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Lifetime subscriptions are also transferable, so if you can pick up a used unit that has one it's a quick call to TiVo support to transfer it. I got my Series 3 HD from a co-worker who upgraded for $100. Transfer went quick and easy.

Only rare Tivo models with Tivo Basic features, and original Series 1 Tivos, are capable of recording without guide data. If you have the most common type of Series 2 or 3 Tivo, and there is no guide data, you cannot manually record anything. The device is effectively useless, and "bricked" is quite appropriate to describe the resulting worthless box.

As for using alternate sources of data, that exact subject--running a Tivo without service--has always been the line the Tivo hacking community didn't publicly cross. I've hacked in as root on my older Tivo and installed a web server and other goodies on it. That was easy; swapping the guide data out, that's really hard.

If you have certain model DirecTV TiVo unints they can be easily(for me at least)hacked.
Start looking here http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay. php?f=8
Look for posts regarding the Zipper.
This hack will enable the USB ports and add a bunch of features such as 30second skip,TiVoToGo,a web server,shell,telnet and so on
You will need to purchase 1 or 2 ISO files but,the total for them was like $25

The R-10 model CAN NOT BE HACKED without a hardware modification....period! don't believe the hype...it's junk...get a cheapo
used unit with no drive from http://www.weaknees.com/ and use your current drive in the R-10 or upgarde.
I have 2 units with the Zipper on it and 350gig drives in each and it is heaven!
Good Luck

DirecTV hasn't provided TiVo's to customers for most of this year, they have their own inhouse brand DVR now the R15. They still support their customer with the TiVo's however.
They will also still sign you up with a new TiVo, if you find it somewhere else. I bought a new DirecTivo from Weaknees in February, pre-upgraded to 215 hours, and I had no trouble at all.

No I don't, actually. I've had a TiVo since their first models came out and I don't recall any of them having a 30-second skip.

Haven't used it in a while, but just tried it 5 minutes ago on my series 2 (ver 7.2.2*), and works without a hitch. The reason IIRC I gave it up before was that the 30-second skip was a little too precise - 30 sec skip, watch 1 sec, 30 sec skip, repeat n times, and you're 5 seconds or so into the program and have to back up anyway. I also tried the above hack with "29" instead of "30" and no dice ;-)

More on your topic: I'm on a fence with my TiVo. I'm worried about the whole DRM thing. It hasn't affected me yet, but the instant it does, TiVO will lose a household with three TiVOs in it immediately.

What does this really mean?

Well you can get programming data for most (all?) Canadian tv providers, the catch is that you have to buy the Tivo hardware in the States (or over ebay or the excellent site http://www.weaknees.com/).

Keep in mind that the series 3 Tivos should be out soon*.

*where soon is sometime in the next 6 months.

People always assume you need to spend a great deal of money for Tivo box. I recently bought a Tivo 40 hour for $50AR. I bought a 300gig HD for $100. I spent $299 for the lifetime subscription. So, for $449 I now have a 300 hour Tivo box.

You might say,"But you modified it, lost your warranty, etc". That is true, I threw away my 90-day warranty on a device that you can easily get spare parts for almost like a computer (check out www.weaknees.com). I also gained 300 hours worth of Tivo time that took me an hour to install using free software.

Now, on the value of Tivo versus Myth.TV and the variety of other vendors. It will cost you well more than $800 for the hardware to properly run a computer that is setup similar to a Tivo box. If you make it a Media Center computer, you're talking easily $1500-2000 for something that isn't much cheaper than Tivo. Cost wise, I spent $449 dollars over a 5-10 year period on something that will work. No messy fixes, no glitches because a built-in soundcard doesn't have a linux driver, it just works.

Tivo is to media devices what Apple is to computers, they build things that work intuitively. Take the dive, spend the money up front, and enjoy Tivo. The work-arounds for a "free" DVR aren't there, and probably never will be.

make your tivo bigger...

http://www.weaknees.com/

and share the spacee.

Made specially for DVRs. Maxtor makes them. This site sells them.
http://www.weaknees.com/

One of the cons for the Echostar unit is that it can only record 25 hrs of HD content, but that problem isnt mentioned anywhere on the HD DirecTV/Tivo box, even though its got the same sized hard drive. The only difference is that you can go to weaknees and upgrade your HD DirecTV/Tivo and get 70+ hours of HD recording.

These are supposedly tuned to be the quietest - the ones they use in Tivo's and other PVR's.

http://www.weaknees.com/maxtor_quickview.php

But like another poster said, most of the noise on your system probably comes from the fans.

Some enterprising people have already set up sites to modify imported machines, and supply the data.
tivo site for making australian Tivo
Tivo Weeknees

Of course, some tout the flexibility of PC-based DVRs

To my understanding all the TiVO _is_ is a stand alone PC running some strain of Linux (which can be networked with a bit of effort). Later models than mine (or so I have it) already have networking built in.

