New TIVO DVD advice

[A.R.M]

I have an 80 hr Tivo unit and a seperate DVD player. My DVD is slowly dying so I'd like to replace both with a Tivo/DVD recorder. My tivo works great so I'm a little worried about replacing it after reading some of the horror stories posted on the tivo/DVD recorders.

What I would like is the unit to still have the same tivo menus that I have now and be able to burn some stuff I record to DVD. Thats all I'm really interested in, simple and reliable.

What unit should I choose? As I understand it my choices are the Humax DRT800, the Toshiba RS-TX, and the Pioneer DVR 810. Are there any other units? Which would be the best for my need?

Thanks

[robomeister]

There are actually six different TiVos with DVD writers. They are

Pioneer DVR-810H-S with a 80 GB drive
Pioneer DVR-57H with a 120 GB drive
Humax DRT400 with a 40 GB drive
Humax DRT800 with a 80 GB drive
Toshiba RS-TX20 with a 120 GB drive
Toshiba RS-TX60 with a 160 GB drive

All have the TiVo menus, with DVD functions added, of course. Burning a disc is extremely easy. You can even burn a disc, watch a show and record a show all at the same time.

The Pioneers and the Toshibas come with LifeTime TiVo Basic, which is a stripped down version of TiVo Plus. You will only get 3 days of guide data, instead of 14 days. You don't need a subscription to record shows and burn them, but you don't get a lot of the cool features, like season passes and wishlists and Multi Room Viewing (you can't transfer shows).

I am partial to the Pioneers. They came out first but are harder to find in retail stores. The Humax has the added feature of still being able to get a LifeTime subscription. The Toshibas have the biggest drives of the bunch. They are all Series 2 TiVos with USB ports on the back.

All of these players can be found on ebay. TiVo still sells the Humax DRT400 on their website. You might be able to find a Toshiba or a Humax at Best Buy or Circuit City.

Also keep in mind that while you can transfer shows between non-DVD TiVos and DVD TiVos, you cannot burn transfered shows. You can only burn shows that were recorded by the TiVo with the DVD writer.

Hope this helps,

robomeister

[ThreeSoFar]

The Humax units still have lifetime subscription available, as well. This is a big plus.

You have to do it by phone as their web site doesn't offer it.

[ThreeSoFar]

We have the DRT800, which I upgraded with a 200G Samsung drive to 224 hours.

[A.R.M]

Thanks for the info everyone. I'm leaning towards the Humax. I'm a little nervous after reading some of the reviews of the various dvd models. There seems to be quite a few problems with them. Also I've read that due to the low recording quailty of the Humax you need to record at best quality and at best quality a dvd won't hardly hold even a single show- yea/nay? Getting lifetime subscription would be nice though.

I would use tivotogo but am a mac user and that isn't supported.

Thanks again.

[DaisyChain]

I tried using Tivo To Go and it took up way too much room on my computer, and took wayyyy too long (more time than the real time length of the shows!).

I will tell you, I have a Toshiba DVD Tivo and once again it's been making coasters. The past two days it made 8 of them (failed discs). In fact every time I tried, it made a coaster.

It seems to do this lately if I make more than say, one disc a day. I would not be surprised if there has been another 'update' to disable the burner. I think it's wrong as they clearly sold it as such.

Good luck even finding a DVD Tivo... and if you do, good luck not making coasters!

[Steve0000]

I have two Toshiba RS-TX60 units and one just died one year and four days after purchasing it. Had I known that they use Maxtor drives in them, I would have purchased a different unit. I am in the process of replacing the drive, since it costs less than to send it back for service.

- Steve

[megazone]

I would not be surprised if there has been another 'update' to disable the burner.There has absolutely NOT been any such update.

Have you tried other media? It could be an issue with the blanks, even a bad run at the factory. People have had a run of coasters in the past, switched to a new spool of blanks and had no problems.

[blackstar25]

hello,
i am also in the market for a tivo w/ dvd recorder...
the most important for me would be to edit shows before burning, as I have a Mac, and therefore cant transfer shows from tivo to Mac, right?
well I heard that this is not possible on the Humax/Pioneer, is this correct?
so what are my options?
or are there none and I simply have to get a regular HD DVD DVR w/o Tivo?
well i would appreciate help, information on Tivo/HD DVR is very confusing I find!

