Newbie questions

[MickBurke]

I'm considering getting Tivo on my FIOS setup for a few reasons, but primarily because when comcast goes all digital, I'll pretty much have to trash my 5 tuner SageTV setup. I currently use it extensively to record COPS and Judge mathis and all those other inane shows that I like to watch on my tertiary monitor while I'm working on the PC (which is about 12 hours a day).

So my first question is about the PC software: Does it let you watch what is on the Tivo, or must you transfer anything you want to watch to the PC, and then watch it?

Secondly, does it work with any other media center type boxes, so you can watch the tivo content in another room etc (without a PC)? Or does TIVO over some sort of remote box for playback in other rooms?

How widespread are the 'content flags'? If I can't watch any of the shows I like on the PC it'd be pretty much useless to me.

I assume 2 tuners is as many as the HD Tivo (S3?) supports? Again, I'm coming off a 5 tuner setup, so I've pretty much never had a recording conflict.

Related question, I assume Tivo has something that will try to resolve conflicts; i.e. if I want to record Planet earth at 8:00 and COPS at 8:00 and Planet earth is re-run at 2:00am it will resolve???

I expect external drives are fully supported at this point? I usually don't spend a lot of time watching TV (other than as mentioned above) so I like to be able to just keep recording for hours and hours and hours and then watch for a few hours here and there.

Than ks for any input, I'm sure I wil coem up with more as I think through it all...

Mick

[David Platt]

1. You must transfer a show before you watch it. Unfortunately, no streaming.

2. No. The only way to watch TiVo-recorded programs in another room is with a second subscribed TiVo or a PC.

3. Use of content flags vary widely, from what I've been reading here. Some providers, like Verizon FiOS don't use the flags at all, while I've seen reports of some providers, like Comcast, using them so extensively as to make TiVoToGo fairly worthless.

4. Correct. No TiVo has more than two tuners.

5. After you create a Season Pass for a show, you can assign it a priority. Shows with a higher priority take precedence over shows with a lower priority. If you're recording a show that repeats later, it will skip it and record the other show if you have the repeating show set to a lower priority. Shows that only air once should always be set at a higher priority than shows that air multiple times.

6. eSATA external drives are supported on Series 3 TiVos and TiVOHD boxes. The Series 3 can use several different drives, while the HD can only user the officially-supported MyDVR Expander.