The other day while I was putting together a post about getting a TiVo for $19.99, I started to think about how my first TiVo has really paid itself off. Since I purchased my first TiVo, I’ve meet a lot of nice people via this site. I really do enjoy all of the feedback I receive, both positive and negative.

Along with the great people that I’ve meet, I also have received a number of new gadgets that I wouldn’t have acquired if I didn’t buy my first TiVo. Now you’re probably wondering how a purchase of a $200 TiVo helped me get new gadgets including an iPod Mini & a 140 hr TiVo. The answer is TiVo’s rewards program! If you haven’t already signed up for the rewards program I highly recommend that you do. When I first signed up back in August ’04 I never would have imagined that I would be able to get enough referrals to receive a free TiVo and an iPod Mini. The only problem with getting so many referrals is that once you referrer somebody, you by default become their TiVo guru. I can’t even tell you the number of times that I’ve received a call from my buddy or my Mom asking me a question about their TiVo.

As you can see, my initial investment of $200 has paid itself off. Now if only my minimal amount of TiVo stock would flourish. I guess beggars can’t be choosers :).

It’s almost hard to believe that you can now get a Series2 40 hr. TiVo for only $19.99 after a $150 mail in rebate (via PVRWire). Isn’t it amazing how much the cost of a TiVo has come down? I spent $200 on my 60 hr TiVo a year and a half ago! Now you can basically get a TiVo for free. If only I could convince my wife that we need another TiVo ;). With prices being so low, it’s a good thing for TiVo that only 50% to 60% of new subscribers actually send in a rebate offer!

If you decide to take advantage of this offer, I would appreciate it if you put me down as your referrer (raianoat AT gmail DOT com).

Dave Zatz has alerted me to the fact that TiVo has partnered with Rocketboom to provide daily broadcast downloads. Now do you see what I mean when I talked about the real reason why TiVo’s HME app release is important?

If you follow TiVo news like I do, you probably already know that a lot of sites are talking about TiVo’s HME app release. Site after site mentions how cool these new apps are. In my opinion, most of these sites are missing the real story behind the news. As a matter of fact, I don’t even think that the apps that TiVo has released are all that impressive (thus far). After all, do we really need another HME app to check the weather? How about another way to listen to podcasts on our TiVo? The functionality that these apps provide has been around for a long time. For example, Galleon has been providing weather checking and podcasting functionality for a long time.

The real news behind this release is that TiVo has opened up a new way for you to get digital content on our DVRs. Other platforms have tried to connect the internet to our TV however, in my opinion; these previous endeavors were a failure. With the release of these HME apps, TiVo has truly made it easy for us to get internet content onto our TV screen. No longer do we need to install a separate piece of software on a PC that essentially scrapes the internet for podcasts or weather updates. As a matter of fact, with HME, you don’t even need to have a PC in the house to enjoy internet content! Now with HME your TiVo has the ability to act as a full-fledge PC and consume content off of the internet.

To sum it up, I think that the real news behind the HME app release isn’t the fact that TiVo released a couple of HME apps. Instead, I feel as though people should concentrate on the fact that TiVo now has the ability to deliver internet content to your TV! This is the reason why I’m excited about the HME app release. How about you?

Remember that there is only one week left for contest submissions. The winner of this contest will win a Best Buy gift card ($25.00) plus a TiVo t-shirt.

Last night I watched one of those 15 minute c|net clips that my TiVo downloaded via the internet. Prior to watching the show, I had this preconceived notion that the 15 minute clips would be a waste of my time. Being the big TiVo geek that I am, I was obligated to watch a show before I came to a final decision. To my surprise the show that I watched was actually pretty good. As a matter of fact, I made sure to tell my TiVo to keep the show until I delete it. Has anybody else enjoyed watching any of these shows? The show that I watched, talked about LCD TVs vs. Plasma TVs. I’m currently in the market for a new TV so I thought the show was worth my time.

Now that I’ve recorded eleven holiday specials, I need to find some time to edit the recordings using MyDVD. As you can imagine this is going to be a tedious process.

Needless to say, I don’t think I will have it done before Christmas. In the past I never had to edit out commercials because all of the content that I’ve wanted to put on a DVD didn’t have commercials. In the past, all I really needed to do was adjust the start and end times. Now that I have eleven recordings all with commercials I need to come up with an efficient way to edit out the content that I don’t want. I think I may use the “find scenes” feature in MyDVD however, I’m not sure how this works.

Does anybody have any experience editing TiVo recordings in MyDVD? Are there any recommendations for editing a large number of recordings like I need to do?

Yesterday I received a 40 hr TiVo that I plan on giving to my mother-in-law. I got this TiVo by taking part in the $100 Dockers special offer. In my opinion, this is one of the best promotions TiVo has put together thus far. For $100 I got $100 worth of Dockers clothing, a 40 hr. TiVo and 3 months worth of the TiVo subscription service. To top it all off, this offer was in place prior to TiVo requiring a one year commitment so my mother-in-law won’t be forced to pay for a year if she doesn’t like the service (I can’t imagine why she won’t like her TiVo).