What to do with a dead Tivo?

[Roger Wilco]

I've had a Hughes SD-DVR40 for a few years and it's been great but it's time has come. It began stuttering a few months ago and now it's stuck in reboot/GSOD limbo. DirecTV is replacing it for free + 2yr contract and $20 S&H. I had a choice of another DTV tuner/Tivo combo or a R15. I have one R15 already and it is quite underwhelming and the UI is a train wreck so I happily went with Tivo again. I was surprised I even had the choice since I thought such units were no longer available.

Anyway, what to do with the old model? There are some movies on there I'd like to get but I'm going to assume they are in a propreitary format. This unit does have two USB ports in the back. Can it be connected to my LAN or PC and be revived? Can the HD be removed and connected to my PC and the movies ripped into a usuable format?

What are the possibilities?

[wscannell]

Basically, the movies are gone. There is no good way to retrieve them from a non-working unit.

You may be able to use dd_resuce to copy the hard drive to a new hard drive and uyou might get it to work again, but since you are at the GSOD, this will probably be unsuccessful.

The USB ports on the back are inactive unless you hack the machine. (See the "Zipper" in the Underground forum. However, your hard drive seems too far gone for that.

Sorry, not much good news.

[Roger Wilco]

Thanks for the quick reply. How does TivoDesktop and TivoToGo work? Aren't the files being transferred to the various devices and to DVD's? If the DVD can be played in any player then it must be converted to a compatible format. Also, how do you play the file on your laptop or mobile device? Is there a tivo player for these OS's or again are the files converted to familiar formats?

[aztivo]

Thanks for the quick reply. How does TivoDesktop and TivoToGo work? Aren't the files being transferred to the various devices and to DVD's? If the DVD can be played in any player then it must be converted to a compatible format. Also, how do you play the file on your laptop or mobile device? Is there a tivo player for these OS's or again are the files converted to familiar formats?
this is for stand alone units only ie not Dtivos

[Stanley Rohner]

You could have just bought a pre-formatted hard drive or bought an unformatted drive and set it up yourself with calling DIRECTV and commiting to a 2-year agreement.

I guess it's to late for that now.

You'll have to send the old unit to DIRECTV I believe.

[Mavrick22]

You could have just bought a pre-formatted hard drive or bought an unformatted drive and set it up yourself with calling DIRECTV and commiting to a 2-year agreement.

I guess it's to late for that now.

You'll have to send the old unit to DIRECTV I believe.

You dont have to send the old unit back to DirecTV in most cases these days for they don't have a want for the old TIVO based boxes and are telling most people that have them to do whatever they want with them.

The only exceptions to this that I have seen posted on multiple places is if it is an R10 that is being replaced then they want those back but any other model no they do not want.

[Roger Wilco]

You could have just bought a pre-formatted hard drive or bought an unformatted drive and set it up yourself with calling DIRECTV and commiting to a 2-year agreement.

I guess it's to late for that now.

You'll have to send the old unit to DIRECTV I believe.

Well, i'm not completely sure it's the HD and two yrs is no biggie IMO...DTV itself is fine, better than my cable options.

And they said i could do whatever i wanted with the old one which is why i posted in the first place :)

[Roger Wilco]

this is for stand alone units only ie not Dtivos


Out of curiosity...how come? Is there and incompatibility in the hardware/software or file formats. Or is it just a corporate agreement.

Do I understand it correctly...I could Tivo a movie or show and burn it to DVD or copy to my PC? Seems like the MPAA or movie/TV producers in general wouldn't be so thrilled about that.

[yunlin12]

Out of curiosity...how come? Is there and incompatibility in the hardware/software or file formats. Or is it just a corporate agreement.

Do I understand it correctly...I could Tivo a movie or show and burn it to DVD or copy to my PC? Seems like the MPAA or movie/TV producers in general wouldn't be so thrilled about that.

Tivo compresses analog video to digital video in MPEG2 format. DirecTV already broadcast in MPEG2 so the DTivo's don't have to do the encoding themselves. They just store the MPEG2 they receive from DirecTV signal. The difference is that the standalone boxes uses an MPEG2 encoder chip that can be put in a box that's sold a for a couple hundred bucks, and DirecTV probably has some $10,000 encoder doing the same work, so the MPEG2 file you get from DirecTV is very high quality, very close to the original broadcast quality.

The quality difference is probably one issue what standalone Tivo is free to distribute their recordings (to some extent) and DirecTivo is not. Standalone Tivo is not allowed to transfer some content that are marked with a do-not-copy (some times copy-once) flag that's been embedded in some shows (more common on premium channels or PPV).

It is possible to hack the DirecTivo's to get TivoToGo function. The hacked units can also support MRV (multi-room-viewing), which lets you watch one Tivo's content from another Tivo, if they are networked together. These has been made pretty simple by people on the underground forum. If you have the time, and a spare HDD, you might try it on this Tivo and see if you can get it to work. If you can, then when you get the replacement DirecTivo, you may choose to hack that as well, then you can use the first DirecTivo for MRV.

[aztivo]

Out of curiosity...how come? Is there and incompatibility in the hardware/software or file formats. Or is it just a corporate agreement.

Do I understand it correctly...I could Tivo a movie or show and burn it to DVD or copy to my PC? Seems like the MPAA or movie/TV producers in general wouldn't be so thrilled about that.

D* decided to not allow the Tivo to go features for what ever reasons they have... Yes you can record something than save it to dvd or Computer with RCA Jacks... but only Stand Alones can "Transfer" to a computer or another Tivo

[Stanley Rohner]

Check your next DIRECTV bill. It'll probably show that you are now leasing the unit they sent you for free, well not really free since they charged you approx. 2 times the amount you'd normally have to pay to ship something that size.

[Dkerr24]

D* decided to not allow the Tivo to go features for what ever reasons they have... Yes you can record something than save it to dvd or Computer with RCA Jacks... but only Stand Alones can "Transfer" to a computer or another Tivo

az: Both of my DTivo units will transfer files in mpeg2 format to my PC where I can then burn them to DVD. All thanks to the zipper script and TyTools.

[aztivo]

az: Both of my DTivo units will transfer files in mpeg2 format to my PC where I can then burn them to DVD. All thanks to the zipper script and TyTools.
Yes I know that but the OP was refering to unhacked IMO