We went ahead and got the new Sony Tivo. I did not realize that this monster was going to take over our AV system. Here are my problems. The Tivo requires that the feeds (in my case Sat Dish) go direct into it then to TV. We just bought a Sony 777ES receiver and want to take advantage of its comb filter for video plus it has optical digital Audio connection. The audio must also go through Tivo because as we have found, Tivo delays everything (I guess so it can record it).

Questions for anyone who has this similar problem.

1) can the Tivo be hooked up to a receiver, and if so how?

2) can it be hooked up in such a way so that you can bypass it? (If you just want to watch the dish and not think about Tivo and use the dish menus, etc.)

Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated.

I am going thru the same issues, and I think I have found a way to do what BET is looking for:


1) can the Tivo be hooked up to a receiver, and if so how?
YES - I have hooked up the Sony/TIVO output to run into my DENON amp, then the denon amp monitor out leads runs to the TV. I use the AMP as a switch for all of my audio and video, so when I want to watch TIVO, I just select that from soruce my remote and it switched the signals running to the TV to the Tivo feed.

2) Can it be hooked up in such a way so that you can bypass it? (If you just want to watch the dish and not think about Tivo and use the dish menus, etc.)
You can easily bypass Tivo by switching (via my last point) your AMP to your DSS source (which also needs to be connected to your AMP). Then simply switch to your DSS on your remote, and you can control your DSS receiver without the need to use TIVO.

That's it - I am in the process of hooking all of this up myself, and all of my premlim test show that it will work....Good luck!

I've had TiVo for many months, and it's hooked up almost exactly as Eric describes and works fine. I originally bypassed TiVo often, but I've learned that if you'll take the time not to bypass it, you'll get more use and more enjoyment out of it. If you have a cable or antenna feed (in addition to sat), the fact that TiVo combines both signals into a signal guide is great.

Thanks for the info guys, This is why I love this site! Now pretend you are talking to an idiot, because you are. What input should I use for Tivo? Video2? That would seem to make the most sense. Will this also solve the audio/video being out of sync?

I will still have to hook my VCR up directly to Tivo using RCA because I don't have svideo on the VCR. Did any of you use the IR for you VCR? We tried it but it did not work.....