Toshiba SD-H400 DVD-Tivo

TiVo without the fee? You bet! According to this article at Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools, you can get one of these TiVos for about $210. Since I am a Satellite user, I am content to continue using the one that I have with Directv.

With the news of TiVo making it less attractive to fast forward through commercials, I am considering something completely different anyway.

If you want Tivo, but don’t want to subscribe to the monthly Tivo fee ($13), or the very high lifetime fee ($300), then this basic Tivo box is great.

It is the least expensive Tivo box which offers the Tivo Basic features. This is a no-fee service which allows you to program the Tivo either by manually specifying a time and channel, like a regular VCR, or you can choose to record from a 3-day-in-advance programming guide. You can store up to 80 hours on the Basic (highest compression) quality. On the Best quality, which I use exclusively, much less compression occurs, and you get about 24 hours.

Pros: The Tivo interface is exactly the same, except items that are only accessible to the Tivo Plus paid service subscribers do not appear on several menu pages.