How to buy a Tivo

As an annoyingly vocal Tivo cultist, I've gotten a few questions lately from friends who are shopping for Tivos as gifts: What kind of accessories they'll need, whether it's better to get the lifetime or monthly subscription, that sort of thing. Here's what I told the last person who asked.

First of all, do you have cable or DirecTV? If you have DirecTV, you may want to consider getting DirecTiVo, which is integrated with your receiver. You don't have to; standard Tivos will work just fine with a DirecTV setup. The main advantage of DirecTivos is that if you have dual inputs, you can record two things at once, or watch one thing while you record another, which you can't do with a standard Tivo.

As far as Tivos go, there are three options right now: vanilla Tivos (which are wonderful all by themselves), combination Tivos with DVD players (I wouldn't recommend this; you're better off with separate components, in case one breaks), or the new Tivos with integrated DVD burners. Those last are _extremely_ cool, but prohibitively expensive right now ($800-$1500); I'm planning to wait until they're cheaper and have had a chance to work the bugs out.

The one thing everybody wants on their Tivo is more disk space. You simply can't have too much -- it fills up with movies and episodes you haven't gotten around to watching and episodes you want to keep around for repeated viewing. With 2 people in the house, it's worse. You can always buy an upgrade kit and add a bigger hard drive yourself, but what I would highly recommend is to buy an aftermarket already-upgraded Tivo from a respectable vendor like Weaknees.com. (I bought my Tivo from them.) Many of these vendors offer their products on ebay, where you may be able to get a better price, but be careful about the seller.

Make sure you have a warranty of some flavor, since the factory warranty is voided the instant anyone cracks the case. That means that factory warranties do not apply to upgraded Tivos -- if the upgrade vendor doesn't offer a warranty, you could be screwed.

As far as accessories go, I strongly recommend that you get the APC uninterruptible power supply recommended by the Weaknees folks. It's about $50; it will not only prevent the Tivo from rebooting every time your power flickers, but it'll also protect the modem if you run the phone line through it. Do this. In fact, I recommend that you poke around Weaknees.com for a bit in general -- they've got a lot of good Tivo advice there.

If your TV has multiple inputs (my TV does), you may want to consider splitting your cable signal, and running one signal through the VCR and the other through the Tivo and digital cable box (if you have cable). This is how my system is set up, and it allows me to record one thing on the Tivo and another on the VCR. That may be more complexity than you want to deal with on Christmas morning, however.

Finally, there's the question of purchasing the monthly vs. the lifetime Tivo subscription (programming info and all that). Monthly is something like $15/mo.; lifetime (that's the lifetime of the unit, not your lifetime, unfortunately) is around $300. I would recommend the lifetime subscription, but you may want to do the monthly thing for a month or two until you're sure that you've got a good Tivo unit. And remember that if you later buy a newer Tivo, you'll have to buy another subscription for it. This is the primary reason why I've never upgraded my Series 1 Tivo. It works; it has a lifetime subscription; it makes me happy; why mess with it?

Muwahahahah. Welcome to the cult.

Angels we have heard on high, tell us to go out and buy

Rampant holiday consumerism is just so much easier with online shopping. I've found a couple of websites invaluable for finding gifts for others, not to mention a few gifts for me.

Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools site (formerly "Recommendo") contains recommendations for a wide range of highly useful tools and books. It tends to lean towards outdoorsy/camping gear, mobile computing, and unusual hobbies. This site introduced me to Tom Bihn bags (there's a luggage love post coming down the pike in a day or two). And I can easily think of 2 or 3 different people who would love to receive a surplus Geiger counter, for instance. (Yer not getting it. Sorry.)

ThinkGeek is always a great source of toys and bizarre gifts for the nerd in your life. Shop here for anyone who works in a cubicle or reads Slashdot. Like Amazon, they have wishlists, gift certificates, and gift guides. Unlike Amazon, their site is full of gratuitous Office Space references.

Finally, although it still purports to be in beta, Google's Froogle is a great way to locate items for sale and to check out price ranges. It features Google's usual usability excellence: Pictures are displayed when available, and you can specify a price range, group items by store, and sort by relevance or price.

I love technology. And shopping.