[silverwolf0]

Hello everyone. I am new to this board and have a few questions that I hope some of you nice people can clear up for me. I currently have Jadeworld from Directv, which is basically just 5 chinese channels. My parents saw this commercial on tv and wanted to buy a tivo so they could record shows. As I don't know to much about other dvrs or dvrs in general, I am opting to get the regular one from directv which is $48 after rebate and $5.99 a month.

One of the main reasons my parents want a tivo is so that they can record stuff and then bring it to work and watch it with them. I've seen some things about TivoToGo. What device should I be looking for to accompany the Tivo? I need something that can easily transfer from the Tivo and hookup via coaxial or composite to another TV somewhere else. Thanks in advance.

 

[Jonathan_S]

Well, the TiVo's for DirecTV (also known as DirecTV DVR with TiVo, DTiVo, DirecTiVo) do not support TiVoToGo.

You can of course connect them to a video capture card on a computer or a DVD recorder to record their output in real time. That could let you generate a DVD which could be viewed on pretty much any semi-recent DVD player...

 

[ZeoTiVo]

A regular Stand alone Series 2 TiVo has TiVoToGo. Basically You install free TiVo desktop software on a Desktop or laptop windows PC and use that software to transfer off shows and then play them back. DirectTV has opted to not support TiVoToGo on their boxes however, so any directTV TiVo DVR will not do this on a standard box. You can have a 3rd party like ptvupgrade (see ad at top of page) do some of the modifications for you but you still have to do the final work to be able to pull shows off yourself. Not for everyone.

So barring hacking a DirectTV TiVo you can either hook a DVD recorder up to a DirectTV TiVo or else hook a Stand Alone TiVo to the DirectTV receiver amd use the receiver and the TiVo to record and then TiVoToGo from the stand alone to a Laptop

 

[bidger]

As I don't know to much about other dvrs or dvrs in general, I am opting to get the regular one from directv which is $48 after rebate and $5.99 a month.

Be advised that the R-15, which is probably the one your folks saw in the commercial (little boy who wants his father to read to him, but he's watching football), is not powered by TiVo. It's NDS software. If you want a D-TiVo, you have to ask for it specifically or buy it retail.

 

[silverwolf0]

I will be going back to school in a few weeks and it will be only my parents and my sister, who are all brain-dead as far as computers and electornics goes. I was hoping it would be something simple like hooking up a small device to the tivo and taking it to another tv and hooking it up there to watch it. I believe that is possible with TivoToGo portable media players, but those are expensive and since you're telling me that the Directv DVR requires either an external Tivo or a dvd recorder, that adds on to the problems. No simple solutions exist? So far I think videotape is the easiest as well as the most practical for them. I'll have to go teach my mom how to program again with the old vcr ). That's gonna take two hours...

 

[ZeoTiVo]

There are no directly hooked up portable video players. You still need a PC running Microsoft media player 10 to make it easy to do.

here is a page on TiVoToGo and its features to get a good overview
http://www.tivo.com/4.9.19.asp

 

[Crrink]

Maybe instead of a DVR you could get your Mom a newer VCR. A few years ago before I had TiVo I had a great Sony VCR that included a guide, which made scheduling recordings very easy, and a "cable mouse" that was basically an IR blaster to control a cable box (don't know if it could control a DTV box or not).
Anyway, that might give your Mom a user friendly way to make her shows portable.

 

[bidger]

There was an announcement about TiVo working with both DirecTV and Dish Network as far as portable devices go. The thread, or one of them anyway, is here.

 

[silverwolf0]

I am sure there are devices (Archos maybe?) that are portable and can record directly to maybe an mpeg4 format and have a tv-out of some sort that you can view the video from it to an external TV. That also poses a problem however as there is only one device and if they take it with them, there is nothing to record the shows while they have it at work. Man I can't believe tapes are so practical and economical. Technology just gets more and more complicated and buggy.