idallassleeping less and reading more

I did it. I bought a top of the line series 3 HD dual-tuner TiVo. It’s the best thing to ever happen to television. As a gadget, it’s pretty great. It also, however, pegs me as somebody willing to spend a pretty big chunk of money on enhancing my television entertainment.

After having a series 2 TiVo previously and having used the Comcast Motorola HD DVR box for over a year, I feel confident saying that as far as digitally recording high definition content (including premium content like HBO), nothing else out there touches the TiVo. The Comcast DVR records fine, shows look great and all that, but it’s just lacking the polish and finish the TiVo interface has. The ridiculous number of steps it takes to search for a program and set up a series recording on the Comcast DVR is mind numbing, and the way it dumps you back to the ‘live TV’ mode at odd times forcing you to dig through the menu system to get back to where you were is infuriating. It almost makes it a chore to watch television, and that’s exactly what watching television should never be.

I don’t think the TiVo interface is the end-all be-all of set-top DVR but it has very clearly had a lot of work put into it and it’s pleasant and almost fun to use. Oh, and wishlists. Yay for wishlists. With a nice set of wishlists and season passes set up, a TiVo almost makes the exorbitant prices Comcast charges for cable worth it. Almost.

I had been eyeing these things for awhile and finally decided to give myself an early Christmas present and get one. It was designed to be a sort of electronic conga drum and it has some very good conga sounds built-in (as well as several hundred other world and electronic sounds). The interface is split into 10 rubber pad areas and each one makes a different sound. Some of the pads can influence other pads to emulate things like holding one hand down on a drum while you hit it with the other. You get a different more muted sound. That works pretty well and if I was a better drummer I think it might sound pretty realistic.

It has inputs for a couple of external pedals so it can be closer to a full drum kit with the addition of kick and hihat pedals (but way more portable), and it has the nifty ‘D-Beam’ infrared controller for triggering sounds (like a big gong, blammo!) or affecting other sounds like fiddling with the pitch for some cool effects. It also has a somewhat interesting ‘Rhythm Coach’ that I’m hoping may help me actually be able to play some of these ethnic beats.

I played with it some today and it’s pretty fun so far. I’ll be using it live for the first time tomorrow (at the Be Nice Party one year anniversary) so hopefully I don’t embarrass myself too much. I was hoping to have more than a day to get to know it. Wish me luck!