Tech Gurus: Help me setup my tivo!

[AZK]

Ill confess, I have testicles but still don't know a goddamnn thing about home entertainment/audio or how it all works together. My dad purchased a home entertainment system and I just got a tivo. Do i need to splice the cable into the cable box and the tivo or can i just hook up the red/white/yellow wires to the tivo box from the cable box and then from the tivo to the receiver. The audio receiver thing is the main part of the whole unit, it's where everything gets plugged in etc... He got this setup from tweeter, and those fucks are being less than helpful in trying to set this up unless I want to pay $225. [censored] that. So recap: Flat screen which is just a monitor, actual tv is a base unit, goes into audio receiver, DVD/VCR also goes into audio receiver, Where does Tivo go in all this? If I hook it up from cable box to tivo to receiver it would be the exact same set up the VCR has and this is what the tivo directions say also, but the guy at tweeter when he set the system up said that we wouldn't be able to record on the VCR, does this mean then that if I hook up the tivo the same way I won't be able to record? Help.

Thanks.

[wonderwes]

Your tivo must have some type of cable feed going to it. You will need a cable splitter (get a cheap one at Radioshack for $5). Now you have a digital cable box. You should have gotten this adapter with the tivo of two light nodes to put over the cable box. That is the IR I believe. If tivo has to record something, and change the channel box, thats what it will do it (You prob dont need a coax cable feed for that since it inputs the video off the rca) (as in Video out cable box ---> video in of tivo). That device acts like your remote control to send change channel commands to the cable box.

if you plug in the cable co-ax line directly into the tivo then you will probably get the basic cable channels (not the extra ones on tivo). You might want to do that. I state this because if your tivo wants to record something, it will have to change it to that channel on the cable box, resulting you cant watch something else on your cable box due to its recording. However, if you have a direct cable feed in the tivo, and it can record the basic channels, you can still watch anything sepereately on the cable box.

To hook up the video is easy. You can use RCA or Svideo to whatever device you want. You can hook it directly into the TV video inputs. If you have everything running into a stereo receiver you have two options. Run the video to the TV, audio to the receiver. Otherwise, if your stereo receiver also handles the video, plug in all the cables into the stereo. Your stereo receiver prob has a lot of inputs for Video 1, Video 2, 3, etc. Each set will most likely have the Yellow (video) and two stereo cords (white/red). You will also probably see a S-video port on it too. I recommend to use S-video because the picture quality will be extremely better.

Make sure you have it next to a phone line. If its a series 2 you will have the option to have it connect through ethernet, but when you first boot it up it wants to a daily call. After the daily call it will install any upgrades (latest tivo OS 7.2) and program show data. After that daily call it will prob take 4 hours to reload it all (just takes long that first time).

Just get the tivo up so you can see the video on your screen. The guided setup is very detailed and easy to go through.

PM me if you need any other hookup info.