Pay for TiVo’s Recorder or Settle for Cable’s?

This question was posed by The Wall Street Journal today. It is an interesting dilemma no doubt. On one hand, you have a cheap 10 dollar a month DVR from the cable company that is not even on the same playing field as TiVo. However, TiVo demands a pretty serious price tag for its Series 3 HD DVR. I guess in the end, if you have the money to pay for the WAF of the TiVo, its a pretty easy decision to make.

From the article:

This latency problem didn't affect just one dud of a
Motorola box. In our home, we have four of these units, and three have
the problem. All, of course, share the capacity limitations and
user-interface problems.

In the program grid, even on a 50-inch,
high-definition screen with acres of room, the Comcast box displays
just four rows of stations at a time. Until recently, there was a fifth
row, but now that has been replaced by an ad. The ad not only sucks up
space, but also is aggravating because it gets selected each time you
reach the bottom of the grid screen.

Advertising is fine, but in this case, sacrificing 20%
of an already paltry information screen for an ad just shows contempt
for users.

By contrast, the basic TiVo grid shows eight rows of
stations at a time, and offers an alternate view that packs in even
more information using two vertical columns: one displaying stations
and the other showing a list of shows scheduled in the coming hours.