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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!
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.
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?
.. 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.
Live web cams
The DIRECTV with TiVo combo units have 2 tuners.
Record 2 shows while watching something else you already recorded. Life is good.
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.
"Probably the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to murder a loved one because they're the devil." -Philips
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.
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 don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.
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
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.
"The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance." -Thomas Jefferson
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.
"And like that
"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.
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.
-- It is too late for the pebbles to vote, the avalanche has already started.