TiVo on your PC is cool, but there are kinks to fix

ByABC News
October 8, 2008, 10:46 PM

— -- The folks at TiVo once scolded me for using TiVo as a verb, as in "I TiVoed last night's game." The company is vigilant about protecting its trademark. It's a worse faux-pas if suggesting you've TiVoed something on a Windows Media Center or other PC. No computer-based digital video recorder is an actual TiVo.

That's about to change with this month's arrival of the Nero LiquidTV TiVo PC from TiVo and the German company Nero. It will be the first time a TiVo DVR has been fully integrated into a PC. I've been testing exceedingly buggy late-stage "beta" versions of the Nero software on two roughly 1½-year-old Windows Vista PCs. The software frequently froze or was unstable.

The prospect of a TiVo on your PC is likely to jazz fans of the service accustomed to the friendly interface and search features. And the required TiVo service is free, at least for the first year. That said, for most potential buyers, the LiquidTV TiVo isn't so much a replacement for a stand-alone TiVo set-top box as much as a possible complement.

As with other software-based DVRs such as SnapStream Media's Beyond TV program, you can watch, schedule, record and pause live TV on your PC; LiquidTV doesn't work with Macs. But Nero includes the familiar TiVo interface and electronic programming guide, plus many other TiVo features. These include suggestions on what to watch based on your viewing habits, the Season Pass feature for automatically recording favorite series, parental controls and the "WishList" feature which helps you find programs based on an actor's name or other criteria.

A familiar TiVo remote control is included, too, at least as part of the $200 LiquidTV retail package. Nero also provides the option of controlling everything on the screen with your keyboard and mouse, through convenient onscreen toolbars.

Some TiVo features are missing, though, including links to Amazon Video On Demand and YouTube. Of course, you can already get to those on your computer.

If you have another TiVo in your house, you can use the Nero software to transfer shows via your home network to the PC with LiquidTV. So you can start watching, say, on the TiVo in your living room and resume watching on your laptop when you've retired to the bedroom.