R.I.P Tivo, The product revision that killed the Tivo

Wait, did TiVo go out of business?? $h!t, I hadn't heard. I better get a Xfinity box today!

 

THERE'S this week's poll!

 

You mean this week's "I hate Hydra" thread.

 

Advertisements

Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. B-)

 

A "TiVo is dead" and a poll is a two-fur!

 

I give them a couple of posts and then it's straight to the ignore list. If they post numerous times (even create numerous threads) it's a waste of time... if you repeat yourself endlessly and are overly dramatic you can't be taken seriously.

 

Ah, were that it but once a week...

 

I guess poll threads are like potato chips.

R.I.P. Tivo, The update that killed the Tivo User experience

Being ignored for six months must have hurt.

 

[sar] oh gee another RIP Hydra thread with a poll, what will we ever do without our weekly new poll on exactly the same thing as last week [/sar]

 

The new experience must be growing on him. In the previous poll, Tivo was dead to him. Now - he's just losing confidence. Sounds like a new experience convert in the making.

Oh wait -- hasn't actually tried it yet ...

 

Well, to be fair, that previous poll/thread was directed at the update to TE3 that normalized the look-and-feel across all applicable devices. Perhaps the sentiment expressed in the previous thread...

... was suspended awaiting the TE4 "New Experience."

That said, if the objective expressed in the opening paragraph, above, is true...

... the titling of the thread is going to distort the feedback received, given the saner denizens of TCF, and those who are OK with Hydra, would scroll past yet another "down with Hydra" thread. (Putting aside the fact that people who are OK with their Hydra'ted TiVo box are less likely to be frequenting this forum.)

 

ZZZZZZZ

 

There weren't enough choices in the poll so I had to choose the second one. But I believe Hydra is better in almost every way. But certainly not in every way.

 

I like Hydra better in several ways. Certainly I like that upcoming recordings display right under the individual wishlists. It is a big improvement and saves button pushes.m
Moving around the horizontal and vertical menus is not that bad.. in fact sometimes it's good!
The four arrow presses in the live TV screen are terrific, although I wish the live guide was in ascending order and the channel and Skip ahead keys moved ahead one screen and one day respectively. Perhaps that will come, along with other things that are missing ... such as the guide sorted by channel name, transfer of recordings., etc.
I recently downgraded to Encore and realized that I like Hydra better and brought it back.
Let's look forward to the new changes that TiVo will make sometime in the current quarter when they release new software again

 

From over 7 months ago

Did you lie?

 

I chose option 3, but there are two critical issues that need to be dealt with before I consider switching my primary device to Hydra:

1) The lack of Live Guide *and the associated Record by Channel' manual recording option. These allow one to work around issues with the Program Guide without needing to take notes offline.

2) The second is the horrible interface for showing the current site of the tuner. Here are my notes from an evaluation at the beginning of Hydra (and the current state is the same):
It is impossible to see a full state summary for 6 tuners (recording status, channel, program) at the same time. In fact the current method only gives the full information for one tuner and almost information-free icons for the at most 3 other tuners.

 

A stark visual upgrade. Usability is awkward and inefficient. Missing transfers is deal-breaking.

I trust Ted when he says they're increasing their efforts on usability (now that the platform is generally stable and reliable.)

I still think it's going to take another year until the platform is "polished". I said this 7 months ago but v1.1 took an awfully long time to come out and didn't change much for the long time we waited.

 

I wish they'd fix the multiple button pushes where I didn't have to do before and bring back Live Guide but I can live with it.

As far as Tivo being dead I'd say not yet. Don't get me wrong I love Tivo and I've been a customer since 2004 and on about my 6th box but if my Tivo died today and I had to replace it, I might (probably) replace it with an Xfinity X1 box. I have one in the kitchen as part of my package and it is light years past old cable dvr's. And the voice recognition works perfectly unlike Tivo's work in progress.

A couple of months ago I touched my tv and zapped it. My Tivo hdmi output didn't work for a while but after restarts a plenty it came back. To replace it with a lifetime pass would have cost me almost $1000. An X1 box would be about $10 a month and if it breaks I swap it at the Comcast office.

Tivo has been great and created this DVR thing, but I think the Comcast's of the world have moved at least up to Tivo and perhaps beyond. I don't see it lasting well into the future. Just my opinion.

 

@avaddict

You couldn't find any answers in the hundred other Hydra threads that already exist? There are also many thread about Tivo alternatives, well researched by experts for your convenience.

You declare in your title that Hydra killed Tivo, yet you've never actually used it? How did you reach that conclusion? I thought Rovi would have killed Tivo, but they're still kickin'. I guess Tivo is more resilient than we thought. They've apparently been able to survive a guide data apocalypse and a GUI update.

I'd really love to rehash all of the above to save you the trouble of doing a little searching, but I'm really lacking motivation for some reason.