After my previous adventure getting a new dish and TV antenna installed, I've been ready and waiting. Finally, yesterday, the Tivo arrived. The box was crunched up and hanging open; they didn't double-box it, like they should have done for UPS shipping. And, oh by the way, I paid for 2nd-day FedEx and they used 3rd-day UPS; I have requested a refund on that matter.

Anyway, I plugged it all together and it worked perfectly. Amazingly perfectly. The quality is just fantastic and the Tivo even deals automatically with all of the 4:3 to 16:9 issues. I grabbed one of those Japanese eye candy videos from Discovery HD and stunned my wife. "I was expecting everything to look that good. I guess I'll have to watch more wildlife shows." All of the local HD channels also come in with perfect clarity. I was concerned I'd have to delve into the wild world of antenna preamps, but no need.

About the only feature I'm not using yet is the HDMI output, as my TV only accepts analog component input. About the only thing that's disturbed me so far was getting TV commercials with Dolby Digital sound. Luckily, with the Tivo, you don't actually have to watch them. If I had to complain about something, it would be the 30-minute latency in the hold queue to get a DirecTV customer service to activate my box.

Now I just need to extricate the couple videos from the Tivo I borrowed from Rob and send that back to him...

I'm probably just going to use the traditional videotape technique. I've got a couple shows saved for other people who aren't exactly TurboNet capable...