Tv Program Schedule | The Best HD Video Equipment

TiVo TCD658000 HD XL DVR

By admin on Saturday, November 29, 2008

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Filled Under: HD Video Accessories

TIVO TCD658000 TIVO(R) HD XL DVRUP TO 150 HOURS OF HD SHOWS WITH 1 TERABYTE OF STORAGE;THX(R) CERTIFIED FOR EXCEPTIONAL SOUND and VIDEO QUALITY;PAUSE LIVE TV, PLUS REWIND, SLOW MOTION and INSTANT REPLAY ANY CHANNEL, ANY TIME; DOWNLOAD MOVIES and TV SHOWS FROM THE WEB, STREAM MUSIC, WATCH YOUTUBE(TM) ON TIVO(R) and MORE*;*BROADBAND INTERNET CONNECTION REQUIRED

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Calling it a DVR just isn’t doing it justice
This is the ultimate video recording device with software that is simply unrivaled in the industry. The box itself offers huge capacity which you always want in a Tivo as you can never have enough space. If you’ve never owned/used Tivo, you won’t regret dumping your cable DVR to experience this. Whatever small stuff is wrong with this unit or the software is disproportionately outweighed by everything that is great about it.

5 Stars kicks butt
A perfect companion to television. Plenty of storage in HD. Easy to use and set up. I have been with tivo since 2000 and this is a nice upgrade to the original.

2 Stars TiVo – Love / Hate Relationship
Ok – here goes !

First – The Love:

* TiVo’s best feature- its great being able to watching programs on “your” schedule and not the “TV program” schedule.

* Skipping thru the junk and commercials is heaven.

You can watch 2 or 3 programs using TiVo in the same time you watch

one live show.

* Menus are easy to use and it’s “smart” ! TiVo can find your programs, advise if you have recording conflicts, has a program recommendation feature based on your preferences, can download movies from Amazon and Netflix, watch You Tube, and a whole list of great feature that is growing.

* Dual channel HD is very nice and Tivo is addictive !

It will drive you nuts to have to watch a “live” program once your use to Tivo and you will soon be buying another unit once the other family members horde in on “your TiVo” – lol.

Now the Hate:

* DO NOT purchase the lifetime subscription service !!

Unless you’re a addicted gambler or a fool – there is a very very good chance you will be parted from a huge (400.00) chunk of your wallet. The service subscription is for the life of the “unit” and

— TiVo reliability is abysmal !!! —

Some research on diff web forums as well as TiVo’s 30 day replacement (no charge) and 1 yr limited replacement (min of 40.00 charge) will attest to the this.

* I bought 2 TiVo HD units and both have failed in the first year. I have read a lot of reviews about folks having units for years with no problems – but beware..

there are also a LOT of units that have had problems, been replaced multiple times, and or just become useless after the 1 year limited warranty is up.

* And if you are thinking – Wow what a great rebate !

O-boy… another disaster ! Several calls to customer service, rebate service, tech service, and the janitor and you may finally get it. Let me know cause I’m still waiting.

As much as I love the Tivo when its working,

I would not recommend this unit to anyone due to very lousy warranty and reliability. And PLEASE don’t get sucked into buying a “lifetime” Tivo subscription unless you like just love to gamble or waste money !!!

4 Stars MythTV fan loves TiVo

I’ve been using MythTV (open source settop box) for about two years now but with the digital broadcast switchover, my box is no longer going to function as a tuner so I turned to TiVo as the cheaper alternative to rebuilding an entirely new system.

PROS

TiVo is an appliance. You plug it in, connect it to your TV (I use HDMI) and network the device. Thats it. SIMPLE. This has a high “wife usage” factor which pleases me greatly. The remote is very intuitive and easy to use. Even my 5 year old has figured it out

The User Interface (UI) is decent. It’s not perfect but it is intuitive. Recording a program has never been easier. Just hit the red record button and its done.

The XL has a TeraByte of storage. WOW! Thats a lot of HD shows to record. You could basically do the entire Olypics in one shot!

CONS

No commercial skip. Gross. MythTV had a commercial detection system that would accurately skip ALL commercials from every show. It’s WEAK that TiVo does not employ this method to their product. In fact, there is nothing but “fast forward” to skip commercials. That sucks. This is a big drawback for me. I was so spoiled of commercial free TV for so many years that this makes it very difficult to go back to.

The UI is not perfect. Looking up programs on a remote is tough. Looking up programs using a non qwerty ABC grid that is only 4 columns wide is horrific. C’mon! Seriously? I would rate this 3 stars if it were not for the fact that you could use the web to establish program recording.

It is difficult for me to upload my family movies to this thing. They should make the interface easier to get to when uploading home movies. I know it can be done but using a 3rd party web site to upload my flicks only for them to download back to my machine is wasteful. Plus now this 3rd party has copies of my personal videos. TiVo needed to have a network “jail” portion of the disk that allows access to the drive via the network using file sharing protocols found on all of our computers. Or perhaps a “custom” USB thumb drive that works only with TiVo to transfer video files.

Overall, TiVo is a good appliance. It’s ease of use and setup makes it a good product.

It gets 4 stars though because it is not perfect. Perfect is MythTV which is FREE to obtain and has NO monthly fees with MORE functionality. It just required more system resources on a computer than I happened to have budgeted for so TiVo was the better alternative for this year.

Two years from now, I promise I will be dumping TiVo for MythTV once I get a rocking computer set up but that is another story and review.

5 Stars Tivo knocks it out of the box!
I upgraded my TiVo TCD648250B Series3 HD Digital Media Recorder recorder to this one. I was very happy with my series 3 but due to a lighning strike I was able to get a new one. That being said I really like this one more than my old one. My older series 3 was a very good tivo but could not hold the amount of HD content as this one. I could only get 35-40 hours on my old one.

If you are comparing both you should go with this one. The reason is that this one holds up to 150 hours! You may think you would never fill that up but just realize that once February rolls around there will be even more HD content out there.

This model does NOT support satellite, so be careful BEFORE you order.

Save up to 150 hours of HD programming at one time. I use it with Time Warner Cable and 2 cable cards. Until switched video becomes the norm I am unable to get all of the HD channels. I am assured that this will not be an issue come February. I’ll update this review later once this time comes.

I have my 10baseT (ethernet) directly connected to my router. This allows for faster movie downloads, updates and searches. Youtube looks awesome considering the low quality of the source.

Specs:

TV signal sources: digital and analog cable, digital and analog antenna. Satellite NOT supported.

Replaces your cable box using one or more CabeCARD decoders available from your cable company.

Video output modes:

*480i 640×480 (vga)

*480p 704×480 (svga)

*720p 720×1280 (a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9, a vertical resolution of 720 pixels and a horizontal resolution of 1280 pixels for a total of 921,600 pixels)

*1080i (a high-definition television (HDTV) video mode. The term usually assumes a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9, implying a horizontal resolution of 1920 pixels and a frame resolution of 1920