Can I find the year of manufactur from the serial number

[SRamsden]

I may have to purchase a replacement Tivo (from eBay). Is there a way to find the year of manufacture from the serial number.

[iankb]

I think that they were all built within a year or so of each other. However, they were built in batches, the first of which I think was was 601E.

The serial number for that batch would be XXX-XXXX-601E-XXXX, and the number increased by hexadecimal increments.

Although some people thought that later batches must be better, I don't believe that there was any real difference. It's possible that the NICAM bug (that could affect people using the inbuilt tuner) might change with batch number, but I don't think that there was any other difference.

The batch number is unlikely to indicate the wear-and-tear on the TiVo, since they weren't sold in batch sequence, and a lot of the unsold stock that was bought up by companies such as Tivoland was probably from earlier batches.

I have one of the 601E batch, and have been running it for well over six years.

[Pete77]

The serial number for that batch would be XXX-XXXX-601E-XXXX, and the number increased by hexadecimal increments.

Although some people thought that later batches must be better, I don't believe that there was any real difference. It's possible that the NICAM bug (that could affect people using the inbuilt tuner) might change with batch number, but I don't think that there was any other difference.

The batch number is unlikely to indicate the wear-and-tear on the TiVo, since they weren't sold in batch sequence, and a lot of the unsold stock that was bought up by companies such as Tivoland was probably from earlier batches.

I have one of the 601E batch, and have been running it for well over six years.

The first 10 characters of the Tivo serial number are always the same and only the last 6 digits vary in a hexadecimal (base 16) sequence as ian suggests.

All UK Thomson Tivo PVR10UK units have the digits 601E, 601F, 6020, 6021, 6022, 6023 and 6024 in the third block of four digits and 601Es like mine are the earliest models (quite a few of which were shop demonstrator models like this one I have) and 6024's the latest units produced.

Due to the use of hexadecimal numbering there are actually 65,536 numbering combinations possible in the last block of four characters which would on the face of it imply over 458,000 units produced (as seven of these blocks of 65,536 maximum possible combinations were used for UK Tivo models), although obviously production of the UK model stopped at some unknown point in the 6024 block. In practice though it is generally thought that less than 30,000 UK Tivos were manufactured and distributed which seems to imply that perhaps only one in 16 of these number combinations were used. For instance 458,000 divided by 16 gives us 28,672 - around the number of UK Tivos thought to have actually been produced.

There is no functional difference in any of the boxes other than that as ian says some of the early models had a bug with a faulty capacitor that in some cases caused popping when recording in Nicam stereo from the internal UHF analogue tuner. But as people now usually record from a Sky, Cable or Freeview box and not the internal tuner this is not generally speaking a concern these days. The popping problem was repaired on the units that suffered it at the time for those owners who used the internal tuner and complained about it but too late now as the machines are long out of warranty. The only other difference in spec between the units is that at some point Thomson changed to fitting a single 40Gb hard drive in the Tivos other than a 30Gb and 15Gb hard drive as happened earlier in the production. This happened when fitting a 40Gb hard drive became a cheaper cost option than a 30Gb and 15Gb drive due to falling hard drive prices. If your Tivo only left the factory with one drive this means it only has one hard drive bracket in it so if you want to add a second one now you will have to buy the bracket from www.tivoland.com who still have stocks.

As the units were only marketed for two years they may only have been produced for one year to 18 months as ikb suggests, as the production line probably ran every day for a while at Thomson and units were then stockpiled in a warehouse somewhere.

So which Serial number your box has is not a very relevant factor and more relevant is whether the hard drives have been replaced with larger capacity units, whether the box also has a network card like a Turbonet or Cachecard added and whether it has a Lifetime subscription.

Hopefully this info may be of assistance to you.

[TCM2007]

They're all old! Quite a few refurbs are in circulation so ther serial number really tells you nothing.

[Pete77]

They're all old! Quite a few refurbs are in circulation so ther serial number really tells you nothing.

As TCM points out the Tivo Service Number is actually tied to the Motherboard in the Tivo unit and so if the motherboard has been replaced during a repair (eg to fix the Nicam bug problem) then an earlier manufactured unit may acquire a later Tivo Service Number.

Tivos aren't that old. Only just over 6 years at most. My fridge, freezer, oven, hob, boiler and dishwasher are now all over 16 years old and still going strong.