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New Zealand, Wellington
1 Level
746 Review
42 Karma

Review on TiVo TCD540080 Series 2 80-Hour Digital Video Recorder: The Ultimate Entertainment Solution by Eric Montgomery

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Once you try Tivo, you can never go back!

I cannot rate this item less than 5 stars. I've been using it for almost 2 months now and I can't imagine my life without Tivo. If it breaks tomorrow, I'll have to spend a few hundred euros more and buy a new one right away. Tivo has changed the way I watch TV so much that I even try to hit the skip/instant play button when watching other TVs (not connected to Tivo) or on my DVD player! This means you won't miss any of your favorite shows and you can watch all the movies you've always been interested in. One of Tivo's best features is the ability to easily skip commercials, as you can program Tivo to skip in 30-second increments and then repeatedly press the "skip back" button if you press it too many times. Since most hour-long programs contain 15-20 minutes of commercials, you can watch 3 hours of TV program in 2 hours. Time is money and 1 hour of my time without watching ads and doing something else justifies the price I paid for Tivo. Someone complained about the new TivoToGo feature. New software containing this update will be released gradually, but you can subscribe to the priority list to get it sooner. I think I had to wait about a month from signing up to receiving the update. Be a little patient and understand that there are many people who want to get the update and limited ways to distribute it. In any case, TivoToGo comes in handy in that it allows you to transfer shows from your Tivo to your computer, where you can watch them or burn them to DVD. I haven't used it much yet, but it seems to be working pretty well so far. Another person complained that they couldn't find a compatible WiFi adapter. There is a really simple solution to this problem by going to the Tivo website. In [.] there is a list of compatible wireless adapters for each Tivo device. Seems pretty easy to me. If you're determined to get the Linksys WUSB11 (which worked great for me) then I think the only place you can get compatible older versions is on ebay. The outside of the box says which version it is. Maybe you can go to the store and see them all. If you don't want either, I would just buy one of several other compatible adapters. The main reason I wrote this review was to address some of the complaints/concerns that have been raised in recent reviews. Tivo will change the way you watch TV by giving YOU control over what and when you watch. I love my TiVo!

Pros
  • A dream come true
Cons
  • Appearance