Tivo: Teacher, Mother...Secret Lover!

When we got DirecTv back in 2004, it came with a Tivo. This was our first taste of DVR-life, and we've never looked back. I think sports and the debates are the only things I've watched live in the past few years, except for when I happen to be sitting there when Rachel watches tv. And even with live tv, we can still pause to go to the bathroom. So DVRs are on the list of things I would hate to live without, along with high-speed internet and food.

Then we moved to NY and started having trouble with our dish. Snow and rain would mess up the picture. We'd wake up and discover some shows had not recorded properly. So we decided when we moved next, we'd switch to cable: no signal problems, no unsightly dish on the roof, no missed recordings. The only downside is: no more Tivo!

I had seen Time Warner's DVR in action before, so I knew it was going to be a step down from Tivo, but now that I've actually lived with a non-Tivo DVR, I can honestly say it is a BIG step. Here a few of my gripes about Time Warner's DVR (I don't know if these are specific to Time Warner or common among all non-Tivos):

1. There is no option to bundle multiple episodes of one show in a single folder. We've got all Season 2 episodes of Mad Men recorded for when we finish Season 1 on Netflix, and every time we scroll through our recordings, there are a dozen Mad Men in the way. With Tivo, that would be one Mad Men folder.
2. Sometimes the end of shows are cut off. This is fine, Tivo did this too occasionally. It mostly has to do with the signal it's getting. But with Tivo, you could set a season pass to end a minute later. With this DVR, it doesn't seem to be possible to edit season passes of shows to stop recording a few minutes later. You can do it all you want with single recordings, but once you choose to record all episodes  "First Run only on this channel", your special time selections are overwritten.
3. You can't arrange season passes in a hierarchy, where if there is a conflict, higher priority shows get recorded over lower priority shows. This isn't too much of a problem for me, because we don't record enough for it to be an issue, but it should still be available.
4. This DVR has two tuners, so it can record two channels at the same time. But when recording two shows in a row on the same channel, even if there is nothing else being recorded, it only uses one tuner. And there is a 5-10 second gap between when recording the first show stops and recording the next show begins. If this gap is during commercials, fine, but with the networks' wonky scheduling, sometimes it's right at the end of the show.
5. When fast-forwarding through commercials, Tivo rewinds a bit when you stop, depending on how fast you were going.  The faster you fast-forward, the farther back it jumps. Our DVR doesn't do this, but I've gotten used to it's own quirks and have come to deal with it. At times, I've even made it through commercials much faster than I could with Tivo.
6. With Tivo, you can search for shows to record by typing in the name of the show. It then shows you the show in an alphabetized list that you can scroll through. You can also search by actor, genre, and other categories. With this DVR, you can only search by typing in the first letter. Then you have to scroll through all the shows that start with that letter. So if you're looking for reruns of Dynasty, have fun scrolling.

So why the long post? I just learned that Tivo has partnered with Netflix so that people can now watch Netflix's library of downloadable movies on their Tivo! We're not really taking advantage of that aspect of our Netflix subscription because it's a chore to hook up the laptop to the tv, reboot it in Windows, etc... But if we had a Tivo and all you had to do was press a button? AWESOME. Not to mention that the internet connectivity that enables the Netflix partnership also enables you to set recordings from the internet. Maybe even from the iPhone!