It’s been less than a month since I received my Series 3 TiVo on 19 March 2010.
Overall, I absolutely love it. It spanks my Verizon FiOS on numerous usability points and even picture quality. Here are some ways it falls short:
- It only pauses for 30 minutes. At 30 minutes, it unpauses (plays) and I can’t rewind.
- From a similar source with with a different symptom: If I’m watching a live TV show more than 30 minutes before I push <Record>, it doesn’t record the whole show so far — it only records the last 30 minutes. Big suck here. Verizon FiOS HD DVR spanked TiVo on this point.
- After unpausing, I’d like the position indicator at the bottom of the screen to go away faster.
- Ads. Ads!? Actual ads from TiVo, separate from TV commercials. Sorry, I didn’t expect this when I signed up for the $13/month TiVo service, which for me is basically just overpaying for an over-the-wire TV guide.
- If you go into the TiVo menus via the TiVo button, the TV you’re watching doesn’t show up in a little window like it does on the Verizon FiOS DVR. It’d be very nice if it did. Some people might find this distracting/noisy/annoying so it should be a preference.
- Remote control/Interface: I’d like it to be easier to jump between the shows currently being recorded. It might be that the <Live TV> button is doing this. Gotta test it.
- No way to type alphabetic characters directly with the remote control.
- Allow WishList searches containing not-equal.
- Allow me to say title = String1 OR actor = String2 (Both strings are usually the same guy but that’s not relevant.)
- Allow me to say title = string1 AND actor != string2
- WishList searches: Allow me to say, e.g., “Keyword = String1” and language = English (to avoid recording Spanish language versions of programs).
- No way to know how much disk space is currently used. This is just annoying and sort of insulting.
- It’s not that clear to me where to go to edit a non-WishList predefined recording, such as a Record by Title definition. Yesterday when I went to do this, I wound up doing it from the To Do List. Is that the only way to edit a non-WishList search that presently has no programs recorded through which you can edit it? Hassle.
- I’d like to be able to delete all recordings under a category (but keep recording in the future). For example, if my predefined job to record The Office gets too full and I just want to get rid of the 25 episodes with one action and start fresh, I apparently have to delete 25 recordings manually. I want to mention here that deleting a recorded program on the TiVo is so much more comfortable than on my Verizon FiOS because I don’t have to confirm every delete on the TiVo. That was a good user interface decision. Update: Maybe the <Clear> button will handle this.