just bought a tivo...

[mike55btz]

I have a sci atlanta 3250 with time warner cable...

I have been reading the forums for a couple of days and i finally bought a box..

i have two questions that i didnt find answers to...

1) one of the problems i read is SLOW IR for people using the IR blasters with cable boxes... Will this help ? smarthome image transmitters ?

and has anyone tried it, i assume it would help becuase i could position the most powerful IR blaster inside my set top cablebox right in front of the receiver..

2) can i be recording 1 channel digi or analog and WATCH another at the same time.... this may seem like an elementary question to ask, but i never found an EXPLICIT answer... thanks


Mike

[mike55btz]

btw i cant post the link to the ir blasters... but it is at a site called smarthome that i found them.... one of them is a sitckon that connects with a connector that looks like a headphone jack on one end, and a double sided sticky on the other that you could place on the front of the IR on the sci atlanta box...


I also found another that is just the LED and headphone type jack.. that is supposed to be the BLASTER... for a super powerul signal..... what i MIGHT do is open my cable box just enough to drop the LED right infront of the IR receiver so that there will be no delay

[etemple]

I have no idea about the IR question, but as for the other one, if you bought a Dual Tuner Tivo, then it is really easy to watch one channel and record another. That should be covered in the booklet, but I think you just change channels once your recording is set (honestly, I haven't had a chance to try this yet, but that's my understanding og how it works).

If you bought a single tuner box, then you can still record and watch simultneously, but it is a little bit trickier--basically, you have to set up your cable so that one signal is going into the tivo and another signal is routed to your tv through a vcr. Then you can watch live tv through the vcr while the tivo is record on a different input.

I hope that makes sense.

[gastrof]

Actually, using a VCR wouldn't be necessary at all, especially if the TV has its own cable-ready tuner. (Of course, this is for analog cable. If you're looking for digital stations, you'd have to have some way of getting the digital channel to the TV. A VCR wouldn't do that, tho'.)

You'd split the cable and run one to the TV directly, the other to the TiVo.

You would have to have a separate way to send the TiVo to the TV, tho', whether by feeding it in thru Audio/Video lines, or using a switchbox on the TV's antenna input.

[mike55btz]

I guess I am confused at the conversion process... what I am tring to figure out is if these scenarios will work


channel surf digi and nonbox but record non box
channel surf digi and nonbox but record digital

and finally,

channel surf digi and non-digi and record 1 non and 1 digi
channel surf digi and non-digi and record 2 non digi
channel surf digi and non-digi and record 2 digi

as you can see i am most concerned with surfing being affected at any given time due to recording any other.

at most i would probably try and record 1 digi and 1 non digi and probably another option for me would be to try and record 2 non digi at the same time.

[mike55btz]

guess i found the answer...

in fine print on tivos site

* Record from two basic cable channels, or one basic cable and one digital cable channel, at once. Does not support recording from two digital cable or satellite channels at once. Supports recording from cable and satellite sources only; does not support recording from over-the-air antenna.


now i only need to get a motorola box probably so there will be no delay in channel changing... so i dont have to use the IR blasters...

on the back of my current SCI atlanta box it has a little out OR in that says IR... maybe i can go out of tivo IR to in of the sci atlanta box...

[greg_burns]

now i only need to get a motorola box probably so there will be no delay in channel changing... so i dont have to use the IR blasters...

It was my understanding that the delay was primarily caused by how Tivo changes channels. (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong). It doesn't send an up/down signals, it will actually send each individual digit of the channel number and then possibly an enter code. Not sure there is much you can to do speed it up. There are different remote codes you can pick during set up (each of varying speeds) that may help. (Slower being more accurate for some cable boxes.) Regardless, it will probably be noticeable slower than up/down channel changing using just a digital cable box. At least using IR, never tried a serial connection.

On the bright side, once you have Tivo you'll stop channel surfing anyways. ;)

[ChuckyBox]

now i only need to get a motorola box probably so there will be no delay in channel changing... so i dont have to use the IR blasters...

Channel changing is never going to be all that fast -- hell, just the switch from analog cable to digital pretty much ended my channel-surfing days because of the painful digital box delay. And when you add a TiVo box into the circuit it will be even slower.

But that probably won't be an issue. Most people who have TiVo for a couple of weeks find that they don't channel surf anymore. One of the greatest things about TiVo is that there is always something good to watch, whenever you sit down to watch TV. And since you can jump through an entire commercial break in just a couple of seconds, you never get bored and start jumping around to see what else is on.

Set up some season passes and wishlists, and give the thumbs up and thumbs down to the TiVo suggestions. Enable the 30-second skip. If you are like a lot of us, in a couple of weeks you won't care how long channel changes take, and you'll wonder how you ever lived without this thing.

[mike55btz]

thanks for the info guys...