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Originally posted by: theredbaron
Call me a Phillistine, but what is a TiVo? I hear all these American Hollywood stars talking about it in awards ceremonies and on Oprah, but I don't think they've been released in Australia yet (although I'm probably wrong). Is it just a brand of set-top box? What kind of features does it have?

Tivo is a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) device with a subscriber service.

The base equipment is basically a VCR that saves to a computer hard drive instead of tape. The advantages are that rewind and fast forward are practically instantaneous and you can save a LOT of stuff on one.

The subscriber service, which requires a phone line/network connection, offers a number of automated features.
There is the TV listings system. Every night, the system downloads the next days lists, so you can browse what is going to be on without a TV Guide.
Also (and this is the big feature), there is the ability to input a show name, and it will do the programming work related to recording every instance of that show. For example, say you want it to record Seinfeld. It will search the TV listings for every Seinfeld show listed, and automatically set itself to record them.

That's too lazy for me. I'm perfectly happy programming what I want recorded. The benefit I have is that I can then burn the stuff to DVD-R...WITH a decent menu system.