Hey TiVo, how about just building a high quality, friendly user interface? Add the features that your customers have requested. Note: Customers = people who subscribe to your service. How about starting with the percentage space used monitor? Not hard to do, but you’ll set some hearts all a-twitter about that little feature. How about making TiVo Desktop Server robust? Not a memory hog, auto-updates? The sorts of things modern software has? And while I’m on a bit of a rant (and bear in mind, I’m a huge Tivo fan), hey, TiVo software programmers, aren’t you a bit embarrassed by that desktop code?? Start by fixing your memory leaks, then add directories=groups. Really, guys, how hard can it be?

And while I’m ranting … TiVo, give us Series 2 users a hardware upgrade plan, rather than the sole solution of an outright purchase of a TiVo HD. All you are doing is forcing people to make a complete new DVR decision all over again. You are not that much the incumbent when we have to switch the box out, still call the cable company for cablecards and installation, and then put the old Series 2 in the garage or on eBay.

All my opinion of course. There are lots of people who think TiVo Corporation is infallible and will continue to give them the benefit of doubt.

They do offer the ability to clear it with down, but single frame advance works better and removes the progress bar also, the way clear does.

We should at least try it and see if it works for us. As you noted, most of the time people pause because they don’t care what’s on the screen (doorbell, bathroom breaks) or because they explicitly care what’s on the screen (and the pause menu can be disabled for an entire show.) Compared to looking at my uncle’s Charter DVR and its PiP and ads all over the place, the pause menu doesn’t really irk me.

I rather like the other new feature that appeared on my old Series2 recently, though. When I pause programs now, I get a little bar that says “More about $PROGRAM”. Mind you, it’s a bit inaccurate; what it should say is “take me to a black screen with the PLEASE WAIT… box and remain there indefinitely, making me wonder if the box has crashed, until I give up and hit <- to go back to what I was doing.” But I accept that that’s a bit too wordy to really fit in the space provided.