Salvage saved programs before new TiVo?

[kxmc65]

Hi there,

I have a series 1 Sony SVR-2000 standalone. It has worked well for years, and I upgraded to a large HD in ~2003. I think it is finally dead... When I turned it on the other day, my TV said 'unknown signal'. The front panel red LED showed it taping properly, though. I unplugged it for 24 hours, and now I can see a picture from it, but it is in black and white and blurry. There is no sound output. When you move around the menus, color lines flicker across the screen, but then it stays B&W.

I have no problem with it being dead, and am ready to buy a new one. (Already have a series 2 that I replaced my original Phillips series 1 with 2 or 3 years ago...) I just want to know if there is any way to salvage the saved programs! My wife has some stuff on there from a couple years ago that she really wants to save, and I would like to salvage the last couple weeks of programming we haven't watched yet.

So, any words of wisdom? I'm not getting my hopes up, as I realize it is old. I'm pretty computer savvy, and would just like to know if I could get somehow connect the hard drive to a pc, and get access to the saved programs, or somehow transfer them onto the new unit. (If I need one)

Oh yes, it is of course on a lifetime programming contract. Any way to salvage that in a new unit?

Thanks very much in advance for any advice...

[gastrof]

To save the unit, if it's the hard drive, putting a new one in (with appropriate software on it) should do the trick.

If it's a power supply gone wonky, I don't know how easy it'd be to find a replacement, but those two things (the drive or the supply) seem to be the major causes of machines "dying". If you can get it running again, the LIFETIME status would stay with the unit.

Also, once in a while TiVo seems to have agreed to transferring the LIFETIME status of an older machine to one you're just now buying.

You could check with them to see if your machine meets the requirements. (But don't take a CSR's "No", if they give you one. Insist on talking to their supervisor instead.)

As for saving the programs, I've heard that for people good with computers, there's a way to at least try to save the files. I'm not up on such things tho'. If you check the Underground forum, they might have more info on that end of things.