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Review 3 of 14
Price Paid:
$200.00
from Sony Outlet Summary:
I love my TiVo!
HOWEVER... I bought the unit at the Sony Outlet, and it was supposed to be refurbished. That did not bother me, beacuse the "price was right". Well, I opened the box at my aunt's house in Wisconsin, about 10 minutes from the outlet. The unit was missing its power cord. No big deal, I just drove back to the outlet and got a new one. I then hooked it up to a TV at my aunt's house, and everything SEEMED to work fine. I packed the unit up and hauled it back to Maryland.
I got it back to Maryland, hooked it up in my room to my Sony STR-D915 receiver (not the STR-D*E*915 that everyone has problems with). I hooked the unit up, started to use it. The remote would only work up to two feet from the unit. I lived with that for about a week, then decided to take it to a local Best Buy store.
After Best Buy got the unit back from Sony, I went to pick it up. Aparently the local Best Buy store in Annapolis lost the remote control. I picked the unit up on September 3, 2002. Best Buy still has only partially reimbursed me for the cost of the remote as of 12/30/02. That is even with a complaint to the Better Business Bureau and the Maryland Attorney General's Office. I never will be shopping Best Buy again!
Once I got a new remote (in Late November), I went ahead and tested it out. Everything works fine. So I purchase the TiVo lifetime subscription. I love it. But the cost of the subscription is really too damn high.
In mid-December, I got digital cable through Comcast. We were provided with Motorola boxes. I hooked the TiVo up to the box, as shown in the instructions. Well, I don't know if the Digital Cable Box was bad, or the connection to the serial port on the box caused it to go bad, but my Digital Cable box went bad within 24 hours. So I hooked the TiVo up to another cable box, and it has worked flawlessly. However, with the setup I am using, I can't let the TiVo record one station and watch another station. That's a disapointment. I need to split the cable signal up and just not use the digital cable box to tune the TiVo.
As far as picture quality, At "best quality" its about the same as a recording at LP on my Proscan PSVR65 VCR. At medium quality, it is the same as EP on my VCR, and in low quality, its terrible. So generally it is left at the medium or high quality setting. I have my TiVo outputs hooked to my STR-D915 receiver, then to my JVC 27" 27550 TV. When the TiVo was hooked directly to my parents Panasonic HDTV monitor, the picture was better. But still the same, relative, to my ProScan VCR Strengths:
Flexible timing options, no need to load tapes, instant deleting, ability to "pause" a live TV show, remote is easy to use, Weaknesses:
Remote sensor on a Refurbished unit went bad, I was told the hard drive was going bad by Best Buy when I had the unit fixed, high cost of TiVo subscription, May have fried my Digital Cable box. Similar Products Used:
Sony SLV-595HF VHS VCR
Proscan PSVR65 VHS VCR
Toshiba V-685 VHS VCR
Toshiba Betamax VCR
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