OTHER TECH

USING TIVO All of TiVo's trademark features are here, including Season Pass, Wish List, and its famous smart recording (Tivo Suggestions). Tell TiVo you like a TV series, and the Season Pass mode will find and record every episode. If the show moves to a different time slot, no problem: TiVo will automatically update its recording schedule and ignore reruns, unless you tell it otherwise. Want to catch every show featuring a favorite actress or director? Or maybe you know the title of a movie but have no idea when or where it will be broadcast? The Wish List will track 'em down for you.

My love of animated shows like The Simpsons led to hours of pretten cartoons recorded as TiVo Suggestions.

If you like, TiVo will automatically record programs it "thinks" you'll enjoy based on the kinds of shows you've recorded and on how you rate programs using the Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down buttons on the remote control. My love of animated shows like The Simpsons, Futurama, and King of the Hill fooled TiVo into thinking I'd also enjoy kiddie cartoons like Rug-rats and Hey, Arnold.

Recording quality - and storage time - is variable from Best (just over 82 hours) to Basic (about 302 hours). Basic quality was very poor, with images that were grainy and broke up into mosaic-like blocks of color whenever there was any movement. Medium mode (about 173 hours) was much better, but the picture was still grainy and somewhat soft. For example, the lines of a mowed baseball outfield - cleanly and clearly visible in Best mode - blurred together into smudges of different shades of green. I ended up using the High mode (about 132 hours) most of the time, reserving the Best mode, which produced a near-identical copy of the original source, for sports and movies.

NETWORKING TIVO All new TiVo recorders carry the Series2 designation, which means they support network connectivity. (There's no longer any extra charge for networking capabilities, called Home Media Features.) Strangely, though, none of the TiVo-branded units on the market have an RJ-45 Ethernet jack for direct connection to a network. Instead, they have a USB connector (two on this model). So instead of simply plugging in a Cat-5 cable, you'll have to buy a USB-to-Ethernet adapter. TiVo recommends Linksys adapters and sells both wired ($44) and wireless ($65) versions through its Web site (tivo.com).

One benefit of tapping into a home network is that, after initial setup, you won't need a phone connection to receive program guide updates and other routine TiVo downloads - it's all done through the Internet. Then you get to the really cool things you can do, like schedule a recording up to 20 minutes before start time from anywhere you may be, as long as you have a computer connected to the Internet. You can also transfer recorded programs from one TiVo box to another. Record a program in the living room, say, and watch it in the bedroom at the touch of a button, or start a program in one room and finish watching it in another. These features worked as advertised when I patched two T2500s into my home computer network.

More networking goodies: TiVo's digital music player lets you play MP3 music files (no other formats are supported) from any PC or Mac on the network, and its digital photo viewer lets you similarly fetch and display pictures stored elsewhere. You have to download and install TiVo's desktop software, available for free on the TiVo Web site. Watching a slide show of photos of my 2-year-old niece, Kinsley, on our 61-inch HDTV was all it took to win my wife over. Unfortunately, you can't show pictures and play music files at the same time, but TiVo plans to offer this capability sometime in the future.