Tivo HD - On the fringe...

Often I wonder, why did I move to the dead middle of Florida - a cultural black hole. The culture you do get is in the dairy section of the local grocery store. I find it hilarious when in a major city, I can pick up wifi signals of all kinds with my laptop. But, at home, I can sometimes pick up this network named "linksys" if I am lucky, outside my home, in the dark, on a cool night, and Venus is aligning with Mars. We both feel a bit isolated here for many reasons. The nearest Apple store is 1.5 hours away. 'Nuff said.

I, well, being just so flush with cash (read: sarcasm) decided to bite the bullet and get the new $299 Tivo HD. I thought I would at least make an attempt to see if we could get enough HDTV signals off of my outdoor antenna and put the money where my mouth is by living with a decision to dump the television service from my cable company. Being located equidistant from three major "metros" in Florida, I can pick up many radio and TV signals, sometimes two or three on same channel (which means not getting them at all). My chances of this working, I thought, were not great, but that is how I roll, baby. Carpe dig 'em.

What follows is the stuff I would have liked to have known before I bought the Tivo HD box. This could be a stating point for you should you decide. There is a comments section here where you can ask for finer grained info.

Since I am not using it with cable, the sensitivity to picking up weak signals or signals with mutipath issues becomes foremost. The box does an OK job. Obviously the stronger the signal the better, but with multipath (this is when you are picking up two or more signals from the same source - think: bouncing off a building) the box handles it poorly. This is not that unusual, multipath is the enemy of most HD tuners. 'Tis odd that my cheap little pcHDTV 3000 HD tuner card on my MythTV box does the best job of signal reception and handling multipath compared to the new Tivo HD or my 4 year old Samsung SIR-T151 HD receiver. To sum it up, the Tivo HD works fine. Does the job. I need to spend some time in this lovely 98 degree heat with a longer pole for my antenna to clear up most issues I have. One final note on this: if you can have one or more antennas that do not need to be re-aimed to get all the channels you want, you are in a great position to go this route yourself.

To my surprise, you do not have to immediately subscribe to the Tivo service to get listings and use the box. Meaning you 1) get box 2) hook up box and 3) play with box immediately. Tivo gives you a surprising 7 days to wrap you head around the service, the interface, and its feasibility in your life before you sign up and commit. I like that. I signed up on day 3 of testing, when I was convinced it is a viable solution for me. I expect them to prorate my bill from the first connection with the service and not from when I gave up my credit card number, but, that's OK.

O.K. test time is free. Thanks Tivo. Seven days to see if the Tivo fits into your life. Nice.

Since the Tivo HD is a Series 3 Tivo variation, some of the yummy features of Tivo desktop for your computer are not available, most notably the ability to share video files from your computer to the box. Series 2 boxes have this ability. I am a bit disappointed. You see, this would be the Apple TV killer. Think of it, a P.V.R., HDTV tuner, podcast catcher (more on this in a moment), and the ability to stream anything off your PC/Mac for the same price point of the little Apple TV which is a glorified Video iPod that you hook to your TV. Hey! TIVO! Make it happen! ALL TIVOS NEED THIS! YOU WILL SAVE THE COMPANY AND BE FLUSH WITH GREEN! THIS IS IN UPPERCASE, SO, TAKE IT SERIOUSLY!

As far as side entertainment goes, it can play (not subscribe) to podcasts, pull in "TivoCasts" which include DL.TV, dLife, Cranky Geeks and others (it is not a very long list). They also have live audio streaming from Live365 built into the box. Meh. These services are a nice little fortification when you are in the summer doldrums of crappy network TV reruns, looking forward to the new season of -insert your favorite TV show here-.

Over all, the box does a pretty good job over the air, has some nice extras, but I wish Tivo would get off the stick and get those more expansive features that the Series 2 has and pull them up into Series 3. The $299 is, on the final analysis, still well worth the money.

Side note: I am saving $80 per month by getting rid of all TV service from my cable company. Look into naked cable modem service, the savings may surprise you. There are no taxes, at least in my state (Florida) on internet service. This all kind of pays for itself. Huzzah!