Tivo Series2 40GB DVR — $50 after rebate!
A couple of days ago, I read about a $150 rebate from Tivo. This brings the price of a unit down to the “impulse buy” level. I’m thinking about getting us a 40GB unit. I figure that if we decide that we need more space later, we can just hack a larger hard drive into it.
And actually, that may not even be necessary, as I’ve just read that you can now stream video from a PC to the Tivo over a network. Which effectively means that any PC in your home can be used for auxilliary Tivo storage.
I expect that we’ll get pretty good usage out of Tivo. We often miss shows that we like because we’re busy trying to get our kids to bed. And of course, digging out a blank VHS tape and programming the VCR is a pain in the neck (plus you only get 2-6 hours of recording, depending on what kind of video quality you’re willing to put up with). It would be nice to let Tivo keep track of which shows we want to see, automagically record them for us, and timeshift them to when we can actually sit down for an hour.
Current Tivo users: tell me about your favorite Series2 Hacks sites!
The Whole Hacking The TiVo FAQ.
Looks pretty good to me, lots of links to tools and how-tos. I know my father was able to hack a larger drive into his without any online help. That was when they first came out, so may not be so easy now. I’ve been thinking about getting a TiVo also, specifically to hack.
I found dealdatabase.com forums to have a lot of great info, but it’s really hard to find all the diamonds in the ruff in there. There is a lot of really detailed stuff there, but honestly when I was hacking my own TiVo (especially doing the “two kernel monte” which is a complex process necessary to coax a DirecTiVo into having functional USB ports, HME, and other features), I got fed up with trying to sort through all the outdated info about “Sleeper’s ISO” and crap to find the real, up-to-date stuff. I bought the book Hacking the TiVo (Second Edition) and I did not regret it at all. Yes, the info in the book is all out there online, but the author condensed it into something readable and not incredibly frustrating.
I’ve collected some of my favorite TiVo hacking stuff, including a few programs that I cross-compiled myself, on my own blog:
http://marc.abramowitz.info/tivo
I have a DirecTivo, Tivo with DirecTV and it is great. It makes recording shows so much easier than the vcr and I love the time shifting function.
Although I do wonder what the state of Tivo will be a couple years down the road. DirecTV, which makes up a decent amount of Tivo customer base, is dropping Tivo and coming out with their own PVR. Many of the cable companies are doing the same, where does this leave Tivo?
I have done the hard drive upgraded, even added a second drive. Tivo works fine and the upgrade not really all that complicated if you know a little Linux.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=25
Good discussion board about upgrading your tivo.
Oh and if you buy a newer, standalone (non-DirecTV) TiVo, you should check out Galleon, which runs on your PC and lets your TiVo play MP3’s and Shoutcast, view photos, album covers, lyrics, etc. Sadly I can’t run it myself, because of my two TiVos, one is an old Series 1 and the other is a DirecTiVo, neither of which can run the OS 7.2 needed for Galleon. I did briefly check out an old version of Galleon though using the TiVo HME simulator in the TiVo HME SDK.
Join the TiVolution, Dougal! DO IT NOW!
TiVo besides being “upgradable” is one of the single most innovative devices, it changed the way I watched TV!
I love the tivo, it ensures that if I fall asleep early I can still watch every episode of Tom Goes to the Mayor. The “season pass” feature rocks. I have noticed that it takes a while to transfer shows to the PC but that might just be the network in our house. All in all, good stuff.
I don’t own a TiVo, but my cable company offers a DVR in the form of a Moxi, I mentioned it here and here. The price is about $10 per month. You do give up the hackability of a TiVo, but it’ ease of use and “just works” factor are nice.
I second Pete’s comment about cable company DVRs. I’ve got a Scientific Atlanta box from Knology, and now we couldn’t live without it. (You may remember my comments to an email list before my purchase, and how I had to eat my words afterwards because I now appreciate the features I claimed I would never use.)
The pros are that it’s 100% integrated with the cable box, doesn’t require a separate data connection, and has TWO tuners. The rent I pay is actually less than the cost of a TIVO subscription. The cons are the inability to hack a bigger hard drive and the fact that the Title search is abysmal.
I have had a TiVo for a little over a year now, and absolutely love it. You can use the (free) TiVo Desktop software to transfer recordings to your computer and store them, but they come over in .tivo format. I also don’t know how you can transfer them back, I think it’s only a one-way transfer. You can purchase DVD-burning software that can read the .tivo format, but I’ve been holding out for an open source alternative. Which means I have a hard drive full of recordings I didn’t want to delete.
I haven’t tried adding space to my TiVo, but I haven’t really needed to. You have several levels of recording quality to choose from, so I balance mine out a bit between shows I just want to watch on the TV (medium quality) and shows I want to burn to DVD (high quality).
The TiVo system picks up on your watching habits, and records other shows it thinks you may like, which is a pretty neat feature. You can always “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down” (up to 3 thumbs either way) shows to adjust its recording habits. All in all though, TiVo’s Season Pass is the coolest thing since sliced bread. You can tell it to get only first-run shows, or non-duplicates, or all shows. You can adjust when it starts and stops recording (up to several minutes earlier/later as needed). These aren’t really “hacks”, per se, but if you’re really using your TiVo system, you won’t have to hack very much.
I bought a reconditioned series 2 80 hour unit from their website a while back, and it was about $150 after rebate. I use it with Dish Network just fine. The remote required a little bit of setup to work with my TV, a, but it wasn’t very difficult. Two small infrared transmitters sit around my satellite box from the TiVo unit which lets it change the channels. I never bothered to anchor them down, so they move around a bit, but I’ve never had a problem with them. The TiVo was a breeze to set up, even on my wireless network at home. I don’t understand why people have so much trouble with them. You’ll definitely want to go with the network hookup (required for transferring shows to your PC), and it also allows you to schedule new shows to be recorded from their website if you’re away from home. If you’re feeling generous, use my email address as a referral in Step 2 of the activation process
Gosh, I wish I was geek!
I built a MythTV box about 3 months ago and I’ve been very happy with it. For less than the price of a Tivo and lifetime membership I have a full-blown PC that provides Tivo-like services as well as being a data repository (MP3’s, source control, etc.)
I’ve not read any of your other entries so I have no idea if you’ve messed with MythTV before or not, just thought I’d mention it.
The real question is, what are the larger economic ramifacations of this? Is it a sign of TiVo’s eventual demise, or a wise short-term business move? You be the judge.
[...] We finally got a Tivo. I bought an 80hr model off of eBay for $150. It arrived about two weeks ago, and I finally installed it last weekend. We set up some of our favorite shows as Season Passes and put Bruce Campbell in my actor wishlist (hey, I forgot that he was an extra in Darkman!). [...]