What's Available Now??

[pabloptivo]

Wow, I bought the Pioneer 810 unit over a year ago, now I'm trying to hook up my father inlaw, and I can't find anything.

Pioneer - none in stock anywhere
Humax - virtually none in stock.

What's the deal? Should I be looking at some other unit? Is the technology moving on?

Any recommendations on available DVD units for Tivo would be helpful.

[funtoupgrade]

You can find the Humax units on eBay and also on the TiVo web-site.

[robomeister]

The TiVo units with DVD writers are the Pioneer DVR-810H-S, the Pioneer DVR-57H, the Toshiba RS-TX20, the Toshiba RS-TX60, the Humax DRT400 and the Humax DRT800. All are available on Ebay. They go for about $200 to $300, some have a Buy it now option.

The Pioneers came out first (my favorites). The Toshibas came out and also include a FireWire connector on the front of the units for importing video from a video camera. The Humax came out last and have the unique ability to still obtain the LifeTime TiVo subscription.

Good luck,

robomeister

[pabloptivo]

Why are these units generally not available anymore from retailers? I love my Pioneer 810HS, but the only ones on Ebay are used. None of the listed units are really available anymore except on the fringe!

Can it be that not enough people have seen the light! ;)

[slacker9876]

The Humax came out last and have the unique ability to still obtain the LifeTime TiVo subscription.

robomeister Why would anyone want a lifetime sub on an obsolete unit? The series 3 debuted at CES so certainly al series 2 units are toast.

LMAO, I was reading this becuase I too need a TiVo with with HDD and DVD burner, but I think I may just need to push my HR10-250 a lil further.

[pabloptivo]

"robomeister

__________________
Pio 810H, 320GB, WUSB12, Lifetime
Pio 810H, 250GB, DWL-122, Lifetime
Pio 810H, 250GB, USB200M, Lifetime
Pio 810H, 320GB, DWL-122, Basic "

Holy Moly robomeister, you really like the pioneer! How did you get those massive hd's in. Probably posted the procedure already. I wish I could find a new 810, I just caved and bought the humax on ebay, hopes it works as well.

[robomeister]

Yes, I do like the Pioneers. They run on the 2xx platform, so the USB interface hardware seems to be faster than on the 5xx platform. Wired ethernet transfers are not painful. I avoid going wireless, wherever possible.

I used the weaknees online guide for the most part. A link can be found in the Upgrade Forum. However, with drives bigger than 250GB, you have to create a larger swap file. But there is a bug in the mfs tools. It won't properly initialize a swap file larger than 127MB. To get a good swapfile, you need to have 1MB of swap for every 2GB of hard drive space (i.e. 320GB drive needs 160MB of swap). This is so if you get a GSOD or a new software update, it will finish properly, no reboot loop. You follow the standard upgrade procedure, then use a tool called tpip to initialize the larger swap file.

Hope that helps. And good luck with your new Humax.

robomeister

[pad77]

About a year ago Toshiba stopped making the SD-H400. It is a DVD player with free Tivo basic. Best Buy had a close-out price of $199 (the list price was almost $500 i think) anyway i bought 6 of them and kept some and gave the rest to my mother and sisters. I just noticed that Wal-mart must have found some in their warehouse last week because they just listed it on their website. The bad news is they want $360 for them instead of $199.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=2639547

[robomeister]

One thing to note about the Toshiba SD-H400. It does not have a DVD Writer in it, and you cannot upgrade it with a DVD Writer. The DVD portion of the unit is simply a DVD player.

[jfh3]

Why are these units generally not available anymore from retailers?

Because they are being discontinued.