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CNET review (5/27/03; updated 2/23/05) By John P. Falcone Setup and installation | Music and photo sharing | TiVo To Go | Remote programming | Multiroom viewing | Conclusion Thanks to TiVo's marketing savvy and good word of mouth, the majority of TV viewers (even those without a DVR) are familiar with the concept of TiVo-ing a television show. This familiarity may seem to ensure TiVo's dominance, but nevertheless, its DVR competitors--most notably Dish Network, ReplayTV, and local cable companies--have introduced popular, worthy alternatives. But TiVo's Home Media features help further distinguish it from the field. Setup and installation First you'll need to buy a USB-enabled Ethernet or wireless adapter so that TiVo can interface with your existing home network and your broadband Internet connection. The company recommends D-Link or Linksys adapters, but we used an old Netgear MA101 wireless adapter interfacing with a D-Link AirPlus DWL-900AP wireless access point, and we experienced no trouble.
We connected the TiVo, via the USB adapter, to our network. The Ethernet adapter was truly plug and play; the wireless adapter, understandably, needed us to enter a few simple configuration settings, such as the network's WEP password. In each case, once the network connection had been established, the TiVo officially ditched its old dial-up modem and replaced it with lightning-fast broadband access. Music and photo sharing TiVo's music- and photo-sharing functions require a trip to TiVo's Web site, where you download either the small TiVo Desktop application for Windows or the Macintosh version, which sets up the Mac's iPhoto and iTunes software for TiVo. After installation, you use a simple drag-and-drop interface to choose which photos and music files you wish to share with the TiVo. You can "publish" whole folders or individual files in seconds, without actually moving any of the files on your hard drive.
Under the new Music & Photos option in the TiVo main menu, you'll now see "Your music on PC1" and "Your photos on PC1." ID3 information for songs is displayed, so you'll see song title, album title, artist, year, and genre (if available), as well as duration and filename. You can easily navigate nested folders with the remote, play individual songs, or play multiple songs sequentially or randomly. The shuffle and repeat modes can include subfolders. Even better, you can use your existing playlists, as long as you've saved them in the standard m3u, b4s, PLS, or ASX file format. Just pick a folder of music, select a starting song or playlist and the playback mode, and turn off your TV. With TiVo's audio output hooked up to your home stereo, you can enjoy hours of uninterrupted digital music.
Digital-photo navigation works the same way. Photos can be viewed in the same shuffle and repeat modes the music files have, with eight user-configurable slide-show intervals ranging from two seconds to five minutes. Unlike the many DVD players that are billed as photo viewers, TiVo perfectly displayed almost every image we threw at it; JPEG, TIFF, GIF, and BMP files from digital cameras and the Web all came up with no trouble, though some of our PNG files didn't show up. You can rotate images 90 degrees with a click of the remote, and large image files are automatically sized to your screen. | |||
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John P. Falcone, an associate editor for CNET Reviews, no longer owns a VCR. Have a question for him? Let us know!
