The Good and Bad of a Souped-Up TiVo

March 1, 2004 -- One of Amazon's most popular technology books last month was Hacking TiVo.

The book's enormous popularity intrigues me because of what it says about TiVo digital video recorders: 1) Geeks love TiVo; and 2) Many of these same gadget-happy TiVo owners are not satisfied with TiVo in its off-the-shelf incarnation.

I've spent many envious minutes listening to people talk about TiVo-ing their favorite shows, and I've wanted to get in on the action for quite some time. I'm also aware that many people think TiVo needs upgrading — myself included.

With that in mind, I turned to WeaKnees.com, a TiVo upgrade and parts company. WeaKnees.com takes TiVo Series 2 systems, and throws in another hard drive, bumping up the storage capacity from 80 hours (at lowest visual quality) to as many as 320 hours.

Heavy-Duty Guts

The unit WeaKnees.com loaned me actually has two 120GB drives (the company offers a number of configuration options). WeaKnees.com also adds an extra fan or two, depending on the model, as well as a fan bracket. The combo is known as the TwinBreeze and Advanced Cooling Pak. It's designed to keep WeaKnees.com's "TiVo on steroids" cooler than standard models. According to WeaKnees.com, the fans are quieter than those in a standard TiVo.

There's also a PowerTrip Supply Saver, which delays the spin-up time of both drives so that the factory-installed 38-watt TiVo power supply can still support the drives — a pretty neat trick.

The WeaKnees.com upgrade machine costs about $558 — a worthwhile proposition and one that is certainly preferable to trying to upgrade TiVo myself. After all, opening the TiVo case voids the company warranty. WeaKnees.com takes over the TiVo warranty and extends it by another three months.

A Positive Spin?

WeaKnees.com outfitted my unit with Samsung Spinpoint hard drives, but future systems will have Maxtor QuickView hard drives — the same drives used in a number of competing PVR/DVRs, such as Hughes and Philips. Interestingly, when the WeaKnees.com folks initially described the expanded unit they were sending me, they characterized the Spinpoint drives as "…more reliable than the factory TiVo drives. In addition, the Spinpoints are exceptionally quiet."

In announcing the deal with Maxtor, the company characterized the same drives this way "… and previously we have used standard desktop drives in our upgrades, which are acceptable, but not ideal. Maxtor has now agreed to make these drives available to us, which we expect to improve the reliability and performance of our products."

Of course, there's nothing wrong with putting the best spin on product line changes. Every company does it. However, in my opinion, the elevation of TiVo to cultural icon status has allowed some facts about the device to become somewhat mythologized. Don't get me wrong: TiVo and, in particular, the WeaKnees.com unit, are great. I just want to get past the hype and focus on the real TiVo.

After two-plus months with the WeaKnees.com Expanded TiVo Series 2, here's what I've learned, what I love, and what surprising discoveries I've made.

What's to Love

You won't miss a thing: The single best thing — in my opinion — about TiVo is that you can pause or stop movies and your favorite shows to eat dinner, take a phone call or make a bathroom run, then pick right up where you left off. This is because the program is stored on a hard drive (in my case, two). You can fast-forward through the recorded commercials and catch back up to real time. (Actually, you're always a few seconds off since TiVo records before it shows, resulting in a short time delay.)

Season pass: I love the idea of recording entire seasons of my favorite shows with what TiVo calls a "Season Pass." TiVo even skips repeats and recognizes when shows are expanded beyond their normal playing times (a super-sized Will and Grace, for example).

Network ready: TiVo Series 2 is network-ready. That's great news for wired and wireless environments. There's no Ethernet port, but you can use an external USB device like the one WeaKnees.com included with my unit. Configuring the TiVo environment to work with your existing network can be straightforward if you've already configured your own home network.

What's Not to Love

Another remote: No one is happy that I've introduced yet another remote control into our household, and one that we must use if we want to watch television with the TiVo. The remote is a bit on the large side, and some buttons are a little oddly placed. I find myself hunting for the volume and channel controls every time I use it, and while the "Pause Television" button is huge, the "Play" button is relatively tiny.

