This page is really just an archive page, as I've gone back to being a telly-free home.

But if you have a TV, you should have one of these ...

What is Tivo?

Take a VCR, and replace the tape with a hard drive. Now give it a modem and plug it into a phone line so that it can download programme data for a rolling two-week period. This simple idea gives us something remarkably clever: an intelligent VCR.

What are the benefits?

I like West Wing. With a conventional VCR, I have to know that it is on TV at present at all. I have to know which channel. I have to know what dates and what times. I have to programme the VCR correctly. And I have to remember to replace the tape before it's recorded four hours' worth.

With Tivo, I tell it I want to search by programme name. I key in West Wing, see it listed and select the Book a Season Pass option. It will now automatically record every episode for me, no matter what channel, what day and what time. And it'll record up to 40 hours worth in standard form (mine has been upgraded - see below).

If there's ever a conflict between two things I've told it to record, it will tell me and ask me which one to record. For season passes, I don't have to do this on a case-by-case basis, I just put the programmes in priority order.

But Tivo is more than just a clever VCR. Ever just sat down to watch some live TV and the phone rings? Now you either have to hastily arrange to call them back, or start the VCR and then wait until the programme is over before you can watch the tape. Which you probably won't because you've gone off and done something else in the meantime. Not with Tivo, because it can record and play back from the same file at the same time. So phone rings, put Tivo on Pause, have a 15-minute conversation and press Play. You're now watching the programme at minus 15 minutes, which is even better than watching it live because you can fast-forward through the ad breaks.

What about those times when you switch on the TV and it's ten minutes into a programme you want to watch? No problem: Tivo is always recording the most recent half an hour of the current channel, so simply rewind and watch from the start.

But now it gets even more clever. Ever bought books from Amazon and looked at the Recommended Books? And found them uncannily good recommendations? What Amazon does is find other people who've bought the same books as you, and then recommended the other books they bought. Tivo does the same with TV programmes.

Whenever you watch a TV programme, either live or recorded, you can rate it from three thumbs down to three thumbs up. This anonymised data is collated when your box next does an update. Based on your ratings, Tivo looks for other people with similar tastes and recommends other programmes that they have rated highly. If you let it, it will automatically record those programmes for you.

You can look for films by a particular director, or programmes starring a particular actor or actress. It will notice that you have done this, and recommend other stuff by the same director or starring the same person - and will even recommend an interview of that person!

This is TV as it should be. Instead of 100 channels of crap, you have your own favourite programmes available to you as & when you're in the mood for some TV. In fact, the live-TV options I mentioned above are pretty irrelevant because, since Tivo, I haven't once watched live TV.

Isn't this the same as Sky+?

Sky+ is essentially a cut-down version of Tivo. However, it restricts you to Sky (Tivo can use any TV feed) and doesn't offer quite as much functionality.

Sky is a large customer of Tivo. However, it is purely coincidental that Tivo sales were discontinued in the UK when Sky+ was launched ...

How do I get a Tivo?

Tivo has been officially discontinued in the UK. I was fortunate enough to pick up a display model for £150, which was a snip considering they retailed for £400.

You can pick up Tivos on ebay or from a number of specialist suppliers like Tivo Heaven. When buying one, it's well worth buying an already-upgraded one (see below).

So that Tivo knows what programmes are on, you will need to buy a subscription to the programme data. Sky provides this data, but it doesn't matter where your TV feed comes from, the data from Sky still works - you just need to do a one-off 'guided setup' on your Tivo so that it knows which channels you have in your package.

You can either pay a tenner a month for the data, or you can buy a 'lifetime' subscription for £200, which is valid for as long as your Tivo lasts. Note that the subscription is tied to the electronic serial number of the Tivo, which is stored on a ROM and not on the hard drive. So you can upgrade the drive without affecting your subscription, but if the motherboard fails, that's it for your subscription. Yer pays yer money ...

Tivo upgrades

The most obvious upgrade is to a larger-capacity hard drive. As standard, they come with a 30Gb drive which gives you around 39 hours at basic quality. You can get anything up to 500Mb drives for them these days.

If you're a Unix whizz, you can take an ordinary PC drive and install the Unix software it needs for use in a Tivo (a Tivo is essentially a Unix-based PC). Mortals like me opt for a preconfigured drive - these don't cost much more than a bare drive anyway.

Mine has a 300Gb drive, which gives me a capacity of 360 hours for the princely sum of £150.

The other modification I've made is to fit a network card, with wireless bridge, to give me wifi access to my Tivo from my laptop. This lets you control the Tivo locally from your PC (see below), control it remotely over the net (handy when travelling), install hacks (can be useful) and - most usefully of all - copy programmes from your Tivo to your PC for viewing while travelling.

Tivo recordings are made in a slightly encrypted form of MPEG2. You can use a programme suite called TyTool to transfer files from your Tivo to a PC, and a programme called TyStudio to convert from Tivo format to standard MPEG2. Once you've done this, you can watch them on your laptop using Windows Media Player or similar.

Train and plane journeys really zip by nicely when you have a laptopful of West Wings. :-)

Controlling Tivo from your PC

TivoWeb lets you access your Tivo from your web-browser. Although this might seem rather pointless when in the same room as your Tivo, it does give you a significantly more powerful user-interface. For example, from the Now Playing screen:

I can click on West Wing to see both the episodes I have stored, and the upcoming episodes, all on one screen:

Easier and quicker than doing it on the Tivo itself. Similarly, I can pull up programme details on one screen:

Then click on one of the cast to see what else he has appeared in, either already recorded or upcoming:

I can then click on, say, Early Addition, see all the forthcoming episodes and click to record any or all of them. It really enables you to get a lot more out of Tivo.

I've also set up port-forwarding on my router so that I can access my Tivo remotely when travelling. I will then be able to tell it to record something and, once it's done so, go and get the recording to watch on my laptop. Details here when I've tested it, but if you want to try it yourself in the meantime, you need port forwarding on port 3565.

There are all sorts of hacks available for Tivo, though these tend to require at least a working knowledge of Unix. But for the brave and/or obsessional, you can do such things as arrange for your Tivo to send you a daily email telling you such things as what it is planning to record that day and what programmes are about to expire. So far I have stuck to Ty and TivoWeb.