Tivo Quadcard Promises Thousand-Hour PVR

edrock200 writes "The folks over at 9thtee are developing a quad card for Tivo series 1 and Tivo/DirecTV combo units...it will allow you to add 4 hard drives to your Tivo and also break the 133gb limit for each drive....this will effectively give you a 1200-hour unit with 4 320GB drives. Theres also a fairly detailed thread of the development process over at the AVS forums." Gonna need the space since scifi has decided to air 4 episodes of SG1 a day!

Comments

MPAA????

[mwjlewis]

What does the MPAA have to say about this?

Re:MPAA????

[jmccay]

Who cares what they think. Since when have we cared? They just haven't learned from history that technology is rarely held back back anybody when the consumers want it. Besides, they should spend more time on coming up with better plots for movies.

Re:MPAA????

[Zen Mastuh]

Let's see...this device allows you to watch over 1,000 hours of television programming without viewing the commercials? If Dante Alighieri were president of MPAA, the Tivo people would roam a ring of hell inbetween Mohammed Atta and the deMedici family. Valenti, on the other hand, will probably make some comparison to the Boston Strangler instead.

Brain Bandwidth

[drooling-dog]

Brain/eye bandwidth is now the real problem. Anyone working on that?

Re:Brain Bandwidth

[Nightpaw]

TiVo just needs to add optional sound output to the fast-forward features. I bet you could watch a show at the first FF level. Hell, that's how I watch Showtime soft-core porn right now...

Re:Brain Bandwidth

[KelsoLundeen]

Yeah, two cans of RedBull and a double-espresso.

I find that if I ingest large quantities of caffeine -- more than 250 mg at one sitting -- that everything seems faster. That'd be me recommendation for increased brain-bandwidth. Or at least the perception of increased bandwidth.

Large quantities of caffeine make me feel like I've got a speed-up control on my forehead and I can tweak it anytime I want. Up, down. Up, down. Up, up, up, down. Up, down.

I also find that huge quanities increase my ability to concentrate on a single thing -- an episode of the Sopranos from my Tivo, for example -- and I swear that it *seems* faster when I'm cranked. Everybody talks faster, cars move faster, Tony beats his bartender over the head with an ice-bucket in hyperspeed. The result is that the episode makes a lot more sense yet seems to go by in light speed.

I'm cranked now, for example. The medicinal Red Bull is residing in my digestive system, marching out all its evil little enzymes into my 'System'.

I feel like Dr. Mullion Blasto.

I feel like I could watch a shitload of TIVO in a split-second.

Too much stimulation in the System, I guess.

Re:Brain Bandwidth

[MxTxL]

Hmm... just conjecture, but the effect you are experiencing should be just the opposite effect. Your brain is slowing down so everything at normal speed seems to move faster. If your brain was speeding up, it should seem like things were going slower... like Neo dodging bullets in the Matrix.

Re:Brain Bandwidth

[KelsoLundeen]

OMG.

That's so fucking true.

It's like if you speed up a movie camera, you essentially shoot slow-mo, right? (If it's played back at normal speed?)

Wow.

That changes everything. My poor fucking brain. I gotta take another Red Bull and think this over.

Re:Brain Bandwidth

[Tattva]

TiVo just needs to add optional sound output to the fast-forward features.

Turn on close captioning on your TV or VCR. That's what I do.

Re:Brain Bandwidth

[Dannon]

This reminds me of an analysis I read of those '1000 Hours Free' deals that AOL hands out like hotcakes. The ones with fine-print detailing that these hours have to be used within 45 days.

Simple math leads to the discovery that one would have to be on AOL for 22 hours, 13 minutes a day to take full advantage of the offer.

Quit work, have a month's food stocked at the computer (or arrange for delivery), use the remaining 1 hour 47 minutes per day for dealing with disconnects, sleep, and other necessities....

It's not temporally impossible to fully use this offer, but it would be quite a challenge.

Re:Brain Bandwidth

[gvonk]

That's usually how they do slow motion, yes. They "overcrank" the camera, which means to run it at a higher frame rate and then that way they can play it back at a normal rate.

By the way, interestingly enough, the first technical idea for "bullet time" for the Matrix was to use traditional cameras, overcrank them, and then move the camera around the actor(s) in high speed. They had even proposed using a rocket to get the camera around that fast.

Re:Brain Bandwidth

[jelle]

I think JVC used to have a VCR that had a mode at which it did the video playback at a higher speed and that played the audio by cutting out the silences.

That should definitely help on soaps...

Slackers

[MxTxL]

If you have banked 1200 hours of TV programming that you still need to watch, you've obviously been slacking off on your TV watching responsibilities. Come on, people, get with the program... you act like all you have to do all day is work or something.

Re:Slackers

[jelle]

Yeah, tape that stuff until retirement...

HDTV?

[Eightlines]

Quick question, I don't own a Tivo or HDTV but if you were to record an HDTV broadcast would it not require more HD space? Would this not better quality be a better use than more recording time?

Re:HDTV?

[MrR0p3r]

Maybe? Unfortunately I'm not sure how the Tivo writes the video data to an HD, but I do know how other systems do it, and if you're talking about a difference in SD (standard digital) and HD (assuming 1080i resolution), then you'll need twice as much space to playback the video in realtime. Unless of course the Tivo compresses the video the same way anyway regardless of resolution.

Re:HDTV?

[Jethro]

I'm not 100% sure, but I seem to recall from my TiVo-Research days that there is no TiVo that will record HDTV.

Then again that might just be in the DirecTV world.

Re:HDTV?

[foobar104]

First of all, you don't need an HD tuner to record HD programming. You only need a set of component analog video inputs. Outboard satellite, cable, and OTA HD tuners all have component video outputs.

Furthermore, there's a ton of HD programming out there. HBO and Showtime are broadcasting about half a dozen movies per day in HD, via satellite, and the OTA networks are rolling out more HD programming all the time. Most of CBS's prime-time schedule is simulcast in HD, and a good deal of ABC's is as well, including big-ticket items like Alias and Push, Nevada. NBC and Fox have been relatively slow to adopt HD, but they're coming along.

There's something on in HD every night of the week. And I'm not counting demo loops.

Finally, I have it on reasonably good authority that TiVo demonstrated an HD version of their Series 2 device at NAB back in April. It's rumored to have been a closed-door demonstration, so I didn't see it myself, but many others corroborate the story. So "not even in alpha planning stages" isn't quite right.

Man, you were wrong three ways!

Re:HDTV?

[gosand]

Quick question, I don't own a Tivo or HDTV but if you were to record an HDTV broadcast would it not require more HD space? Would this not better quality be a better use than more recording time?

