If you are considering TiVO, then you ought to also consider the new MOXIE HD box from Diego. While it is more expensive to purchase, there is no monthly fee and it will work with cable and FiOS. MOXIE also has payment options for its box if you can't afford the big price tag for its box. Reports are that while MOXIE may have a few features that are a bit more cumbersome to use compared with TiVo, and MOXIE may be considered just barely not quite as "perfect" as TiVo, MOXIE seems more reliable in not having the well documented problems that TiVo HD boxes are experiencing with Cable channels. That will be explained below. Also, the MOXIE is currently the only DVR whose interface is truly HD. The soon to be released Dish ViP 922 will also have their interface in HD, as well. Be aware that the MOXIE HD has NO Over The Air tuners. It will work only with cable or FiOS, and cannot tune to any OTA digital channels that are available using a TV antenna in your home or on your roof.
I own both TiVo Series 3 and Dish HD DVR's, and I always start by saying that TiVo in not a bad product; it is a pretty good product. However, overall Dish DVR's are better.
Well, first of all, even the TiVo fanboys complain about the ads that are inserted on just about every screen. While the TiVo interface looks the most "pretty," there is no picture in menu, and both guides (only a maximum of 14 days, but lately even less than that) fill up almost the entire screen and both the TiVo Live Guide and the TV Guide Grid Guide are terrible, IMHO. Dish has a picture in guide and a picture in nearly all the menus, so I can still hear and see the news as I set-up recordings and adjust or check my timers. With TiVo, all the action STOPS, while I miss the news. That does bother me about TiVO because I feel I can be doing 2 things at one time.
Overall, I do prefer the Dish guides and menus and user interface to TiVo's, but, yes, the TiVo, searchlight backgrounds and colors are very pretty.
As for the learning what you like feature and using the Thumbs Up and Thumbs down to help the service learn what you like to watch, I found it much more of a pain and shut off the auto record on this feature, too, as the other poster said. You can still go to the menu screen to view what TiVo thinks you would like to watch and select individually a show to record, if you want, but I found the box only found ONE show I was really interested in seeing after nearly a year of use and thumbing out of countless suggested recordings. It's highly overrated and TiVo used this information to sell to other parties, a touchy subject among even TiVo lovers. It's more of a gimmick, frankly.
All TiVo HD boxes have only a 30 minute buffer while Dish has a 1 hour buffer. There is some lag time for some TiVo menu screens to load, while not always annoying, it sometime takes longer than other times it does drive me a bit mad, while Dish menu and guide screens are instant. Dish has a 300X Rew and FFwd, while TiVo has only a maximum about 60X, and I really cant stand it when I want to get from near the start to near the end of a recording because it takes TiVo too long to do this. Also, I have never figured out how to "Start from the beginning" on TiVo when I am pretty far into a recording. Dish will easily allow this from a button to select, and this situation occurs for me a good many times.
TiVo has an atrocious Warranty that is pretty much just 90 days. If your box need repair, you get to pay for it, and it is not cheap. With Dish, you get a 1 year warranty, and at the end of that you can add Dish Home Protections Plan for $5 a month and even ANY piece of Dish equipment goes bad, including all leased and owned boxes, they will replace them FREE of any additional charge and NO SHIPPING costs, if you have the DHPP.
Your Lifetime Service of TiVo that pay a ton of $$ for, is only good for the lifetime of the BOX. Meaning if the box dies and you don't fix it, but get another box, you have no lifetime service anymore.
Now, there are a few things TiVo does do better than Dish. One is the extremely powerful Search function on TiVo that will search the guide and on line content, and there are a lot more categories to use in the Search functions. I should add that the soon to be released Dish ViP 922 will have pretty much the same powerful search capability of TiVO, so that will no longer be to TiVo's advantage. The 922 search will also search the internet for content of TV series and Movies in its archives, but it still won't have access to any of the 3rd party internet providers, such as Amazon, mentioned in the following paragraph. Dish HD DVR's also have TV shows and Movies available for download from the web if connected to your broadband service. Of course, you need to connect your TiVo to your broadband service if you want the internet content.
Also, TiVo does have much more varied on line content than Dish including Amazon.com for a library of classic and new TV shows and movies, and Netflix, and a lot of free content from the web like The Onion, Revision 3 (tech shows like the old Tech TV with the same personalities), How to, and whole lot more.
You should also know that all the HD TiVo boxes are having terrible problems with cable TV's analog channels by showing a gray screen, and many have reported problems with digital switched video solutions (a small device) that is supposed to allow tuning to these channels. Oh, and this is after the often frustrating experience of the cable company installing the cable cards necessary for encrypted, especially digital, channels and some cable cards failing or the cable company or not installing them properly. These are well documented problems posted on websites. Of course, it varies by cable company and region, but there a ton of posts on the TiVo forums with TiVo lovers lamenting that they may have to give up TiVo in order to record their shows. I wonder if the cable companies are doing something to contribute to this problem. Right now, the only reliable signal the TiVo can receive is the OTA digital spectrum. Those channels and TiVo's functioning with them seems to be pretty flawless, but a lot of people want to record the cable or FiOS channels, as well.
Also, even though the TiVo has 2 QAM (cable TV) tuners and 2 OTA tuners, it can only record 2 streams (channels) at one time, while the Dish HD boxes can record 2 sat channels and one OTA channel--or 2 OTA channels on the722K--all at the same time for a maximum of 4 HD channels recording at one time.
It is fair to say, that while the Dish ViP DVR is better than TiVo's HD boxes, TiVo is certainly better than the cable company DVR's as far as interface and capabilities. If TiVo could solve the gray screen on analog cable channels and the problems with switched digital channels, and the funky cable card irritations, people wouldn't have to surrender to the crappy cable co DVR's.
I hope that helps.
