I got my TIVO box from Dixon's and hooked it up to my Sky (Pace) Digibox, Sony W/S TV and JVC S-VHS VCR. These are my experiences.

1. It takes up to four hours before you can watch / record anything.
2. Don't try and subscribe to the TIVO box service till it's all set-up. You don't need your purchase receipt as the telephone service centre indicates but the units software serial number which can be viewed in the unit's set-up menu (just like a Digibox).
3. Unit comes with most cables you need, 1x SCART, Telephone cord (very long), Two-way phone cord splitter (so you can plug it into the same socket as your Digibox), Remote IR eyes x2 (to place in front of your digiboxes remote ir receiver), remote control, batteries, RF aerial cable (for UHF tuner like any VCR), user manual and "quick set-up guide card.
4. Once it's all hooked up you can plug it in. It's default RF output is chn 60 or composite video. The initial screens say "booting up" are all in black & white (RGB does work once configured and unit is restarted).
5. Now you have lot's of questions to answer followed by the box making a phone call to download some data (this seems to be a full list of possible channels (terrestrial and via Digibox). Note the time to prepare to dial and the amount of time to sort the downloaded data are incredibly long and the time it says it will take can go up and down).
6. After this more question including which IR type to talk to your box "2000 Fast" seems to work. You also have to uncheck all terrestrial and digital channels you can't get, don't ever watch or don't subscribe too. (you can "tweak" this list later from the set-up menu).
7. Next comes the three hour update. However at this point, it kept saying the phone number was always busy (tried 4 times). Called the service centre and they said to update the dial prefix to a number starting with 0845 (local call, not free, they said "don't worry about it, they've been told it's a free-call as all update calls should be. Only one snag now, to change the dial-prefix you have to work your way backwards through the set-up process to before the first call and enter it their. Then work all the way back. Most answers it keeps and the first phone call and sort were fairly fast).
8. The unit will then be on the phone for 15 minutes while it downloads the next two weeks of program data. It then takes over two hours to sort it! I assume it must have an old IBM PC processor inside to be so slow!
9. Yes it's ready to use!

Using The Box

The concept of being able to stop "Live TV" takes some getting used too. All the time the unit is not in stand-by it's recording live-tv going back 30 minutes. Thus if your looking at the onscreen menus or go and make a cup of coffee while the commercial's are on you can just rewind live TV a bit to when the program just started. At the next commercial break you can fast forward to catch-up with real time. It's virtually impossible to tell the difference of real vs. time-shift playback picture quality in this mode. This is one of the unit's cleverer features (once you get used to the concept of being able to record and play at the same time in real time).

The Program Guide

The on-screen guide tells you a lot more than the current Digibox guide (and is faster to scan) but no real easy way of seeing what's on next (compared with the Digibox). When you want to record something that's on in the future just click select on it and answer some simple question, e.g. just this once or every episode on this channel (season pass which also seems smart enough not to try and record the same program twice that day for items like Voyager). That's it all done, the task is in the to-do list.

Where It All Goes Wrong!

I set my unit to record last night the following
1. Andromeda Chn 106 = Perfect
2. South Park Chn 104 =  Recording stopped before program end, chn 4 were running late!
3. Airwolf Meridian Terrestrial TV = Program had already been on 20 mins and thus finished halfway into recording, program guide data error I assume.
4. Chigley Chn 104  =  Recording started after program started and finished before program ended.
5. High Chaparral Chn 118 = Unit failed to change channels as this recording started when the last one ended. Thus I got the end of Chigley. I think this is a bug in the IR code software.

Also I tied to record as a test yesterday afternoon Thunderbird on Chn 102. I pressed record and on-screen it said "Mogambo", The machine recorded for another 30 seconds and stopped. Yes BBC2 were running early and the player stops recording something when it's guide data says it finishes. Thus no Thunderbird's, just a 30 second recording called Mogambo.

My Overall Views on TIVO

The lack of any PDC (Program Delivery Control) seems to be very big flaw. A simple option to allow the uses to expand the time recording period would do (software upgrade).
The Amplifier remote control codes are wrong for my Sony amp. I found the correct codes at the TIVO USA web site (my unit is code 1059).
I have a feeling I will be getting a phone bill. Note, the unit makes a daily call, yesterday it was about 20 minutes to receive a software update which it said would cause a restart at 02:00. It did not, it says it's still pending.
The IR Control of the Digibox is poor. It does not issue the power on command (or off) so the unit MUST be left on all the time. What happens after a Digibox software update?
I have noted it transmits the channel code via IR at the start and end of a recording. Why at the end?
The install guide should have a guide targeted at people who have a Sky Digibox. The set-up process is not easy and I doubt even if you pay the £50.00 for an engineer that, he will wait the three hours to actually see it work!
When I asked the TIVO centre "how much can you record at best quality" they said "about 25hrs". Actually it's 12hrs!
When I first called to subscribe to the TIVO service (with my receipt), I was told you can't change from monthly to box life subscription. The next time I called with my unit's software serial number I was told I could change! I opted for box life anyway.
11:00 While recording Doctor Who, my box has just decided to reboot and install the new software. It said this would happen at 02:00 this morning!