Hopeless Geek

Several years ago I had television service through Grande in Austin and was overall very happy with their digital TV service. It had some downsides (the STB, for one — I wasn’t used to that) but was overall a great experience.

Some time later I got a TiVo off eBay and how I used TV changed forever. I loved the gadget and what it enabled me to do (that is, almost never miss a show). I got the 40GB model but after some time I got the upgrade kit from weaknees.com and crammed an 80GB in alongside the original. I’ve been running that same 110-hour TiVo ever since.

With Grande I could use the serial cable with the Motorola box they used, and that was really great. It wasn’t hard to setup and made it reasonably possible to change channels quick enough to browse (though, not really). However, I had to move to a new apartment and Grande did not service that apartment, Time-Warner did. They wanted over $200 on the first bill (install, sign-up, first month, last month, something else..). I said that DirecTV didn’t want any of that and would do the install for free. After talking to various people the unsaid answer was: “Well, then do it.”

So I did.

The downside was that I had to use the IR widget to change channels. That worked well, but introduced such a horrible delay when pressing up/down for channels that it took about three seconds to change channels. I used the Guide a lot.

I’ve actually endured this for three years without much complaint. However, lately, I’ve seen the service updates for TiVo bringing it down the shitter quite fast, and it’s time for me to jump. The advertisements are everywhere (for a product I paid for, on a service I pay for) and the speed of menus and reaction to my remote has become such a sluggish nightmare that I’m waiting up to 30 seconds to get to the main menu after pressing the TiVo button.

The new software is designed, clearly, for the new boxes and not for my old one.

So, it’s time to move on. I’ve moved into a house now and had the option of moving my DirecTV service over and opted not to (the only reason to use DirecTV was for TiVo, really; TWC is better about install pricing now). So, today I’m killing DirecTV and the TiVo service and tomorrow I’ll be a U-verse customer, for whatever good or ill that brings. I could have brought the dish over to the new place, but the features of U-verse (record four channels at once at the original quality) versus the pain of today’s TiVo (30 freaking seconds to get out of the show and go to the main menu!) made it an easy decision.

Goodbye, TiVo. Perhaps we’ll meet up again someday in the future once you’ve figured out this HD mess while bringing back the ability to control external boxes again. Until then, I’ll be basking in the newness of IPTV over VHDSL.