Moving to HD, steps I need to take

[ronpp]

We are moving our two tivo house to HD in the family room. I want to purchase the DVR first, the h10-250, and have it set up when the right time/right deal happens on the TV. Is this the right unit? Couple of questions:

Best place to buy the DVR through D, weaknees or other retailer? I did read all the varying posts & prices available through D. Overall, the least expensive though? Still D with the other credits?

I may buy the TV next week or it may be three more months, am I making a mistake in getting the h10-250 up and running now? I know what I want, I am just waiting for the right deal at the right place.

I have a second hard drive in the current family room tivo loaded with my wife's movies. Can I move the second hard drive to the stock h10-250 for more record time? Also, can I run concurrent connections to the TV on the series 2 and h10-250 until such time that I get her movies recorded on the h10-250 or she watches them, or should I just move that to another room?

I am running an attic mounted OTA through to my multiswitch and splicing a line off a tivo coax at the tv with a diplexer, do I need to prepare for anything else?

Did I miss anything?

Thanks, appreciate the help & advice.

[newsposter]

We are moving our two tivo house to HD in the family room. I want to purchase the DVR first, the h10-250, and have it set up when the right time/right deal happens on the TV. Is this the right unit? Couple of questions:

Best place to buy the DVR through D, weaknees or other retailer? I did read all the varying posts & prices available through D. Overall, the least expensive though? Still D with the other credits?

I may buy the TV next week or it may be three more months, am I making a mistake in getting the h10-250 up and running now? I know what I want, I am just waiting for the right deal at the right place.

I have a second hard drive in the current family room tivo loaded with my wife's movies. Can I move the second hard drive to the stock h10-250 for more record time? Also, can I run concurrent connections to the TV on the series 2 and h10-250 until such time that I get her movies recorded on the h10-250 or she watches them, or should I just move that to another room?

I am running an attic mounted OTA through to my multiswitch and splicing a line off a tivo coax at the tv with a diplexer, do I need to prepare for anything else?

Did I miss anything?

Thanks, appreciate the help & advice.

a few answers:

D with credits is generally cheaper if you can talk them down and you get decent installer. That is a crapshoot though. They used to give a 250 credit for self install but you have to ask if that's still in effect now. I have no idea. If you want to own a hi def tivo this is literally your only chance as far as directv is concerned. The new DVR will be out this year sometime and it's not a tivo. UPN/WB/PBS aren't available in mpeg4 HD yet. So OTA becomes important to you now if that interests you at all.

Also note that you will be fine with a regular tv. I wanted to see my OTA strength before buying a tv. It's best you do that because without ota, your HD choices are slim with dtv. If you get OTA in good, then you can buy a tv at your convenience

Also note that after march 1, you really wont be able to buy a receiver as they are going to a lease model (search for that topic). Or even if you can buy it, since they aren't commissioning the salespeople, my guess is it wont be a favorable price.

You can't move any hard drive between any machines and expect to watch that programming. They are all tied to the specific machines.
sounds like you are all setup in the attic as long as you are getting a strong signal you will be ok.

And yes you can just stack tivos and run them all from your TV providing you have enough inputs of course. I have 2 tivos on the same TV. Works great for triple conflicts.

The overriding thing here is if you want a HDtivo to own, you really should decide before March 1. good luck.