TiVo Blogging
I’ve done my share. And, as I’ve said before, TiVo is the greatest invention since Al Gore invented the Internets. Via Les, Katherine Coble suggests TiVo incorporate imdb.com so you can find out info on actors. Well, I have more suggestions for TiVo, in no particular order:
I should be able to watch TiVo in every room in my house but I can’t. All TiVo is in the den. They say that to do that, I’d have to put a receiver in each room. I have TeeVees in the den, my bedroom, and two guests rooms. The problem with multiple receivers is that I’d have to set up identical season passes on each receiver. If I watch part of a show in one room, I’d have to go to the other room and fast forward to the part I was at in the previous room. When I’m done, I’d have to delete the show four times from four receivers. Not worth it in terms of effort. I want to be able to access all my shows from any room and have TiVo remember what I watched and deleted.
TiVo should be portable. Back when I traveled, I thought it’d be cool to take TiVo with me. Technically, I could have put my shows on a DVD and watched them on my laptop but that’s a pain and discs are easily damaged. A nice little USB port in the TiVo to hook a computer up to so you can copy shows (on a computer or even a video Ipod) would be nice when you’re on the road.
Something needs to be done about the suggestions. When I’m watching TV, it will invariably pop up and tell me it’d like to record some suggestion. If I’m watching TV, it shouldn’t bug my. Even more annoying is when it pops up to say it needs to record a show that you want it to record while it’s recording a suggestion. If I’m watching live TV, suggestions should be turned off.
Change the remote control. When the lights are off, the remote feels the same when facing forward as when facing backwards due to its design. Change it so I can feel where the front is. I’ve hit the number 8 instead of play a lot of times.
And I’m willing to pay more for this stuff. Heck, it only costs me an extra $5 a month now. I’d pay more.
Update: Well, silly me. Apparently, most of my suggestions are already in place. See comments
Thanks Phelps.
March 3rd, 2006 at 12:30 pm
You need a TiVo in every room, but you don’t need the same season passes on all of them. The Home Networking software lets you transfer programs between machines. I do it all the time. You can watch it as it is transfering, but it pretty much happens in real time, so you lose your FF and 30sec skip. I tend to do it like anything else — start it, do something else for 5 or 10 minutes, and then watch it. I have one big capacity tivo (thanks Weaknees!) and a bunch of 40 hour jobs. The big one does most of the work, and the others pretty much take transfers. I have a couple of passes for things that conflict, but the master one in the living room does most of the recording.
TiVo is also portable with TiVo To Go. You put the TiVo desktop program on your laptop, and you can transfer programs onto your laptop. They have some DRM on them, but the DRM will let you make DVDs and Video CDs of your programs if you don’t want to watch them on the laptop.
I don’t know about the suggestions. Since TiVo defaults to live TV, I’m not sure how it knows you are watching. Even at that, you might want to drop what you are watching for the suggestion.
Oh, and the Series 3 remotes have a textured edge on the back end so you can tell which way goes forward.
So, half your suggestions are already in place if you just network them, and half the ones that aren’t already in place are being addressed in the next version.
March 4th, 2006 at 12:51 am
Dang, I didn’t know the new TiVos could do that. I have a dino-TiVo I bought in 2000 that doesn’t do any of those things. One day this unit will croak and I can buy a new one and Live in the Fantastic Future™.