How do tivo work?

Answer 1

find shows you want recorded and record them

Answer 2

There is a simple answer. Well, I hope my explanation is good enough to seem simple.

TiVo and other DVRs are really computers. The TV shows are not recorded to tape but are recorded as files on the hard drive in the DVR.

If you are watching "live" TV and if you have not requested a recording of the TV show, TiVo keeps a recording of up to the last 30 minutes of TV. You can rewind, pause, and fast forward through this 30 minutes of recording.

Once this "buffer" is full, you start losing the first minutes as you add new additional minutes.

If you happen to pause, TiVo just keeps a record of where you were. However, if you pause for longer than thirty minutes, you lose your place. Time, and the buffer, keep marching on.

If I'm interested in the current show, I usually just press the record button to tell TiVo to record the remainer of the show and the last 30 minutes in the buffer. This way I won't miss the show incase I pause the show for more then thirty minutes.

But that's just the beginning. Pausing live TV is useful but that isn't the best thing about TiVo.

The best things are Season Passes and Wishlists. With a Season Pass, you can tell TiVo to record all showings of "Lost" or whatever your favorite shows are. Even if they change the day and time, TiVo will automagically record the show for you.

This way if you are putting the kids to bed, no problem, the show will be waiting for you. If you go out to dinner or a movie that night, no problem, the show will be waiting for you. You can watch it later or the next day.

Or, if you have kids and your kids have favorite shows, you can set up a season pass so you always have their favorite shows on hand. My one son likes Thomas and Dora and Go Diego Go. My other son likes Jeff Corwin and Mythbusters and Dragonfly TV and Cyberchase. Instead of watching junk like Yu Gi Oh or whatever else happens to be on at the time, they can always watch one of the shows that we approve of.

Then there are Wishlists. I like movies with Cary Grant. So I set a Wishlist for Cary Grant movies so when TiVo finds them in it's program guide, it automatically records them for me to watch later. For my oldest, we record shows about reptiles.

Anyhow, I could go on and on ... and on ... and on ... about why I like TiVo so much.

Hopefully I've done a decent job of explaining how it works and what the other benefits are.