Last Friday, our Tivo box announced that our account had been closed.  I got a super nice account rep on the phone (after being on hold for way too long) who did all she could to help me keep my supposed “life-time service.”  In the end, the trial was just a trial, nothing longer or greater.  We signed ourselves up for a technology we never knew we needed.

TiVo has won us over.  We like the services they provide.  I am ready to give them money.

I call them up over the holidays.  Their subscription price is a the lowest point I have seen it in the four months since we got our TiVo box. I do not want to miss out on the deal.
On the first call to support (probably a newbie in the tech center), I learn that I have lifetime service and I must speak with level 2 support for them to help me become a customer.  I am excited to learn that I have a lifetime service contract but have to hang up after an hour of waiting on hold for level 2 support.  OK, I really do not believe I have a lifetime TiVo subscription.

On call two a few days later, I learn that I do not have lifetime service (surprise), but that my TiVo box is under evaluation.  Great I have evaluated the product, I like it and will take it.  Sign me up.  “I CANNOT SIGN YOU UP – your box is working and under evaluation” says the level 2 support rep.  “So, you have won me a customer but I cannot become one”, I asked.  “That is correct,” is the reply I received.

I asked to speak to the level 2 support rep supervisor to see if this makes any sense.  She is very bothered that someone is asking her to become a TiVo customer.  She makes it clear that the level 2 support guy was very clear and correct on this fact.  Evaluation clients cannot be customers until the evaluation is completely over.

This blows my mind. It would seem to me that TiVo is in the business of getting paying customers to use their service.  If someone wants to become a customer in the middle of the evaluation – let them.  Is that not the purpose of an evaluation?  Try it out and see if you like it.

Maybe, there is a good reason why I cannot sign up until the evaluation period is over. I cannot see it.  From my view TiVo has put a rule into place that hampers what they are actually trying to accomplish which is to get new customers with evaluation boxes.
Hopefully, I am not putting up roadblocks in the way to what Sherwood is trying to accomplish.

If I wanted to print only one page of a 80 page document, then I must make sure the “print this page only” box is selected. Otherwise, I will probably get 79 extra pages. To avoid spam-like newsletters, you must be sure to uncheck the button that say something like “add me to the newsletter list” when registering on a new website. There is one little button on the Calendar appointment page in Outlook that says, “Reminder.” It has to be unchecked to avoid the daily pop-up reminders or checked if you want such things.

I checked (choose a setting) that I wanted to see only the “new editions” of Extreme Makeover Home edition. It seems that last night was a repeat. Problem solved.

We got the kids to bed, sat down to watch and there was no show. Sounds like me forgetting to set the VCR on my way out.

My only guess is that we got the KidsZone set super low and the show did not make the cut. This is not how I expected the service to work. Hopefully, there is another reason. I will call supprt tomorrow to see what happened.

My boss does not have cable or satellite coming into his home, so he could not use the gift and thus the TiVo items were given to us. My brother and his family have a TiVo DVR and service but we have never watched it or looked at it. I have never checked out TiVo. None of my friends have TiVo that I know of. I knew very little.

Setup was pretty simple, though it took me an extra day to figure out that I needed to put TV on channel 3 to watch the VCR. This would be a good reason to question why I lead “technology” at Sherwood.
Features

LiveTV is the first feature we discovered. My wife came in to watch some TV in the last 10 minutes of a show. Instead of trying to tell her what happened, I went back 30 minutes into the show and we caught her up and watched it to the conclusion. I really like the feature. Unfortunetaly this is going to cut down on me watching 2 or 3 shows at once since TiVo will only record the show that is playing. My wife will be happy.

Season pass is a feature that will allow you to record the entire season of a show that you watch. We signed-up a couple of shows for the kids. They were working the next day.

I like the online TV guides, espeically the one that has what is on now for each station on the left side of the screen while showing the next few hours of programming of the station that is hightlighted.

The KidZone feature is a good concept and will be usefull as soon a we allow our children to use the remote.

TiVo also likes to record shows it thinks we might like. I was surprised to find we had recorded lots of shows in the first couple of day when we only asked for two. They have a feature called Suggestions (I think). Suggestions are shows that TiVo thinks we will like based on what we record and how we rate shows. I setup TiVo to recored the first Tennessee football game and got some Major League baseball, boxing and Sports Center.

A nice bonus was the ability of the remote to control the volume on my stereo. A small but nice touch.

I think I am going to like TiVo.