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Retailers Leak New TiVo HD Specs and Price

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the tastes-great-less-filling dept.

Brent writes "Retailers goofed and posted most of the specs of the forthcoming TiVo Series 3 Lite, which Ars says may be called 'TiVo HD' at launch. A comparison with the standard Series 3 shows that for a savings of $300, you only lose the OLED screen (do you need a screen on your TiVo?), the glowing remote (which you can pickup for $50 anyway), THX certification (worthless) and 90GB of storage. Looks like it may be a TiVo hacker's dream."

7 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Hackers dream? by pegr · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why, did they unTivoize the GPLed software?

    1. Re:Hackers dream? by Kazymyr · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes, and you could pay a wad of cash upfront and get lifetime service. I know, I have 2 tivos with lifetime. I don't pay anything monthly on them. But they stopped selling that 2-3 years ago.

      --
      I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
  2. What? by Constantine+XVI · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What exactly makes it a "hacker's dream"?

    --
    "I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
    1. Re:What? by phildawg · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What makes this so great and a hacker's dream is because the features it loses that cannot be purchased were worthless. The main reason for the Tivo HD is strictly to be able to record at that quality level. A normal tivo cannot do that.

      So what you lose here that cannot be replaced is THX-certification which doesn't mean anything because who has a THX professionally installed, setup, and configured home sound system? The OLED display is no big loss.

      The losses that people would miss are the glow in the dark remote (which can be replaced for 50 dollars) and ESPECIALLY the additionally recording space. The 600 dollar Series 3 has a 300GB hard drive and can record about 30 hours of HD content at that quality setting. This will have a 210 GB hard drive which can record about 20-21 hours of HD content.

      It should be noted that a typical normal tivo right now comes with about 80 hours worth of programming space, so the 30 and 21 hours of HD quality recording really is a setback, but fortunately you can record programs at lower quality on the HD Tivo's.

      However, what makes this is the hackers dream, is for roughly 700 dollars (only 100 dollars more than the top 30 hour tivo HD), you could purchase the remote and replace the 210GB drive with Hitachi's new 1TB drive and turn it into a 100 hour Tivo HD... which is truly awesome! And within a year we will probably see 1.5TB-2TB drives that could be put into this for even more recording volume.

  3. Neato keen and all but meh by TruePoindexter · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Very nice, albeit still not enough to justify me getting one. Mind you the reason why I haven't is not an issue with the TiVo itself - more of a matter of nothing being on television worth watching anyway. If they add a "unSuck" button you can count me as the first person in line.

  4. Re:Losers! by ArsonSmith · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Let me help you out and parse it with bullet points: ... you only lose:
    *the OLED screen (do you need a screen on your TiVo?)
    *the glowing remote (which you can pick up for $50 anyway)
    *THX certification (worthless)
    *90GB of storage

    Now, why didn't 'you' parse the submission right?

    --
    Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
  5. Standard not worth the extra $500 ... by wximagery95 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    THX cert means little if your speakers/TV aren't also in a room that is THX certified. Unless you are a serious audiophile, it's like having heated car seats when you live in Florida. Cool feature, but not worth an extra $500 when you will probably never use it (hear the difference).

    The smaller HD is a bummer, but if the units are as easy to upgrade as the older units were, it's easy to image/re-image onto a larger HD.

    So, upgrade the HD in the Lite and the only "functionality" you give up over the Standard is the THX logo.