things Tivo can do that other PVRs can't: 1.) scheduling from the web. 2.) TivoToGo 3.) network and stream content from other computers in your house 4.) keyword search for programs. The list goes on, but these are the most important to me. Also, I'm not familiar with other DVRs besides what Comcast provides, and Tivo. I've used both extensively. - Nathan Johns
I don't use any of those features but still love my TiVo. I've heard horror stories from friends who use the cable companies DVR and missed shows because of it malfunctioning. TiVo *never* makes a mistake. It isn't even very expensive when you consider that getting one from the cable company usually costs $10/month anyway. - Benjamin Golub
Ah, thanks for the clarifications. I watch very little TV, so for me the distinctions are minimal (and I don't *want* to know about other awesome programs I should be watching; I want to spend *less* time in front of glowy things :D). - Adam Lasnik
Just remembered, though... I got my parents a Tivo a year ago and they still have 2 years of prepaid service on it. But they just bought an HDTV, and I bought them a non-HDTV Tivo, so they plan to get a DVR via their cable company and move the Tivo into the bedroom (with the older TV). Might it be more cost effective over a few years for them to get a newer HDTV Tivo, since I'm understanding they could use it for both TVs? EDITED TO ADD: Nope, just called Tivo. One box per TV required :( - Adam Lasnik
Adam, for better or worse, my TiVo has helped me be oblivious to most new shows. It's seriously cut down the amount of TV I watch, and every minute is stuff I very much want to see. It's awesome. - Kevin Fox
I definitely watch less TV now too. Because I won't sit and flip through the channels. I also like that I don't feel pressured to watch a show just because it's new and on right this instant...I'll watch it when I feel like it. - Benjamin Golub
Kevin, Benjamin... that's surprising and reassuring :-) - Adam Lasnik
Adam, the most cost effective route is to get the two tuner HD DVR from your Cable provider (usually ~$9.95/mo). What you get via TiVo is a better user interface and the ability to do keyword records. for example, if like Uma Thurman's stalker, you want to record everything with her in it, including appearances on David Letterman, or all movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock you can do that easily via TiVo and won't likely be able to w/your Cable companies DVR. TiVo's interface IS better, but if mostly what you'd do is just get "season's passes" (record all new episodes) of your favorite shows, the cable DVR is the better way to go. - Robert Seidman
Robert, I respectfully disagree, but as a designer I'm probably more finicky about the look and feel of the product. Season passes are nearly all I use my TiVo for but I wouldn't trade it in for a Comcast box if you paid me. I've used my mom's a bunch and she misses shows and generally trusts the experience a great deal less. It's also just not as friendly, more like a RAZR UI than an iPhone (okay, maybe the TiVo's not an *iPhone*, but at least a *Blackberry*). - Kevin Fox
Alas, in this case, Tivo is shooting themselves in the foot. I called them and they said: 1) Can't transfer the remaining 2 years on the prepaid service plan to anything other than a retail box (e.g., can't purchase a web special). 2) Can't use a rebate unless opening a *new* plan. 3) Can't use a Tivo for more than one TV. So given all this and given that my parents basically just do "season pass" stuff, a Tivo is just way too expensive for what they need, and it's clear Tivo doesn't care about loyalty :( - Adam Lasnik
Kevin, I have had a TiVo (or four) since1998, so you're preaching to the choir kinda. But more people are clearly voting for generic DVR due to cost. TiVo's share of the market has dipped to around 20% of all DVRs and it will sink lower. If you have $200 extra to spend AND you don't mind paying 3 years worth in advance to get down to $9.95/mo., then sure -- go TiVo. But many people factor cost into the decision. Most people, really. Edit: including Adam, who apparently was commenting at the same time! - Robert Seidman
If you know your way around Linux and have time for a project, you can build your own open source TiVo for a couple bills and some change. It can do everything a TiVo can do and a whole lot more, as it's infinitely hackable. One year of XML program listings costs $20. Google "mythtv" - Larry Rubin (Socializr)