The only real thing I see driving HD size up in the next few years is Tivos and HD PVRs. A 250GB drive will store about 30-40 hours of HD Video (HD MPEG2 bitrates: 1080i = 18Mbit/s, 720p = 14Mbit/s). For people to get 80-100 hours of HD, they'd need roughly 600GB of HD space. Two 300s would provide that. And believe me, there are people who want to store 100 hours (and more) of TV shows, check out Weaknees.

No it doesn't. Commercial Advance is a feature

Wow, way to read the rest of the paragraph! I explictly stated that the automatic advance is unavailable on TiVo's.

It streams the show as you play it, so you don't have to wait, and it doesn't take up drive space on the second machine.

Woop de do. TiVo streams as well. And queues. I can request as many programs to be sent over from any number of HMO enabled TiVos and it'll queue up the requests and transfer them. Yes, it takes up space. It also allows me to start the transfer from the current point (useful for finishing off a program in another room), or from the start. And I still have full trick play capability -- FF, RW, skip back, skip forward, all up to wherever it is in the current buffer. You can't do that with Replay -- either that or it is using HD space. Pick one. Not to mention one of the other issues with Replay, that it won't record live TV while watching another show.

Oh, and network problems? CPU load? Non-issues for TiVo. If either recorder on Replay has issues on either one, you may as well forget it since it's all realtime.

huh? I can think of only 1 feature that Tivo w/HMO has that can't be done on a ReplayTV, that's streaming mp3's. What other features am I missing?


Wishlists, advanced searches, filtering by genre, better conflict resolution, and list of shows recorded/not recorded (and why)/deleted.

If you do like MP3s then HMO is worth it for that alone -- a Replay Receiver on eBay is the same price as the initial HMO purchase ($99) and additional HMO purchases are only $49. HMO gives you the same functionality, plus far better web access to TiVo (updates occur every 15 minutes via TiVo Central on broadband, versus once a day with Replay).

Your price is also off slightly - an 80 hour TiVo is currently $299, since they just instituted a $50 discount. But that literally happened Monday, so I'd be surprised if you had that info. As for a 160 hour TiVo -- well, sorry, closest I can do is 180 hour. For $499. That price may drop $50 in the near future to reflect TiVo's recent price drop. Of course, you can buy a 40 or 80 hour TiVo and upgrade it quickly and easily yourself if you are comfy with it... I've done several myself without issues.

Why would TiVo possibly be opposed to (or be less than neutral about) video extraction? It doesn't have any negative impact on their business model... with one critical exception: Legal fees!

ReplayTV was sunk because they were sued repeatedly, and TiVo hardly wants to spend its precious money on lawyers! Larry Lessig may be a great professor and scholar, and he might like little guys who want to publish copywritten books, but I don't see him supporting TiVo when they get sued by every media giant under the sun.

If and when the courts catch up with the this technology, and if the decisions come down like the betamax decision did, then I'm sure TiVo will be more than willing to add features and DVD recorders into the mix... but if they decided to be at the forefront, they'd get slaughtered.

It is for this reason that the larger tivo upgrade companies don't rock this boat... TiVo was brilliant to embrace (or at least not shun) the hacker community with respect to adding hours, and even built many nifty features that empowered the hackers to do cool stuff.... and we in turn respect that by not doing thinks to get them into legal hot water.

The first upgrade I did, I used a Mac with LinuxPPC installed to do the backup (with dd) and MacTiVo Blesser under Mac OS 9 to do the blessing of the upgrade drive. But at the time, the blesser wasn't blessing as byteswapped like the TiVo expects, so I then used LinuxPPC to byteswap the data on the upgrade drive.

Unfortunately, the good tools have only been developed for Linux on PCs, and the really good ones (such as the ones that make backups that will fit on one CD or that fully utilize the capacity of two large drives for video storage) aren't open source. Those who use Macs exclusively still have to make huge (multi-CD or DVD) backups and can't replace their TiVo's original drive with a larger one, only add a big second drive.

It's worth getting a cheap, dinky PC with two ATA buses and a CD-ROM drive that the TiVo tools CD will boot. Preferably one that lets you easily swap out hard drives. Maybe a 3.5" disk drive too for the situations where you may need to image a married system to two new drives and can't use the CD-ROM (or three ATA buses).

Either that or donate some (Mac OS X capable) Macs to the people writing the tools so they can develop for the platform.

Currently, I have two VCRs and I use them to record every show I watch. Of course, I do this because I can avoid commercials, and because I can watch what-I-want-when-I-want :).

Each VCR has the standard 8 program-slots. So, between the two, I can record 16 programs (or, slightly more than that, as some programs can record two shows if they happen to air consecutively).

I've read the TiVO reviews, and they sure do look nice. But, to be honest, my primary reason for getting one would be for the ability to record more than 16 programs per week.

Having said that, though, TiVOs are kinda expensive (especially if I were to get one of the pre-upgraded ones). So, I may just buy myself a third VCR. Though this may be off-topic, can anyone recommend a highly-programmable VCR? That is, I'm sick of having only 8 programs -- surely someone makes a VCR that can store 16 or <wishful thinking>256</wishful thinking> programs, right?