Finding a Good Movie is Easy with Tivo

Our family has been enjoying Tivo now for four + months.  We absolutely love it.  In our previous articles we talked about the top features of  the new Tivo Roamio.  In this article, I want to focus on finding a good movie on Tivo.

Finding a good movie has never been easier, thanks to Tivo and it merits its own article.  My husband and I have a few weekly shows that we watch together, shows like Amazing Race, Survivor, and Housewives of Beverly Hills or New York.  But on the weekends, when we have a little more time, I like to watch movies.  Before we had Tivo, there was no good way to search for movies.  I typically just looked what was on TV at the moment and hoped that the movie I selected wasn’t half over.

With Tivo, the way we are finding a good movie has all changed.  There are several ways to find movies:

This is the way I used to do it, and with Tivo, you can still look at the TV Guide to see what’s on now.  But this is inefficient, especially with hundreds of channels available.

Using the Find TV, Movies, & Videos choice, you can search for a particular movie you are interested in.  This works great if you already know what you want to watch.  Your search will result in a list of where that movie can be found…either through your cable provider, Netflix, or Amazon Prime.  Or you can also select Hulu Plus, YouTube, MLB.TV, AOL On, etc to search through their offerings.

Now of course, you need to have a subscription to Amazon Prime or Netflix to see the movie.  Often times I am surprised what movies are already on Netlfix.  Searching on Tivo makes finding movies on Netflix even easier.

I love having the choice as to where I can watch the movie.  I can record the show if it’s on TV, but I’ll have commercials.  I can watch it on Netflix or Amazon Prime without commercials.

Under the Find TV Shows, Movies, & Videos section, besides Search, you have the option to Browse TV & Movies.  This is where it gets fun.  Tivo gives you four options:

• Collections
• Movies
• TV
• Sports

Tivo pays catalogers to comb through all the offerings available on current TV, Netflix, and Amazon to find movies and shows that fit in categories they believe will be interesting for their Tivo viewers.  Tivo catalogers constantly keep these collections current.  Many of these movies are available through your cable provider, but not all of them.  Some are only available on Amazon Prime and/or Netflix.  It is through this area that I often discover great shows on Netflix I would have never known about if only using the Netflix app.

Tivo Collections is an amazingly helpful service that makes it easy…and more importantly, fun…to help in finding a good movie to watch. I cannot recommend this part of Tivo enough, we always have good movies to watch…as a family and as a couple.

Recent good finds we have watch lately are The original Wizard of Oz, Beethoven, The Sandlot, Ghostbusters, Chicken Little, Rookie of the Year, Titanic, Rocky I, II, and III, and more.

As you can see, there are a bunch of collections like What’s New, Emmy Nominations, Academy Award Winning Films, KidZone, etc.  Tivo changes some of the categories all the time.  The Retro Saturday Morning collection is new and has been fun to show my kids some of my favorite cartoons when I was growing up.

Interested in finding a good movie that’s on just this week?  4 Star Movies This Week is a great place to start.  Notice you can see to the right whether the movie is also available on Hulu Plus, Amazon, or Netflix, in case you’d prefer to skip the commercials.

Clicking on the Academy Award Winners Collection, you see even more sub-collections, giving you an Academy Award playground, chock full of more finite selections.  What a wonderful, curated way to catch up on some excellent films through the years.

In addition to curating collections based on categories like Academy Awards, Cartoons, Emmy Nominations, etc., Tivo has Tivo viewer demand data which shows which movies or shows are the most popular.  Accumulating this information helps them to curate further categories such as the Most Popular Romance Movies.  There have been some great movies that I’ve forgotten about that I rediscovered within this collection.

And speaking about reminiscing, who could (or would want to) forget the 80’s?  Yep, here are some of the movies available under Academy Award winners from the 80’s.  I’ll never forget the theme song from Chariots of Fire or the funny anecdotes from Arthur….oh, and remember An Officer and a Gentleman?

And what do you do when your kids have watched every movie in your DVD collection a hundred times and are insistent that it’s urgent to drive to your nearest Redbox?  You head over to the KidZone on Tivo for fun safe movies your kids…and you…will enjoy.  KidZone collections are broken down into age groups as well as other categories such as cartoons, science, and movies…including Mouse House (Disney) movies.  Perfect!

Here’s what you find under the Best Kid Movies category.  Lots of great choices.  As a family, we loved watching Freaky Friday together, we talked about it for days afterwards.  And my kids love the Home Alone series…though I’m a bit nervous my son might devise a few traps around our house just for amusement!

Tivo has made it so much easier for me and my family in finding a good movie.  I love binge searching.  Binge searching is when you sit down for a period of time and search for ideal movies you’d love to see.  I usually sit down for about 15 minutes and search the Movie Collections or Search for particular movies.  Then, for those available through our cable provider, I pre-schedule a recording of movies I’m interested in.  I usually choose anywhere from 10-15 movies at a time to record.  With my 85 hours of space on my Tivo Roamio Plus, this is no problem as long as I delete the movie after we’ve watched them.

Now when I want to watch a movie, I have a whole assortment of movies waiting for me on Tivo…to watch with the family or some fun romantic or comedy ones to watch with my husband.

Tivo has saved time for me with their collections, making choosing movies and the search process more enjoyable.  And guess what?  I don’t need to sit in front of my TV to do all this.  I can pull up the Tivo app and make my changes at home while watching TV, the airport, while my child has volleyball practice, or even in the car (as a passenger, of course!).

*  I am a Tivo Moms Ambassador and was given a Tivo Roamio with service to facilitate my reviews.