Need advice from TIVO users.

[JLiebCamm]

DH and I have decided to splurge and buy TiVo, but I need help deciding between the 40 and 80 hour units. We don't seem to watch enough TV to make the 80 hour unit necessary for the extra $100, but I don't want to be sorry that I didn't get it later on. If it helps, my vision of what will go on TiVo in any given week would be The Daily Show, 1 or 2 sitcoms, 2 or 3 children's shows, and 2 or 3 HBO movies. We have a DVD recorder so I figure if TiVo gets too full we can transfer things to disks. Any thoughts or advice on our purchse?

[Melanie]

I think we've got a 35 and it's okay. We don't use it to permanently save things, but if you wanted to keep movies on it for a long time you might want one that is bigger. We have a ton of subscriptions on there and there is still a little big of room for their suggestions as well. It's plenty for us and for the price. Like you, we just couldn't see paying so much more.

[iluvmy2boys]

I personally would go for the 80hour unit. But that's because we record shows for the kids ALL the time as well as save any movies that we get off of PPV. We also have 9 TV shows that we watch a week (when they're on) so we need the space.

HTH

[egoldber]

Definitely 80 hours! We have about that on our PVR (through our satellite service) and we routinely use about half of that space. When we go on vacation it gets almost full! Also, when the disk space gets close to capacity ours starts to act a little flaky.

And you will get absolutely addicted to watching TV commercial-free! We never watch anything live now. We record things and watch them later. Even if something is on right now that we want to watch, we'll wait 20 minutes just so we can skip through the commercials while watching!

And I adore having a "library" of stuff for DD to watch recorded. I have about 10-20 episodes of her fav shows recorded. Yes, I could move things to tape or DVD (and have), but frankly it is MUCH more convenient to watch them from the PVR. No rewinding tapes, no swapping DVDs, etc. It is soooo convenient!

HTH,

[JenCA]

I have a real love/hate relationship with our TiVo. I love it because we can watch commercial free t.v., and I hate it because I honestly believes it makes us watch MORE t.v. than we ever did before we had TiVO. Anyway...we went with the 40 hour unit, and have found that it's more than adequate for our needs.

[713abc]

We watch a lot of tv - record on average about 4 shows a day. But, we still find that the 40 hours is more than enough. We don't record and permanently save any childrens shows on it yet, though we will probably do that when DS gets older.

The key is to record on Basic or Medium quality (not Best, which is the default) and that saves a ton of room.

Enjoy - you will LOVE tivo.

[KMommie]

This is really bad! I just asked DH which one we have...and we "upgraded" to 120 hours. Basically, he and one of his friends took another hard drive and "upgraded" it, switched out the hard drives. We really are addicted to it. We almost never watch live tv anymore. We currently have about 40 hours on there, watch about 5 shows a week, plus a couple of movies. When we go on vacation, it's nice to know we won't run out of space or feel like we have to catch up right away when we return.

Jeannie
mommy to Kiki 4/18/03

[JLiebCamm]

Thanks for all your advice! We decided on the 40 hour unit although I'm already second guessing myself. I've seen the internet sites about "upgrading" and figure that my tech savvy brother can help us do that if needed. Now comes the installation nightmare. We're trying to hook it up through our home theater system and can't seem to get audio output. We're also running it through our DVD recorder which is probably complicating matters. DH is getting pretty cranky! Wish us luck.