Congratulations to Dave Morse for winning TiVoBlog.com’s contest. For writing a wonderful essay, Dave will receive a $25 gift cert. to BestBuy as well a TiVo t-shirt. Thanks to everybody who submitted an essay. I really enjoyed reading them!

Here’s Dave’s essay:

With apologies to David Letterman (who I TiVo every weeknight ), here is a list of the top 10 reasons of why TiVo is better than the competition:

10. The “peanut”-shaped remote: It has won design awards from the Consumer Electronics Association, and everyone I know who has a TiVo raves about it. The remote was designed based upon focus group feedback, and as such it’s very easy to use, with color-coded “Thumbs Up” and “Thumbs Down” buttons to rate show preferences, a huge yellow pause button for when you have to step away from the TV, etc. Every button is positioned in a logical place, and the remote itself is quite ergonomic and fits well in anyone’s hand.

9. Online scheduling from the Internet: If you hear about a show you don’t want to miss but you’re not in your house, simply login to the TiVo web site, browse the online TV guide, and schedule it remotely! I have used this feature many times and it works flawlessly.

8. WishLists: This is one of the most underrated (and perhaps underutilized) features of TiVo. The ability to find shows that include your favorite actor/actress, subject, genre, or keyword is extremely powerful. DVRs from the competition can’t touch this.

7. Cost: The cost of standalone TiVos (especially with recent promotions) has dropped dramatically over the past several years. At the time this was written, a 40-hour Series 2 TiVo could be had for $49.99! A build-your-own PVR or Windows MCE PC can’t touch that.

6. “Service-agnostic”: Unlike DVRs from cable or satellite companies that tie you to their service via integrated tuners, standalone TiVo boxes can handle any provider you throw at it, be it cable, and satellite, or just an over-the-air antenna. If you decide to change providers, you can take your TiVo (and all of your preferences and saved shows) with you

5. Music and Photos: The ability to stream MP3s and view slideshows of photographs from networked PCs extends what was originally a DVR into a home entertainment device.

4. TivoToGo: This feature allows you to transfer shows to, and now from, PCs! With additional software, you can also burn recordings to DVD. Combined with a portable DVD player, this feature has proved invaluable for cross-country road trips in the minivan! This capability certainly doesn’t exist in current DVR offerings from cable or satellite providers.

3. Continual improvement: I think TiVo is better than the competition for the simple fact that it has continued to improve upon their product through software upgrades like no other DVR has: grouping episodes by “folders” of show titles (who can forget the elation when that feature was rolled out?!),
networking capabilities (see other features on this list!), and most recently Overlap Protection. The TiVo Home Media Engine SDK will allow external developers to extend the TiVo’s capabilities in ways not yet
imagined! The announcement that TiVo will soon extend TivoToGo to allow easy transfer of shows to iPods and PSP is yet another indication of TiVo’s commitment to improving the best-in-class DVR.

2. Season Pass Manager: The ability to prioritize which shows should record when conflicts occur is unique to TiVo. TiVo is very clear what conflicts will exist when new shows are scheduled, and you get the option of giving them priority over existing Season Passes. TiVo is also especially adept at
only recording new episodes of TV shows, if you’ve already seen older episodes. No other DVR has a similar feature.

And I saved the best for last…

1. User Interface: TiVo’s menus are obscenely easy to navigate. Everything is very intuitive; my 4-year-old son has figured out how to play his favorite shows (a couple of TiVo button presses, scroll to the show and press play!). My in-laws, neither of whom is very “tech-savvy”, love their TiVos and couldn’t live without them. Consider it a very complex consumer electronic device that TiVo Inc. has gone out of its way to make usability an overriding tenet. As former FCC chairman Michael Powell has stated, “TiVo
is God’s machine.”