The ability to pause live tv. Built in rating system to tell Tivo your likes and dislikes. And best of all...the season pass uption to record all of your favorite shows without having to programs them daily, weekly, or never again. Unless you stop watching the show!

Getting Started might take a little time...it is worth it though. I am having trouble finding a replacement for my remote.

The future of TV is here! With Tivo you can do amazing things like program your your favorite shows, using the "Season Pass" function, and never have to worry about programming it again. This gives true meaning to "Set-It, and Forget It!" You can also pause "live-tv" and tell Tivo what kinds of programs you like to watch! Tivo then automatically selects stuff you like to watch, based on a "Thumps-Up and Thumps-Down" rating system that allows you to tell Tivo what you like and what you don't! Buyer beware, you can get hooked on the new television viewing experience!!! It's great!!!

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The all-new Tivo with more hard-drive space!

Season pass lets you indicate shows you want and it records every one -- all the time -- this way you don't miss anything. And if you go a week or two without watching TV at all -- you aren't a slave to programming it -- it will keep recording. TV menu is great -- you could see what's on two weeks in advance. Easy access to all shows recorded -- not like VCR tapes. Pause live and recorded shows when you want to go to bathroom or answer phone. Many ways to search for your favorite shows. It records things on its own based on programs you told it you like --- I don't usually have enough time to watch half of the programs I recorded myself -- but if you watch a lot of TV you will find this feature really cool. I can go on and on ...

This model has a small hard drive - 30MB -If you record a lot of movies and let the kids record shows that are on while they are in school -- the recorder gets full pretty quick -- but to put it in perspective -- if you have close to 30 hrs of things recorded -- you don't have to worry about not having anything to watch. Remote is slow when changing channels

This is the most amazing product ever!!! BUY IT YOU WON'T REGRET IT! I don't understand how people can NOT own this. My friends think I am a salesman for TIVO, because I get so excited about it. I only watch live TV for sporting events -- period. Even when a TV show is on that I want to watch -- I will watch something else and start watching the show that's on via delay so I can skip through commercials and catch up to live. Easy to use -- my 6 yr old son records and plays cartoons like Pokemon. Never watch commecials again. You are now in charge of watching the shows you want -- when you want -- now if they could come out with a portable product that I could download all these shows to while I am commuting -- it would be perfect BUY THIS NOW!

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NOTHING ELSE LIKE THIS

Flexible timing options, no need to load tapes, instant deleting, ability to "pause" a live TV show, remote is easy to use,

Remote sensor on a Refurbished unit went bad, I was told the hard drive was going bad by Best Buy when I had the unit fixed, high cost of TiVo subscription, May have fried my Digital Cable box.

I love my TiVo! HOWEVER... I bought the unit at the Sony Outlet, and it was supposed to be refurbished. That did not bother me, beacuse the "price was right". Well, I opened the box at my aunt's house in Wisconsin, about 10 minutes from the outlet. The unit was missing its power cord. No big deal, I just drove back to the outlet and got a new one. I then hooked it up to a TV at my aunt's house, and everything SEEMED to work fine. I packed the unit up and hauled it back to Maryland. I got it back to Maryland, hooked it up in my room to my Sony STR-D915 receiver (not the STR-D*E*915 that everyone has problems with). I hooked the unit up, started to use it. The remote would only work up to two feet from the unit. I lived with that for about a week, then decided to take it to a local Best Buy store. After Best Buy got the unit back from Sony, I went to pick it up. Aparently the local Best Buy store in Annapolis lost the remote control. I picked the unit up on September 3, 2002. Best Buy still has only partially reimbursed me for the cost of the remote as of 12/30/02. That is even with a complaint to the Better Business Bureau and the Maryland Attorney General's Office. I never will be shopping Best Buy again! Once I got a new remote (in Late November), I went ahead and tested it out. Everything works fine. So I purchase the TiVo lifetime subscription. I love it. But the cost of the subscription is really too damn high. In mid-December, I got digital cable through Comcast. We were provided with Motorola boxes. I hooked the TiVo up to the box, as shown in the instructions. Well, I don't know if the Digital Cable Box was bad, or the connection to the serial port on the box caused it to go bad, but my Digital Cable box went bad within 24 hours. So I hooked the TiVo up to another cable box, and it has worked flawlessly. However, with the setup I am using, I can't let the TiVo record one station and watch another station. That's a disapointment. I need to split the cable signal up and just not use the digital cable box to tune the TiVo. As far as picture quality, At "best quality" its about the same as a recording at LP on my Proscan PSVR65 VCR. At medium quality, it is the same as EP on my VCR, and in low quality, its terrible. So generally it is left at the medium or high quality setting. I have my TiVo outputs hooked to my STR-D915 receiver, then to my JVC 27" 27550 TV. When the TiVo was hooked directly to my parents Panasonic HDTV monitor, the picture was better. But still the same, relative, to my ProScan VCR

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Sony SLV-595HF VHS VCR Proscan PSVR65 VHS VCR Toshiba V-685 VHS VCR Toshiba Betamax VCR

sony tech support

sony tech support

regarding the first post (pamrayne) if she in fact did receive the tivo unit back and it broke again in 2 days it would in fact of been replaced.. i work for technical support for sony and i personally know they would have repaired the unit again or in fact replace the unit itself

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sony tech support

pause, rewind live tv, schedule recordings from a menu

reliability, short warranty, have to ship for rapair

Majorly disappointed! System ran fine for 4 months, then crashed. After HOURS on the phone with support, had to ship it to Sony for repair (& pay for labor). They repaired it and shipped it back to me with a 3 week turnaround. System worked for 2 days and crashed again! Neither Best Buy OR Sony will take the box back now.

