better.

Comment #4 from Ken (realkato)
2005 Sep 23 - 6:49 pm : #

Yeah, I have to say, despite the difficulty in integrating TiVo with my Time Warner cable setup, I think TiVo's better features and ease-of-use make it worth it.

Comments are closed for this post.

Search This Site