First impressions

1013 Views 4 Replies 3 Participants Last post by rodalpho, Jul 12, 2007

opus472

Discussion Starter · Jul 12, 2007

Used to have Dish Network, now have the Comcast DVR, trying out the S3. Obviously, far more thought has gone into the Tivo interface, but there are some possible drawbacks -

The Tivo search function is much slower than Comcast. There's a delay after each selected letter, and more delays for each Page Down. Comcast's DVR has no such delays.

The CC function is buried way too deep in the menu structure. Comcast is even worse, but I'd hoped Tivo would have this down by now.

Tivo's maximum FF speed seems awfully slow compared to both Comcast and Dish. Dish's FF was by far the best, with smooth FF at 4x, 15x, 60x and 300x. Comcast's FF4 appears to be much faster than Tivo's maximum. With the Tivo, looks like it would be very time consuming to skim thru a recording to make sure the entire program was actually recorded, or FF to a particular spot. Not sure what the Tivo's actual speeds are for its 3 FF options...

Steve

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Justin Thyme

· #2 · Jul 12, 2007

Just curious but:

How good was the Dish DVR for channel surfing? Or did you stop watching Television that way?
What percentage of your time was spent watching recorded shows versus live Television?
What was your percentage backlog of unwatched recorded shows - would you watch everything recorded, or would you watch 60% of what was recorded before they were deleted?
Did you have the Hidef package? What percentage of your watching was hidef/ what was your main HD channels?

Regarding Tivo FF- you understand about the skip button right? For each notch on the timeline, each press of the skip button while in FF will jump to the next notch.

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opus472

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jul 12, 2007

Thanks Justin. Not sure how to do edit/quotes, so I'll just respond in order -

Never been much of a channel surfer.

Watch almost exclusively recorded programs, very rarely live.

Watch 100% of recorded programs, although sometimes copy to DVD first.

Not much HD yet. Part of my HD problem is CC, which is why I'd hoped the CC was handled better by Tivo.

Haven't quite figured out the skip button yet. I've entered the programming code, but I'm not even sure which button it applies to...

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opus472

Discussion Starter · #4 · Jul 12, 2007

So far, for me at least, Tivo's one huge advantage is the HD size and the ability to add another HD. Comcast's 160G is way too small for high def.

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rodalpho

· #5 · Jul 12, 2007

Welcome to the TiVolution!

Do you have 8.3 yet? Many of the speed problems are fixed in the latest update.

To move around a long recording, while fast forwarding hit the "skip forward" button. It will immediately skip to the next "tick" mark in the status bar.

The above works without the 30-second skip (SPS30S) code. That makes the "skip forward" button skip 30 seconds ahead instead of going to the end or the beginning of the whole recording while not fast forwarding or rewinding.

FYI, assuming you had a SA8300HD, you can add eSATA to it too. But it's buggy, and disables trick play during live TV. Not to dissuade you from the TiVo, it's a much better machine.

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