Hopeless Geek

I’ve been without DirecTV and TiVo for about a month now and I figured now’s a good time to look back on it and see if this was a good decision. The best way I’ve found of determining that is the venerable pro/con list. So without further blathering, I’ll just drop into that.

Pros

1. Recording four shows at once without degradation in video quality. A DirecTiVo can do this for two shows at once but I, alas, have one of the old 40GB Series 2 TiVos that was controlling the DirecTV box via IR cable. So not only was I getting compressed video off DTV, but then TiVo was compressing it again. Best Quality never was. With U-Verse, however, what I see in a recorded show is always the raw MPEG-4 stream that it received, so that’s spectacular. Then on top of the better video quality, I get four at once.
2. Better conflict handling. Rather than TiVo’s priority-based approach, the U-Verse box walks me through conflict resolution when it happens and lets me sacrifice a recording right there in the “please record this” screen. TiVo makes me add the show as all-or-nothing and then tweak it in the Season Pass screen (for which processing takes forever when you change something).
3. I can watch live TV again. This is mostly because of how I had to control the DTV box. When I was using TiVo, I pressed Channel Up on the remote and that sent an IR signal to the TiVo which then actually dialed out all four codes to the DTV box which then changed the channel (with a delay). Changing a channel could take three seconds. Each. Needless to say, I didn’t channel-surf much. Now changes are instant, there are live previews as I use the guide, and I can watch one channel and record three others if I want. I can have it all.
4. Video on demand. Speaking of having it all, I can have advanced features as well. TiVo (Series 2) doesn’t integrate with the television service at all other than as a video client, so things like interactive features don’t work. Even the Series 3 units are using the older CableCard devices and can’t use the interactive features of a cable service. Having Encore/FLiX/Showtime On Demand is the most fantastic thing to happen since NetFlix. Combined with NetFlix, I have every movie I want to see available at almost any time. TiVo can’t handle this at all. The best you could get is (with a Series 2) scheduling a recording on the VOD channel with the TiVo and then be sitting right there when it starts and use the cable box remote to start the show. But then, of course, you’re right there so why bother?
5. Interface. I’ll walk out of the crowd and say that for many things I prefer U-Verse’s interface. It’s not centered around being granny-safe and cute and actually lets me get some things done quickly that TiVo makes tedious. Add to that the ability to both schedule recordings on the web and manage existing recordings (yes, you can delete shows from the road to make room for more) and this quickly becomes more powerful.
6. Speed. TiVo was becoming slower and slower the longer I had it. Slow to boot (when it crashed), slow to respond to button presses, slow to start and stop shows, and so forth. Just slow. The U-Verse box is only slow sometimes, and mostly at times I can see why. The TiVo was such a (literal) black box that I couldn’t fathom why it was taking 30 seconds to get to the main menu at times.
7. No advertisements. Recently, TiVo has gone the way of a cheap website and covered itself with ads. Ads on the main menu. Ads over the commercials in a show. Ads at the end of the show. Ads in the show’s folder when browsing. Ads, ads, ads. You can’t pay them more to remove them, which means you’re paying them to be advertised to. Unacceptable. U-Verse is ad-free, and it better be for what I’m paying.
8. Cheaper. DTV was $60 and TiVo was $13. U-Verse is $60 and I get the functionality of four DTV receivers (+$15) and four TiVos (+$20 or more). An easy win, that.

Cons

1. Speed. It’s running WinCE and it shows, sometimes. Things are a little slow to load if there are several streams running and/or you’re at a cutoff time (like half-after or on-the-hour) and it’s starting and stopping some recordings. Not so much that every menu is a pain, but enough that you think it hasn’t registered a button and then it does a few seconds later (but only once; it’s usually better after just one pause).
2. Interface. It’s very blue. It’s very button-centric as well. There’s a button for recordings, one for VOD, one for the guide, one for the menu, one for U-Bar, and then a 5-way cluster for menus under the 8-way for navigating recorded TV. TiVo tried very hard to keep you using the same five buttons that were all in reach of your thumb in the middle of the remote. This one seems to love making you hit another button somewhere else. It’s rather frustrating at times.
3. Lack of “smart” features. There are no wishlist recordings of any kind. There are no suggestions. There is no rating. There is no integration with home computers. Things I rarely used, to be honest, but things I’m seeing the use of now that I don’t have them (as it often happens).
4. Recording options suck. You can record a series like you would with a Season Pass in TiVo but you can’t say “and keep only five of them around”. It records the show, and then the next, and the next, and the next, and then starts deleting older shows to record the next. It keeps 120 hours of TV, so it takes a while, but if you’re not careful it’ll fill up on them. It does have a “Anytime, once per day” option that seems to work, but only for hour-long shows. If it’s a half-hour show that has another airing right after then it records both of them (so, two-per-day instead). Happily, I can clean the old recordings out from the couch on the web while watching TV. Sadly, I have to do that if I haven’t specified “once per day” for something that airs a lot of repeats.
5. It’s not TiVo. I liked supporting TiVo. I like having TiVo. I liked beta testing for TiVo. I like my TiVo gear (cups, keychains, etc.). I liked being a TiVo user. I loved the menu style, the little “bleep”, and the fact that they’re fighting for the proliferation of DVR technology everywhere (their brand, with licensing rights, but still). It feels a bit bad to have left that, but it couldn’t be helped.

Overall? I’d do it again. I love the service and the options and think it’s certainly the “future tech” of television. I can see channels going away in 10-20 years and being replaced by VOD channels instead, being served to homes over this 25Mb link.

Caveat: I don’t have HD and have two standard sets. I hear HD is a bit of a problem they’re working on. Someday I’ll find out, but with a new house and a baby on the way, buying needless toys is a bit low on my list of priorities.