Is tivo the same thing as digital cable?

Question

what is tivo??

Answer 1

No.  Tivo is a machine that allows you to digitally record TV shows.  It's like a VCR that uses a hard drive (like what's in a computer) instead of video tape.  Tivo makes a daily telephone call that allows it to download TV schedules.  This gives you the ability to program your Tivo to record every episode of certain shows (a season pass) or to record all shows with your favorite actor in them.  Whenever you want, you can look at the list of shows your Tivo has recorded and pick the one you want to watch.  You can then fast forward through the commercials while you're watching.

Tivo is the greatest invention since the air conditioner.  Once you have one, you won't know how you lived without it.

Answer 2

No, they are not the same.

TiVO is TV recorder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiVo

Answer 3

TiVo is a digital video recorder; it comes into its own when you subscribe for their service, which downloads your TV/cable schedule so that it can easily automatically record shows.  For example, if you want to record "The Simpsons", you could set it to record xx channel at x:xx time, just like a regular VCR; or, with their service, you just tell it to record the next Simpsons show without having to look up when or what channel -- or all Simpsons shows until you tell it to stop, or any Simpsons it hasn't already recorded (cuts out reruns).  

It also records whatever you're currently watching through it, so you can also pause while watching a show live... it keeps recording so you can just un-pause it, or, you can rewind on the fly if you want to see something again.

It does NOT include content -- the actual shows themselves.  That would be your digital cable.  Some digital cable packages do include a TiVo or other digital video recorder, though.