The greatest consumer electronics device since the invention of the television? Probably. A recent report in the Sunday Times reported that it cost the average Briton £45 for an hour of spare time.
That was calculated by things like the cost and time of a take away compared to a home cooked meal, or getting someone to do your gardening or laundry. Well here is a way to be liberated for ever from the TV schedules! Never wait for a news program, never miss an episode of a favourite series, catch every documentary on your favourite hobby without lifting a finger. Forget 999 channels and nothing on, there is one channel and it is made up solely of what you watch, it is TiVo's "Now Playing" list. Archiving around 20 hours of high quality TV on its' internal hard disk (more if you upgrade) TiVo searches listings downloaded by telephone overnight for the next episode of the series you are watching without further intervention. It will then record this (or another showing if there is a clash) and place it in your own personal TV channel. If ain't in Now Playing, it ain't worth watching, so Why Don't You Just Switch Off Your Television Set And Go And Do Something Less Boring Instead as we were once urged. Comparisons to Sky+? There aren't any. Both use a hard disk and that's about it. Whilst Sky+ is aimed at the bottom feeding end of the market where a family watches 32 hours of television a day and records at the same time as watching Sky (I have still to find one program worth watching on a Murdoch channel), TiVo is aimed squarely at the discerning ABC1 market where time is valuable and quality is prized above quantity. The software in the boxes is like comparing a Mercedes Maybach with a 1970s Austin Allegro, but the difference here is the inferior Murdoch product will cost hundreds and hundreds of pounds more over the next five years.
Purchased via and more details at http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=14