TiVo

The book I read to research this post was TiVo for Dummies by Andy Rathbone which is an excellent book which I bought from Amazon. They don’t sell TiVo’s in Britain any more although at the time of this books publication they were still supported. They were still selling them in the USA although they weren’t selling them anywhere else. The TiVo was a landmark in dvr’s or pvr’s because you could select a programme to record by its name rather than the time of the broadcast, what channel it’s on etc. You can select a programme according to who stars in it, who directed it etc. For example if you are a Bette Davis you can programme it to record any film she stars in. Also there’s the season pass feature for example if you are an NCIS fan you can programme it to tape just the latest series, repeats & previous series are ignored. Another feature the TiVo has is HMO or Home Media Organiser which lets you play files from your computer. The TiVo is fully compatible with the AppleMac but isn’t compatible with the Media Player in Windows so you need third party software. Some companies will upgrade the hard drive on the TiVo & if you do this you will usually have to send it away. These hard drives are substantially bigger than the one that comes with your TiVo. When you buy a TiVo you must connect it to the phone line or internet to download the latest software & updates although any phone line will do. It can even be a friends phoneline. Some TiVo’s work with satelitte television & the process of recording these programmes is simpler. Also there are 2 major types of TiVo the class 1 & class 2 & the class 1 is a lot older & hasn’t got all the features of the later type.