By the time HDTV is in wide use, we'll probably have terabyte drives on our desktops. :-)

But in reality, I would rather have the quantity instead of the quality. I mean, this is TV after all. Is there anything worth watching in high-definition? My friend has his TiVO networked throughout his house, and he has a 61" Mitsubishi HDTV set, and it is awesome. He gets some HDTV broadcasts, and he said you can really tell the difference. But in my mind, it isn't worth it. TV just isn't that interesting to me most of the time. What advantage do I get watching Iron Chef in high def? Now Blue Planet on the Discovery Channel would be incredible. But at this point, to choose between capacity or quality, I would go with capacity. In general, stations broadcast more crap instead of good programs. So if you are really that into TV you probably have many different shows you want to watch.

But then again, I don't even have a TiVO. And watching the Simpsons on DVD is weird, it is too crisp and clean. The poor broadcast quality of Fox adds some charm to it. :-)

Re:HDTV?

[Raptor CK]

Tivo doesn't support HDTV just yet.

That said, the difference would be noticable between HD and standard broadcast, and you might want to preserve that at higher quality settings (Tivo has four: Low, Medium, High, and Best) so that you see something as close to the original as possible.

You won't use any extra space for recording an HD feed (in fact, you may take up less, since you'd be forced into letterboxing it, and VBR recording would probably make that more efficient) but you'll probably use the higher settings at about 2GB/hour just because it would look better.

Personally, given that much free space, I'd record everything on high or best quality just because I'd hardly worry about running out of space. However, the Tivo is slow when it comes to dealing with long lists of shows, so I'd also use higher quality settings just because I'd be forced by space limitations to keep the number of shows down.

Re:HDTV?

[billnapier]

You can get ATSC HDTV PCI card for your PC (MyHD, AccessDTV, etc). These cards reportedly need 10 gig per hour of recording, which is a bit more than a Tivo at Best quality will use (like 2.5 times). IMHO, HDTV would be a better use of that space.

And while there are currently no HDTV Tivo's available, Tivo has shown a prototype one. When will it be available? Probably as soon as it becomes worthwhile ($$$) for Tivo to sell them. Tivo/Replay/etc. are having a hard enough time selling boxes that handle a format that at least 95% of the population of the US can handle!

Re:HDTV?

[Tattva]

And watching the Simpsons on DVD is weird, it is too crisp and clean. The poor broadcast quality of Fox adds some charm to it. :-)

Try reducing the sharpness on your television. Most people have it set way too high, and most broadcasting is more pleasing to the eye a little bit softer.

Re:HDTV?

[Tattva]

When will it be available? Probably as soon as it becomes worthwhile ($$$) for Tivo to sell them.

Given that it isn't worth it for them to sell regular TiVo's, it could take awhile! They are still losing money.

Re:HDTV?

[adolf]

Usually, the correct way to view local, high-quality sources (DVD, Laserdisc, C-band, and sometimes DBS) is with the sharpness control at absolute minimum.

Try it sometime. After you get past the initial "evrything looks so blurry" feelings, you'll find that only those things which are supposed to be blurry actually are, and that all objects which should be sharp and in-focus are spectacularly portrayed. You'll also be able to see small details, like the small variations in a grey sweatshirt, which were previously invisible.

The reason behind this? The sharpness control is literally just like the treble knob on your stereo. It is a resonant filter which boosts high-frequency information. For sources like VHS (and cassette tape, to keep with the stereo analogy) which are often lacking in higher frequencies, it can help to turn it up a bit.

For everything else, it's just not needed. It is not a perfect system - turn it up, and sharp lines get resonant patterns following them. You'll see this a lot during, say, football games - the thin, dark shadow on the right side of the blinding white uniform is a product of a resonant filter. With a good source, that filter is the sharpness control. Turn it all the way down, and you'll not be losing information, but only removing a filter from the signal path, and you'll be one step closer to seeing what the producer sees in the ABC truck at the stadium.

That all said, the picture/contrast control is just like the volume knob on your stereo. If you twist the knob on your stereo all the way up, things will sound pretty bad, because there is obviously only so much it can do. Same with the analog electronics in your TV - believe it or not, there's actually shades of grey in, for instance, the Headline News banner, but you'll never see them with the picture control cranked.

Setting both of these to sane, appropriate levels will markedly increase the video fidelity of your TV.

If anyone's interested in more, ask Google about it, or look into the doings of the Imaging Science Foundation.

Hours are great, but....

[Art Popp]

My Tivo has 60some hours of recording time. And it's more than enough. The reality of TV watching is that there is very little worth seeing more than twice. I don't know that I've ever had anything auto-deleted that I wanted to watch, and if I did, I'd blame myself for not getting around to it in the first 30 days. If you're shopping Tivos, upgrade, but don't go nuts, it's just not necessary...

Re:Hours are great, but....

[DonkeyJimmy]

My Tivo has 60some hours of recording time. And it's more than enough.

First of all, 1200 hrs = about 700 hrs of high quality (your 60hr tivo has closer to 35hrs of high quality record time).

Secondly, 1200 hours of tivo action would give you greater flexability with how you use your tivo. You wouldn't need to delete good shows just because you had already seen them. You could keep a collection of HBO movies instead of buying the DVDs. The entire season of Sopranos, whatever. Tivo is smart, if you already have a show, it won't re-record it (assuming the guide has the epiosde information).

Tivo doesn't have a way of cropping a video such that only a desired scene is kept (one of my suggestions for upgrade), so you need to, for example, save the whole Conan just for the 10 second bit on The guy who's protected from three inch bees. I love that bit, but my 30 hr can't afford an hour for every scene I want to keep around to show my friends when they visit, neither could my 60, or even 120 if I had them. I'd still have the world cup on my tivo if I could, if just to illustrate what I was talking about to my friends when I complain about Kahn crushing my country =(.

With 1200 hrs, maybe tivo will release some software that allows us to put some of our programs into archives, or have some kind of sorting tools. All they have now is a filter for the now-showing guide.

Re:Hours are great, but....

[Nomad7674]

The reality of TV watching is that there is very little worth seeing more than twice.

True, but then again I am planning to buy all of the DVD sets of the Star Trek: The Next Generation coming out this year... and the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine DVD sets coming out next year. If someone would rather get these off of broadcast/cable TV for Random Access viewing, it would certainly be a cheaper way to go!

Re:Hours are great, but....

[Sc00ter]

To the people replying to this guy about quality.. did you ever think he has a DirecTiVo? They have no quality settings..

Re:Hours are great, but....

[grytpype]

According to the article, there's no room in the DirecTivo box for two more drives.

Re:Hours are great, but....

[Tattva]

According to the article, there's no room in the DirecTivo box for two more drives.

I believe the phrase "duct tape" is an appropriate rejoinder.

Re:Hours are great, but....

[jdbo]

kudos for referencing the 3-inch bee guy. (I figure he comes from the same part of the world as the guy with the bullet-proof legs :) )

For varying reasons I stopped watching Conan (after being an avid viewer) about a year ago - would it be worth my time to start watching again?

Re:Hours are great, but....

