==Who Provides It?==
The TiVo box is made by the company TiVo and provided by the company Virgin Media as an upgrade to their V+ Box. TiVo has been around for ages but their partnership with Virgin Media to provide their services to Virgin Media customers is a fairly new one.

==Price and Availability==
The TiVo box is available to Virgin Media customers whether they are new ones or existing ones.
The Virgin Media website is currently offering free installation to new customers but without this offer installation normally costs £40.

The 500GB box costs £49.95 and the 1TB box costs £99.95. With both boxes the monthly fee is £3

==Specifications==
Virgin Media offer two types of TiVo box.

The first one is the 500GB box which gives you around 250 hours of standard TV recordings or around 50 hours of HD TV.

The second one is the 1TB box gives you around 500 hours of standard TV recordings or around 100 hours of HD TV.

The key specifications are:

* Record to hard drive
* Connectivity: Ethernet, HDMI, Optical Audio, Scart and USB
* 3 tuners
* Hard drive size: 500GB or 1TB depending on the box

==Features==
The TiVo box offers a range of features, these are:

* Record three programmes and watch a fourth that you recorded earlier, or record two and watch live TV at the same time. This comes in handy if like me you have a lot of shows you want to record.

* Wishlist: The wishlist is like series link but a bit better. If you don't know when your favourite series is due to start then just add it to your wishlist and your TiVo box will record it for you. You can search for things to add to your wish list and as well as adding shows you can add specific actors, for example if you love Johnny Depp then add him to your wish list and anything he is in will be recorded for you.


* Search for a programme by title, actor or director, this handy feature saves you having to scroll through the listings looking for a specific show.

* Suggestions are a cool new feature, on the TiVo remote control there is a thumbs up and a thumbs down button. You can rate shows that you like or dislike up to a maximum of three thumbs up or three thumbs down. If you rate it as a thumbs down then the TiVo won't record it again. If you give it a thumbs up then the TiVo will also record suggestions for you, these are programmes that are similar to ones that you like. It will only record if there is enough space and will never delete or stop your chosen recordings to record a suggestion. You can turn this option off in the settings if you don't want it.


* There is an apps and games section that has a youtube app and a Who Wants To Be A Millionnaire game. There was also a Harry Potter app around the time of the release of the last film, I'm not sure if it will be there forever or just for a limited time though. You can also connect to Facebook, Twitter and eBay, as well as catching up on missed programmes with BBC Iplayer.

* One other little feature that is like the marmite of TiVo, is the beeping noise that you get every time you press a button on the remote. Whether it's scrolling through the menu's or fast forwarding a programme there is a beep noise that registers your button press. It can be annoying but you can turn it off in the settings if you wish too.


* TiVo has it's own internet connection so it will not slow down your broadband when it is being used. This is helpful as the box doesn't work properly without being connected to the internet.

--My Thoughts==
Personally I love the TiVo box. It is a bit expensive in the beginning with the cost of the box and the activation fee if you have to pay it but it is well worth the money in the long run. You get a lot more space than on the old V+ boxes and the new features are really good. I especially like how you can rate the programmes you watch to that they don't get suggested to you again if you don't like them and the search function is invaluable to be as I hate scrolling through the listings.

It was pretty easy to get the hang off, within a few minutes I had worked my way around the menus and figured out how to do things on it. Another bonus was that Virgin Media let us keep our V+ box and set it up in the bedroom for us when they came to install the TiVo box and because we were upgrading to TiVo they gave us multi-room for free! So we have Virgin Media in two rooms now at the same cost as having one box. I thought this was great as I still had recordings on the old box and if I hadn't kept it in another room then they would have taken the box back.

I would recommend this to anyone who has or wants to get Virgin Media as it is so much better than the old boxes it really is worth the money