TiVo. Problems, hints and tips!

[Topgun]

Originally Posted by Andy C

Some remote tips from the guys over at tivocommunity, many still from the S1 days...

* Pressing CLEAR works as a shortcut for delete on most pages - most handy on the "my shows" page
* Press and hold TEXT switches your TV AV sources - that's how I flip between VM TiVo / TiVo S1 / DVD
* Press and hold POWER button turn turn TV on/off - a short press makes TiVo go into standby
* Press SLOW to toggle mini TV screen at top right

* The good old shortcuts still work - though it's "home" and not "TiVo" button:

Home+Home : My recordings (now playing)
Home+1 : Manage series links
Home+2 : Planned recordings (todo list)
Home+3 : Wishlists
Home+4 : Search all TV
Home+5 : Browse all TV
Home+0 : full screen TV + pause ?

Cheers,

A.

That's excellent, thanks for that.

[zerolight]

Not a tip per se, but a couple features that I loved on my old Tivo that for whatever reason never appeared on V+ or Sky+.

1. Record First Run Only - only record if it has never been shown on any UK channel ever. Great for pulling out that occasional new episode of the Simpsons or whatever.

2. Record at Most... great for getting stocking fillers of loads of shows - the wife likes the odd Oprah, 2 and a half men, that sort of rubbish. This feature used to let me always have the past 3 or 5 most recent episodes of fillers.

[Stephen]

Those feautures are on VM TiVo.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Hambone88

It's a bit like here
The cheap DVD players will play anything
And the Sony type won't.
My cousin bought a DVD player for 40 bucks
And it plays everything
No conversion req

I did have a Sony DVD player and Pioneer DVD player, which have now been replaced with a Samsung DVD recorder, and a JVC dvd recorder. All four play both NTSC and PAL disks fine, and will covert to PAL if needed (although all my TVs will do NTSC playback as well, so it's not a problem if they didn't anyway).

I don't know if it's the same in the US, but generally any DVD player sold in the UK will play NTSC discs, as long as either the disk is not region coded (which if recorded on a DVD recorder is likely to be the case) or the player has been unlocked.

[savvychels]

Originally Posted by Stuart

I did have a Sony DVD player and Pioneer DVD player, which have now been replaced with a Samsung DVD recorder, and a JVC dvd recorder. All four play both NTSC and PAL disks fine, and will covert to PAL if needed (although all my TVs will do NTSC playback as well, so it's not a problem if they didn't anyway).

I don't know if it's the same in the US, but generally any DVD player sold in the UK will play NTSC discs, as long as either the disk is not region coded (which if recorded on a DVD recorder is likely to be the case) or the player has been unlocked.

Nope - they're not as 'advanced' as this lot over here LOL. I'm from Canada (same video formats and equipment as the US), and while I can buy and play NTSC formatted discs and Videos from Canada and US and play them here, over there their TV's and video equipment cannot decode the PAL into an NTSC signal.

Though the other poster has said that his recorded videos work fine, so I may try recording a programme here onto DVD and seeing if my family can play them. Obviously as you say region coded DVD's cannot play (and you cannot cheaply - if at all - unlock regions in North American players to my knowledge - unlike here where most companies build in a code to unlock them) but maybe they can cope with just a recorded DVD. I'll have to give it a go.

[Lew]

I think the main reason our DVD players will play NTSC discs is that region 2 includes Japan as well as Europe and they use NTSC in Japan. PAL-playback DVD players do seem to be getting more popular Stateside though. I have a friend in San Diego who has several players that'll convert PAL to NTSC as his family are huge Anglophiles and buy loads of British DVDs from Play.com

[roughbeast]

Originally Posted by Stephen

Don't think so, mainly cause you have 1GB of storage. You don't really need to back it up lol.

Surely you mean 1TB.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Lew

I think the main reason our DVD players will play NTSC discs is that region 2 includes Japan as well as Europe and they use NTSC in Japan. PAL-playback DVD players do seem to be getting more popular Stateside though. I have a friend in San Diego who has several players that'll convert PAL to NTSC as his family are huge Anglophiles and buy loads of British DVDs from Play.com

Actually, I read an article in a DVD magazine that suggested it was simply because it's considerably cheaper to maintain one manufacturing line that manufactures DVD players that can do both than it is to maintain two manufacturing lines that can each manufacture DVD players that can play PAL or NTSC.