Thanks guys. I guess I'm going with the cable company.

Tim

Was a sales manager for Circuit City for a while so I can wade in on the differences. Tivo has a few different features, the biggest one is called Season Pass. Basically if you like a show you can tell Tivo to record every single episode of the show no matter when or what channel it comes on. You can also set it to record only new shows or both new ones and repeats. Somebody correct me if I am wrong but I believe you have to set the cable DVR whenever u want to record something. You can also search shows or movies by actor, title, genre basically anything you want to. You have to be careful with the lifetime subscription for Tivo though because last time I checked it was the life of the unit so if it went (hard drives go out in DVRs quite frequently) your fee was gone.

Basically Tivo is great if you are lazy. Set it and forget it. It will record every episode of whatever forever. I have Tivo, but i have a Directv and it is only like 3.95 a month.

Hope this helps!

If it does do all the thinkin for ya then really no reason to get Tivo for a cable TV customer.
It is more expensive and really no significant difference. One thing u may want to look into is see if they have one with two tuners so u can record a show and watch another channel, or record two shows at once. If it only has one tuner and it recording something U cant watch anything else.

I got TiVo when it 1st came out. I got the lifetime subscription for $200 and that was about 5-6 years ago. At that time it was lifetime subscription...not life of the unit. So obviously Ive already gotten my moneys wirth and I never have to pay again.

TimeWarner's has two tuners and also has the season pass equivalent. I'm guessing they all do nowadays. If you google around you can probably find out who makes your cable company's box and what its features are.

A couple things it doesn't do that TiVo does are 30 second skip ahead, and suggestions based on what you record. I don't really need the suggestions, but I'd definitely use 30 second skip if I had it.

Let me say this....I dont care which one you get but GET ONE OF THEM!!!

Jesus, these things are the greatest invention since the wheel. There is so many good things about DVRs that i cant list them all. My favorite thing, which most people probably dont even think about, is that I can TiVo an hour long show and watch it in 40 mins.

Thats 20 more mins to play poker instead of watch commercials. I dont even like watching live TV anymore because I cant fast forward.

Yeah definitely. The worst is when you forget that you're watching live TV, and you go to fast foward but you can't.

Okay I'm getting it. I didn't realize that I was THAT behind the times. Geez. Hey, what's this "sex" thing everyone's talking about. Is that worth it?