Tivo

[drthundr]

So I have been mulling over getting a Tivo. We currently have the shitty Time Warner Scientific Atlanta box that we rent from TW for $6 a month, coupled with it's remote that we rent for $4 a month. Currently i can get a 40 hour tivo for $205.39, that's $49.99 for the box and $155.40 for one year of service

Comments

[michaelallroy]

yes, assuming you have digital cable. tivo is more analagous to a vcr than a cable box; that is, it needs a pre-tuned/descrambled signal to work with, be it cable box, satellite box, or OTA (series 3 will change this, but ignoring that so as not to cloud things further). if TW uses different cable boxes for its DVR and non-DVR subscribers, i suppose you'll have to swap boxes. ask TW for a box with an active serial port on it - tivo needs to talk to yr cable box to switch channels, and the best way is via a serial connection. if TW doesn't have boxes with serial ports (or worse yet, has them but deactivates them) you'll have to use the "IR blaster", which is a wire that runs from tivo and adheres to the cable box in front of its infared port, controlling channel-switching that way. the IR connection is wonky because it is one-way, and tivo cannot verify that it's on the correct channel after tuning to it. if there's a misfire while changing via a serial connection (say, it tries to tune channel 520 and gets 50 instead), tivo can correct the error itself. with the IR connection, it'll just record the wrong program.