Temptation Island

By Chris Taylor

I'm just a gigolo when it comes to gadget love. I get all excited about cool devices, then dump them in a flash for younger, slimmer, faster models. But I've never fallen so hard as I did last month when I bought a Sony TiVo, the tapeless video machine that stores up to 30 hours' worth of TV on its internal hard drive. TiVo delighted me with its ease of use and uncanny intelligence (smart enough to recommend shows it knows I'll like). I was sure I'd found a lasting relationship. So when a friend mentioned that Microsoft was working on a rival box called Ultimate TV that could do everything TiVo did plus record two channels at the same time, my heart sank. Was it dumping time again, so soon?

To find out, I spent last week on a kind of technological Temptation Island, quietly playing with Ultimate TV on the bedroom set while TiVo sat in the living room, blissfully unaware of my cheating. And I'm somewhat relieved to report that for all its dual-channel flashiness, Ultimate TV ultimately failed to sway me from my first love.

Right now, Ultimate TV is only available with DirecTV, which means you have to commit to satellite to use it (score one for TiVo, which works with cable too). Ultimate TV combines receiver and recorder in one box--which should, in theory, be better. But for some reason (possibly all the extra circuitry Microsoft had to pack into it) my Ultimate TV buzzed and hummed like a mini-fridge, even when powered down. I had to unplug it to get any sleep. So much for all those shows I wanted to record overnight.

Ultimate TV's supposedly universal remote didn't fare much better. It was bulky, sluggish, overly complicated and couldn't even be made to turn on my TV. I missed TiVo's slim little clicker, which recognized the TV semi-automatically. And I really missed its thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons.

Pressing thumbs is how TiVo learns which shows you love and hate; when it figures out the kind of stuff you like, it records it automatically. With Ultimate TV, you have to wade through the onscreen schedule and manually select each program you want to record--unless you choose a "season ticket," which records a show each time it's on. The device also warns you immediately about scheduling conflicts and, as with TiVo, makes it insanely easy to zip through the commercials.

But that's about as far as Ultimate TV's user friendliness goes. Want to mark a show for recording without browsing through the listings? Ultimate TV makes you enter names on an infrared keyboard, which is even clunkier than the remote. This is part of the package because Microsoft is also trying to sell you Web TV, which still ranks as one of the most painful Internet experiences I've ever had.

To be fair to Ultimate TV, its main advantage--two simultaneous channels of everything--is a huge one. Last Thursday, for example, it dutifully recorded both Survivor and Friends. With TiVo, I can't watch one while recording the other. If you're a career couch potato with many such conflicts, you may be able to overlook Ultimate TV's faults.

But if you're like me, and all you really want is grippingly well-made TV on demand, no recorder loves you back like TiVo. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to make up for my unexplained absence with some serious thumb action.

You can compare these two systems at ultimatetv.com and tivo.com Questions for Chris? E-mail him at cdt@well.com