Hello, Tivo. Goodbye, Life.

Goodbye, Ken. See you on the other side

 

Ken, I've had that for two years. It's great! I love time shifting programs at the touch of a button.

mud-

 

That's because the Tivo for DirecTV is really just a "bit bucket". That is, the digital signal coming in is just stored as is on the hard drive. No re-encoding. So there's no difference between what's stored or what's live. Of course what you're watching live is actually being stored at the same time, thus the ability to pause "live" tv.

On the other hand the Tivo's (or other PVR's) for regular tv or cable (analog) will get the signal encoded on the fly to mpeg. So, depending on your quality setting, you'll have some degradation.

I'm looking forward to next year when there's supposed to be a Hi Def Tivo. It'll have four tuners, two for DirecTV and two for over the air digital TV broadcasts. The OTA digital TV recording will be the same "bit bucket" idea as the DirecTV. It'll have a 250 gb hard drive for around 25 to 30 hours of Hi Def recording. It'll also store the standard def broadcasts too (not sure of the capacity, maybe 100 hours?). Suppoased to be out 1st qtr next year for $800 to $1K is the guess.

 

The first step is admitting you have a problem. Well done!

Stay strong, we'll have you cured in about 60 years.

 

I don't suppose there's a digital output on these units for computer capture is there? Only analog?

 

Correct, only analog. I understand people were pushing for a firewire output to archive on the next gen Tivo. But the model I was describing for next year doesn't have firewire.

What'd be great would be a built in dvd-r. Of course to avoid re-encoding that kind of dvd-r wouldn't be playable on a standard dvd player.

 

I actually find that Tivo lets me watch less TV. Knowing that the programs are available anytime means there's no compelling reason to watch them when they're on. Fast forwarding through the commercials and boring parts also saves time. For example, I can watch Saturday Night Live in less than 30 mins.

 

Make sure you move around every few hours, so you don't get blood clots.

 

I have the Dish PVR and love it! The only problem is that I've long since filled up the HD storage space and I don't have time to watch everything I've stored on it. It probably doesn't help that half of what's stored are "Wiggles" episodes for the kids.

 

That'll do it!

 

I've got two standalone units and have the Home Media Option which allows, multi-room viewing, remote scheduling, streaming of MP3s and digital photos from my PC...The greatest gadget I have ever bought....Just wait till cooperative scheduling comes out!! Whoa Baby!

 

Congrats Ken! I've been a D-TiVo user since April 2001 and I can't/won't go back. I added a 2nd unit around 2 years ago and upgraded both myself using "Hinsdale's How To" and the MFSTools2 CD around this time last year. Both units now have ~109hrs. storage capacity and I use one for movies & the Sopranos, Futurama, while the other is for music shows, the Simpsons, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. I also have an unsubbed Series 1 SA I use for 2 networks I couldn't get waivers for.

Glad you enjoy HMO Bruce, but for anyone who is a DirecTV subscriber, the D-TiVo is a MUCH better deal. TV MY way, baby!!!

 

I can hardly wait. I think this will be when I jump in.
I did an on line survey for TIVO on this guy a few months ago.
Firewire, DVI, USB, component, etc all choices for the survey.

 

Unfortunately Firewire won't be on this unit. All the details I've read on the avs forum indicates this. Basically this means one can't transfer hi-def to a d-vhs (digital vhs tape) or possibly attaching another hard drive.

It will have the new interface HDMI. That's basically DVI + multichannel audio. Myself I want to use HDMI just for the video and glad that its a much smaller connector than DVI.

I'm planning on getting into hi-def this time next year. So the hi-def Tivo with the OTA capability will fit the bill perfectly. Well almost perfect. It would've been nice to have Firewire to able to archive hi-def movies.

 

I wonder what kind of hard drive is in these units. Meaning, could an end user pop the unit open and install something larger? (Not that it's recommended, but just on principle.) Makes me wonder if it's a proprietary hard drive controller in these units, or if it is more like a standard IDE or SCSI interface where the unit would accept whatever disk space is available.

 

I'm also waiting for HI-DEF Direct TV TIVO.

Getting by these days with Digital Cable that does have HBO Direct and Showtime Direct.

 

Did you read my previous post Rudy? 'Cause that's exactly what I did, I added a 80G Maxtor slave to the existing 40G and I now have ~106hrs. recording capacity on both units. I ran MFSTools from an image I DL'ed from the TiVo Community Upgrade forum, burned it to CD as an ISO image, set my PC to boot from the CD drive, ran the Linux commands that were included in "Hinsdale's How To", installed both drives and away I went!!!

It's all available at www.tivocommunity.com and scroll down to the Upgrade Forum section. Heck, cruise around awhile, you've got questions, they've got answers.