Posted 10/18/2009 at 08:55:16am

Ok I tried out Nero's Liquid TV based off of Maximum PC's review and it was an absolutely horrible experience.

I installed the Liquid tv and drivers and it would not work so I tried calling Nero's tech support and was told that they only have one person on staff who can handle Liquid TV problems and they would call me back.. But never did.

 Every time I try to connect to the Tivo service it says it is not responding.  So of course I have disabled and even went so far as to uninstall my fire wall and disabled the firewall in my router as well and yet it will not connect.

 So I check and download the newest version of Liquid TV from their site. Still it does not work. Finaly I decide I'll format my computer and reinstall windows and then try again. So I format, install liquid tv and download my critcal updates and install all my computer's drivers..  Still Liquid TV does not work.

 So I think. Ok maybe my ISP is blocking Tivo. So I call AT&T and sit on the phone with them for a good bit of time while they check over everything and finaly she decides that there is nothing on their end blocking it.

 So I try calling Nero for the 6th day in a row and get a hold of some knucklehead that does not give me the same "We only have one person who can handle liquid tv problems" line and all this worthless piece of flesh says is "Its your Firewall"  "No" I say "I have disabled and uninstalled my firewall, It is Not the firewall" to which he replies "I dont know what to tell you, its your firewall"  "Bahh you people are idiots" I say "Click" 

 So finaly at this point I start thinking I never did see the .NET framework get updated when I ran my windows update after reinstalling so I go back and realize that the .NET framework is under Custom Updates so I get all the .NET upgrades and magically TIVO starts working after that.  Of course I had already had .NET installed prior to formating because I know I needed it for something, maybe steam or impulse or some online games, but maybe it was not the up to date version or something, who knows. Anyways now I have Tivo finaly working kind of, not very well really since it still wants to stutter and not work 100% appropriately. 

 Overall I'm pretty dissapointed. Particularly when Win 7 will come with Media center that does the same thing for free I'm thinking.

I really cant imagine that there is any good reason for TIVO to not work well on my computer.  Its definitely time for me to build a new computer which I'm working on now (Just bought me a new ATCS 840 Case) but no reason this computer should have any problems running Tivo

Asus A8N SLI premium

AMD 64 X2 +4800 Overclocked

Geforce 9800 GX2

 2G Ram

I cant imagine that should really be having trouble running simple TIVO on a fresh install of Windows XP

Posted 10/06/2009 at 10:09:05pm

Ok let me point out that if the only reason you are thinking about upgrading to the professional version over the Home premium is because you are afraid some of your XP programs will not work in 7 then it would be kind of stupid to even go with the Professional version instead of the Home premium.

 Why??  Because you probably already have a full version of XP and if you do you can buy a full version of Home premium for the same price as the Professional Upgrade version.

What does that mean?  It means you can upgrade to windows 7 without invalidating your old copy of XP and then dual boot or have XP on one computer and 7 on another and both copies will be valid according to microsoft.   So for the price of an Professional upgrade you instead get Windows 7 and get to keep your old copy of XP which you appearantly would loose if you tied it to an upgrade version of 7.  And I'm pretty sure an actual copy of XP would be more compatible with XP programs then a Virtual XP.  And you get it all for the same price...

 While if you instead pay for an upgrade copy of Windows 7 Professional you will loose your ability to go back to Windows XP or use it on another computer. Seems like a loose loose situation to me.

 So yeah it seems pretty much like a no brainer to me if the XP mode is all you are worried about