NZTivo, New Zealand specific Tivo information.

What is a Tivo?

In short Tivo is a (smart) digital video recorder that uses Hard Disk technology as opposed to tape technology such as conventional VCR’s! Tivo is defined as a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) or Digital Video Recorder (DVR), an acronym for a device that:
• puts you in control of your TV viewing
• allows you to quickly access lists of recordings
• skip quickly through extraneous parts of the recordings
• lets you watch what you want, when you want!

The Tivo combines several important technologies together, such as real-time hardware video encoding, hard disk storage, and an electronic program guide (EPG). The key features of this combination of technologies are the recording and playback of shows, time-shifting (the ability to rewind/pause/fast-forward live TV), the ability to schedule regular recordings (eg daily/weekly shows), and the ability to suggest and record new shows (based on your likes/dislikes), etc.

Where can I get one??
If you’ve lived in North America or the UK then no doubt you’ve probably heard of Tivo and or one of your friends or family already has one. For everyone else, specifically those who live in Canada, Australia, or New Zealand – you’ll have to import a Tivo from the US or UK and modify it to work somewhat ‘stand alone’ because there is no Tivo service in those countries. The Tivo service is what legitimate users pay for (monthly, or lifetime subscription) to get access to the program information for the TV network (eg satellite, cable, etc) that they subscribe to. In countries without a Tivo hacking community it’ll take some considerable extra effort to get a Tivo working properly.

Is this legal?
It’s a bit of a grey area actually. The Tivo is often referred to as “subsidised hardware”. A term used to describe a product that is sold at or near the actual cost price to encourage and tie consumers into that system and it’s associated services and or products. For example, gaming consoles such as Playstation, Xbox, etc, which require expensive game disks and or more recently monthly online services.

The Tivo system requires a program guide service which involves a monthly fee. It is this revenue which keeps afloat the Tivo company and hence one of the reasons why some people are not too fond of other users not having to pay for that service. Fair enough for those fortunate enough to be living in a country that has Tivo service available or one of it’s alternatives, but for those living in a country who’s TV network operators have been slow or deliberately unresponsive to adopting PVR technology then I feel it is well within ones rights to use a Tivo without paying monthly fees.