[gvonk]

Seriously, it's mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but do these people realize what would happen to the speed of your Tivo of you were to do this? I upgraded mine to 90 hours and when it's full of shows, hitting the Tivo button sometimes takes a full 15 seconds of "Please Wait" as it indexes all of the shows in the infinitessimal 16MB of ram it's got. I can't imagine increasing it by a factor of ten but not increasing the RAM. (And yes, I know you can solder RAM directly onto the board, but I don't have a deathwish here;))

50 Days

[Geeyzus]

That's 50 days of straight programming. 50 days, 24 hours a day.

It's cool, but come on, it's unnecessary. If you are 1200 hours behind in programming, you are just not going to catch up, period.

I suppose this would be cool though if you had 4 smaller hard drives around that you weren't doing anything with, to increase the capacity more without having to buy another hard drive, or swap out one that you were already using for the Tivo.

Mark

Re:50 Days

[Fugly]

That's 50 days of straight programming. 50 days, 24 hours a day.

It's cool, but come on, it's unnecessary. If you are 1200 hours behind in programming, you are just not going to catch up, period.

Actually, there are certain shows that I save to videotape for later referece. Sometimes I get a lot of shows that I intend to dump to VHS backed up on my drive and it takes a couple of weekends to dump them. If I had 1200 hours of programming, the TiVo itself could become my video library. There are of course some issues regarding backing up the data and such but still, I'd love to have my entire library of VHS tapes sitting on one harddrive instead.

Also, when you live in a household with more than one person, you'd be suprised how much space you can eat up. I have 80 hours of capacity on my TiVo and it very rarely actually has space to record TiVo suggestions.

What I really need to do is get an ethernet card installed and figure out how to share the video files but I say bring it on, I'll take all the space I can get.

Re:50 Days

[Fugly]

Also, there's the whole quality issue too. I record 90% of the shows I record at the lowest quality, I'd be able to record everything at high quality if I had that sort of space.

Re:50 Days

[IceFox]

Yes, but just think of trying to cordinate the deletion of episodes. Did you see this one? Did you- don't know what it is? hold... ok it is the one where... ok . Ok next one... Living with two other guys on a 40hour it only took up a few minutes, but imagine with 1200 hours.

Re:50 Days

[compwizrd]

Tivo needs to figure out something like symlinks.

Have a tivo that has profiles. If you want to record something, tell it to record. If it already exists on someone else's profile, the Tivo will just symlink to it.

when the other person deletes it, it knows there's still a symlink to your personal list, that you haven't deleted your copy, and keeps it.

Last person to delete it, the Tivo actually deletes the file.

Tivo vs ReplayTV?

[joeytsai]

I'm thinking of buying a PVR soon, but I'm still undecided as to which. ReplayTV seems to have more features than Tivo (ethernet, commercial skip), but I'm interested in hearing from the Slashdot folk which they prefer. Thanks for your answers!

Re:Tivo vs ReplayTV?

[Jethro]

(A) TiVo has commercial-skip, but it's disabled by default. It's not really a hack since it's built-in. You hit Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select on your remote, and one of the buttons is transformed into 30-second skip. Works wonderfully.

(B) You can fit an ethernet card in TiVo. With software version 3 and a Series 2 TiVo it's not even a hack - builtin USB port and builtin ethernet support means you can plug a USB Ethernet adapter into your TiVo.

Either way, TiVo has a lot more, uh, aftermarket products available. You _can_ do the whole adding-harddrives thing to ReplayTV too, but it's a lot more accessible with TiVo.

Also, you've got the TiVo+DirecTV combination, which is what put it over the top for me. Capture the MPEG stream rather than recompress, and dual tuners.

Re:Tivo vs ReplayTV?

[sirket]

A lot of people are doing a lot of fun things with the TiVo. Adding ethernet is dirt simple as you simply have to plug in a card. You can also enable 30 second skip on the TiVo if you enter the right codes or run the right software.

I have had a DirecTivo for about a year and unfortunately I lost my modem in a lightning storm. It would not even boot up but just hung. I ripped the drive out, commented out the modem test scripts, installed and network card, and was back in business. All in all it has worked out well for me.

-sirket

Re:Tivo vs ReplayTV?

[ringrose]

Personally, I prefer ReplayTV.

When our remote died, they sent us a replacement for free - even though we were off warranty.

I'm more confident of ReplayTV's privacy policies than TiVo's.

Don't forget the cost of the service (realistically, you'll buy the lifetime version) when you do cost comparisons. The boxes lose a lot of functionality without the TV guide service.

If you really _do_ intend to hack the box, sure, get TiVo. But if you just want a box you can plug in and record things, I like Replay.

Re:Tivo vs ReplayTV?

[Zathrus]

TiVo+DirecTV combination, which is what put it over the top for me

Unfortunately you can't get a lifetime subscription for a DirecTiVo, which means paying whatever the current monthly fee is forever (and that fee can go up).

We have two TiVo's, both with lifetime subs. One has already paid for itself, the other will do so within a few months.

I may finally be able to get DirecTV, since I think that the tree that was blocking my view of the satellite fell on my house last weekend (hint - this is not a good way to get DirecTV), but I'm not real interested in DirecTiVo's because of the ongoing cost.

Re:Tivo vs ReplayTV?

[RedX]

DirecTV recently lowered the price of their TiVo service to $4.95/month, and it's free if you have their Platinum package. Keep in mind that the Series 1 DirecTiVo's are difficult to come by, especially if you're already a DirecTV subscriber, but the Series 2 are due out in October. I used a standalone TiVo for a year with DirecTV, but switched to the DirecTiVo box once the dual-tuners were enabled. If you thought a TiVo changed the way you watch TV, the DirecTiVo takes it to another level. This is the first fall that we haven't become upset over the networks' habits of scheduling all of the "good shows" at the same time. With 2 dual-tuner DirecTiVo's, we don't have any more conflicts!

Re:Tivo vs ReplayTV?

[Jethro]

Oh man, sorry to hear about your house.

When I got my DirecTV system, the installer came over and said that there was no way it'll work, because of the trees. He didn't even bother checking. I have the dish up now (self-install... well... I got my boss to come over and install it for me). It's pointing RIGHT INTO a huge maple, and I get excellent signal.

Which is all a moot point for you right now, really...

Anyway. Are you sure you can't do a lifetime subscription with DirecTiVo? I recall being offered that when I signed up.

Also, while it's true proces can go up, they've recently gone way down - the TiVo part of DirecTiVo is now like $5/month.

Re:Tivo vs ReplayTV?

[sirket]

Actually, adding an ethernet card gives me a web based interface to my tivo, as well as the ability to extract the video streams which I am simply not interested in.

-sirket

Re:That's all well and good...

[calibanDNS]

The slashdot article mentioning Maxtor's upcoming 320 GB drive can be found here.

Unfortunately, the drive will be a 5400 rpm drive when it comes out some time around the end of this year. However, the article also mentions a 250 GB model that will run at 7200 rpm.

with only one tuner?

[diesel_jackass]

1000+ hours is awesome, but what good is it if you want to record more than one channel at a time?

Are there any tuner hacks to TiVo?

Re:with only one tuner?

[tag]

The DIRECTV with TiVo combo units have 2 tuners.

