REVIEW: TiVo Extras Add Little Luster

In this handout photo released by TiVo, a screen grab from Yahoo! Photos is shown. (AP Photo/TiVo) (AP)

SEATTLE -- Ever get an itch to buy a movie ticket, find your nearest Lexus dealer or listen to the president's weekly radio address on your television?

No? Well, you're probably not alone, but TiVo Inc. is hoping to get more customers tuned into the idea of using their digital video recorders to do a lot more than just pause live TV or hook up season passes to their favorite shows.

Teaming up with Yahoo Inc. and other companies, Tivo began adding online services late last year that let viewers share photos with family and friends, check weather forecasts and real-time traffic conditions, play games, listen to live radio or recorded podcasts, compare reviews of kid-friendly programming, or track fantasy football standings.

The services are available through Series2 TiVos, which start at $69.99 after a $150 mail-in rebate and a $19.95 monthly subscription fee, as well as the new Series3 high-definition boxes that cost $800. (TiVo offers a variety of models with varying price structures.) For the online services to work, the boxes must be hooked up to the subscribers' broadband-enabled home network.

I tested out the features on a borrowed Series2 and liked the first feature I tried _ browsing for movie listings and buying a ticket through the online ticketing service Fandango. Still, it didn't completely dazzle me.

After punching in my ZIP code, I got a choice of searching for movies by title or theater, what was opening that week or coming to theaters soon. Movie listings came with short plot descriptions _ skimpier on detail than those Fandango offers on its Web site _ plus a list of cast and credits and a photo gallery that seemed designed to make up for the lack of a trailer.

With another click of the remote, I picked a theater and showtime, got a prompt saying it would cost me $9 per ticket plus a $3 Fandango charge, then I entered my credit card number, got an 11-digit confirmation number _ which I had to jot down because there was no way to print it out _ and instructions to head to the theater with the credit card I'd used.

When I got there, there wasn't a line, but if there had been, I'm sure I would've felt cool walking up to the Fandango machine and getting my tickets with a quick swipe of my credit card.

The rest of TiVo's online features struck me as spare, less user-friendly imitations of tasks that seem better suited to a computer.

It was easy enough to set up a link to my Yahoo Photos account, though I soon found it pretty tedious to enter information like usernames and passwords into an on-screen keyboard with the up-down, right-left buttons on my TiVo remote.

My photos looked nice on a 27-inch screen, but no nicer than when I simply plug my digital camera straight into my TV. Another feature lets people view pictures from family and friends with Yahoo Photos accounts. Most people I know use other digital photo-sharing programs, which I've generally found much easier than Yahoo's, so it's not a service I can see myself using that much.

TiVo's Yahoo Weather service seemed like a better fit for TV. It displays five-day forecasts by ZIP code and lets you save more than one city on the same screen, making it easy to compare forecasts in different areas. It didn't surprise me to find out it's one of TiVo's most widely used online services.