Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Tivo Series 3

I'm not usually a super-early adopter of home electronics. After spending all day thinking about code, I don't want to come home and have to debug my TV setup. But when I heard about the Tivo Series 3, I was instantly interested.

I've had a Tivo Series 2 for years. Before I got it, people would tell me, "it will change the way you watch TV". I found this hard to believe at the time, but after using Tivo for a few weeks, it quickly became hard to remember the pre-Tivo days. Watching TV on my own schedule + Tivo suggestions + instant replay + 30 second skip = a truly better TV experience.

Until the local cable company started offering HD programming. I then found myself having to choose between HD content the old-fashioned way, or the now-inferior SD picture on Tivo. Additionally, I now had both the Tivo and the cable box sucking power 24/7. In an attempt to resolve this, I tried the cable company HD DVR, which seemed like a reasonable solution, but it just couldn't match Tivo. Awful UI + no 30 second skip + massive power consumption + lockups = a very unsatisfactory product.

So the notion of a Tivo, with all its goodness, that could display/record HD seemed like the perfect solution. And when I found out that I could transfer my lifetime membership from my Series 2, I was sold. Having now spent about two months with the Tivo Series 3, I can say it has lived up to my (high) expectations. The high points:
  • Same great Tivo UI
  • HD recording/playback
  • THX certified
  • Dual tuners (works for HD, too)
  • Internal format conversion (essential when your TV only does 1080i)
  • Lifetime membership transfer
  • Great remote (even better than the Series 2)
  • 30 second skip still works!
Power consumption is quite reasonable too - even while recording HD, the Series 3 only draws 34 watts, compared to 28 watts for the Series 2. (Both of which are way better than the cable company DVR, which could be used to heat a small room). Of course, not everything is perfect. Some (minor) lowlights:
  • Tivo to Go is currently disabled
  • No HD display for Music/Photos
  • Music/Photos does not support DLNA media servers
Hopefully these can be rectified in a future firmware upgrade, but they're really just minor complaints. Overall, I've been very satisfied with the Series 3. It just works, and works great.

4 comments:

Andy said...

How many watts did the cable company's DVR put out?

Twinsen said...

I've been using a DirectTV HD Tivo for the past year and a half and have been very happy. Won't give it up for the world. I found the Tivo Series 2 shared video/pics/music + and remote programmability to be a cool factor for sure but can't say I remotely recorded a program but two or three times. But now that I have a Wii... ;o)

juberti said...

I returned the Adelphia DVR before I had a chance to measure it, but the Motorola fact sheet for the box (http://broadband.motorola.com/catalog/product_documents/Final%20DCT6400%20Series%20III%20Product%20Data%20Sheet%20524553-001-a.pdf) indicates it consumes between 48 and 55 watts.

Andy said...

That sounds like money saved to me. Good work. On a side note, what Google software products do you work on in Kirkland?