Record 2 shows while watching something else you already recorded. Life is good.

You're watching?

[aufecht]

Taco wrote "Gonna need the space since scifi has decided to air 4 episodes of SG1 a day." I thought we were boycotting ScFi until they decided to bring back Farscape ;)

Re:You're watching?

[stratjakt]

Just like they're boycotting the MPAA unless a Star Wars or Star Trek movie comes out.

They're also boycotting the RIAA untless N'Sync releases a new CD.

You see, the plan is to boycott only quality entertainment, and watch/listen to only crap.

That way the industry execs get terribly skewed statistics on buying trends, and go bankrupt when they jointly produce "Star Wars vs. Star Trek II - Lance Bass's Big Adventure".

I think the point of this..

[Frank of Earth]

.. not that you don't actually need to record and save that much TV/Movies on your Tivo, but rather it can be done and Tivo doesn't seem to be preventing it.

What makes Tivo so popular to "hackers" is that Tivo does not seek legal action on every little hack that is developed. Of course, if one would create a hack that bypasses the subscription process; that's a different story, but they seem to be pretty open to hacks such as these.

Too bad we can't say the same for xBox. I would really love it if I could also use my xBox as a MAME console.

Re:I think the point of this..

[logicTrAp]

Well, they don't sue you but they are taking steps to stop you. As far as I know, since this hack requires a new kernel it will not work on the new series 2 TiVos (ie the only ones you can buy new now) since they have "PROM lockdown" code preventing any changes from being made to the system; similarly you can't run TiVoWeb on the Series 2 either. It's possible that someone will break this in the future (it's been done for the DirecTiVos) but I wouldn't overstate the case about TiVo being "hacker friendly."

smaller hd's is better

[mekkab]

Unless you buy the latest processor simply to burn a hole in your enormous wallet,

the true value of this will be the average person who has a bunch of extra hd's and would like a little more room on their tivo.

Also on the swapping angle: I wonder if you could store the "Kids in the Hall" marathon, or "Law and Order" marathon on a harddrive, remove it and put it on ice for a while, then the next time you have a long weekend and nothings on plug that bad-bwoy in and watch,watch, watch, go pee, watch, watch, watch some more, etc.

now....

[shren]

Now, if those 4 drives are a raid array, and I can keep my shows through a disk crash, then I'm impressed. Otherwise, nah.

Re:now....

[Geeyzus]

If you really need a 4 drive raid array to make sure your Dawson's Creek episodes can survive a disk going down, you have issues that the Tivo Quadcard can't fix.

Mark

Re:now....

[bfree]

Why not just network your tivo and pull stuff off onto your high availability raid network storage device?

Reasons it's good/usable:

[batkiwi]

-Record everything in best quality. Sure you have 60 hours, but that's at the lowest quality. You reallt only have 15-20 at highest quality.

-Record entire seasons. I would have loved to record the 24 straight hours of "24" at highest quality, and kept them around for when friends come over/etc!

-Go wish-list crazy. I love cops, and it's always showing on 243 channels at once. I could just set it to go cop-crazy, and not worry about it filling up my tivo and pushing other stuff off.

Re:Reasons it's good/usable:

[Zathrus]

Go wish-list crazy

You'll so regret this.

My wife and I both have TiVo's, and I've upgraded both of them with a second 80G drive, giving us something like 130 hours at lowest quality.

We both have around 18 season passes or wishlists, and whenever we shuffle them around in priority it can take up to 5 minutes for the TiVo to sort things out.

These are both original v1 TiVo's with the speedy 40 MHz PPC CPU, so a v2 box with a 350 MHz MIPS CPU might be better off.

You think that's ridiculous?

[mekkab]

This is absurd. Does the consumerist beast that is America know no bounds?

No.
screw bounds checking, that ADA stuff is for dorks. Even the DOD dropped it!

Mekka- Do-dork-ahedron -B

Re:ridiculous

[Star Stealing Girl]

12000 hours of recording time is more than unnecessary; it's almost offensive. Most people reading this site probably haven't spent that much time outdoors in the last year. It's revolting.

I'm pretty sure that you didn't spend 500 days outside last year either. . .

Re:1200 hours? why?

[phorm]

Not for me, I record all my favorite movies into divX, hopefully soon to DvD-ROM.

What these things really need is a form of media recorder which they can dump/archive stuff on, rather than superhuge hard-drives.

For all those that want to collect EVERY Star trek episode, a solution will come - phorm

Re:That's all well and good...

[afidel]

You think a Tivo needs anything faster than a 5400rpm drive? I don't think so, the data rate is pretty slow from what I remember. Capacity over speed is good for this application, especially since faster drives are hotter and louder then slower drives with the same technology. From the linked page
# Runs the fan at maximum for best heat dissipation (SA version).
# 5400rpm drives recommended to reduce heat.
# Additional cooling recommended

Re:That's all well and good...

[Zathrus]

As a side note, you really don't want a 7200 rpm drive in a TiVo. 5400 rpm is preferred, since they generate less heat, and TiVo's can have heat problems as is.

Cheaper better solution...

[bmooney28]

Step 1. Buy All In Wonder Radeon 7500 for $150 retail...

Step 2. Record TV shows using point and click interface in VCD format...

Step 3. Use software that came with CD-R drive to burn VCD's of your favorite movies and TV shows... (74 min per CD and playable in nearly any DVD player!

This is a cheap and effective alternative to TIVO of any sort considering that you probably already have a CD-R drive, and the AIW card is relatively inexpensive... Also, you can store 1000 hours of programming for far less than a single 320 GB drive will cost *when* it becomes availiable. As an added bonus, the VCD's that you burn are very portable and can easily be taken to friends' houses as well as stored for years to come...

Re:Cheaper better solution...

[bluestar]

Umm, no. All you've done is reinvent the VCR using VCD instead.

And you'll need one big-ass cabinet to store 1200 disks.

The difference between a TiVo and a PC with a TV tuner card is like the difference between a 1950's B&W console and a home theater.

Re:Cheaper better solution...

[billnapier]

Step 4: WindowsXP crashes for the 15th time that day right in the middle of Farscape.
Step 5: go buy some dedicated hardware to solve this problem.

or maybe this:

Step 4: Run my MSVC compile during Buffy.
Step 5: My old Underpowered P3 can't keep up with the MPEG-1 encoding and the compile at the same time.
Step 6: Buy faster processor and new motherboard (no longer as cheap...)

Re:Cheaper better solution...

[shepd]

Step 4: Realize you can't record in very many applications because ATI sold out to Microsoft and doesn't support the most popular windows video recording standard (vfw). Get pissed off, sell the card to someone, buy a $50 WinTV, and use the generic VfW drivers instead.

Quad Card. Pshaw.

[Oculus Habent]

Forget about the quad-card. I'm waiting for the Fiber Channel card... 32 TB SAN here I come!

Re:Quad Card. Pshaw.

