TiVo Premiere XL Receiver

Overall, I have to say I'm really happy with my first foray into the TiVo line. We had been using the cable company-provided DVRs (TWC) for several years, with our company charging a flat rate for DVR service for as many DVRs as we wanted in the house (we just had to pay a box lease fee, equal to the lease fee for any one of their cable boxes). Then, early this year, we were told that DVR service was going to change from a flat fee for the whole house, to a fee for each DVR in addition to the box fee itself. That meant, for our 4 DVRs at the time, that our cable bill would go up by about $30+/month. After this fee change, I decided to move into the TiVo world and was able to purchase a lightly used Premiere XL and lifetime service here on eBay for <$700 combined as our first one. The TiVo was in the original box with all the cables and manuals and only a couple tiny scuffs on the remote showed any signs of use. The service activation purchased on eBay was instantaneous but there are a couple issues that you do have to go through when buying a used unit, even a store return if it has been activated. Directions are included and on-screen setup walks you through it, but you may want help if you're not too electronics-savvy. Once you receive the TiVo and do the box setup process-it's important to do this ahead of any cablecard installation because the software will want to update which takes on the order of a couple hours-and you don't really want the cable guys hanging out that long. After the setup, the Premiere XL worked right away and showed up as me having lifetime service (you enter this information during setup), but if you want to call customer service at TiVo (like to troubleshoot getting the CableCard to work with the cable guys later like we had to), it will help to actually start an account at TiVo.com and transfer your specific TiVo to that account. I also found out that if you want to utilize VOD through Amazon-in our case-and likely the other ones like NetFlix, you must also have the TiVo registered in your TiVo.com account because setting up the VOD links your Amazon account to the TiVo.com account-if you don't have the TiVo in your profile you won't be able to download to it. TiVo.com will have the unit registered to another user somewhere if it is used/a store return and you have to call them to get the unit "transferred" over to you, which took me about an hour on the phone but eventually it worked out fine and the process was cordial as he kept asking if it was okay to put me on hold again-I suggest doing this while doing something else like checking email. Also, you will need a "tuning adapter" from the cable company which is like a cable modem for the TiVo box that enables you to get "switched" or SDV cable channels-which most of the HD/movie channels are because of the amount of data. Unfortunately they can be backordered-at least in our case with TWC-and you may be watching standard def for a while like we are. Aside from that the TiVo works great. We've had this one for about 2 months now and it is much faster at responding to commands than the cable DVRs, overall a much "snappier" experience with great picture/sound of course. I also like the new wireless-n adapter if you don't have a wireless bridge or lan outlet near your a/v stuff-you definitely want this hooked up to the internet vs. phone. To recap: you need 1)TiVo 2)TiVo service 3)Cable service 4)Cablecard 5)Tuning Adapter 5)Internet.

I'm 1 week into hooking up My new TIVo HD XL. It is my 3rd TIVo so I'm writing this from the standpoint of the refinement of the concept since its original roll-out. I've always felt that TIVo, as a basic concept, gave its user the control that is necessary to manipulate recordings and their selection criterion. This new unit does that well for the most part and find it quite usable and it has advanced (but not overly fast) throughout its life. I did find that the "Season Pass" didn't do a real good job on obeying the request to ONLY record new episodes, but insisted on grabbing every well identified repeat performance that must then be deleted. Which means that selection criterion differs in no way from the "NEW and REPEAT" selection. So I must make a manual selection of time and channel which isn't near as easy as pressing the "record" button from the guide. OK, I'm picky, but this is only programming and it is possible to do this correctly.

The image and audio quality is fabulous and I'm glad I waited for TIVo to catch up to this technology. I have still not been able to devote the time necessary to figuring out why I can't access my TIVo recordings on PCs on the local network from the free downloaded software, "TIVo Desktop." This may be my own ignorance on this, but with the ease of the TIVo making itself network aware, I'm surprised that it was not able to become a part of the LAN workgroup just as easily.

I've always felt TIVo's schedule guide was well done and am glad that it has maintained this high standard, unchanged. The addition of Youtube and download subscriptions like Netflix, podcasts, music/home video server, etc really makes this an extremely useful and diverse product. I intend to utilize internet access as soon as I figure that feature out.

All and all I'm pleased with this purchase and since this is a programming based service, I'm sure that corrections can and more than likely will, be made down the road. Otherwise, in the case of TIVo Desktop, I guess my next point to evaluate will be the level of support I will encounter from TIVo's phone personnel.

We simply LOVE our new TiVo - freeing us from the high cost of cable TV (personal savings is $60/month). Use in conjunction with NetFlix and you've got 100% more programming at YOUR control! Seller has the BEST price available for top of the line TiVo and LIFETIME subscription. Great user interface built in and comes with updates - so easy and convenient, my only complaint is that I didn't purchase sooner!

THIS IS MY 2ND TIVO AND THIS NEW GEN IS INCREDIBLE I TRAVEL A LOT AND FINALLY WHEN I GET HOME I CAN RELAX AND START WATCHING ALL MY TV SHOWS WITHOUT MISSING A SINGLE EPISODE
THE 1TB HARD DRIVE IS MORE THAN PLENTY SPACE TO ALL MY RECORDINGS NEEDS AND THE THX CERTIFY IT GIVE A INCREDIBLE IMAGE MUCH BETTER THAT MY TIVO HD

If you have all or some of the cable premium channels like I do it is nice especially the season pass which will automatically record a tv series. The access to Netflix, Blockbuster, Amazon, YouTube, Pandora and other internet items is nice as well. However, with all that is available on the internet through Tivo you would think that it would have internal wireless, but you have to purchase a wireless connection separately. Personally, if you are interested just the internet for streaming video ie Netflix and YouTube and Pandora, I would just get a really good blueray player most of the upper end blueray players have wireless access and hard drive space. You can pay a lot less and not have to pay aTivo subscription or cable subcription for an access card.