Still going strong....

[David W]

I haven`t been on the forum since 2004 and purchased the Tivo well before that when Dixons was still selling them so god knows how long ago that was - bought a lifetime a/c at that time and have been using it ever since (always say that the tivo was the best tech item i ever bought).
It`s a shame Tivo never came back to bring the next/latest version of their product to the UK but still it has been a great device and I hope it will continue to work for me for years to come..

David W.

[Pete77]

It`s a shame Tivo never came back to bring the next/latest version of their product to the UK but still it has been a great device and I hope it will continue to work for me for years to come..

David W.

And if the hard drives do pack up on you then you can always get a new larger pre-configured one from either www.tivoheaven.co.uk or www.tivoland.com

You would find a new Samsung 400Gb drive to be a great dial quieter than and also has a lot more capacity than the original Quantum drives.

[blindlemon]

Thanks for the plug Pete :up:;)

Yes, the new Samsung HD400LD (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article657-page1.html) is a very nice drive for TiVo use. Not as quiet as the now very rare HA250JC, but pretty darn quiet for a 400gb 7200rpm drive nevertheless. And none of the ones I've handled have suffered from as much vibration as the review suggests either :)

[Pete77]

Thanks for the plug Pete :up:;)

Yes, the new Samsung HD400LD (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article657-page1.html) is a very nice drive for TiVo use. Not as quiet as the now very rare HA250JC, but pretty darn quiet for a 400gb 7200rpm drive nevertheless. And none of the ones I've handled have suffered from as much vibration as the review suggests either :)

But with 400Gb of drive capacity, even if people record everything in your top Mode 0 setting with VBR enabled they will find they have about 135 hours of recording available taking them very close to or possibly exceeding the level of 150 program items in Now Playing where menu speeds tend to slow down a lot unless you have a Cachecard and 512MB of RAM also fitted to the Tivo. Could that be another reason why you personally favour the 250Gb Samsung drives over the 400Gb Samsung drives for your customers since you know it will not then also be essential for them to fit a Cachecard and 512MB of RAM unless they also definitely want to network the machine and/or plan to make many recordings at lower picture qualities rather than at the top Mode 0 quality?

As the Samsung HA250JC was in a class of its own for quietness but stocks at Ultratec and everywhere else are now exhausted something tells me you may be trying to get hold of the sizeable number of sibling 200Gb V120CE series Samsung drives that you have identified as being in stock at a supplier elsewhere in the EU? ;)

[yungee]

Absolutely. I just wish I'd gone for the lifetime subs at the time. I've been paying £10 a month for Tivo #1 since April 2001, and another £10 for Tivo #2 since December 2002 (bought stock once they stopped making them). :eek:

How much is it to transfer to a lifetime subscription now? It was £200 just then and I couldn't justify that on top of the £400 the first Tivo cost me.

[Pete77]

How much is it to transfer to a lifetime subscription now? It was £200 just then and I couldn't justify that on top of the £400 the first Tivo cost me.

Still £200 unfortunately. :eek:

Unmodified Tivos with a Lifetime Sub on Ebay currently seem to sell for between £160 and £200 though. So in theory it would be cheaper to buy one of those swap your current disks across to the Lifetime Subbed machine and then sell the remaining unsubbed Tivo for £50 or so on Ebay.

[yungee]

Still £200 unfortunately. :eek:

Watch me come back on here in September 2008 crying that I'm still running 2 Tivos and paying £10 a month for each.

I was wondering why the lifetime Tivos sold for so much more than the others on Ebay!

[Pete77]

Thanks for the plug Pete :up:;)

Yes, the new Samsung HD400LD (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article657-page1.html) is a very nice drive for TiVo use. Not as quiet as the now very rare HA250JC, but pretty darn quiet for a 400gb 7200rpm drive nevertheless.

These two German retailers seem to indicate that they still have the HA250JC for sale, although there is something about 28/02/2007 on their site that I don't quite understand. Perhaps this is when they are expecting the next shipment? They seem to quote quite a number of units as available to order?

See www.heise.de/preisvergleich/a145199.html

[blindlemon]

I think the highlighted numbers that look like stock levels are actually the number of customer recommendations :(

However, I will email them and see if I get a response.

[Pete77]

I think the highlighted numbers that look like stock levels are actually the number of customer recommendations :(

However, I will email them and see if I get a response.

If one tries to go through to the order stage on either of these websites it seems to indicate they are awaiting Incoming stock on 28/2/2007. However this may of course be something that the stock computer just keeps rolling on and on into the future on a now deleted product line?

Have you ever tried writing to the senior management of Samsung in Korea to ask why they do not seem to be bothering to produce any more models in their PVR specific 5400rpm series?

[blindlemon]

Both websites are clearly run off the same back-end (like Argos and Homebase here) as the ordering pages are the same and the system generated email replies to queries are identical apart from the store "name".

I'm not hopeful :(

If you can find me the email address of Samsung's CEO then I'll send him a mail, but trying to get any sense out of Samsung themselves has always been a waste of time IME.

[Pete77]

If you can find me the email address of Samsung's CEO then I'll send him a mail, but trying to get any sense out of Samsung themselves has always been a waste of time IME.

This guy is the Chairman:-

www.samsung.com/AboutSAMSUNG/SAMSUNGGROUP/Chairman/CEOMessage/index.htm

And this fellow is the Vice Chairman of Samsung Electronics Global which presumably supplies the HA250JC

See

www.samsung.com/AboutSAMSUNG/ELECTRONICSGLOBAL/InvestorRelations/CorporateGovernance/CEOMessage/index.htm

and

www.samsung.com/AboutSAMSUNG/ELECTRONICSGLOBAL/ViceChairman/PersonalProfile/index.htm

However I have to say that my attempts to email senior management at Samsung in January last year over the burnout of the motherboard on my mother's just under 3 year old Samsung P10 Notebook did not get me very far at all. By contrast emailing the CEO of HP (Mark Hurd) ultimately seemed far more productive in terms of the burnt out motherboard on my notebook a week over the one year warranty (finally they agreed to repair it free of charge) only a few weeks later. Initially HP UK customer service suggested I would have to pay for this repair.

[blindlemon]

Hmmm, impressive CV, but no email address.

My assumption is that demand was not high enough for the 5400rpm models as most OEMs are happy to fit a 7200rpm drive if it's as reliable, quiet and cool as the Samsung T133 series are.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how you look at it) most people are not as obsessed with achieving near-perfection as most TiVo owners seem to be. So if there's a product which is "good enough" at the right price, the majority will settle for that, pushing the truly excellent products into niche markets. However, hard drive manufacturers these days don't really care about niche markets unless the 'niche' is the size of the Grand Canyon :)