[GoRK]

The scheme he's using is something akin to talking to an "ide switchbox" via the single IDE controller. He's got 7 bits of address space for drives, so -- you could have 128 drives. If you were to use the upcoming Maxtor 320GB drives, that'd be almost 41TB (4.096e13 bytes) or 37.25TiB

Tivo's don't do HDTV, yet.

[asdfasdfasdfasdf]

Tivo's only do standard resolution television. Therefore, you would need a HDTV box that has a s-video out to record, and it would be recorded at standard tivo resolution (480x480) on a stand-alone (non direcTV) Tivo.

Dish network is working on an HDTV PVR, the 921, and Sony is rumored to be working on an HDTV unit as well, but no word whether tivo technology will be used on that.

You should check out this forum For the latest on tivo technology. A few tivo employees are active contributers-- and the news always hits this place first.

Re:Tivo's don't do HDTV, yet.

[abischof]

The defaults even vary depending on the selected recording quality and the selected input.

This is very interesting to me.. Is there a list somewhere with the corresponding recording qualities and their respective resolutions?

Re:BETTER Cheaper better solution...

[stratjakt]

use ShowShifter pro to encode in DivX Pro/SVCD. VCD quality really bites. VHS is superior.

BTW if it were just for PVR, AIW Radeon is overkill. My *vintage* AIW does the task of capturing live streams just fine.

AIW 128 would be reasonable. USB versions get enough throughput to do the job well, too.

Neat, but kind of messy...

[dmadole]

From one of the linked pages:

• Requires external power supply to power extra drives.
• Additional cooling recommended.
• Will operate in a DTivo but there is insufficent room to mount the additional harddrives.

I know from my own Tivo that heat is definately a problem in these things with only two drives.

What might fit the ticket a little better would be a firewire (or serial ATA ?) interface and external drives in a separate case, with separate power supply. Unfortunately, I calculate USB to be a bit too slow for simultaneous record/playback at high quality.

Or, even better, how about SCSI with external drives? Well, maybe it's not better, given the price differential on SCSI drives. Hmmm.

Missing the point

[Gorimek]

I think we have 10 comments already on how you don't need this much to keep up with your tv watching. Which is of course true.

But what makes this compelling to me is as a permanent storage medium. You can store entire seasons of many of your favorite shows. Every Seinfeld, Buffy, +20 other shows episode available within a few seconds, in perfect broadcast quality for ever.

I'd pay for that!

Re:Missing the point

[fobbman]

No, I think that you are missing the point of the other posters. You need to remember that there is no TiVo for your life, so therefore you shouldn't be obsessing about whether you have "every Seinfeld, Buffy, +20 other shows episode available within a few seconds, in perfect broadcast quality for ever".

eBay the TiVo. Go outside. It's an amazing world out there.

Re:Missing the point

[Tattva]

No, I think that you are missing the point of the other posters. You need to remember that there is no TiVo for your life, so therefore you shouldn't be obsessing about whether you have "every Seinfeld, Buffy, +20 other shows episode available within a few seconds, in perfect broadcast quality for ever".

So, to extend your line of thinking, anyone who buys a Sopranos season 1 DVD set or a Simpsons season 1 DVD set, etc is inferior to your mad social skillz and needs to get a life, yo.

Local Storage Is Not The Answer

[Dark1]

Replaytv 4000s and up can support dedicated video servers (with the help of programs like DVarchive). You could put terrabytes of storage on the server, service both replaytv and pcs, and implement fault tolerance. Who wants a noisy, hot, electronic device in their living room?

Why this is cool: it enables a new mode of usage

[IvyMike]

Don't think of it like your current Tivo, where you record shows to watch later in the week; instead, think of it as a video archive machine. I was just going through my old video tapes last night, and was amazed by the things I have on tape that I totally forgot about. Imagine that instead of having every episode of the Simpsons on tape somewhere, you have every episode archived and instantly available on your Tivo. And heck, you would probably put all of your home videos on it; now you can re-watch the birth of your son at the push of a button!

Of course, this probably actually requires more space than 1200 hours (you would want redundancy, so RAID eats some of that, and you would want to record in a higher-quality mode, eating even more.) This is ridiculously expensive today, but I bet that in 5 years, the "Tivo video archive" will be common.

Re:BETTER Cheaper better solution...

[bmooney28]

SVCD/Divx Pro is better quality, yes, but when played back on a television, there is very little noticible difference, and the formats you mentioned are not so easily playable on nearly any DVD player. AIW Radeon 7500 has hardware MPEG2 encoder and free TIVO-style programming guide, which are the only two reasons I chose this over an older AIW board...

Terabyte appliances

[d5w]

Whether or not this is necessary, or the right allocation of home disk storage, I find it oddly charming to think of a terabyte disk array as a home appliance.

Ooo neat..

[Anonvmous Coward]

..you can capture nearly all of the SNL skits that weren't funny!

Why you need 1200 hours

[bluestar]

Haven't we all been waiting for a way to archive all our movies the way we've archived our music? Just because TiVo records 1200 hours worth of programming doesn't mean you have to watch it all!

Mine has 120 hours of capacity and I've always got some Hitchcock and Woody Allen movies along with the regulary Buffy, Simpsons and West Wing stuff.

More capacity means I can keep stuff on the TiVo much longer and still use it like muggle TiVo owners do.

And no, you CAN NOT make a PC do this with ANY capture card. TiVo's software rocks. It's like Mac OS X vs. DOS. It's got Coax, RCA and S-Video inputs. It's got Coax, RCA and S-Video outputs. It's virtually silent. On-screen programming guide. Two-button recording. Wish lists. And a whole bunch of other stuff you just can't appreciate until you have one.

Re:Why you need 1200 hours

[squaretorus]

Surely the combined power of the open source community and a decent card with Linux drivers could work up a TiVo beater in a relatively short period.

With unlimited drivespace, a decent file system, a decent show definition system, and some neat tools to pick shows - even without the 'clever shit' this would kick some ass. Build in KaZaA support, some MAME, and define a solid minimum spec and we could all have dedicated inux boxes running our TVs without any annoyance from a corp.

Why spend time hacking the TiVo when the hardware is all there in component form to create a TiVo beater. If people can be arsed contributing to a Browser project, surely a TiVo project would be hyper popular...

Re:Napster II??

[SirSlud]

Man invents the VCR. All is good. You can record shows. Hollywood sues. Consumer wins. Man can now make 'perfect copies of TV shows', so long as he doesn't rebroadcast them.

Flags wave. People sing the national anthem. Technology gets better. VCR gets better. VCR is now called Tivo.

The whole I work 40 hours a week is to develop better VCRs! (Well, I work on other technologies, but I'm speaking for people who's job it is to make better and better methods of recording/playing TV .. ) If the ultimate goal of the technology is perfect copies, why the hell are we working on it if we can make it so good it supposedly 'destroys Hollywood'.

Frankly, if anything, I like these things because if they make less money off the shows, they have less money to _make_ the shows, and then the only things they can improve instead of special effects and hire-a-cameos are the plots and substance of televsion programming. Which sounds like a win to me. I'm willing to forgo special effects, text superposition, multimillion dollar paycheques and bluescreen for an industry that actually improves via the quality of the shows rather than the quality of the productions.

