Am I the only one thinking I am 99% of the way there with buying a $60 PCI TV tuner card from ATI?

99%? You're not even in the same area code.

You have to get away from the VCR, linear application mode of thought when it comes to TiVo.

You don't tell TiVo to record this program or that program at a certain time. Well, you do at the very beginning, but after that TiVo figures out what you like (movies, Sci-Fi, action/adventure, comedy, sports, whatever) and it does the rest automatically. The latest TiVo software even has a feature where you can see all the programs that it wanted to record for you but couldn't, due to scheduling conflicts or other reasons. ("Someone in your household deleted this item from the To-Do list 2/7/02 4:45 pm", or "TiVo will not record this program because a higher priority program "Scientific American Frontiers" will be recorded instead")

It is so nice to press the "List" button on the remote and see 30 hours of programming I can choose from -- highlight any of the programs and a single button press gives me a synopsis of the program. Get half an hour into it, decide to watch something else for a while, and when I come back, a single button press resumes right where I left off.

TiVo is a lot like the empeg player -- no amount of describing it will convince you. You won't "get it" until you have played around with one for a day or so -- and then you will be amazed that you somehow had managed to get along without one. You will no longer watch television -- you will only watch TiVo.

Somebody later on in this thread mentions the TiVo's UI. I have said over and over to anybody who will listen that TiVo's User Interface is the best I have ever seen for a consumer electronics product.

The $9.95 a month that my TiVo subscription costs me is probably the best spent money that I pay every month in terms of bang for the buck.

tanstaafl.