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To: Z Analyzer who wrote (1401)	12/1/1999 11:03:00 PM
From: Mark Oliver	Respond to of 1487

My experience with Tivo. I bought it at Fry's, the big computer discounter in San Jose. They said they sold quite a lot of them. I also bought an emachine computer for 299.00 with no rebates. I set up the computer first. That was pretty easy. Then I set up the Tivo player and that was harder. We have a DSS sat system, which means we have a set top box and a VCR on the TV. It all connects together, but the VCR is pretty old and missed some feature which might make it all work on one remote. There's a connector called S-video, which seemed to make the connections better, but they should have had 2 with the system. I guess they assumed I'd have one. It took me about 1 hour to get it all together. It was 1 am, Saturday night when I finished. Then I needed to get it to do some software stuff. I entered some things through the set up and then the system needs to use the phone for over an hour. They recommend you do this before going to be. I got up the next day and it didn't work. I called the Tivo support Sunday morning and they were there, but couldn?t help me. Then someone called back. They ran through some things and discovered the OS on this box was old. Needed to down load a new one. That never seemed to work. Finally, I talked to someone and I asked him to check the connections with me and we discovered a cable in the wrong place. It worked then. It's in the same state today. People were suppose to call me back, but never did. I haven't bothered because I planned to return it anyway. If the OS were up dated, it might be better. I expected it to record programs I want by selection, but it's not doing this. Don't know why for sure. It is cool when you watch a program and then put it on pause. Stops the live broadcast and starts time shift. Then, you can go forward and back. The pause is a perfect snap shot. When forwarding through commercials, it's not so good. Problem, you never seem to be time shifted when they come. Can change that. So, if there are commercials, you need to pause the program from the start and then do something else until you have enough time to shift past the commercials in front of you. Does that make sense? When you do shift past commercials, it's not really clean. You often miss the start of the program. It's a silly thing. They don't just shift to the start even though you know they could. It's a way of kissing butt to the broadcasters. I also have a problem that it doesn?t recognize all my channels. So, I miss out on watching some channels. Pay movie channels. That's bad. I had hoped they would call me to correct this, but never did. The OS is still not corrected. So, in the end, I just use it to pause, and fast forward on programs I am currently watching. Cool, but not worth $500. Good thing is the Tivo remote seems to be good. Seems to miss the prev channel button, but I like that it operates my TV and the Tivo box. I could have a signal remote if my VCR were newer. I think the issue of too many remotes is a worry I'm glad to see is solved. Also, they say you have 14 hours record time, but that?s not 14 hours of top quality recording. High quality recording is something like 3 or 4 hours. I think the machine is a good first effort. If I weren?t here for 3 months, I'd keep it. I was also glad to buy it because I made 10K off the stock in the first 3 days it traded. I don't think I will buy the stock again, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it go well. I think it will also be interesting to see the integration of these devices in set top boxes and TV's. Also, we should see Jini bring all these entertainment devices together running off a central home server. Remember also that Tivo is not a hardware play. They will make or break on their ability to sell services. Currently, they sell for $10 a month, but they probably sell more people on the year and life memberships. The guy at the place said they would probably offer to upgrade systems in the future. Bring in the box and trade it for one with a bigger hard drive. I should think they could expand their service to include music downloads. They'll probably go to specialized commercials, and maybe even a FatBrain like download of specialty videos? Regards, Mark