TiVo TCD540080 Series 2 80-Hour Digital Video Recorder

This is the best thing I've ever bought for my husband. No longer do we have to watch him flip through channels, searching for a show to watch. We never miss a favorite program, the children are restricted to shows that we have approved, there's ALWAYS something to watch! In fact, I can't remember the last time we've watched 'live t.v.'.

Just like a computer is useless without the programing, the TIVo DVR is useless without the TIVo Service and your programing source. TIVo allows a person to save programs you might want to view and lets you view them when you want.
Negatives:
Used with Dish Network requires a signal from the Dishnet control after its daily update and TIVo doesn't give this signal.

TIVo works with IR controlled Dish/cable boxes, and Dish Network has dual tuner box with one tuner IR and the other radio controlled, TIVo will only control the IR controlled tuner.

If you use either the DW6000 or DW7000 satellite modems and don't have a land-line telephone, DO NOT BUY TIVO! Despite what their website advertises, tivo series 2 DVRs cannot get programming updates over satellite internet. Tivo blames Hughesnet, and vice-versa. Tivo Customer Support is so bad I would put it in the same category with direcway/hughesnet. Calling is a waste of your time. They do not care. Tivo wouldn't offer me a refund after advanced technical support promised to extend my warranty until their engineering dept could provided an upcoming patch. When the patch failed to fix anything, they told me to change my Internet provider(like I could if I wanted to) or that I was simply out of luck. They offered to cancel my tivo service, but no refund. Amazing ineptitude.

When DVRs work they are really cool. But buyer beware. There must be better DVRs out there. I sure hope so....

For a short while, I loved my Tivo. But, then one day it just stopped communicating. I called Tivo and after an hour on the phone, they determined that the modem must have gone bad. It hasn't moved, wasn't jostled - ok whatever. So, since my 90 days was up, I had to pay another $49.00 and they sent a REFURBISHED machine that only has a 30 day warranty. And when I went to hook that Tivo up, it won't go past the powering up screen. So, I have to get yet another refurbished machine. What a pain. I checked out the message boards on the tivo site and it seems lots and lots of people have the same problem. I would just get the dvr feature from your cable company or satellite - not Tivo.

We purchased TIVO for its legendary ease of use, but set-up and use have not been what we expected. Using the recording devices on our satellite and cable boxes was easier than using TIVO. Also, TIVO had an annoying habit of "recommending" programs while we were in the midst of watching TV - we had to search around to figure out how to disable that feature. Finally, now we need two remotes - one for TIVO, the other for the cable box - when we want to record programming. When our subscription expires, we will likely use our cable recording device or purchase recordable DVR.