Despite many pitfalls, I am determined in my quest for a fully functional personal video recorder.

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  • The most annoying drawback is slow response time. Sometimes I can count to five before the push of a button registers.

  • Coming in at a close second is pixelation. This occurs almost exclusively when viewing recorded programs and rarely when watching live TV. The picture will degrade to the point where it is completely unrecognizable, the audio will cease, and, if you're lucky, normal play will resume several seconds later. This is incredibly frustrating, especially when it happens during crucial scenes, as it invariably does.

  • I wish the software was a little smarter. For example, I wish the unit would automatically omit the channels you don't receive from the Live TV guide. It should also exclude the programs that air on those channels from the list of possible programs you can record.

  • The Season Pass feature needs some fine-tuning as well. When setting up a Season Pass you have the option of recording first run or first run and repeats. They should add a third option, which would be to not record the same program twice. Some networks replay their shows several times. I don't need three recordings of the same "Sex and the City" episode.

  • I also spent a good five minutes looking through menus for a way to change the recording quality so I could squeeze in more programming minutes on my hard drive, but the search was fruitless. I spent another five minutes looking for an answer in the FAQ on the TiVo site. Again, no luck. I'll have to call TiVo about that one.

  • The remote should also have more options for fast-forwarding and rewinding through programs. It'd be nice if you could skip ahead or back in five-minute increments.


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