Adam, as an 8 year TiVo owner I've always had the impression that TiVo is *all about* customer loyalty. You find very few people who have used TiVos and have then ditched them for other PVRs (Robert being somewhat of an outlier), and TiVo's made an effort to let users transfer their lifetime service to new boxes in my experience. TiVo may be more expensive and not for everyone, but it's not at all clear to me that TiVo doesn't care about loyalty. The fact that their market share has gone from 80% to 20% is *far* more a factor of market growth than of people switching away from TiVo, as their quarterly subscriber counts can attest. - Kevin Fox
Kevin, I'm not an outlier, I still use TiVo, but I'm a realist. It's hard to compete with "free" and TiVo is not actually competing very well in terms of adding new subscribers. Edit: *every* quater for like 7 quarters now TiVo has lost more subscribers than it added, though this was due more to DTV bolting from the TiVo deal and not really supporting the existing boxes than a loyalty issue. - Robert Seidman
I happily display an Apple sticker and TiVo sticker on my piece of junk car. - Louis Gray
I was orginally a Replay TV fan, when they went out of business and almost immediately got a TiVo, what my local cable company, Comcast offers doesn't interest me at all. - Kim Landwehr via Alert Thingy
With TiVo, you can now listen to almost any song ever made (thanks to Rhapsody) and watch practically any show ever aired (thanks to Amazon Unbox). These are just two of the many many features TiVo has that are superior to our competition (yes, I work there). Plus it's actually cheaper than most cable offerings -- despite the box being "free" many cable companies charge you a box rental fee, a DVR fee, and additional fees, all of which are add up to something much higher than our service charges. Get TiVo! - Stephen Mack
I couldn't agree more, Kevin. I've been using TiVo since it first came out and cannot live without it. Recently, I got a DirecTV DVR and a Comcast DVR, and I can't believe how completely unusable and crappy they are on so many levels. But you are right, if either of those were my first experience with a DVR, I would never know how so very much better it could be. It is sad to me that TiVo isn't doing better. - Rich Bragg
Only thing to be mindful, however, is to not stoop to Clinton's level and start calling West Virginia irrelavant..... She is, but not the state... - Chris Reed
I don't think this is exactly fair. In West Virginia, the GOP holds a delegate convention, not a primary or a caucus, and it took two rounds of voting before Huckabee was declared a winner. It's generally assumed that there was a back-room deal to decide the victor. Finally, at the time, it wasn't just Huckabee and McCain in the race: Huckabee got 51.5 percent (not 98 percent as your stat might lead one to believe) to Romney's 47.5 percent. Check out http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23... for more info. - Mark Trapp
That said, i do appreciate the spirit in which your tweet was given. - Mark Trapp
Sorry, I don't mean to say that West Virginia is irrelevant, just that its demographic is not overly representative of the nation, and that the statements about 'Democrats having to win West Virginia to win the White House' are simple correlations, not causal correlations. - Kevin Fox
"The Associated Press and television networks projected Clinton as the winner seconds after polls closed, suggesting that surveys that showed her winning by a bruising margin were accurate." Not only that,t he article was written before the polls closed, and was published 4 minutes before the polls closed! - Kevin Fox
Are you drawing our attention to how fast the articles were written? I don't see anything unusual about that. They are doing exit polling all day, and they might have even decided on headlines and stories well before election day, unless something really unusual happened. - Neil Kandalgaonkar
I was more drawing attention to the part where they claim that "the networks called WV for Clinton mere minutes after the polls closed" but they published this claim minutes *before* the polls closed, based on their confidence that the events that they were reporting would come to pass momentarily. - Kevin Fox
To quote a review of the 1980s that I heard a few days before Christmas in 1989, "At year-end, Noriega was still in power." - j1m
posted a message
“I got to use the word 'contrapositive' in a sentence today. It is a good day.”