Which is to say, if anything, if this hurts the production industry, good.

In unrelated news...

[Lonath]

Copyright Industry Association of America spokestrog Vilary Halenti today lamented "the emergence of a new and more deadly form of IPiracy that will soon raid the and pillage the IP repositories of this great nation. The IPirates have upgraded from their little rubber dinghies they used to IPirate Copyrighted Protected Digital Intelletctual Property and are now getting TiVo-class heavy freighters that they can use to IPirate even more than ever before. We are disappointed that the US hasn't gone after these terrorists with the same vigor that they've gone after the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We can only hope that Rep. Berman's legalized hacking for rich copyright holders bill will set the precedent necessary for giving us the broad powers we need to defeat the IPirates."

Re:In unrelated news...

[Lonath]

Oh, by the way. Seeing as how my google search for the word "IPirate" came up with nothing really relevant, you must refer to this as IPirate (tm) or IPirates (tm) or IPiracy (tm) from now on. *lick*

Speed probs

[kirkb]

The main reason that most people hack the original Tivos is to get more HD space so they can record more shows. The problem with this is that when you update the "Season Pass" (the list of shows to record), it gets slower as the list gets longer. A lot slower. Modifying a Seasons Pass with > 20 programs can take minutes. A friend of mine has to wait for 10 minutes every time he updates the list. A 1000GB Tivo would be completely unusable.

Re:Forget 4 drives

[TBC]

Check out 9th Tee's web site. It's all there. You have to get a bash prompt, upload specific drivers and utilities, and then you're set. Only thing is that (as far as I know) you have to run it with the case open. The RF shielding won't allow the 802.11b out.

They also have a wired adapter that is a much better deal. You do have to drill a hole for the cable to go inside, but you get wire speed then.

Blipverts!

[wiredog]

Has your head exploded yet?

What we REALLY need..

[Havokmon]

..is an algorithm to compress all the grunts and "Whoa's" in DBZ so you can watch a weeks worth of episodes in 30 minutes.

But in the end

[MrChuck]

it's still TV. And without TV, your life would not entirely suck.

With only 2-3hrs/week of TV, yeah, you'd be fine.

1200HRs of TV means you are look at the TV too much. Even over a year.

Re:But in the end

[geekoid]

wow, thanks for telling everybody how to live there life.

it's still the internet. And without the internet, your life would not entirely suck.
With only 2-3hrs/week of the internet, yeah, you'd be fine.

1200HRs of the internet means you are look at the internet too much. Even over a year.

feel free to replace theninternet with Books, movies, walking, etc...
so why is it too much?

Re:But in the end

[slim]

With only 2-3hrs/week of TV, yeah, you'd be fine.

1200HRs of TV means you are look at the TV too much. Even over a year.

It's a valid point, but for me at least, the point of having all that stuff on a TiVo is not to watch it all -- it's that when you sit down for a piece of your 2-3 hours a week, you have a choice, and among that choice you're likely to find something good, rather than have to put up with what's on right now -- and without any of the pesky advance planning you have to do with a VCR. The bigger the buffer, the more likely there is to be a pearl in there.

Puhleeze!

[tswinzig]

First of all, you're saying it's cheaper, but it's not. You're leaving out the cost of your computer, hard drives, etc. Now add $150 for the special video card. And to top it all off, what you're left with is nowhere near as easy to use or as convenient or as smart or as living-room-appearance-friendly as TiVo.

Although it would be nice to have an easy way to pull and archive video off TiVo, it's not crucial, and if it was, I could use one of the TiVo net hacks to implement it.

$100?

[mekkab]

Where are you getting this "$100" tivo?!

All I see is $250 used!

Re:$100?

[delus10n0]

My TiVO was less than that ($80) from ubid.com

Re:$100?

[gvonk]

Walmart often has the 212 model, which is the 20-hour one, for $99.

Extra RAM will be needed for this . . .

[millisa]

Not to rain on their parade, I like saving shows as much as the next packgeek and it is nice to just let the TIVO record what it will and then delete what you aren't interested in.

The problem is, when you get up to only 100+ gig of storage space on it, even with the memory modifications, the TIVO takes a while to bring the recording lists up (~1-2 minutes on my full 120 single drive unit). Having all that space isn't really going to do much if it takes 5-10 minutes everytime you want to look through your recording list. On the bright side, the guys at 9th tee know this already so I have high hopes for a solution when the drive expansion unit becomes available :)

My own station.

[DarkHelmet]

With 1200 hours of Television programming, I could start MY OWN network.

Star Trek, Farscape, South Park in the day...

Hot Les Porn at night.

$1 / month service charge, no commercials, anyone interested? Heh.

Not developed by 9thTee

[stevel]

"The folks over at 9thtee are developing..."

NOT!

The QuadCard, like the AirNet and TurboNet adapters also sold through 9thTee, were developed by a TiVo user named Nick Kelsey (known as "jafa" on the TiVo Community Forum.) 9thTee is the distributor - though I don't want to take anything away from them, they have been remarkably supportive of the TiVo community and they deserve kudos for taking the financial risks of selling these add-ons.

It is truly amazing what Nick has been able to do with his electronics expertise.

The truly scary line in all this-

[mbourgon]

May be susceptible to TiVo automatic software upgrades.

I think it would officially _suck_ to spend 1k+ on all this, only to have a software update render it unusable.

Shows the weakness of TiVo's software

[seligman]

This is cute and all, but imo, it'll end up doing the same thing that the 2x120gb upgrades do to the TiVo: Just show how miserable the TiVo is at dealing with a big number of programs.

It does work, but the results aren't something I'd like to deal with. One big list (at least you can change the sort order with the latest version of the software). No folders, no searching. Oh, and from what I hear, it can really slow down the TiVo. My un-hacked TiVo takes minutes to exit the season pass manager, and often stumbles for a few seconds pulling up the now playing list. I'd hate to think how long I'm staring at the "Please Wait" display if I had one of these uber-upgrades. Heck, it's bad enough on my unit: Which of the four South Parks is the one I haven't watched yet, and which three are the ones I'm saving for my SO to watch? No way to know from the list, and since it's a show on Comedy Central, there's no way to know without going into the program itself because guide data is sketchy.

Until TiVo really speeds up there system (assuming they can, there's not a lot of horsepower in your average TiVo box), and adds some more advanced options to organize and maintain shows, I think I'll just stick with my ~35 hours. 100+ hours is a nice idea, but IMO, TiVo just doesn't scale that well yet.

Re:Shows the weakness of TiVo's software

[delus10n0]

TiVO Series 2 almost completely gets rid of the problems you're describing, and so does upgrading a Series 1 unit with more RAM (actually desoldering the 32 meg chip and upgrading it to a 64 meg one..)

