I wasn’t going to take unboxing pictures of my new Tivo Series 3, but the packaging was too cool not to. Tivo went for a classier black box this time, with the color not popping out until you open it up. Like their on-screen interface, they put ease of use first in the packaging, with a quick-start poster and instructions for your cable guy.
What really impressed me is all the cables they include, especially in an HD world, where everyone wants to sell you overpriced HDMI cables. The only thing they left out was an optical audio cable, but otherwise it’s a pretty complete set for your money. The box itself is wider than the Series 2, and has a glossy black finish, silver faceplate and Cylon display slot.
In the back is a rich selection of ports for all those cables; one particularly neat detail is the built-in dust cover for the optical audio out. I had to clear some room in by equipment rack for the new addition, so it got to sit up on a pedestal for a few days. During the power-up and setup, the fancy new display gets put to good use.
November 12th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
I’m biting back the bile of jealousy. I need to know if the CableCard crapola actually works and you can drop your cable box with this baby.
Are you wifi-ing it?
November 12th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
According to the Comcast rep I talked to, your digital cable equipment fee gets you either their setup box or two CableCards. They seemed to have it on their customer service menu, so enough people must’ve asked about it.
It works like a charm with the Linksys wifi adapter from the old Tivo. The engineers were even smart enough this time around to let you punch in the WEP passcode instead of that awful hex string.