[megazone]

You cannot edit before burning on *any* TiVo/DVD system. None of them support editing, you can only burn the shows 'as is' to DVD.

[DaisyChain]

blackstar: I have the Toshiba TiVo, (120 hr. I think) and there is no edit function that I know of. That's all I know about the editing question.

megazone: Thank you for your input; maybe it's the discs. I hope so! But that pack of discs worked fine, until suddenly, coaster after coaster. It was a pack of 25 or 50, I'm not sure which (I didn't use those all in one week or anything!), and unless there can be bad or good within one same, new package - it wasn't the discs.

Thanks for the info about no update. I'm a bit gunshy after that one time when a new update brought cranky customers in here in droves ;)

It's still making coasters... about 10 now, I think. I will try again tonight. There are only 1 or 2 blank discs left in the pack. By the way discs from this same pack, I was told work great even in Playstation or laptop. So I think they're quality. It's possible a bad few got into the pack but 10 seems like a lot.

Also sometimes the machine says it's working but it keeps saying zero percent (saving). (But it goes through the other motions.) Also sometimes it fails at the last 2 percent. That 'finalising error' (it tells me 'save failed due to internal error', is all) was what kept happening during that infamous update of months past.

It just seems very touch and go for a fairly new, $400 machine. So as not to anger the devoted TiVo fans - I will also add that when it does work, it's a great toy to have!!!

[robomeister]

DaisyChain,

Have you tried rebooting the TiVo before trying to burn a new disc? I've read here that this helps fix this problem.

Also, doing a lot of burning at once can heat up the laser in the burner and cause failed burns. I recommend not doing too many burns in a row.

Another technique to recover from failed burns is to have more than one brand of DVD recordable media. If you use DVD-RWs, then if the burn fails, you can use the disc again.

Hope that helps,

robomeister

[Scott Atkinson]

I've been following the posts in this forum for a few months and have a question: has anyone managed to drill down to the root cause or causes of the various dvd record failures?

It doesn't make sense to me that you would have so many failures, scattered across three different brands of machine. At first I thought these were Humax specific problems, but I see similiar complaints for Pioneer and Toshiba boxes.

In addition, the 'cures' seem to fall into the catagory of folk remedies - change recordable dvd brands, rest the machines, clear out the hard disc, play a recorded dvd.

There are a lot of people with a lot of knowledge about both Tivo and dvd burning on this forum: what do you folks think is going on?

Scott A.

[maarass]

There are actually six different TiVos with DVD writers. They are

Pioneer DVR-810H-S with a 80 GB drive
Pioneer DVR-57H with a 120 GB drive
Humax DRT400 with a 40 GB drive
Humax DRT800 with a 80 GB drive
Toshiba RS-TX20 with a 120 GB drive
Toshiba RS-TX60 with a 160 GB drive

All have the TiVo menus, with DVD functions added, of course. Burning a disc is extremely easy. You can even burn a disc, watch a show and record a show all at the same time.

The Pioneers and the Toshibas come with LifeTime TiVo Basic, which is a stripped down version of TiVo Plus. You will only get 3 days of guide data, instead of 14 days. You don't need a subscription to record shows and burn them, but you don't get a lot of the cool features, like season passes and wishlists and Multi Room Viewing (you can't transfer shows).

I am partial to the Pioneers. They came out first but are harder to find in retail stores. The Humax has the added feature of still being able to get a LifeTime subscription. The Toshibas have the biggest drives of the bunch. They are all Series 2 TiVos with USB ports on the back.

All of these players can be found on ebay. TiVo still sells the Humax DRT400 on their website. You might be able to find a Toshiba or a Humax at Best Buy or Circuit City.

Also keep in mind that while you can transfer shows between non-DVD TiVos and DVD TiVos, you cannot burn transfered shows. You can only burn shows that were recorded by the TiVo with the DVD writer.

Hope this helps,

robomeister

I too am looking at these. Your post was very, very informative. thanks

[ThreeSoFar]

I too am looking at these. Your post was very, very informative. thanks
A couple other things.

Upgrading these to larger hard drives is possible yourself. I did our Humax DRT800.

Getting lifetime with the Humax units must be done by phone, and don't let them tell you you can't.