Australian TiVo online scheduling delayed

Adam Turner
Tuesday, 29 July 2008 04:13

Opinion and Analysis

5. Can't check remaining hard drive space

If you're familiar with other PVRs it soon becomes clear that TiVo is designed to be the "PVR for Dummies", which can be frustrating for power users. It's particularly annoying that the menus won't tell me how much space is left on the drive. Surely this information could be hidden somewhere in the advanced menus, safely away from dummies but still within reach of everyone else.

4. No 24 hour skip forward or back in the onscreen EPG

The fastest you can move back and forward through the onscreen EPG is in 90 minute jumps, which is incredibly frustrating when you want to look at the schedule for later in the week. I encouter this most often when I see an upcoming show advertised (or read about it) and I try to find it in the onscreen EPG to record it. I realise you can search for shows by title, but I'd still like the option to skip through the EPG rather than crawl.

3. EPG doesn't indicate which programs are scheduled to be recorded

This one is really baffling. When I call up the onscreen EPG, why doesn't the TiVo mark in red the programs that are scheduled to record? Then I could spot scheduling problems ahead of time. For example, the TiVo EPG changed the title of "The Hollow Men" to "The Hollowmen" a few weeks ago, which meant my Season Pass failed to record it. I might have picked it up beforehand had the onscreen EPG indicated which programs were to be recorded.

2. No ad skipping

It's hardly worth mentioning, because I know Seven will never enable ad-skipping. From what I've seen of US TiVo hacking, it's quite possible that someone will release custom firmware for the Australian TiVo that unlocks this feature (which would be easy to install when you swap out the 160 GB drive something more generous). I'm still adamant that ad-skipping is a luxury and its omission isn't a deal-breaker considering the TiVo's other strengths. If you fast forward an ad break and then press play, the TiVo automatically jumps back a few seconds - which is great and helps ease the pain of losing ad-skipping.

1. No streaming content from a computer

This is close to a deal-breaker for me, because it means I have to keep my media centre PC (or some other media player) in the lounge room for watching downloaded content as well as watching DVDs ripped to hard drive. I know TiVo intends to enable this feature next year (and charge for the upgrade) but I'm worried it will be clunky and it doesn't look like it will play the DVDs I've ripped to the hard drive using AnyDVD. The lack of video streaming won't bother mums 'n' dads users, but I'd say it's the biggest sacrifice when switching from a media centre computer.


I know that other off-the-shelf PVRs such as those from Beyonwiz address many of these features but, while the Beyonwiz DP-S1 is very tempting, it has long been an unfinished masterpiece. I think Beyonwiz has the potential to be a TiVo slayer but there's still work to be done. As for a Vista Media Centre, after a year of ups and downs I'm just sick of fighting with it. TiVo will frustrate power users but, for now, I think it's the best choice for Australians who want a PVR that "just works".