Help picking out a tivo!

[Jawa78]

Ok I read alot of old threads, and I am a new direct tv customer. I went out of my way did quite bit of research and made sure that my Dish was legacy 5lnb setup with a wideband 6x8 switch.

Ok so which direct tivo unit do I get. By the looks of it non of the Direct Tivos have eithernet. But it appears that I can buy usb nic /or usb wireless and used the software found around here to enable said function.

Last year about this time I paid 30 dollars or something for Tivo Home software while I was visiting a friend who had standalone tivos so we could transcode movies over to the tivo and some of the other neat features the software promised.

If I put a usb nic in, will the the direct tivos work with the tivo home.

Should I go ahead and buy a HD direct tivo even though it Hd does not work any more do to the mpeg4 transsistion. even if it is just to hook up the tivo via the hdmi port.

Thoughts feelings on what someone new should be looking for ... I am not really impressed with the HR22 that they put in the living room but that is ok. I figure even a old direct tivo unit is better then these cheaply made looking D11 units in the other two rooms.


thanks in advance for the help

[stevel]

You can "hack" the software in a DirecTiVo to enable the USB ports and add a USB NIC, but it cannot share programming with other TiVos on your home network unless they have also been "hacked" to disable encryption, and even then it won't have access to TiVo services such as Netflix, Amazon Unbox, Swivel Search, etc. and won't work with the TiVo Home software.

[Jawa78]

You can "hack" the software in a DirecTiVo to enable the USB ports and add a USB NIC, but it cannot share programming with other TiVos on your home network unless they have also been "hacked" to disable encryption, and even then it won't have access to TiVo services such as Netflix, Amazon Unbox, Swivel Search, etc. and won't work with the TiVo Home software.

Ok let me rewind and ask a different question.

1. I have replaced HDs on standalone tivos and I assume it is a similar process on the direct tivo units?

2. Since the Tivo Home software is not compatible with the direct tivos I have to ask the question, what can I do if I "enable" usb ports and plug in a usb nic, what bennefits are there I guess is the right question to ask.

[stevel]

1. Yes. Same process.

2. Assuming you do the other common hacks such as disabling encryption, you can: 1) Copy shows to your PC and burn them to DVD (not using TiVo's software), 2) Use TiVoWebPlus to control and view state on your TiVo, 3) Copy MPEG2 recordings to your TiVo for viewing, 4) Move recordings around your home network to other similarly-hacked DTiVos. There are other things too, but those are the major ones.

You cannot use any network services that require interaction with TiVo's corporate servers and, if you have version 6.3 or later, can't use MRV (with other hacked DTiVos), but there are alternatives to that.

The Underground section of this forum is a good place to start reading.