Saturday, October 4, 2003

PVR Fun

So a while back I went out and bought a ReplayTV because I wanted a PVR that could be used without a phone line. At the time the ReplayTV was the only one available that would worth with an ethernet connection in a supported manner. Sure, you could make a TiVo do it, but at the time they weren't supporting the configuration.

Anyway, I was reasonably happy with the ReplayTV at the time, but since then things have gone down hill. It's become more and more clear that the TiVo just has a better UI, and that more interesting things are being done with the TiVo (primarily because Sonicblue went under I imagine).

So I finally got tired of being annoyed by the ReplayTV, and today I started looking in to getting a TiVo. I really didn't plan on it, but it turned out that they were having a sale on refurbished 80 hour series two TiVos from the TiVo website, so in a moment of weakness I ordered one.

A little research shows me that I will probably even be able to get past the how do i setup a new TiVo without a phone problem without too much trouble. It turns out that they don't support the initial connection over a network because most of the current gen TiVos that are shipping don't have the most recent software, but with the right kind of network adapter you can make it work. And even if I don't have especially good luck with that, I can always take it to a friend's house and do the initial setup there.

And yes, I will admit to anyone who cares that I am the king of the impulse buy, and I seriously need to have my credit cards confiscated by someone more responsible than myself ;-)