Re: General TiVo Discussion Part 2
I had TiVo installed a few hours ago. Thought I'd throw my twopenneth worth in regarding my initial findings.
First up, installation took about 1 hour 20 minutes. Engineer superb, never left until everything working, didn't appear to be rushing and seemed knowledgable.
First impressions of TiVo is that it is an excellent bit of kit and much much better than V+ box. Having read so many posts on forums about people having problems I was seriously questioning whether to let the install go ahead or if I should cancel it until bugs have been ironed out. So far, I have to say I am delighted I went ahead with it. Really excited about what the future holds with updates, additional apps etc.
PQ was a big worry. But I have to say that those worries were pretty much unfounded. The SD picture is definitely a little softer, but I mean a little. It does not make the picture unwatchable and after a couple of days viewing, I'm sure I'll forget there is a difference to my old SA V+ PQ. Admittedly, I haven't watched many programmes from SD channels that I would during the course of the week yet, but have flicked through various SD channels and not encountered any picture that caused me any distress. Was watching a lot of Soccer Saturday on SSN and it was very watchable indeed. The text was not quite as sharp as the old SA V+, but only a marginal difference.
Haven't watched HD too much yet, but what I did look at the picture quality looked a little better than the SA V+, at worse it was exactly the same. The only gripe I have is that on my TV I have a settings option of "HDMI Black Enhancement", which worked with the SA V+ connected, but doesn't work with TiVo connected. But it's no major issue as I have a separate "Black level" options, which does a similar thing.
The menus look great. Love the background colour too. Much easier to read the menu's than the jet black background of V+. Menu's in general are much more responsive than the V+ too. The pause between switching channels that existed on the V+ is present on TiVo and at times I felt this was slightly worse, but it could be due to my box downloading stuff having only been installed so recently. Even if it isn't it's not a major thing.
Suggestions, wishlists etc seem like great functions. Can't make too much of a comment on them until a couple of weeks of using them, seeing what is being recorded etc.
Any gripes I have at the moment are very minor things that may be just me being too picky or they simply don't spoil the enjoyment of what is a far superior STB than V+HD. And will probably be fixed anyway. One such gripe is the way you have to enter text in seach menu's etc (navigating a grid of letters with the arrow keys). The installer said that they would be releasing a new remote with a flip up keyboard attached, but didn't know when this would be - so that would be useful if true.
Overall, I'm very, very impressed with my TiVo based on the first few hours use and can already see why so many people are saying they could never go back to V+ after this. I couldn't even go back to using Sky+HD (even with all their extra HD channels) despite the fact I felt their box was better than V+. As long as VM can continually improve the box and increase the apps then they are on to a real winner IMHO.
Sorry if this post is too long and boring.
Time for something to eat, then more TiVo play time...:D
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