Finally back
Well, I didn't get back to this post as early as I had planned, but I'm finally back to finish what I started.
Ok so it was a fairly normal week at first, but on Wed, me and Ariana hung out. We finished up the movies we had rented on the weekend by watching Saved! It was a pretty good movie, and lots of parts hit close to home, especially since I was raised in the church and a Christian Youth Group. So yeah all in all I was pleased with our 3 movie rentals.
Oh but before watching the movies something even better happened. So, you know how me and Henry have been extoling the many great virtues of TiVo? Well I wound up being told that Cablevision had their own DVR and service and I decided to call and get some more info about it so I could compare the two.
Now don't get me wrong, I love TiVo, but I was having a few small issues with it. It was through no fault of the tivo system itself though, just that my TV is old and has a lot of stuff hooked to it, so I had to go some ass-backwards way of installing the TiVo which did not allow it to perform at its optimal level. I won't go into details (as I've already mentioned some things here and told people in person about it).
So I call and start asking questions, and I start hearing some very good things. The Cablevision DVR is also the regular cablebox, so that would reduce the amount of space used. Second, it holds 110 hours as opposed to the 40 hours my TiVo had. It was also only $9.95 a month as opposed to TiVo's $12.95. It could also record two shows at the same time (something Tivo could not do).
But the big kicker? The Cablevision DVR was FREE!
I didn't believe them, when they said it. I was just like "What!?!? You mean I don't have to pay to get the DVR box?" They were like "no, it's like a regular cable box, you can come in to the cablevision center nearest you and pick it up. You basically rent it per month just like you do with the box you have now."
It sounded too good to be true though, so the very next day i swung by the Cablevision center and picked one up to try out (b/c my 30 day money-back guarentee with TiVo was gonna be over in less than a week).
So I hooked it up and tried it out...
... and it's pretty freakin good.
This put me in a position where I had to make a tough decision. Cuz while the Cablevision DVR had a lot of good qualities about it, it wasn't as "User-friendly" as Tivo was.
Here's how the DVR stacks up to TiVo:
-Setting up to tape shows on TiVo is super easy. You just type in the name of the show you want and a list will pop up of all the upcoming episodes of that show on every channel it airs on. Then you can pick to record one episode (or multiple) or get a season pass. On the DVR, it's not that easy (not hard, just not ultra-simplified). Basically the way to find shows is to go through the normal cablevision channel guide and go up to a show and select it. You can still do season passes, but you can't just type in the name of a show and bring up a list of upcoming ones. You just gotta go day by day in the schedule and look at it that way (which can be kind of annoying).
-When you are fastforwarding TiVo has like a 3-5 second "pullback." Cuz you know how when u are FFing commercials and sometimes you don't stop it in time and usually have to rewind like 5 seconds back so you don't miss the restart of the show? Well TiVo did it automatically, and I got used to that. The new DVR does not.
-And the thing that bothers me the most... it's hard to explain but let me give you an example: Ok on Monday nights I watch Monday Night Raw and 24. The COOL thing about the DVR is that I can now record both shows unlike the Tivo where I had to watch one through the VCR and record the other. But anyways, both shows start at 9pm. 24 is from 9-10pm and Raw is from 9-11pm. So let's say I watch 24, then at 10pm I wanna go watch Raw, but from the beginning. On TiVo, all you had to do was select the show from the menu and it AUTOMATICALLY started from the beginning (unless you select Live TV). On the DVR, it just starts from where it is, so that means I have to manually rewind it to the begining, which is kind of annoying. And the other thing that ties into that, is let's say I start watching Raw at 10pm, meaning I'm an hour behind "Live TV." Thing is at 11pm (when the show ends), the recording I am watching, for some reason automatically jumps to the end for the final second of the show. So then i'd have to restart the show and Fast-forward up to the point I was up to, to continue watching. Which is obviously a big pain in the ass (although there might be a way around this, i haven't found out yet).
-TiVo has an option called "Suggestions." Where it will record shows that it feels you might be interested in, based on shows you have recorded previously, which was a fun little option (but not necessary, at least not to me, since it never got anything good for me).
And so far, TiVo looks like it has the upper hand, but like I said, the DVR does have its advantages- like being FREE (saving me the $100 it cost me to buy the TiVo box), holds almost 3 times more space. Is $3 cheaper a month to have. You can record 2 shows at once (and also watch a 3rd previously recorded show at the same time). And for ME, I can now easliy watch one show while recording another and tape things on my VCR, which i was unable to do with the TiVo b/c of my crazy installation arrangement.
