TiVo Series 3 - "Official" Thread - Page 10

Yes I do have the Passport software. Perhaps that is the reason for my lack of TiVo appreciation?

Frankly, I just can't imagine that the quality of HD I'm getting from the 8300HD is $800 less than that of what the TiVo unit outputs. There's just no way it's a night and day difference like SD to HD and it makes absolutely no sense, to me, to pay $800 for something that is included for free with my DVR subscription. $800 for a more functional interface?

I did have the hang-ups you mentioned with my older box, the regular 8300; however, after upgrading to the 8300HD-DVR(that appears to self-upgrade itself unlike the regular 8300) I have had no hesitations, pauses, missed recordings etc.

A couple of insights. First of all, for those wondering why some DVRs (Tivo) spin the hard drive constantly instead of starting and stopping like some DVRs (Ultimate TV) is because Tivo paid attention in school. Inertia is the answer.

A spinning hard drive wants to keep spinning with very little power needed. Constantly starting and stopping any motor or hard drive will reduce the life of the product. Any engineer will back this up.

As far as Tivo VS. the rest, some folks are power users and some are only addicted to three shows a week. If you want your DVR to be on the constant lookout, 24/7, for certain movie stars, favorite models, favorite musicians, for any show with the words Best" and "Beaches in it, and ten movies that you want to record if and when they come on, and anything with the word China in it along with 40 other items of interest to you . . . there is only one product that can do that for you. It's a Tivo, and it's called a WishList. Once you set up your WishList you no longer have to keep searching, searching, searching manually every week for things that interest you, And after a couple months, Tivo will even make logical guesses and auto record them if there is spare room on the drive.

Case in point: I loathe The Apprentice but I enjoy shows concerning sports cars. I came home last year to find an episode of The Apprentice on my Tivo as a Suggestion. Looking at the description revealed it was the episode where Donald Trump had the contestants come up with an ad campaign for the Lamborghini Geraldo. I didn't have Lamborghini in my wish list, it was simply an educated guess based on my viewing habits. Cool episode. And no other DVR could or would have presented me with that show unaided.

People who drive Porsches are not pissed that they paid more than a Saturn owner. And once you drive a Tivo, everything else is a Yugo.

Another factor to consider is how much programming are you being required to purchase in order to get the cable DVR. I only want the local HD, which comes with a Limited Basic subscription, but I have to pay another $35-40 a month for channels I don't want before Comcast will rent me their DVR. I did the numbers awhile back, but the S3 will have paid for itself in less than 2 years time. You'll be paying for that cable DVR forever, and if you're paying for programming you don't want as well, it adds up pretty quick.

I have a couple of questions. First off, I have never owned or used a Tivo. I currently have HD service through Comcast with a Motorola 6412. I also use a JVC D-VHS to archive things I want to keep permanently.

In terms of long term archiving, am I correct in assuming I probably don't want to go with the Tivo? It does appear to have a firewire connection and from what I've been able to gather about the SATA connection, that won't seem to work either. It sounds like you will be able to add an external SATA drive in the future, but you won't be able to constantly switch drives. I think it creates a striped set with the internal drive so if you unplug it and then start recording to a new drive the information on the original external drive will no longer work. Is this correct?

Also, I'm somewhat unclear on whether the Tivo can search for programs that are only in high definition.

DING DING DING....we have a winner!!!!!!

This is one of the PRIMARY factors I will NEVER go with a cable package. I'm currently paying about $20/month for my cable. If I had to go with every additional add-on they required before I could get an HD DVR (expanded basic, then digital, then HD, then DVR rental), I'd be very unhappy. Keenan hit the nail on the head.

Well good for you. So tell me again why are you here in this thread? I smell a troll.

This was the one feature of my TiVo that I absolutely hated. It kept trying to record stuff that I had no interest in based on what it thought were my viewing habits. Wasted space for things I would never watch. I disabled the feature.

The difference is you at least had the feature to disable.

Yeah, why would you "hate" something that is so easily disabled? There are so many great features of the TiVo, but there's always a feature or two that some folks don't care for. "Hate" is such a strong word...

Hi...

Quick question....Tivo makes a wireless internet adapter...

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1122654250546

I believe that was made for the S2...so you could watch shows all over your house. But...

Can I use that with my S3 as my internet connection? to download program data from my wireless network?

My LAN is hard-wired, and I'd rather not make another CAT5 run to the Tivo. Now I'm using telephone to make the connection. But obviously I'd rather use broadband.

Thanks

I'm more concerned with just getting it off the Tivo somehow. If that were done, I could either keep several external drives and plug the one I want back in, or if I could get it off that drive I could burn it to DVD to play back in my HD DVD player.

Happened to me last night. I was recording survivor and all of a sudden it went black screen on me. To make sure it wasnt just my cable blanking out I went upstairs and the wife was watching it on the tv.

I guess "greatly disappointed in" would have been a better phrase. I was hoping it would actually find things I was interested in.

I have the FIOS DVR now and the only complaints I have is recording space and it doesn't let you pause one tuner and watch the other like my HD250 did. I will probably get the S3 just because of those 2 things.

If you use the 'thumbs' the program will learn what you like and dislike and will make better decisions on what to 'suggest'

It came back only when I canceled the recording. So I can't figure this one out. I also don't understand why when I am watching tv and then bring up the guide and flipping up or down on the guide it has audio dropouts and the picture freezes in synch with the audio dropouts. Never had this problem with any of my other moto dvr's. I am just worried that if I am recording stuff and I am looking at the guide to look for other stuff to record that when I get these dropouts is it affecting my recording as well. If so this tivo is going back.