there are so many other pretty things here too! Kevin, I mean its too late for you this time, but do you really want to give ME more Photoshop how-tos? Please remember your own sanity when giving me toys like this. - Rachel L Fisher
Nice. If you don't see the new UI on your iPhone, scroll to the bottom and click on 'Mobile'. The old UI is now oddly referred to as 'Classic' (not-mobile?) - Kevin Fox
funny that its 'new' but doesn't have the new share with notes feature. Looks great though. Just slightly slower, but I'm on edge right now, not wifi. - Vince DeGeorge
vince I am seeing the notes feature on the main screen -- also running quite a bit faster for me (but on WiFi) - MG Siegler
I can go to the things I've shared and see the notes, I just can't add new items. Ha, between the new reader and FF, I've used 75% of my battery at the airport. - Vince DeGeorge
I'd use it as my desktop browser version if it had j and k built in. - Jordan
Cool but it should be possible to bookmark a particular folder for direct access - Nico Steegmann
@Nico ; actually you can from a full browser but not from mobilesafari - Jonathan Belgourari
@Nico and @Jonathan The current version of Mobile Safari is not great about URLs and history handling (which gets you bookmarking). Things seem to be better with the iPhone SDK simulator, so hopefully with the 2.0 firmware release this summer things will be better everywhere. - Mihai Parparita
posted a message
“It's strange to me that most of the people I'm subscribed to who have private feeds are Googlers, and they are mostly just sharing what they post to their non-private Twitter accounts.”
Yeah, using a Motorola Q Very dangerous. Should be using an iPhone or Hiptop. :) - Chris White
So your point is it would have been better if he'd been wearing a helmet? - j1m
No, if he had been texting on an iPhone - Jim Norris
I wonder if there was more to this, you only have 140 characters remember! Perhaps he also caught fire went through a hoop, landed in a straight jacket, chained up by a masked guy then thrown in a river and finally becomes the masked guy. David Blaine's latest stunt! - Joe
What exactly is indoor skydiving? Just floating over a vertical wind tunnel? - Julian Missig
Basically, although as you get more skilled there's a lot of really cool acrobatic moves you can do. Here's the place we go: http://iflysfbay.com/index.php... - Kevin Fox
I once bungee jumped as research for a story on bungee jumping for the Daily News. Basically, after everyone jumped and all I could get were "I just can't describe it, man" quotes, I just stormed up and had to do it myself. First thought was, "I can't describe this, man." - Chris Reed
Technically every piece of air is sky. So flopping to the ground counts - Ranjit Mathoda
Yeah, I bungee jumped once. One of the scariest things I've ever done but it was a blast. This isn't really scary, but there's a lot of technique to be learned. I'm reminded of HHGTTG's instructions of how to fly: "Throw yourself at the ground and miss." - Kevin Fox
Here is a link to the youtube video of our first time indoor skydiving. If you skip over us learning to near the end you will see our instructor do some amazingly cool things. Hopefully we will learn one or two things that he does. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... - Rachel L Fisher
My group just had an offsite there. Just 2 minutes of flying per person, but packed with fun! - Adam Lasnik
That's cool...how long are the classes for? - Adam Kazwell
I absolutely love skydiving. Only 20 jumps under my belt, but enough to be certified. It's essentially that feeling you get on your hand when you stick it outside the car at 70+ MPH - all over your entire body. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
Mark: thats pretty much what the chamber is like too, and it turned out that Kevin and I were the only ones signed up for today, so we had a half hour of fly time between us. I flew at least 12 minutes and oh my god are my arms tired!!! It was really fun though. - Rachel L Fisher
12 minutes - wow, I can only imagine what that's like. Most jumps that I've been on only last a fraction of that time (at least the falling part). The wonderful part about it is that each time it is a new and different experience. I'll never forget the first time I overcame the nigh-overpowering urge for self-preservation and stepped out onto the wing of that battered Cesna. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
Thats the part I'm not sure I could do. I prefer the feeling of flying up rather than falling down even though the actual sensation is basically the same. We didn't fly 12 minutes straight luckily, Kevin and I took turns but by my last couple of turns I kept loosing my form because I was too tired. - Rachel L Fisher
A lot of skydivers will tell you it's the best feeling in the world. It isn't that, truthfully. What it is, is something that will change forever how you view challenges in life. They say that everytime you jump out of an airplane, you're 'saving you're own life.' That's true, and if you're able to overcome the fear of jumping from a "perfectly good airplane," then doing <insert scary thing here> should be a breeze. In that, it is sincerely lifechanging. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
I have sky dived before, and I must say that iFly is a very different experience. Most notably, in iFly you don't have the sensation of free falling, which is extremely scary or thrilling depending on your point of view. - Thai Tran
"Sweeheart-
Remember the rule. Don’t bring home anything you can’t wash off. That should cover it.
Love,
Mom" -- I love this site. Every now and then a real gem comes through. - Kevin Fox
