S2 to S3?

[Irvinraw]

Hello All,

I was wondering if some of you could chime in on this and give me your opinions. I purchased a Series 1 Tivo about 4 years ago and I loved it. I didn't subscribe to the Tivo service, but was still happy with the hardware. Then last year, I heard that Tivo was getting rid of the lifetime membership. So I purchased an S2 with the lifetime membership. I totally loved the Tivo service and its intuitiveness.

Anyway, when the S3s came out I thought it was way too expensive for me to upgrade. Besides the hardware, I had to shell out another $200 to transfer the lifetime membership.

I visited this website a couple of weeks ago and although the official upgrade period to S3 is over, I've read that Tivo is still allowing transfers of lifetime memberships to S3. Anyway, I started thinking that perhaps with the new all-digital requirement by the government coming up in 2009 it may render my tivo useless.

I'm not too familiar with this stuff so forgive my ignorance. Will this digital change render my S1 and S2 useless? Furthermore, is upgrading from S2 to S3 a big deal? To tell you the truth, I don't want to purchase another DVR. But the reason I purchased the lifetime membership was because I wanted to use it for a long time. Besides my two Tivos, I have a DVD recorder player with a hard drive and a DVR from Comcast. I love my Comcast DVR. It definitely is not as good as Tivo, but I love the fact that it records HD and has dual tuners. I know S3 has this as well.

Given the hardware I have, do you think I should upgrade to S3?



Thanks in advance

Irv

[ZeoTiVo]

if you can still get the lifetime transfer it is probably a good deal since you can shop around and get the s3 for 500 to 600$ now. First I heard of still being bale to transfer lifetime though.

If you just have analog cable you can hook it right up to the S3 the same as the S2 and enjoy the TiVo goodness. No need to upgrade to digital right away

[mick66]

If you just have analog cable you can hook it right up to the S3 the same as the S2 and enjoy the TiVo goodness. No need to upgrade to digital right away

But since he already has digital cable
I love my Comcast DVR. It definitely is not as good as Tivo, but I love the fact that it records HD and has dual tuners.
He may want to get a couple of cable cards installed in the S3.

[gastrof]

Hello All,

I was wondering if some of you could chime in on this and give me your opinions. I purchased a Series 1 Tivo about 4 years ago and I loved it. I didn't subscribe to the Tivo service, but was still happy with the hardware. Then last year, I heard that Tivo was getting rid of the lifetime membership. So I purchased an S2 with the lifetime membership. I totally loved the Tivo service and its intuitiveness.

Anyway, when the S3s came out I thought it was way too expensive for me to upgrade. Besides the hardware, I had to shell out another $200 to transfer the lifetime membership.

I visited this website a couple of weeks ago and although the official upgrade period to S3 is over, I've read that Tivo is still allowing transfers of lifetime memberships to S3. Anyway, I started thinking that perhaps with the new all-digital requirement by the government coming up in 2009 it may render my tivo useless.

I'm not too familiar with this stuff so forgive my ignorance. Will this digital change render my S1 and S2 useless? Furthermore, is upgrading from S2 to S3 a big deal? To tell you the truth, I don't want to purchase another DVR. But the reason I purchased the lifetime membership was because I wanted to use it for a long time. Besides my two Tivos, I have a DVD recorder player with a hard drive and a DVR from Comcast. I love my Comcast DVR. It definitely is not as good as Tivo, but I love the fact that it records HD and has dual tuners. I know S3 has this as well.

Given the hardware I have, do you think I should upgrade to S3?



Thanks in advance

Irv


As long as your cable company is providing you with a cable box that will work with an analog TV, it'll work with a Series 1 or 2 TiVo.

If you're using a TiVo for over-the-air television, once the analog stations are off the air, the S1/S2 TiVo's built-in tuner won't have anything it can pick up. It'd need to work with some type of digital TV over-the-air tuner ("set top box"), but right now no TiVo has the control codes to change the channels on a digital TV box.

Who knows? TiVo may upgrade the software on the S2s (probably NOT on the Series 1s, tho' who knows?) so's to work with set top over-the-air digital boxes.

Don't count on it, tho', since it's not a given.

[TiVo Troll]

As long as your cable company is providing you with a cable box that will work with an analog TV, it'll work with a Series 1 or 2 TiVo.

If you're using a TiVo for over-the-air television, once the analog stations are off the air, the S1/S2 TiVo's built-in tuner won't have anything it can pick up. It'd need to work with some type of digital TV over-the-air tuner ("set top box"), but right now no TiVo has the control codes to change the channels on a digital TV box.

Who knows? TiVo may upgrade the software on the S2s (probably NOT on the Series 1s, tho' who knows?) so's to work with set top over-the-air digital boxes.

Don't count on it, tho', since it's not a given.

A free digital cable box used as the line input source for an S2 works great. A cheap cable hi-def DVR works even better, and provides programming otherwise unavailable from a regular digital cable box. Then, if you choose, you can upgrade your TV to hi-def and record programs in hi-def or standard def without buying a hi-def S3 and paying $200 more to transfer Lifetime Service to it.

Hopefully TiVo will eventually provide S2 control capability for ATSC OTA tuners. Right now an activated ex-Dishnetwork VOOM box can be used as a workaround.