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It may have taken four and a half days to hook up[1], but we now have Tivo. We’ve been taping three shows (Lost, Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis) since watching them when they are on isn’t always possible with a two month old. And watching them before the next episode airs is equally as difficult. Tivo solves all that.

The Good

At the moment, Tivo is practically giving away the 40-hr player. Couple with the advances they have made in the Series 2 machines, I was sold.

The Series 2 DVRs can be hooked into your home network. Since we don’t have a land-based phone line, we couldn’t get a Tivo until network capability was introduced. And, not only can Tivo get its updates via the web, they introduced Tivo Desktop which allows you to share music and photos from your computer to the Tivo. I can now have slide shows on the big screen and play all of that digitized music through my stereo. That should work out great for our next holiday party.

Tivo Series 2 also included TivoToGo. This allows you to download recorded shows from the Tivo to the computer for on-the-go viewing. Essentially, with the way I have everything hooked up, this means that I can download a program to the PC to watch, Sarah can watch live TV while Tivo records something else. Brilliant.

As for hooking everything up, it was really pretty straight forward. Essentially my TV is now just a monitor and all the other devices — DVD, VCR and Tivo — are all separate inputs. Why still have the VCR? Well, we still have some tapes and Tivo has a Send to VCR function so that I can send a show from Tivo to tape. This will mostly get used by Sarah as she occasionally tapes shows for her classroom. Now she can just Tivo them, preview them, and send to tape if they will work.

The Bad

While Tivo introduced networking, it still has to be hooked into a phone line the first time you power it up. This meant taking the box and all of the wires to my neighbor’s house and borrowing his TV and phone. The instructions say it only takes about an hour to download the info. What I didn’t know was that after that Tivo spends 4 - 8 hours processing the information. So, Tivo sat in next door overnight. I really see no reason that everything can’t be done online.

As for the network capabilities of Tivo itself, I’m a bit disappointed. The unit has two USB ports that currently only run at USB 1.1 speed. (I understand that they are actually USB 2.0 ports, but are software-limited. There is a upgrade being rolled out.)

Additionally, the unit only runs the 802.11b wireless spec. (Again, I believe the upgrade to version 7.1 of the software will allow 802.11g – the irony is that I need to buy a b adapter to get the upgrade.) It also only (allegedly) uses WEP security. So, my Netgear WGT624 router is pretty much overkill. The real kicker, as I found while exchanging the original network card, was that Best Buy, which has a pallet of Tivos in the middle of the floor, had exactly one 802.11b network adapter — and I bought it. Everything else in the store is 802.11 g. They have moved on to the new standard while Tivo is playing catch-up. Not a good thing.

The thing that really bugs me at the moment is that the only way I got my Tivo to see the network was to turn off all security and turn on the beacon. So I have to have a broadcasting unsecured network in order for Tivo to work. Until I get it to work with WEP enabled, I turn broadcast on and off at the moment so Tivo can update itself. Very poor indeed.

The Ugly

Tivo Desktop.

I downloaded and installed the Desktop[2]. I pointed it to our music and image files. Went down to the Tivo and, presto!, there they were, as advertised. I must say I was rather pleased and impressed.

With a few shows already recorded I headed upstairs to the computer to try downloaded a show. I launched the Dekstop and headed to Pick Recordings to Transfer only to be greeted with “There are no Tivo DVRs available on the network.” That’s funny, it’s recording shows. It sees the computer and plays music. What’s the deal? At this point I am totally stumped.[3]

Overall

While this all sounds rather negative, I’m still pretty happy with Tivo. The Season Pass is really awesome, and the thumbs up and down buttons are pretty cool. The on screen interface is easy to use. I feel like they did a lot of user testing to come up with a very intuitive menu system. I really like that you can drill down the menus by using the right arrow or select keys.

The networking features, however, feel like a beta release. The biggest disappointment is that they didn’t use the latest networking specs. I should have the ability to transfer files (if I could get Tivo Desktop to work) at 108 Mbps. As it is, I’ll be transfer data at less than 20 Mbps. Very sad.

Hopefully Tivo will get it’s act together and get speedier, and more secure, units out there. I’m not sure what good that will do me, since I’ve got a lifetime subscription tied to this machine. Of course, Tivos are very hackable….