So while I will miss some of TiVo's cool features, for this moment in time the Cablevision DVR just works better for me. Maybe in the future when I move out and buy a new TV and stuff I will get a TiVo again but for now I'm moving over to the DVR.
And hopefully I've provided enough info for all of you who may be researching into getting a TiVo or DVR of your own so you could make the best choice for YOUR home set up.
****
Jumping over to the weekend- on Friday we had my college trip for my students. We took them to Hofstra University out in Long Island. It's a pretty nice school and I was impressed with their overall presentation. The guides were VERY informative and the students really enjoyed themselves, so it was a job well done.
As for later on in the day, I decided to get a jump start on Valentine's Day and went down to the city to surprise Ariana at her job with two dozen roses (12 red surrounded by 12 purple- it looked really nice), and took her to dinner at this Japanese restaurant nearby (which had pretty good food).
After that, we headed back to my place b/c we had to pick up my sister so we could drive over to the airport to pick up her boyfriend who was visiting for the weekend. This was the first time we were all meeting him (Jenny went to visit him before, but he hadn't been here yet). So the whole family was looking forward to his visit (b/c Hell anyone would be an upgrade over her last bf).
His flight got delayed a little while though, so the three of us got in kind of silly moods while waiting around for him at the airport. We saw three of those carts you can put your luggage on stranded in the corner of the airport, and it was pretty deserted in the area for some reason. So I sat in one, put my feet up and Ariana pushed me around in it, going in circles around the line for the tickets kinda like a Go-Kart track. it was pretty freakin hilarious if I do say so myself. I noticed the only one other guy in the area look over to us and crack a smile and start to chuckle (which I think was quite an accomplishment cuz the guy had a pretty sour face on the entire rest of the time beforehand).
As for my sister's bf, he seems nice. A lot more quite and calm than the last one (which i think is a good thing). And he seems to treat my sister very well, so he gets some extra points for that. I'm hoping things work out this time for my sis. She sure seems happy.
And yeah, that was about it for last week, plus I gotta run for a few b/c we are doing some cleaning up here in the office, so I will be back later- I have some fun links and quotes to share with you all.
Ok so it was a fairly normal week at first, but on Wed, me and Ariana hung out. We finished up the movies we had rented on the weekend by watching Saved! It was a pretty good movie, and lots of parts hit close to home, especially since I was raised in the church and a Christian Youth Group. So yeah all in all I was pleased with our 3 movie rentals.
Oh but before watching the movies something even better happened. So, you know how me and Henry have been extoling the many great virtues of TiVo? Well I wound up being told that Cablevision had their own DVR and service and I decided to call and get some more info about it so I could compare the two.
Now don't get me wrong, I love TiVo, but I was having a few small issues with it. It was through no fault of the tivo system itself though, just that my TV is old and has a lot of stuff hooked to it, so I had to go some ass-backwards way of installing the TiVo which did not allow it to perform at its optimal level. I won't go into details (as I've already mentioned some things here and told people in person about it).
So I call and start asking questions, and I start hearing some very good things. The Cablevision DVR is also the regular cablebox, so that would reduce the amount of space used. Second, it holds 110 hours as opposed to the 40 hours my TiVo had. It was also only $9.95 a month as opposed to TiVo's $12.95. It could also record two shows at the same time (something Tivo could not do).
But the big kicker? The Cablevision DVR was FREE!
I didn't believe them, when they said it. I was just like "What!?!? You mean I don't have to pay to get the DVR box?" They were like "no, it's like a regular cable box, you can come in to the cablevision center nearest you and pick it up. You basically rent it per month just like you do with the box you have now."
It sounded too good to be true though, so the very next day i swung by the Cablevision center and picked one up to try out (b/c my 30 day money-back guarentee with TiVo was gonna be over in less than a week).
So I hooked it up and tried it out...
... and it's pretty freakin good.
This put me in a position where I had to make a tough decision. Cuz while the Cablevision DVR had a lot of good qualities about it, it wasn't as "User-friendly" as Tivo was.
