Price Paid:  $299.00 from Circuit City

Summary:
Have used without an issue for over a year. The dual tuner is a must with TIVO. Letting you watch one channel and record another at the same time. Must if you have kids. Did have one issue during the receiver setup one time where it stopped at 28% every time. Found a simple fix on the Tivo Community site. Other than that it's been great....

Strengths:
Dual Tuners, Dolby Digital

Weaknesses:
none so far...kncok on wood...From what I hear the support from Sony is not to great.

Similar Products Used:
none

Price Paid:  $350.00 from tivo

Summary:
TIVO service SUCKS!
You can't talk to the same person twice. You can't get an employee number or last name. You can't get them to give the same answer twice.

I'd love to have one that works. It would be great if the service was even marginal. It's a total disappointment!

Price Paid:  $99.00 from MiniDishes

Summary:
I love the recorder and Tivo. The Tivo channel guide is the best I've ever seen, and I've seen a few. The ability to record two programs at once and watch a third I'd recorded earlier is amazing. I am a previous owner of the Dish Network's DishPlayer and while it was good, it lacked the two best features of the SAT T60 - Tivo and dual tuners.

Strengths:
Two tuners, Tivo service, great picture

Weaknesses:
Unfortunately, the unit died after only three months. Thanks to great service from DirecTV and Sony a bad hard drive was replaced and I have my unit back and working in only a couple of weeks.

Similar Products Used:
DishPlayer, Regular Tivo

Price Paid:  $250.00 from Good Guys

Summary:
Great product. Have used over a year with no reliability problems. As others have written, TiVo changes your life, since you no longer surf live channels and settle for mediocre material. We now watch only live sports, or recorded shows and movies we've decided we want to see.

Strengths:
Reliable, easy to set up, easy to use program guide.

In my case, after the initial warranty ran out, I upgraded the disks to 230 hours. I never, ever run out of space. Upgrade is easy if you are handy with PCs and electronics. The SAT-T60's design makes it easy to do this, based on simple instructions on the Internet, or you can purchase an upgrade.

The TiVo "Season Pass" ability to record recurring series -- and get only new episodes, not repeats if that's what you want -- means you never have to remember to record your favorite shows. It's great.

Weaknesses:
If you insist on channel surfing, it takes a moment to bring up the next channel.

Similar Products Used:
S-VHS recorder.

Price Paid:  $300.00 from ORBITSAT.COM

Summary:
Although I'm happy with the picture quality, human interface, and seamless integration of the DSS and TiVo features, I'm extremely unhappy with the reliability of the unit. It was installed for about three days when it suddenly refused to power up. A phone call to the on-line retailer, ORBITSAT.COM, was very discouraging; they didn’t even want to talk to me and referred me to Sony for warranty service… on a three-day old receiver! The people at ORBITSAT.COM wanted nothing to do with me after they got their money.

Sony wasn’t much better. They did agree to repair the receiver under warranty, but they took a long to time to get it done. I was without my receiver for several weeks. I have since discovered that many people have complained about similar problems with this unit including issues with the optical digital audio, remote control, and hard disk.

If you really want one of these, your best bet is to purchase at a local retailer using a credit card so you’ll have some recourse when/if your unit dies a few days after you get it home.

Also, the unit is advertised as able to record 35 hours (depending on program content) but the real capacity is closer to 20 hours. The hard disk can be replaced with a bigger one using one of several after-market kits, but that immediately voids the warranty.

During initial installation, the modem refused to work. A call to DirecTV solved the problem, but I had to set the modem to half-speed to make it work.

The interface sometimes lags for several seconds which can be annoying when you’re trying to set up shows to record and configure the unit.

The unit includes an infrared emitter which it uses to control your VCR. This allows you to pop in a blank tape and transfer a show from the DSS to tape. It’s a good idea, but the execution doesn’t work well. The emitter is mounted at the end of a flimsy, flexible plastic boom which doesn’t stay in place and looks bad sticking out in front of your VCR. All it does is tell your VCR when to start recording, but you can just as easily do this manually without the extra clutter the IR emitter causes.

Finally, the TiVo component makes suggestions and automatically records shows it thinks you’ll like based on what you usually watch. The suggestions so far were terrible, but they were improving as the unit learned my tastes.

Strengths:
Clear picture and great sound. The TiVo integration with DSS is seamless. The remote control integrates TV and DSS/TiVo functions in one place so you can change the volume on your TV and change channels on the DSS with one remote control.

Weaknesses:
The receiver has serious reliability problems. Numerous others have reported problems with the optical digital output, remote control, and hard disk. Mine died a few days after it was installed; Sony took weeks to repair it. The unit doesn’t have the Picture-in-Picture feature that Ultimate TV has. Modem doesn’t work well and the TiVo suggestions suck, but they are improving.

Similar Products Used:
Various DSS