Re:Shows the weakness of TiVo's software

[Cato]

I agree about the performance - it's painful to have to wait a second or two for a screen to appear, and in some cases minutes (after changing a season pass). I can't work out why it is this slow - I suspect poor algorithms and data structures. After all, it is presumably dealing with an in-memory database that (with proper indexing and data structures) should be blindingly fast for retrievals and updates.

Tivo's performance is the one really annoying part of the product, and enough to stop me recommending it to other people.

Re:Shows the weakness of TiVo's software

[jafac]

I've often wondered if anybody's tried one of those XLR8 G4 upgrades on a TiVo?

What does every Tivo story have this thread?

[swb]

I mean really, there's always someone who says:

Get old (486/Pentium/PII), install capture card, xxx GB disk, xyz software, burner and its "as good as Tivo".

Occasionally you can substitute in "install linux, xwindows, etc" in there someplace.

Re:What does every Tivo story have this thread?

[Tony Hoyle]

It's usually from people who have no idea what Tivo actually does... They reinvent the VCR (badly) and say 'as good as tivo'. Sigh.

Re:Why would you do that?

[tycage]

haven't you(presumably isnce you seem like a fan) already seen these? And if so wouldn't you have already Tivo'ed them?

Not necessarily. I didn't start watching SG-1 till it was airing before Farscape. So I'm looking forward to Sci-Fi showing the older seasons.

(Ok, so I've got the first 2 seasons on DVD already, but I've not seen any of season 3 and only some of 4 and 5 (they were in reruns for a bit after SG-1 started on Sci-Fi)).

--Ty

Ugh

[jandrese]

Having upgraded my TiVo to 120ish hours, I can say with some certainty that you aren't going to like your base model TiVo very much if you do this upgrade. Apparently the RAM in a TiVo is very limited (32MB), and even with only 120GB in there it can take sevaral (usually 2-5) seconds to pull up the list. I can't imagine what a 1000Hr TiVo would be like.

OTOH, you CAN upgrade the Ram in a TiVo, but it's not something just anybody can do (you'd better be good at sodering surface mount parts on expensive hardware).

Great...

[Junior J. Junior III]

Now all I need is a way to have 1000 hours to watch the shows I've recorded. Anyone developing a time machine that'll be ready for consumers this holiday season?

Oh, I don't have cable...

[shren]

I don't watch much TV. I only have one to plug video game consoles into it. It just seems a waste to have that much space. Really... If you had that much space, wouldn't you be willing to give up some of it for realibility?

RAID can also be faster, you know. If one disk can read one file in 1 minute, then three can read it in 20 seconds if there's an equal piece on three drives. (You stick the checksum on the fourth.)

I've never understood why RAID technology hasn't made it to the desktop. You get speed and realibility.

Unlimited storage for ReplayTVs

[gduprey]

Well, first, the TiVO hack to enable the skip is not quite the same as the comercial skip on the ReplayTVs. The ReplayTVs automatically detecte the commercial and skip over it. It works about 80-90% of the time for me. The Tivo Hack gives the same abilities as the ReplayTV 2000/3000 (and 4000) to jump quickly 30 seoncds ahead (which is still great).

But, the ReplayTV 4000/4500 series have a ethernet plug AND have DVArchive that allows you to turn a PC into a virtual ReplayTV - downloading and storaing shows and serving them back up to your replay TV. You can keep adding disks and space and never violate the warranty. It even has an automated scheduler so it can sweep good stuff off your ReplayTV while you are away (keeping things from rolling over and losing good shows from lack of space).

Re:YES. For the same reason as...

[ncc74656]

Also, I wonder if anyone is actually going to spend the large sum of money needed to max this out when the 320GB drives are available.

YES, for the same reason people pay 250 dollars more for a P4 2.8 over a P4 2.53mhz. proc.

IMHO, 1.2TB would be better located on a file server or workstation than in a TiVo. With Ethernet or wireless networking added to a TiVo, you can always offload stuff you want to archive to somewhere else on the network. Edit, reencode, and burn to SVCD, and you can play an ad-free show in your DVD player. If the drives in your TiVo go tango-uniform one day, your SVCDs will still play just fine.

(I'd like to upgrade from TiVoNET to TurboNET sometime, though...even with the TiVo's fairly slow processor, the move to Fast Ethernet is still supposed to be good for a 2-3x speed increase. That'd be more useful to me than more storage. I already have 100GB in mine, and even with everything recorded at best quality, I'm not cramped for space. At most, I might stick another 100-120GB hard drive in.)

Some thoughts about this

[BigJimSlade]

Glad to see that this will sit on the existing IDE channel and not eat up the PCI slot (I just got my TivoNet installed last week!)

Here's what I see as the problem with this much storage:

1. 1st gen. Tivos are *reeeeally* slow. I know when I get a lot of programs on my 80gig Tivo that loading the "Now Showing" menu takes a long time. I can store about 100 hours. Multiply that wait time by 12... you see the problem.
   
2. If speed of the interface is not an issue, what about sheer navigation issues? That I know of, the only way to page thru all your recorded programs is by *date*. So for you to effectively keep track of all your programs, you have to remember what date they were recorded on. Someone would really need to revamp the interface in order to allow usefull navigation of older programs (maybe saving programs in folders or something? Automatically putting older TV shows in a folder for that show, movies in a movie folder, etc.)
   

If these issues can be resolved, I bet quite a few geeks would actually get some use out of 1200 hours of programs.

Re:Some thoughts about this

[CormacJ]

In v3.0 there is a code for sorting your list:

Slow-0(zero)-Record-Thumbs Up

This will give you an option on your now playing list for sorting by date, show and expiration date.

I'm not sure if you to have the backdoor mode enabled for it. More details are at: Tivonews backdoors

Re:That's all well and good...

[msobkow]

Not so sure about that -- I had an 80GB 5400 RPM Seagate that passes every drive test I could throw at it, but it kept having problems in my TiVO. A pair of 60GB Maxtor 7200 RPM drives have been quite happy for months.

I found there to be less than a 3C temp difference between the original drive and the pair of 7200's, and about a 2C difference with the 5400. Even though the unit is running well within it's temperature tolerance, I found that it periodically was unstable, even with the original drive.

I eventually diagnosed the crashes as occuring whenever DirecTV was hammering the encryption codes to knock out the pirates. During the hours that they do that, the temp would rise an additional 5-6C.

I now run it with the cover off and it's ok, but a better solution would be to carve some mounts for small case fans. I just happen to be a bit too lazy for that...

1200 HOURS!

[_ph1ux_]

Hmmm... Thats all well and fine... but a bit excessive I'd say. I dont currently own a tivo - many of my friends do - and although I think they are nice, I dont think that I miss all that much not having 1200 hours or any other number, worth of space for recording.

however! please contact me when they have come out with a tivo that has an automated DVD burner in it - where I can schedule a show to be recorded - burned - deleted all while I am out at the beach!

Re:1200 hours? why?