P.S. I only watch the channels that are HD. This tivo is for my home theater and HD is the only thing allowed in there.

Nice!!!

I am in the same boat...I pay $12/month for cable and for that I get all the HD locals, which I can tune using the built-in QAM tuner in my TV (no cable box). I suspect we aren't alone, and that there is a large group of consumers who are interested in the S3 precisely because they want to record HD without having to upgrade their cable subscription. Which begs the question: why didn't TiVo include manual channel mapping of unencrypted QAM channels on the S3? The S3 has been delayed for years...they had plenty of time to add what should have been a trivially simple feature.

I have a worrisome suspicion. TiVo is trying to foster a cozy relationship with the cable industry (see their recent TV Week ad for the S3 making a "customer loyalty" / "churn reduction" argument direct to cable execs in pointing out the lack of satellite support in the S3, and their recent business deals to bring the TiVo interface to cable STBs). TiVo wants to be a partner with cable, not a competitor. I believe they are reluctant to add features to the S3 that directly hurt cable companies financially, and manual channel mapping would mean that customers would not have to buy "official" HDTV support from their cable co which entails a digital tier, an HD tier, a cablecard rental, etc.

I'm worried that we will never see manual channel mapping of unencrypted QAM channels on the S3. I won't buy an S3 without this feature, and I know I'm not alone. Perhaps if we make our voices heard, we can overcome TiVo's reluctance to upset big cable too much.

pretty much everyone is saying the tivo s3 outputs a better picture than the sony dhg. i thought the sony had very good processing and components. were the comparisons via component or HDMI?
i have a lifetime subscription on an s1 as well as a dhg-500. i am trying to justify a switch to the s3... right now the biggest things holding me back are TivoToGo support and video inputs. i was hoping i could get rid of my s2 completely...

The channel mapping does work on the S3 to the degree that it's mapped to the PSIP channel number, at least for the OTA HD equivalent channels in my market.

For example, our CBS station broadcasts OTA on UHF channel 29, but it's channel 5.1 in the PG, for both OTA and the cable fed signal. The problem is there is no guide info for the cable fed signal, it just says digital service I believe.

If the cable company is passing along the PSIP along with the signal they get from the station(which apparently they are doing, at least here anyways) then I wouldn't think it would be to hard for the TiVo to apply the guide data for the OTA equivalent to the remapped cable fed channel. If this could be done, than a CableCARD wouldn't even be needed for the local channels. Cable channel of course would still require it as they are all over the place, Discovery-HD is buried on ch 76.4 for example, and some cable systems move these channels around on a regular basis so guide info would be difficult. But for cable fed OTA stations it shouldn't be too big a deal. The problem may be in whether or not the particular cable system is passing on the PSIP info, some may not do so.

You're right about the cable/TiVo relationship though, and it will probably in fact result in some limited abilities on the S3, it already has.

That's the problem I'm having. I can't find the where our cable co. (Mediacom) is placing the cable version of the HD locals (except for our PBS station). I even plugged in our cable company's digital listings in an online TV listing (Yahoo, I think) and tried those channels, but they're in the 700s, and, while I can manually plug those in on the S3, there's nothing there. It's not a huge problem for me, though, since I can get all of them OTA without having to move my antenna. But it would be nice to find them.

my priorities are changing bought a S3 to try out from CC so could easily return if needed. so far alot like the hdtivo just faster and a couple ohter features, native passthrough and network hookup is nice.

HD PQ is same as hd tivo on component and hdmi.

Would sell one or both of my rolexes to get the new panny 65" 1080P plasma.

This isn't a Tivo-based solution, but here's what I'm doing. I'm keeping my non-DVR Moto cable box with its firewire connection, as well as getting the S3. I've got the cable box hooked up to an old PC via firewire that I use to capture anything that I want to keep. For stuff that I'm just time-shifting, I'll use the Tivo. This isn't a great or easy solution, but since I don't keep all that much, it works for me.

And, while I'm here, I'm another one of those who only has a limited cable package and wasn't willing to increase myself to enhanced basic in order to get the cable company's DVR. So the S3 will pay for itself in a couple years.

You won't find them in the 700's, they will be QAM tuning channels like 75.2, 75.4, 79.3, etc. Keep looking online; there are local newsgroups out there with QAM mappings posted. I use hdtv.forsandiego.com. Also, I read somewhere that TiVo will pick up the raw QAM channels if you simply do a channel scan?

OTA ATSC is one thing, QAM is another. The S3 apparently does not pick up PSIP data for QAM channel mapping. Without that or manual channel mapping, you can't get guide information for QAM channels.

Edit: Sorry, I think I am misunderstanding your post. Are you saying that the S3 does recognize PSIP data in the QAM channel which maps it to the ATSC (OTA) equivalent channel number? And that the guide works fine as long as you use the OTA channel number? Now that's interesting...I thought that the S3 ignored the PSIP data for QAM.

I assume the TiVo can find the QAM subchannels but there is no guide info available. Can't you remap to a channel that has the same guide info? i.e., I get WTICDT here in CT on QAM 89.1. The TVGOS on my Sony HDD's has a WTICDT listing with some Digital Cable assigned number like 203; I just remap to 89.1 and the listings are correct going forward.