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CATV digital

- Features of the service - time shifting of programs, pause/rewind/fast-forwarding of recorded and live programs - Hard drive access is instant - no waiting for tapes to rewind - Ability to create a video-on-demand system - Strong support of user community - see: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/ - Hackable!

- Can be slow to load some screens - Best if you can split your TV signal to watch something else while Tivo is recording - Basic recording level is coarse - I recommend Medium (about 20hrs of time on the SVR-2000)

There''s no other way to put it - I LOVE my Tivo! (Sony SVR-2000) It has completely changed the way I watch TV and it means I can watch what I want to watch WHEN I want to watch it (and skip commercials)! While not recommended for everyone, I hacked my Tivo to be a total of 160 hours (two 80GB drives). I now have tens of shows available for watching whenever I feel like it. There''s always something on! My non-technophile wife even said that she was getting addicted to Tivo (a tremendous two-thumbs up from her!). All in all, this ranks up there on my list of all-time coolest products ever.

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Sony VCR with "smartfile" (has the ability to automatically select programs from a listing and have the program names automatically stored on the tape)

Tuner, ease of hook-up, extremely good picture, complete and total control over every aspect of TV.

Could use a second tuner. Could use more memory (Series 2 models, just released, have 40 gig(hours of memory) and they''ll have a 60 gig drive later this year. It''s also upgradeable to a drive as high as 160 gig.

It''s a TIVOlution. You''ll never watch TV the same way again. This is basically a computer with a tuner. It continuously records whatever channel it is tuned to. Some think the "pause live TV" is a gimmick but it''s not. Neither is the ability to rewind live TV. In the one week I''ve owned it I''ve recorded triple the number of shows I did before. I''ll take a peek at it and if I don''t like it, I''ll delete it. The Season Pass feature is also great as you can require that no re-runs be recorded. There are wonderful newsgroups on the TIVO where you''ll learn secret codes that definitely enhance the experience. I''ve been a gadget freak most of my life. I was the first in my group to have a laser disc, DVD, mini-disc (and apparently the last) and Web-TV but I''ve never been as impressed as I am with this gadget.

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There is nothing like it. Picture quality far superior to my Panasonic SuperVHS.

Easy to Use

SLOW.. Remote makes no sense, menus hesitate, sound doesn't kick on without turning the channel after startup.

This TIVO is a great idea wrapped in a terrible product.. the sony box is horribly slow with menu response time. The machine hesitates.. kinda like a web page loading at 9600 bps. DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT. either wait for better equipment to come along, or get a programmable VCR / Writable DVD (future) .. whatever.. I love the TIVO service.. that is really good. They need to better evaluate who is putting the hardware product out.. SONY sux anyway.

Easy to use, many features such as record while you are not at home, record shows when you don't know when they are on

Can only record one show at a time

This product is awesome! Other than watching live sports events, there is no reason to ever watch live TV or commercials. You can set up the box to record all shows you might ever want to see, even if you eventually do not have the time to watch them. You can easily transfer shows to VCR tapes. The thumbs up button gives TIVO the ability to record things similar to the show you already watch and suggest shows you wouldn;t have even know about. The remote is simple to use and there are so many ways to search for programs (by actor, by channel. by date, by type). This is perhaps the greatest electronic product yet.!

Very flexible. Gives you complete control over your tv experience. Very good quality image.

Occasional incorrect program recorded.

I have had the Sony Tivo (30hr model) about a month and a half and i really like it. First off, the flexiblity is really great.

You can record a season pass (per channel -if Friends is shown on 3 different channels, you can choose which channel to season pass, or just add 3 season passes to get them all) - you can choose "first runs only" or "first runs and repeats". At high quality mode (14hrs recording time), the image quality is excellent - super crisp.

You can search by name or scroll through all the programs that are on (hundreds easily). When you select a show to look at, you can also "view all upcoming shows" and choose any one you want.

Tivo will let you know if there is a recording conflict and give you choices, it will tell you if it needs to change the channel to record something .. etc. Tivo is really about options and there are so many you couldn't list them all.

You can always watch your already recorded shows, even if tivo is recording something else at the same time! You cannot, however, change the "live" channel from what you are recording. But for me, there will already be 10 or more shows already recorded, so i have plenty to watch in my playlist. There is only really a problem if there are 2 shows on at the same time, ..there may be a repeat at a different time -(or you can split off your cable and bypass the tivo when that happens).

Occasionally, shows are inaccurate. Like for example i recorded "Behind the Music - Ozzy Osbourne" but when i played it .. it was actually Huey Lewis or something. This may be on the cable provider's side, but usually does very well (the program schedule has the upcoming 2 weeks of data - and updates it every night).

The hard drive is kinda loud, but oh well. The remote is very nice.

I love it. Tivo gives you freedom to control what you watch. Regular tv can cage you into fixed times and loud commercials - with tivo's ability to rewind, pause or replay anything (even live tv), it gives you control over what you are watching.
I have had no problems with the sony unit so far, but i got the 3 year best buy coverage ($90) just in case.