Hello TiVo
December 11th, 2005 • News / Television
Yesterday we said goodbye to our ReplayTV and hello to a shiny new TiVo. We named him Mr TiVo. He makes cute noises.
We decided to ditch the Replay since the service is basically dead. There hasn’t been an update to the software in forever and all we were getting for the monthly fee was TV listings. It really just didn’t seem worth it anymore.
Plus, there are cool things for TiVo like this nifty TiVo widget that shows what shows have been recorded. Now I don’t have to go turn on the TV to see what’s available. With Replay I would have to fire up the rather slow DVArchive, which was a cool program, but took forever to start up and just wasn’t conducive to frequent use.
Another great TiVo feature is the online scheduling. It works from TiVo’s website or via Yahoo! TV, and can be set up as close as an hour before the program starts. Pretty awesome.
There are a few TiVo offerings on which I’m not completely sold. TiVo does recommendations based on shows you’re recording or have given thumbs up. Today Mr TiVo recommended The Rockford Files as a show we might like. Mr TiVo was quite mistaken. I’m willing to give him another chance though since he hasn’t had very long to get to know us.
I’m pretty impressed with TiVo already. It definitely beats out ReplayTV when it comes to interface and user friendliness. And Mr TiVo makes cute noises. It’s all about the cute noises.
♫ Pendulum - Hold Your Colour
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ney
December 11th, 2005 at 4:55 pm
I thought it was all about the points… hmmm.
dan
December 11th, 2005 at 5:47 pm
The only reason it suggested Rockford Files is because EVERYBODY LOVES ROCKFORD FILES! Yes, even you.
O James Garner as Jim Rockford, what kind of crazy misadventures will you get caught up in this week?
julie
December 11th, 2005 at 7:49 pm
Brilliant. Always give Mr. Tivo a second chance to get to know you. Amazon always recommends that I buy and read books that have to do with stupid things I have purchased for other people, e.g. NASCAR and bellydance.
RyanH
December 11th, 2005 at 10:49 pm
Agreeing with julie: my greatest annoyance with Amazon is that I can't mark my past purchases as gifts or personal in order to not be pressured to buy items I am not at all interested in. Almost of a third of my purchases on Amazon are gifts for people and I am inundated with recommendations for all sorts of stuff I would never buy for myself. Very, very frustrating. Good luck with mastering the TiVo. Remember that it is more afraid of you than the reverse.
adam
December 12th, 2005 at 6:34 am
Ryan: You can exclude purchases from recommendations. Go to My Account, then scroll toward the bottom and choose Improve Your Recommendations. From there you can go to Exclude Purchases and tell Amazon which items you don't want it to use for recommendations.
MegaZone
December 12th, 2005 at 3:58 pm
There is quite a lot of cool stuff available on a networked TiVo. Check out http://www.apps.tv for some. And Home Media Engine (HME) applications can do a lot. Galleon is the most popular: galleon.sourceforge.net
There are a number of links to TiVo resources here: http://www.tivolovers.com