Oceanic and TIVO

Got an invitation to Sujin's house and met Nalu (the black retriever). Of course, Sujin wasn't there, otherwise why would I get an invitation? (Thanks Cathy.)

Beautiful (and clean) house. Wonderful dog.

And a snazzy hidef TV on the wall that was set up in a way that I had never seen before. It was getting Oceanic HD TV but there was no Oceanic cable box to be seen. It was running Tivo. From what I can figure out, it must have been running from the TV box with a cable card plugged in. Way more storage than Oceanic's DVR. Scanning through the recorded list, there must have been hundreds (and hundreds) of hours recorded on that thing.

The other thing that I couldn't figure out was how to get their Blu-Ray player working. It wouldn't show up on any video input on the TV. Maybe the cable to the player wasn't hooked up. Or maybe there's another switch somewhere.

Anyway here's techhui's post on Oceanic and TIVO (and why and how Laurence Lee booted Oceanic).

*** [9/14/13]

Played around with Shirlyn's TIVO today (they apparently lost the network connection).  It got me tempted to consider the TIVO.  Here's my notes.

I'm kind of tempted to dump my Oceanic box and going to TIVO

I wonder how much it costs?

I think you need a cable card in the TIVO to view HD channels.not on direct connect cable

plus a tuning adapter (for SD - switched digital channels)

here are some user experiences

maybe I just gotta try it

ok, here's the price of the cable card, only $2.50 per month (vs. $12.99 for a DVR)

Assuming you can live with the limitations (no on demand), you'll save about $10 a month (the guy in the user experiences link says $24 a month). Oh, I forgot the price of the cable box which is $6.20.  OK, that brings it up to $16.

Wait, there's a monthly service fee for TIVO.  It's $14.99, so there goes the savings.  However you can pay a one-time fee of $500 for lifetime service (lifetime of the product?)  So if it lasts three years, you'll come out ahead.

How much is a TIVO these days?

Well checking Best Buy,

The TIVO Roamio Pro DVR is $599.99.

record up to 6 shows at once with 3TB storage

The TIVO Roamio Plus DVR is $399.99

record up to 6 shows at once with 1 TB storage

The TIVO Roamio DVR is $199.99

record up to 4 shows at once with 500GB storage

TIVO Premiere High-Definition Digital Video Recorder is $149.99

records up to 75 hours of high-definition programming

Plus I'll want a wireless adapter

TIVO wireless-N adapter is $70.99

TIVO wireless-G USB adapter is $43.99

Evidently Roamio is the current line of TIVO (formerly it was the Premiere) and has built-in wireless.

TIVO makes it sound easy to set up.

Here's a review of the roamio plus

Another review

***

Alternatively, I could buy a device like a Hauppage PVR 2 which can record HD from the cable box.  In addition, I would need a computer.