Here's how the DVR stacks up to TiVo:
-Setting up to tape shows on TiVo is super easy. You just type in the name of the show you want and a list will pop up of all the upcoming episodes of that show on every channel it airs on. Then you can pick to record one episode (or multiple) or get a season pass. On the DVR, it's not that easy (not hard, just not ultra-simplified). Basically the way to find shows is to go through the normal cablevision channel guide and go up to a show and select it. You can still do season passes, but you can't just type in the name of a show and bring up a list of upcoming ones. You just gotta go day by day in the schedule and look at it that way (which can be kind of annoying).
-When you are fastforwarding TiVo has like a 3-5 second "pullback." Cuz you know how when u are FFing commercials and sometimes you don't stop it in time and usually have to rewind like 5 seconds back so you don't miss the restart of the show? Well TiVo did it automatically, and I got used to that. The new DVR does not.
-And the thing that bothers me the most... it's hard to explain but let me give you an example: Ok on Monday nights I watch Monday Night Raw and 24. The COOL thing about the DVR is that I can now record both shows unlike the Tivo where I had to watch one through the VCR and record the other. But anyways, both shows start at 9pm. 24 is from 9-10pm and Raw is from 9-11pm. So let's say I watch 24, then at 10pm I wanna go watch Raw, but from the beginning. On TiVo, all you had to do was select the show from the menu and it AUTOMATICALLY started from the beginning (unless you select Live TV). On the DVR, it just starts from where it is, so that means I have to manually rewind it to the begining, which is kind of annoying. And the other thing that ties into that, is let's say I start watching Raw at 10pm, meaning I'm an hour behind "Live TV." Thing is at 11pm (when the show ends), the recording I am watching, for some reason automatically jumps to the end for the final second of the show. So then i'd have to restart the show and Fast-forward up to the point I was up to, to continue watching. Which is obviously a big pain in the ass (although there might be a way around this, i haven't found out yet).
-TiVo has an option called "Suggestions." Where it will record shows that it feels you might be interested in, based on shows you have recorded previously, which was a fun little option (but not necessary, at least not to me, since it never got anything good for me).
And so far, TiVo looks like it has the upper hand, but like I said, the DVR does have its advantages- like being FREE (saving me the $100 it cost me to buy the TiVo box), holds almost 3 times more space. Is $3 cheaper a month to have. You can record 2 shows at once (and also watch a 3rd previously recorded show at the same time). And for ME, I can now easliy watch one show while recording another and tape things on my VCR, which i was unable to do with the TiVo b/c of my crazy installation arrangement.
So while I will miss some of TiVo's cool features, for this moment in time the Cablevision DVR just works better for me. Maybe in the future when I move out and buy a new TV and stuff I will get a TiVo again but for now I'm moving over to the DVR.
And hopefully I've provided enough info for all of you who may be researching into getting a TiVo or DVR of your own so you could make the best choice for YOUR home set up.
****
Jumping over to the weekend- on Friday we had my college trip for my students. We took them to Hofstra University out in Long Island. It's a pretty nice school and I was impressed with their overall presentation. The guides were VERY informative and the students really enjoyed themselves, so it was a job well done.
As for later on in the day, I decided to get a jump start on Valentine's Day and went down to the city to surprise Ariana at her job with two dozen roses (12 red surrounded by 12 purple- it looked really nice), and took her to dinner at this Japanese restaurant nearby (which had pretty good food).
After that, we headed back to my place b/c we had to pick up my sister so we could drive over to the airport to pick up her boyfriend who was visiting for the weekend. This was the first time we were all meeting him (Jenny went to visit him before, but he hadn't been here yet). So the whole family was looking forward to his visit (b/c Hell anyone would be an upgrade over her last bf).
His flight got delayed a little while though, so the three of us got in kind of silly moods while waiting around for him at the airport. We saw three of those carts you can put your luggage on stranded in the corner of the airport, and it was pretty deserted in the area for some reason. So I sat in one, put my feet up and Ariana pushed me around in it, going in circles around the line for the tickets kinda like a Go-Kart track. it was pretty freakin hilarious if I do say so myself. I noticed the only one other guy in the area look over to us and crack a smile and start to chuckle (which I think was quite an accomplishment cuz the guy had a pretty sour face on the entire rest of the time beforehand).
As for my sister's bf, he seems nice. A lot more quite and calm than the last one (which i think is a good thing). And he seems to treat my sister very well, so he gets some extra points for that. I'm hoping things work out this time for my sis. She sure seems happy.
And yeah, that was about it for last week, plus I gotta run for a few b/c we are doing some cleaning up here in the office, so I will be back later- I have some fun links and quotes to share with you all.
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