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David is an occasional blogger, software engineer, Nintendo fanboy, liberal, news magazine addict, voracious TiVo user, and bibliophile. He was born in St. Louis, grew up in southern Indiana, and returned to St. Louis to attend Washington University. He hasn't managed to escape yet. He's a fan of free wine tastings, too many tv shows to name, and eating out. David makes his living developing web applications used internally by his employer. He doesn't blog about work because he's heard too many stories about that causing workplace troubles. There's more on the about page. |
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26 January 2003 - 2:11 am
The big news here at apartment 12 is the purchase of a replay tv device. I've already successfully recorded a show, and I'm fairly pleased with it, but there are a few quirks. The most noticeable thing is the change it induces in television watching habits. Because there is a delay of a few seconds when changing channels, much like you see if you have digital cable, I'm less inclined to switch between channels and watch two shows, which isn't my normal tendency.
My only real complaint is that you can't change channels when recording programs. At least that's what I think the on-screen message said. This seems odd, because the system should be able to split the cable into two signals, record one and let me watch the other. I guess the issue comes from trying to write both signals to disk (so I can pause live tv), but you'd think they'd just let you browse with limited functionality while recording, or something.
The trade-off is that having an interactive tv listing is almost worth the price of admission by itself. Once you've spun through the channel listing at your own pace, getting episode information and everything you'd like to know about the shows currently playing, you'll never want to watch the tv guide channel again.
All things considered, I give the replay tv a qualified recommendation. And if I can figure out how to record one show and watch another, I'll change that to an unqualified recommendation.
Posted by on 26 January 2003 at 2:11 AM
Comments
We have tivo at my parents' home in Milwaukee. It's excellent and I recommend it to any avid couch potato, or anyone who likes to control their own TV-watching schedule.
The model we have works with DirecTV and has two tuners. Thus you can watch a pre-recorded show and record two others simultaneously, or any less compilated combination of watching and recording. I'd think that with a single tuner version you should be able to record one and watch another.
Posted by Adam on 26 January 2003 - 11:36 PM
We figured out how to watch one show and record another. We jsut have to treat the replay tv like a VCR and switch to the TV's tuner when it is recording something.
Posted by david on 28 January 2003 - 5:25 PM