Good deal on an HD Tivo [and now a 50" Plasma TV!!]

[Chernabog]

When we move, I'm going with satellite

[Gn2Dlnd]

Originally Posted by Chernabog

When we move, I'm going with satellite

Moving van might be more practical, but, you know, go with what feels right.

I saw the woot! deal, but after looking at the Tivo site, decided to save my pennies and go for a larger drive with service. Tivo is such a superior product. I still have my non-hd tivo for my non-hd TV that I don't watch anymore.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by mousepod

When I got my HD-TIVO, Time Warner had to send out an installer to put in the cable cards. I was originally annoyed - I figured I could just go and pick them up myself - but in the end I was happy that the friendly technician was there to troubleshoot the installation with me.

I had the same reaction. But when I saw the challenges the TW installer had with getting through to tech support (I had to stifle my laugh), I am glad I had them do it.

Originally Posted by Chernabog

When we move, I'm going with satellite

You can't (without some serious hacking) use TiVo with satellite. I like my TiVo enough that this is important to me.

Also, HD satellite can be a bit of a pain to install at an apartment or condo. For us, it was effectively impossible as they needed two lines coming into our unit and only one was installed when the place was built. I posted it about it previously.

Originally Posted by Gn2Dlnd

I saw the woot! deal, but after looking at the Tivo site, decided to save my pennies and go for a larger drive with service. Tivo is such a superior product.

Which larger drive? To the best of my knowledge, they have only offered one size drive on the HD TiVo.

I have installed the My DVR Expander to get the extra room. Since that drive is only 500 GB, I was tempted to build my own 1TB unit. But I decided to stay with the smaller drive that TiVo supported.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Kevy Baby

Which larger drive? To the best of my knowledge, they have only offered one size drive on the HD TiVo.

I have installed the My DVR Expander to get the extra room. Since that drive is only 500 GB, I was tempted to build my own 1TB unit. But I decided to stay with the smaller drive that TiVo supported.

There's a high end HD TiVo (Series 3) with a 250GB drive instead of the 160GB. It also has other features like surround sound. And it costs double the price of the standard HD ($600 vs. $300).

There's a 500GB, power saving, quiet running Hard drive for $70 at Newegg.com. It requires a little bit of semi-advanced computer gymnastics to get it recognized by the TiVo, but it's a much better option unless you REALLY want surround sound from your TiVo.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

There's a high end HD TiVo (Series 3) with a 250GB drive instead of the 160GB. It also has other features like surround sound. And it costs double the price of the standard HD ($600 vs. $300).

There's a 500GB, power saving, quiet running Hard drive for $70 at Newegg.com. It requires a little bit of semi-advanced computer gymnastics to get it recognized by the TiVo, but it's a much better option unless you REALLY want surround sound from your TiVo.

Here is the site that convinced me that I did not want to do my own eSATA DVR expansion. You would probably be better capable to do a lot of this than I. But for me, a part of it was the TiVo support issue.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Gn2Dlnd

Moving van might be more practical, but, you know, go with what feels right.

I saw the woot! deal, but after looking at the Tivo site, decided to save my pennies and go for a larger drive with service. Tivo is such a superior product. I still have my non-hd tivo for my non-hd TV that I don't watch anymore.

FYI, you can replace the installed hard drive with drive that's twice as big as even the one that comes in the fancy Series 3 box (which only buys you 25-30 hrs of HD space instead of the 20 hrs. on the regular HD unit), for around $70-$100 instead of the extra $300 the Series 3 costs. It's not a simple drop-in upgrade, but I think you might know someone who could do it for you...(we're going to see if 20 hrs of HD is enough for us, if not I'll likely install a larger drive myself and get 50-60 hrs.).

[Gn2Dlnd]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

It's not a simple drop-in upgrade, but I think you might know someone who could do it for you...

Noted and smilied.

20 hours is so not enough recording time