So, I gave up on building my own PVR, having tried vdr and mythtv both of which look like fantastic projects, if you have the right hardware and a lot of time to fiddle with it.

I’d been wanting a Tivo for ages but they’d always been £200+ on EBay and not available from shops anymore in this country. A while back, I noticed them still being sold on Ebay for about half the price they used to be, so I bid on one and won it. After a few issues, I finally got it and then after a few more issues, I’ve finally this weekend got it working and it’s FANTASTIC.

For those who are unaware, a Tivo is a PVR that is quite popular in America but never really took off over here. You can use it as a hard disk recorder without a subscription, but when you subscribe (at £10 a month or £199 for lifetime), it really comes into it’s own.

The ability to search for programmes by Genre, Title, etc is very useful. Season pass is a godsend. One quite cool (but I’m not sure how useful) function is the Tivo Suggestions function, whereby the Tivo will watch what you watch and try and record things that it thinks you’ll like. For example, before going to Huntingdon on Saturday, I was playing with the Tivo and testing it’s live recording function. I happened to record 2 minutes of Motor racing. Whilst we were in Huntingdon, Tivo had gone off and recorded all sorts of other Motor Racing programmes. Which was kind of it. Luckily, it remembers what you’ve watched and has a scoring system for programmes to try and get your preferences.

I look forward to watching programmes that I normally sleep through or are on during the day.

Becca made a good suggestion yesterday that Tuesday evening should become Tivo Evening, because there’s never anything good on Televisions on Tuesdays.

This post sees the end of the VDR category on my blog, which will be unceremoniously renamed to Tivo :D