Couple of birthday presents
Category Nokia n800 TivoHD
So a few weeks ago I treated myself to a couple of birthday presents, one was planned, the other was on a bit of a whim. What were they? One was the new TivoHD and the other was a Nokia N800. The TivoHD was planned and the N800 was an impulse buy as buy.com had it on sale for $239.99 delivered. Here are my impressions so far.
TivoHD - I have had a Tivo of one sort or another for a few years now, and the Cable company rented me their Motorola DVR to be able to record HD. Sadly the cable companies DVR was terrible, slow response from remote, terrible UI, very difficult to find shows etc. Now if you've never had a Tivo you probably think that the Cable company DVR is amazing, which it actually is, but if have had a Tivo then the Cable company DVR sucks really badly, and this really is the problem for Tivo, people don't know what they're missing, they think Tivo just pauses live TV, but it actually does so much more. The major issue with the Cable company DVR though was that it was too big to sit nicely on the shelf where I wanted it. So back to the TivoHD, Tivo had a HD model previously, but it cost something like 800 bucks (you can find refurbs now for about 400), so seeing Tivo announce a cheaper HD model was exciting news, and an opportunity to rid myself of the cable DVR. The TivoHD does offer dual tuners, but requires cablecards, odds are that when you call your cable company about these you are going to hear different things depending upon who you speak to. I finally got hold of a technician that knew what I was talking about and they came out a couple of days later with two cablecards.
The technician that came out told me point blank that the cablecards would not be able to support premium channels like HBO or Showtime etc. and that I should know that. A few alarms went off in my head and I asked the technician if he had ever done a cablecard installation before, he admitted he hadn't at which point I told him I thought he was talking BS about the premium channels. I could understand not getting the ondemand stuff, but not channels like HBO. After I had setup the cablecards in the Tivo (a 2 minute process) we checked to see if HBO etc. were coming through, funnily enough they were, and TivoHD was alive and well! I do have to pay about 7 dollars a month to Tivo for their sevice, but I save that by not renting a cable company DVR anymore.
Would I recommend a TivoHD? Certainly would, and if you decide to get a Tivo, be sure to say that I referred you so that I can get some Tivo rewards.
Now onto the Nokia N800 - Nice little device, runs Linux, can stream movies, has access to Rhapsody. It's a clever device and fun to play with, but I haven't really figured out yet what I will do with it. It would be nice to get a slingbox player and Sametime running on it. Skype runs very well on it, and I've installed a few 3rd party apps. I haven't yet tried out the webcam that's built into it. It would ne even better if someone introduced some nice GPS flying software for it, right now I still use my Palm Treo for that. So I now own a nice "solution looking for a problem" device. If you're interested in the device, there are lots of demonstrations on YouTube that people have posted.
So a few weeks ago I treated myself to a couple of birthday presents, one was planned, the other was on a bit of a whim. What were they? One was the new TivoHD and the other was a Nokia N800. The TivoHD was planned and the N800 was an impulse buy as buy.com had it on sale for $239.99 delivered. Here are my impressions so far.
TivoHD - I have had a Tivo of one sort or another for a few years now, and the Cable company rented me their Motorola DVR to be able to record HD. Sadly the cable companies DVR was terrible, slow response from remote, terrible UI, very difficult to find shows etc. Now if you've never had a Tivo you probably think that the Cable company DVR is amazing, which it actually is, but if have had a Tivo then the Cable company DVR sucks really badly, and this really is the problem for Tivo, people don't know what they're missing, they think Tivo just pauses live TV, but it actually does so much more. The major issue with the Cable company DVR though was that it was too big to sit nicely on the shelf where I wanted it. So back to the TivoHD, Tivo had a HD model previously, but it cost something like 800 bucks (you can find refurbs now for about 400), so seeing Tivo announce a cheaper HD model was exciting news, and an opportunity to rid myself of the cable DVR. The TivoHD does offer dual tuners, but requires cablecards, odds are that when you call your cable company about these you are going to hear different things depending upon who you speak to. I finally got hold of a technician that knew what I was talking about and they came out a couple of days later with two cablecards.
The technician that came out told me point blank that the cablecards would not be able to support premium channels like HBO or Showtime etc. and that I should know that. A few alarms went off in my head and I asked the technician if he had ever done a cablecard installation before, he admitted he hadn't at which point I told him I thought he was talking BS about the premium channels. I could understand not getting the ondemand stuff, but not channels like HBO. After I had setup the cablecards in the Tivo (a 2 minute process) we checked to see if HBO etc. were coming through, funnily enough they were, and TivoHD was alive and well! I do have to pay about 7 dollars a month to Tivo for their sevice, but I save that by not renting a cable company DVR anymore.
Would I recommend a TivoHD? Certainly would, and if you decide to get a Tivo, be sure to say that I referred you so that I can get some Tivo rewards.
Now onto the Nokia N800 - Nice little device, runs Linux, can stream movies, has access to Rhapsody. It's a clever device and fun to play with, but I haven't really figured out yet what I will do with it. It would be nice to get a slingbox player and Sametime running on it. Skype runs very well on it, and I've installed a few 3rd party apps. I haven't yet tried out the webcam that's built into it. It would ne even better if someone introduced some nice GPS flying software for it, right now I still use my Palm Treo for that. So I now own a nice "solution looking for a problem" device. If you're interested in the device, there are lots of demonstrations on YouTube that people have posted.
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