Thanks guys! I appreciate the opinions and the little "tips and tricks" that you gave.
Have you subscribed to the service, yet? We just got a TiVo, too, at Circuit City a few weeks ago. Ours is the one that burns DVDs from TV programs, but it's similar in that you have to pay a monthly fee to subscribe. Can't remember what the montly fee is, it's not much, but we chose the one time payment of $299.00 that is good for the life of the TiVo box, rather than pay the monthly charge.
I've got a DVD burner on my computer so I chose to skip that feature. If I want it, I'll just transfer it to the computer via the broadband connection and burn it from there. It
should work, I hope. If it's the wrong file type my electronics/computer genius ex has a program that should convert it for me.
I haven't gotten the boxes yet so no, I haven't activated the service. It should be $12.95 a month for the first box and $6.95 for the second box. I thought about the lifetime thing but it mentioned that it was the life of the box and not the life of the person and unless the box was officially defective the "lifetime" could be cut short any time. Good reason for them not to make a long-lasting product, right?
We got ours all hooked up and then what does it do? Starts changing the channels all by itself and recommends programs all over the place, records this, records that, the channel-surfing wonder, and it won't even let us watch DVDs!!!Finally we got sick of troubleshooting the darn thing and have called the manufacturer. They are saying it's defective and we should have a new one, soon. It has not been much use to us, yet, and we've had it for a month, now.
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Good luck w/the TiVo. Their website has pretty good support and instructions for whatever you might need. www.tivo.com
I looked at the diagrams on the website very carefully before buying. You're right, they do have very clear schematics and help online and that's one of the things I liked about them. I found diagrams for how to hook up your VCR with the TiVo so you could record one channel and watch another, and I think I can adapt it successfully to a DVD player. I THINK! LOL. That is why I will be tinkering with the set I bought for myself in my bedroom before I give my parents theirs on Christmas morning. I usually have a big 'ole pile of clean shirts floating around on top of the TV anyway, I'm going to take advantage of that to hide the TiVo.
I'll let you know how it comes out. I'm no electronics wiz but I got a crash course when I moved to college and suddenly had to hook up cable, etc. Last year it was ME, not Dad, that hooked up Grandma's new DVD player and my aunt's new combo player. Dad couldn't figure out all those newfangled cables!
Poor engineer. First time in his life he'd had to ask me for help.
On the other hand he was proud that his daughter had finally started to show talent in his line of work! Hehehe.
Leia
