Tivo is a video recorder which, rather than recording on video tapes, uses a computer hard disk to record programs digitally.

This means that you get the following benefits over conventional VCR.

1. You don't have to buy tapes
2. The recording quality is MUCH better
3. You select recordings from a "SKY" style programe guide rather than having to set date time etc
4. you select recorded programs from on on screen list when you want to play them back.
5. you can start watching a program from the begining even before it has finished recording.

On top of this, TIVO offers much more, like being able to pause & rewind live TV, and the facility to "Learn" the types of programs you like, and record them automaticaly.

I can honestly say that TIVO is the best home entertainment item I have every bought. Gone are the days when:

You have to watch adverts (you can now FF over them)

You have to surf through the channels looking for something to watch (TIVO has usually recorded something worth watching)

You have to miss your favorite programmes because you are out (tell it you like a series, and all episodes will be recorded automatically)

Just tell Tivo what you like & it will record it for you for you to watch when at your leisure, with the ability to skip the adverts. And this is just one of its many wonderful features. Now it doesnt matter if someone rings duing my fav programme, I just pause & come back to it when I'm finished.

With the world cup comming up, TIVO is a sensible alternative to shifting to Japanese time to ensure you don't miss the matches.

All in all a truely wonderful development, which has truely changed the way I watch TV, and put me back in control instead of the TV schedulers.

As you can probably guess, I Like TIVO A LOT!!

This said, like all systems it has its short commings. The worst of these is tha
t it will assume the program starts & stops when the schedule says it will. usually the ads give you a buffer, but on BBC often programms run late meaning you miss the last minute of the programme.

Tivo have worked around this by allowing you to "Pad" recordings (add a couple of minutes to the stop time), and 99% of the time this solves the problem.

If you want to know more, I suggest you visit the AVS TIVO forum on

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/

This is not linked officially to tivo, and reading the threads will give a good unbiased picture of the Pluses & minuses of the system