Customer Reviews

Leo Laporte's Guide to TiVo

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Even though Amazon recommends this for people who've bought a "TiVo TCD540040 Series2 DVR", this book is unlikely to be of much use since the hardware has changed in such a way as to make many of the Series1 & Series2 hacks unusable. The new TiVos are considered to be Series2.5 and at best the book is only good for telling how to add an extra hard drive into the new TiVos or use the remote control tricks.

Giving only one star as Amazon's suggestion that this is a useful book for owners of TCD540040 is clearly misleading.

I had a spare 120 gig drive left over from another project and found
out that I could use it to upgrade my series 1 Tivo machine. That was January 2004. I read various websites on the subject. I thought about it; read some more; thought about it some more; and never got anywhere. Finally, I read the section on InstantCake in Leo's book and realized that this was best solution for my situation. Lucky me. I ran the program and initialized the drive for TIVO before I opened the box. My Tivo had been reconditioned and I discovered that the drive(s) configuration didn't match what I had expected from my serial number. No matter. I just pulled out the old drives and installed the new drive. It worked right away although I had to figure out how to get both LNB's working,
change the daily call phone number, and TURN OFF TIVO SUGGESTIONS (my TIVO started recording everything until I remembered that I had to turn it off when I first got the machine.) This book saved me time and trouble.

The only downside is what I call "sidebar-itis." This problem is not unique to this book, but it gets harder and harder to read these books with all these sidebars disrupting and distracting you like a guy sitting behind you in a movie blabbering away. Otherwise, very useful.

I wrote the above in November 2004. A year and a half later, I find this book to be much more than I did then. I've found myself going back to it periodically and finding valuable help. My four stars now look to me a little on the stingy side, I would give it five now if I could.

This seems like a nice book for beginners to TiVo. There are occasionally intersting nuggets inside, so I don't totally hate it. For my purposes, though, it was awful. Leo LaPorte is technically savvy, but this book's description is DEFINITELY MISLEADING. It will NOT teach you how to get your Series 2 DirecTivo on the web. For that you will need "Hacking the Tivo" and a lot of time on dealdatabase.com's forums.

TiVO is one of the most increasingly popular electronic home entertainment systems in the market today. With a computer chip that makes video tape obsolte, and with the enhanced visual images that only a digital system can provided, TiVo is well on its way to making VHS video recorders as obsolete as their BetaMax predecssors. In Leo Laporte's Guide To TiVo, Leo Laporte clearly describes the hacks, upgrades, and improvements that most TiVo users are likely to perform and focuses on the things that will make life with your TiVo worth living - things such as adding a CallerID display to your television, adding a new hard drive, remote control hacks that anyone can perform and adding Web capabilities. Featuring 432 pages of informed and informative "user friendly information, Leo Laporte's Guide To TiVo is a "must" for anyone seeking to maximize what their TiVo system can offer them.

Great book. If you are interested in the workings of tivo this is a must have

...and I don't play one on TV. So maybe THAT's why I love this book. I mean, I'm the type who didn't laugh when told that there are some idiots in the world who actually called help desks looking for the 'any' key. Um,I was one of those idiots. So books like this, that give me some background, as well as some directions I can actually FOLLOW, are always welcome. And maybe I'm a sucker for style, but I love the tone of this book, and the goofy sense of humor.