[delus10n0]

1) I have my TiVO record my favorite shows.
2) I dump the saved programs (over Telnet) to my main computer.
3) I de-interlace and convert the MPEG2 stream to a 452x460 (from a 480x480 source, but with the TV noise trimmed off the sides) DiVX or SVCD.
4) I have a perfect copy of the recorded show.

what about the "now showing" slowdown?

[mckwant]

I seem to recall people having trouble with the speed of the "now showing" window after their upgrade to 140hrs. If that's true, I can't imagine what 700 would do...

Anybody experienced this firsthand?

Re:Mirroring/RAID

[Otto]

You could rig existing hardware to do this. I've seen hardware that will take an IDE input and mirror it to two drives, basically implementing RAID1 without the knowledge of the computer involved. Also think it could speeds up reads by reading both drives simultaneously for different sections of the same block. Anyway, existing hardware can do that for a computer/tivo/anything at all.

Re:1200 hours? why?

[phorm]

Exactly my point. Why bother with having HUGE TiVo hard drives when you can just dump either to a PC and then record as divX, or just include a semi-permanent storage device that works with TiVo? It'd be sweet to have an addin that hooks right to TiVo and burns DivX CD's, or maybe SVCD/DVD-ROMs. Maybe there is stuch a device, and I'm not aware?

Personally, I haven't had broadcast TV for over 2 years now, never missed it - phorm

Re:1200 hours? why?

[delus10n0]

No no, I was laying out what I do to contradict your "no huge tivo" argument :) I just let the TiVO do the hard work (actually capturing the MPEG2 video), and then dump it off to my PC for conversion. I have yet to find a PC-based PVR that works reliably (as ATI cards are filth.).. Maybe I'll give Sigma's PVR card a shot someday though.

I do agree that TiVO should use some sort of network attached storage, or be capable of storing it's data across a network.. but I think the Tivo corporation is a little wary of this, as it might make "pirating" video an easier task.

Burn to DVD

[RatBastard]

I'd rather have the option to either burn to DVD or transfer the programs to a computer so I can edit them down and burn to DVD.

Re:Tivo Space and Time

[Large Green Mallard]

ob-simpsons-reference: "You're recording NFL with implied oral consent, not express written consent??"

Re:Forget 4 drives

[Large Green Mallard]

Yeah, 802.11b doesn't work within a sheilded metal box? who knew ;)

I have a titanium powerbook.. it has two little windows with plastic covers on for the 802.11b stuff.. I did some testing with some high power antennas.. with one of the windows facing it, I got "full" coverage from 250ft .. with the powerbook facing them from 20ft, I got no signal. I also work in a building which is pretty much a faraday cage.. forget mobile phones in there.

What's with the Orinoco card in the photo?

[John Jorsett]

Is the unit also modified with 802.11?

Re:What's with the Orinoco card in the photo?

[tswinzig]

Man, where have you been? ;)

TiVo Airnet

My favorite scenes include...

[cybrpnk2]

You have really hit on a big issue from my point about TiVo not recording particular scenes. I've got several programs that all I'm keeping them for are particular scenes. Nikita meeting Jurgen for the first time ("Why are you here?"), Byers' dream from the X Files ep "Three Of A Kind (best scene in the whole series - one fantastic, continuous shot that ends "I lose it all"), the brain surgery scene from RoboCop 2 - the most chilling scene ever filmed in sci-fi in my opinion, perfectly balanced by the absurd telethon scene that follows...People do "best mix" CDs of audio all the time, I wish we could do TiVo mix disks just as easily...

Re:That's all well and good...

[msobkow]

The bottom of what? Your drive?

I believe that where the cooling is actually needed is on the chips that do the processing (at least with DirecTiVO.) The rather small cooler gets too hot to keep your finger on when the anti-pirate code cycles are happening.

I had been thinking in terms of either carving the case so a small fan would blow down directly on the heatsink involved, and/or replacing the puny heatsink with something larger (maybe even copper.)

One thing that is abundantly clear to me is that the so-called temperature monitoring isn't even as accurate as what is done with mobo based CPU temp monitoring.

TiVO video capture, formats, and cost

[msobkow]

The original DirecTV stream saved by DirecTiVO is a modified 480x480 NTSC SVCD MPEG2 VBR stream, running at above-normal bitrates. I've heard there are utilities that will readjust the data stream to use standard MPEG2 VBR formats so that they can be dumped off for later viewing.

The problem with that is that the vast majority of set-top players can't handle that high an SVCD stream rate, so playback is an issue. If you copy the SVCD data to HDD for playback, the data rate isn't an issue, but you can't do that with a set-top player.

Some people have had luck with using MPEG editors to clip commercials from the data stream, tie the two MPEG segments together, and burning them off to DVD-R. Some set-top players can deal with that and will display a full NTSC screen with such a source, but it is not a standard DVD format so there are no guarantees.

Any direct data stream work assumes you're going to muck around with various kernel patches and stuff to disable the encryption of the data during the write to the HDD.

Personally I just settled for doing S-VHS wiring to an ASUS GF2MX card with video capture. Edit the HuffYUV files with VDub, and save as DiVX. Takes hours of CPU (PIII933), but it works. I find quality based 1-pass at 2.1 or 2-pass at 1500+ is indistinguishable from the original source, provided you've got enough CPU to turn some of the playback filtering on.

Eventually I got tired of wasting my time with all the editing and stuff, so the box is back to running SuSE 8.0. It was a very educational few months, though, and I learned a lot about video processing, filtering, and formats. I ended up with a few seasons worth of series archived, but movies are easier to just buy.

If finances permit, it's a lot cheaper to just buy season box sets, even at $80/season. Even at 15 minutes to edit out commercials, 20 episodes/season, you're still looking at about 4 hours of manual labour to capture and save a season. Add some more time for burning (say an hour), a reasonable pay scale in the tech industry, and it costs less to buy DVDs that use higher resolution and a much higher data rate.

What a mess!

[bay43270]

I wouldn't mind using my Tivo as a permanent storage medium, but the software isn't really built for that. My unit only stores 30 hours, and at lower qualities, that still makes a mess. If I had entire seasons of shows on the same scrolling list, I wouldn't be able to find anything.

I think some work needs to be done on the software before Tivo can become usefull as permanent storage.

Re:Tivo Space and Time

[Large Green Mallard]

I'm a simpsons geek. Original simpsons quote

Mmm with a Tivo with this much HDD, I could record every episode... if I didn't live in Australia :(

It's the Latency, Stupid

[bill_mcgonigle]

Sorry, not calling you stupid, that was just the title of a great networking article a few years ago, pointing out an analogous problem.

With 50 days of straight programming, you can watch shows that far behind.

So, for instance, I could record the entire season of Dead Zone, Justice League, and Stargate, then watch them all back-to-back. I happen to mention those shows because they build a story over time By back-to-back, I don't mean in a marathon, but whenever I choose to watch TV.

It completely destroys the network's concept of 'seasons', though, so don't look for them to cheer-lead this one.

Weakness?

[tswinzig]

I feel it's a great example of the strength of TiVo's software. That 3rd party hacks like this can be made is a testament to the device and it's design (HW and SW).