Use the Texas "No Call Lists" website.  9:35:18 PM    

I'll hardly be the first web denizen to extol the virtues of this device, so I'll keep it short. Basically, this is what a VCR should be. Sure, it records things, but it's also directly tied into the channel guide. The main benefit of this is that everything you've got recorded is already labeled, since the info is already in the guide.

What's the worst part of the VCR experience? Programming the VCR is difficult. It shouldn't be difficult; the amount of information you have to enter is pretty small (channel, start time, stop time). And yet, the bulk of the VCR-owning population is baffled by it. Why? I suspect the main reason is that there's no useful feedback that you've succeeded. (And the next biggest problem is that it's difficult to keep track of a bunch of sequential access video tapes.)

TiVo completely nails the solutions to these problems.

Other standout features:

• You can watch one thing while you're recording another thing.
• The ability to pause live television is indescribably useful. It keeps the last 30 minutes around all the time, and you can always rewind back into that.
• Recording something is dead easy: hit the record button. It'll give you a menu with some options, but the default option is almost always what you want. Even better: it'll pick up any and all of the 30 minute back buffer, if it's part of the show you're taping. So you've got a half and hour to decide if you want to keep something for watching later.
• It's also really easy to tell it to "record every episode of show X".
• It's also really easy to go hunting for some movie you want to watch, and tell the TiVo to record it for you when it comes on.
• The user interface gets all of the little details right. It's easy to use simply, but also easy to get into the deeper features.
• It's extremely fast and responsive; the complete opposite of the two digital cable boxes I've used.
• Despite the vaguely hacky nature of how it interacts with the digital cable box (it essentially fakes being a remote to change channels), the experience is awesome. I expected to be irritated by it, but I have been totally happy. It's hard to describe.

I can't get over how much they've nailed the user experience. (Even the out-of-the-box experience was awesome: every cable needed was included, and the 50 foot phone cable was actually rolled up in a way that was easy to unroll just the right amount.) This is an unbelievably perfect device.

(OK, OK, there are a few minor nits. There's no "Anime" subcategory under Movies; just "Animation," which includes Disney movies, etc. There's also no easy way to search for animated series. And you can't set up the Season Pass [where it records all eps of a show] if the show isn't on in the next few weeks, which has foiled me for both Farscape and Ed. However, you can tell it to record all shows that match certain title keywords, so I've gotten around it that way.)  12:46:54 PM    

[screenshot]  12:21:48 PM