Series 1 -when digital comes then what?

[frogger999]

I use a Series 1 hd-112 to record off the air (rabbit ears). When terrestrial TV goes digital (Congress ends analog transmission) will this Tivo be of any use? Any adapters? Just wondering.

[litzdog911]

You have two years before this becomes a problem, so your Tivo might be out-of-service by then. If your Tivo is still working you'll need a Digital TV Receiver that can feed 480i (standard definition) video to your Tivo. But it's doubtful that your old Series 1 Tivo will know how to change channels on a Digital TV Receiver for automated recording.

[frogger999]

Thanks, but what did you mean by out-of-service? Broken? I'm not worried about that since I have a parts machine. Anyway, maybe I would have the digital tuner (or whatever its called) just feed it's signal to my "satellite" input on the Tivo? Yet, the digital tuner would presumably be stuck on one channel unless there is a way around that. (And it occurs to me that there is a workaround with a programmable remote). But, aside from all these contrivances, are most people just going to toss out these old Series 1 units? Seems a shame.

[litzdog911]

Those Tivos will still work fine with most of the Cable TV systems across the country. Your situation is a bit different because you're exclusively using over-the-air analog reception. By 2009 I think many people will have upgraded to Series 3 or newer HD-capable Tivos/DVRs that will receive digital over-the-air broadcasts just fine.

And, by "out-of-service", yes I meant that you may have outgrown your old Tivo by then, or it will be dead.

[mr.unnatural]

No doubt there will be set top boxes made available for those that still receive their analog OTA channels via OTA antenna. I thought I read a while back that Congress has already allocated funds for the development of such devices, but I'm a little fuzzy on that.

As LD said, there may be an issue with getting the Tivo to control the box since it would probably require a software update with a new database for the additional STB IR and serial controller codes. This could probably be done via a service download and not a fullblown OS upgrade. It mostly depends on whether or not Tivo will be supporting older models for this function.

[frogger999]

Actually, this is somewhat encouraging. I would have thought that it would not be possible for the Tivo to control an external tuner. Well, not totally impossible but I guess I figured the add-on tuner would only be controllable by IR. Wait a minute, can my Tivo send an IR signal? I guess that could be handy. Then the Tivo software could send an IR signal to change the tuner channel? Is that the idea? Maybe I should dump some of my old technology as I really don't feel like hacking my Sony Betamax player too. <g>

[classicsat]

The TiVo can send IR, has since day one. It can probably update the IR code database. The real issue, perhaps, is dealing with the - in the guide and the channel change.

[gastrof]

Maybe newer digital STBs will have timers and channel changing ability.

When I still had a cable box, the box could be set to change to a certain channel at a certain time and as a result feed the appropriate show to a VCR that was set to turn on and record at that time.

My current early digital STB (which I've used maybe twice...still no decent antenna mounted for it) actually has a clock setting feature, but the crazy thing has nothing else clock-related!

I still can't figure it out. Why the clock, if no timer?