Upgrade v Buy v Replace

[Ovit-UK]

Ok its finally gone tits up, my Tivo that is.

Presume its the drive thats gone after intermitant problems.

So my dilema is wether to upgrade from the initial series 1 (40Gb) and get a 400Gb drive plus cachecard and ram/tivoweb (+transfer from existing drive)for around £250 . . .

or to buy another Tivo from someone . . .

or to look at a humax/topfield/mce setup . . .


I am on the lookout for a 1080p Tv to watch my Hd-dvds on but not interested in a SkyHD box.

We use Sky+ in the other room but the whole family prefer the Tivo but because I cant really do any of the programing of drives myself it means approx £250 spend which does seem an awful lot


S'pose what I'm asking is will £250 future proof me or would I be better getting a new product now or waiting a bit?



PS ... Can I obtain the 3 little screws for the back of the tivo easily as they are now inside a dyson :D is there a name/number for them?


Thanks in advance for any advice.


Ovit-UK

[blindlemon]

If your existing drive has failed then you will not likely be able to transfer anything from it. Sorry :(

There is no better product than a TiVo :) If you upgrade to Mode 0 at the same time as replacing the drive then picture quality on a HD display will be as good as you get from most SD DVD players.

The 3 screws can be substituted for by any case screw that will fit. The ones used to hold PCI cards inside PCs do a pretty good job, as will the screws you get with hard drives.

[davidshack]

Hi,
whilst recent products may have apparently attractive extra facilities - for example "better" picture quality and/or twin tuners and/or easier backup - I have stayed with my TiVos because their features are more use to me, especially:
- TiVo's intelligent software: especially facilities such as season passes that work, wishlists, clear menu lists (ie text only), 30 second skip. TiVo works - it reliably gets on with the job.
- TiVo's upgradability, customisation: larger drives, networking, mods such as padding.
- I'm happy with mode 0 picture quality. That's obviously a personal decision and may well depend on what programmes you watch and the screen. I don't watch sport, for example. But I do watch a wide range from action to natural world. I also watch many DVDs (on upscaling players) and find TiVo holds it own. Nor do I use a small screen. All my watching is on 8ft wide screens with Infocus DLP projectors.

You can buy (from a helpful heavenly TiVo supplier) a ready-configured 400Gb disk for £109. Why not ask for all the "goodies" (mode 0, endpad, diskspace, etc) to be preloaded. Put the drive in and off you go.

I'd suggest the network card can be a nice toy (eg if you want TiVoweb) but is not necessarily a must-have. I have one TiVo with no network, one with turbonet and one with a cachecard: this latter ran quite happily for a year before I bought any memory for it. Most of the time I can't tell their performance apart (unless you have several dozen of titles in the "now playing" list you too may not notice any difference).

Obviously if you buy a used TiVo you'd have a whole set of spares for the future.
But for quick, easy, troublefree future use it's hard to beat buying a pre-configured hard drive.

Hope that helps
david

[Ovit-UK]

Thanks for that guys

Blindlemon, just sent you a pm



Ovit-UK

[ericd121]

PS ... Can I obtain the 3 little screws for the back of the tivo easily as they are now inside a dyson :D is there a name/number for them?If you're getting a CacheCard, you'll only need two screws as the middle one won't be needed: the metal tab on the lid has to be bent up to allow room for the network cable to enter the case.

The case lid is so tight, however, that the other two screws aren't needed anyway! :p