This is a bigger problem than it may seem. Because the show control buttons are sized arbitrarily and aren't that intuitive, you run the risk of losing the program you're watching.

For example, my wife and I were watching a show and had to stop it for an extended period of time. No problem. We paused TiVo, and it recorded until we were ready to resume watching. But when we accidentally changed channels on the remote, we lost the recorded show. This is because real-time recording can only happen on one channel at a time, and TiVo automatically records the active channel. TiVo, or even WeaKnees.com, should add a "Channel Lock" button or function.

Monthly bill: I don't like receiving yet another monthly bill. If you want your programming information and TiVo system updates, you have to subscribe to the service, which is roughly $12 a month. Thanks to Cablevision, I already pay enough to watch TV. Do I love TiVo enough to pay more? No.

Image quality: TiVo is great, but it's not magic. To record shows on the fly and stay just seconds ahead of what you're viewing on the screen, MPEG-3 compression is used. The resulting quality is good, but not perfect.

During the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Katie Couric's face looked like a patchwork quilt. TiVo was attempting to compensate for the marching band in the background; as a result everything else was degraded. Action movies and cartoons can be unwatchable. (When I spoke to a representative at WeaKnees.com, I was asked to verify that I was recording at "Best Quality," which I was.)

Compression techniques are always improving, so I do expect this problem to disappear eventually, especially with HDTV units in the pipeline. And I'm sure many people don't mind the somewhat-reduced image quality.

Too helpful: TiVo can be a tad too helpful. It watches what you watch and then records shows it thinks you will like based on your viewing history. I selected "What's Playing on TiVo" in the TiVo interface and found dozens of recorded shows that I had no interest in watching.

You can, of course, use TiVo as a VCR and have it record scheduled shows (and it does a much, much better job than your standard VCR). But I never really did that with my VCR and have done it exactly once with the TiVo (for a late night showing of Silent Movie).

More noise: It's not loud, but when my TV is off, I can hear the TiVo running, even with the WeaKnees.com advanced "quieter" cooling system installed. I've gotten used to the hum, but I already have enough noise pollution in my life. Again, advances in chip manufacturing and cooling systems could make fans obsolete eventually.

Not so network ready: The fact that the TiVo Series 2 is network-ready is a huge deal; without network connectivity, you'd have to hook up to your phone line and dial into the TiVo service every two weeks. Unfortunately, I had a bear of a time getting a wireless bridge to recognize the network and connect the TiVo.

It turns out that TiVo supports just a scant few wireless access points and adapters (you can't install drivers yourself, and you need to hook up to the TiVo service to get new software and driver updates). Hooking up to my network via standard cabling was not an option because the cable modem resides in my basement. I ended up using the 25-foot phone cable to connect the TiVo to my nearest phone jack. WeaKnees.com did offer to send me a wireless modem jack that lets you connect a phone to any electrical outlet.

I just keep thinking about what the average TiVo user will encounter.

It's not just the act of hooking up to the network that's difficult. If you don't access the service for more than two weeks, TiVo forgets everything, including which shows to record. In fact, it can no longer recognize shows. (Usually, TiVo supplies an information box as you channel-surf that tells you what you're watching and what the particular episode is about.)

Waiting for the Future

Here's something else I learned during my TiVo experience: I don't love TV enough to want TiVo or the service. If I miss an episode of Friends, I'm not crushed. If I have to watch something for a few moments to figure out what it is, I'm OK with that.

TiVo is a revolution, or at least part of one. Now there are so many PVR/DVR choices, including Media Center PCs, and we're starting to see units that fit as neatly into the home theater environment as the TiVo. Ultimately, all the minor quibbles I have will fade away. I envision a day when my TV will have TiVo capabilities, and I won't need a separate device to time-shift or pick up channel information.

In the meantime, I'm boxing up the WeaKnees.com unit, sending it back, and reducing the number of remote controls in my house by one. Unless I change my mind and buy it, that is.

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