Tivo Premiere Questions

No access to netflix, amazon vod, and YouTube without paid subscription to tivo. Tivo doesn't support amazon prime, only amazon instant video.

Analog cable will work. Without cable card no correct guide data and digital channels wont get mapped right. Without tivo subscription no guide data.

You get 7 days or so to try the service without subscribing.

There is a official thread.

Pickup a used Sony DVR (as long as the Rovi data in your area is good) and forget TiVo and pay Guides.

Where TVGOS gets the data. Take a look through the Sony DVR thread.

Seriously? TVGOS is spotty and on its way out.

Haters gonna be haters I guess.

But given the OPs comments, it's obvious Tivo isn't for him either. (Hint: if you change your mind and want to do Tivo on the cheap, get a used HD model off of fleabay for $250 or so, lifetime sub included. Will be Wayyyy better than this Sony DVR crap).

Not here. Sure as hell works better than navigator. Just because your market might have issues, the Sony DVR is surely not "crap". It might be dated, but it has performed as designed in 2005. The problems are the networks playing musical start and end times causing it to miss recordings.
And I normally say little positive about Sony.
I only gave him another choice. Any comments made elsewhere are irrelevant here.

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Edited by videobruce - 11/3/12 at 4:34am

Funny. I did the exact opposite. Came from a Sony/TVGOS setup to Tivo. TVGOS worked on the Sony for about 3 days and then data would just start disappearing. I can't tell you how much time and effort I spent tried to get it working. Absolute c**p.

Tivo just works and can't be happier.

The problem is not the DVR, it's the data stream to your market.
1. Were you CATV only or did you have OTA capability? IOW's did you try OTA?
2. Just how long did you try this?

Either the distribution system to your local station, your local host stations equipment or internal plant, or your CATV system itself if you didn't have OTA enabled. Some markets have more problems that others. That DVR was never designed to handle ATSC or QAM delivered data. TiVo was designed to work with a separate data path, so of course it works with little issue, One is free, the other isn't. One id seven years old the other is current. Surely not a fair comparison.

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Edited by videobruce - 11/3/12 at 4:50am

The point here is that the Sony DVR is not reliable in every market because of TVGOS, and more importantly is not free. Just like Tivo. Therefore, knowing that you have to spend money either way and want something that just works on the cheap, the correct answer is to get a used Tivo HD.

But of course you don't want to ever recommend that because of your hatred of all things Tivo.

I don't know about that. This comes pretty close to one -- faint-hearted, to be sure, but close. He does use the word "decent".

He mostly complains about their extremely vigorous defense of their intellectual property - but ignores the fact that (a) if they didn't have those patents, someone else (probably E*/Dish or maybe D*) would, and (b) if they don't defend them, they will disappear, which would be seen as dereliction of duty by their shareholders - because it would be an objective loss of company value. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

That said, TiVo "just works". That's the long and the short of it. The problem with TVGoS isn't that the data goes over the air - it's that Rovi doesn't care about it very much and doesn't really want to deal with it. I'm guessing it's not really a money maker. There's a reason why there are cheap, simple DVRs in say, Australia, that don't need a guide data provider - because they have TV license fees that viewers pay to fund it, and the broadcasters are thus required to provide thorough, accurate guide data. ATSC at least provides the mechanism, but as usual we say "let the market decide!" Guess what? The market is pretty much indifferent about such things. The market has spoken - they'd mostly rather just use cableco/satco DVRs. So this is what we get:

• TiVo, where you pay a monthly (or lifetime) fee for proper guide service
• DVRs like the Sony DHGs, the DTVPal, and the CM7400, which are hobbled by an OTA guide data provider that's spotty and unreliable
• Cheap DVRs that don't have a guide to speak of, where you use them like a digital VCR

Make your selection.

If I'm not mistaken, the CM-7400 should be lumped in with either the first or the third categories, rather than the second. It doesn't support TVGOS, but it does have an optional paid guide service.

I certainly won't dispute that. I've had my TiVo HD for almost 4 yr now and because of its reliability it is totally invisible to my family. Their expectation is that they push the button on the remote and the TV comes on and all the TiVo functions and recordings are there -- but they don't look at it as TiVo, they are used to all of it being part of their normal viewing experience. It is their expectation that things will continue to work this way -- flawlessly. If I ever put a box in there with lesser reliability or transparency, I would have a full-scale revolt.

I think it's sad that we have such limited options for reliable third party HD DVRs and I'm sure some of that is due to Tivo and their patent protections. I wish the market had more players, especially in the Cablecard space.

But it is what it is - to repeatedly disregard Tivo as a viable option is very shortsighted, and more importantly misleads people coming to AVS for help.

I keep reading things like this, so I have to ask:
Did TiVo's patents prevent Moxi, DTV Pal DVR/CM-7000 Pal or CM-7400 from coming to market?
Did TiVo patents cause Moxi to fail?
Did TiVo patents cause the Pal DVR/CM-7000 to be poorly designed around TVGOS and to fail?
Did TiVo patents cause the CM-7400 to be designed as a toaster + DVR combo? Or prevent the CM-7400 from offering a paid guide service and name-based recording?

I think the answer to why there are limited DVR options really lies in the size of the 3rd party DVR market -- it is relatively small and too small to support more than a couple players.

Tonight I just saw a pair of Tivo Premiere dvr systems at walmart for around $148 each, is this the type of tivo that you can get the lifetime guide added to the cost to get the ota recorder to work?

I might get one of these because I can get the walmart 10% discount could you explain the guide cost one more time?

Thanks

I just don't want to buy one and get screwed thinking I can record ota programming, the box did have not for satilite use. It does mention a cable card for cable use and antenna was mentioned

For OTA, you want the Premiere or the Premiere XL. The Premiere 4 and the Premiere XL4 (formerly the Premiere Elite) are models which have 4 QAM cable tuners and are for digital cable only. However, you can get the Product Lifetime Service option on any model, even a used unit, if it doesn't already have Product Lifetime Service on it.

Monthly guide service is $14.99/month with a 1-year service commitment, month-to-month after the first year. Product Lifetime Service provides you guide service for as long as the unit is functional. Lifetime is $499, or $399 for existing TiVo customers.

The only TiVo that's currently made that works for satellite service is a version of the HR2x-series units that's only available through DirecTV. And yes, the Premiere and Premiere XL *can* accept a CableCARD if you get cable service, but if you're just getting OTA programming, you don't need one.

For OTA use only, will the Premiere box be useless without an internet connection? I plan to always have internet and get the guide data that way. But if times got really tough and I lost my internet, would it be a brick? Or can the clock be set manually, and I would get zero guide data and still be able to record using manual times? It doesn't do anything with PSIP data?
Edited by ay221 - 11/13/12 at 5:33pm

It has to use either an internet connection, or there's a modem (called the "phone line adapter") for the Premiere that you can use to get the guide data - in that case, the TiVo uses it to dial out late at night to a local service number and connects for a minute or two to download the guide data. But the TiVo needs to get guide data - the only PSIP data it looks at is the virtual channel table. The PSIP guide data is not understood or used by the TiVo. The TiVo service (which you pay for either monthly, or all at once with Product Lifetime Service) is necessary for the TiVo to work. It would still be able to tune channels without the guide data, but any Season Passes would not function, you'd only be able to do manual recordings, assuming the last time it got guide data the TiVo service told it you were current.

Thanks.

The bigger problem is that the clock will drift without a regular Tivo connect, and there's no way to manually set that. So you'll constantly have to play around with manual records to offset that over time.

Bottom line is that it's not a good idea to run a Tivo without a net connection if you want to do any recordings - live TV is fine.