Help an old-bie back into the fold? (HD purchase qns)

[jeffw_00]

I've had my Series-1 box since 9/30/2000, (upgraded by me to 70GB) and, back then, used to be on the forum all the time, even beta tested a couple of SW revisions. But I've been out of touch for a while. Hope you're all well. (is the pony still around?)

I went HD a few years ago, and have been using the various COMCAST boxes, for limited HD viewing. Now with so many HD channels available, the COMCAST box isn't cutting it, so I'm ready for an HD-TIVO, but it will have to have extra capacity. 500-750GB should do it.

I've done a little research, and I -think- what I want is an "HD-TiVo", but do I want to
- just buy the TiVo somewhere (where is best/cheapest place to buy?) , and then buy the add-on 500GB drive, or
- buy a 750GB TiVo from 9th Tee (what interests me here is that they will pre-test the unit to decrease infant mortality risk, and I have someone who will fix it if it breaks) - but it's about the same cost as the unit + external drive
- buy the TiVo, upgrade it myself (if it's as easy as last time, I can do it).

I know I'm too late for the cutoff to get the free upgrade-service transfer - does TiVo ever make exceptions for people within a few months of the cutoff?

Big question: Are there any angles or considerations that I'm missing? This is really why I'm posting - I don't follow the forums anymore so I don't know what I SHOULD be thinking about.


Thanks VERY Much
/j

[jamesweber]

Amazon usually has the best price it ranges anywhere from $215 to $250 (price changes all the time).

WD10EVCS (buy.com) is a great hard drive for upgrade (1TB) for $112

Doing the upgrade yourself is much easier now than it was in the old days. WinMFS is a great little windows based program and you can upgrade in less than 5 minutes now. without having to boot to a linux CD.

MFSlive.org

Upgraded with 1TB regular 142 HD 1200+ SD
Upgraded with 1TB supersized 157 HD 1300+ SD

[txporter]

So you still have a working Series1 with a subscription? If you do, you will be able to get discounted service pricing on a new machine.

I would recommend picking up a TivoHD from Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/TiVo-TCD652160-Digital-Video-Recorder/dp/B000RZDBM2/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1231779698&sr=8-1)if you have Prime, or some other online retailer so you can get a bit of a price break over what you can get from Tivo themselves. You can call up Tivo to have the new machine added to your account. The choices you will have will be $299 for lifetime or various 1 yearly/monthly pricing options. See Tivo.com (https://www3.tivo.com/store/plans.do) for pricing details, and log in if you still have service so you can see the discounted prices.

Upgrading capacity has gotten quite a bit easier with the advent of winMFS (http://www.mfslive.org/winmfs/). Check out this thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784) (long) for a FAQ to upgrading Series3 and TivoHD. My recommendation would be to do an internal hard drive upgrade rather than adding an external drive. Fewer drives to fail is usually better. There are recommendation for drives in the thread that I linked as well. Most folks are generally going with a 1TB drive internally and the most popular drive is the WD10EVCS (http://www.buy.com/prod/western-digital-av-gp-wd10evcs-hard-drive-1tb-serial-ata-300-serial/q/loc/101/206827123.html). My opinion is that the price difference between 500g/750g drives and 1TB drives is fairly negligible, so I would recommend going with a bigger drive which would eliminate the need for additional upgrades in the future if you needed it.

If you still have your series1, but you do not want to keep its subscription, you should be able to transfer its subscription (as long as it isn't a lifetime) to the new box through the website or a call to tivo.

If you do not have a subscription on your series1, you will be coming back as a new subscriber. In which case, you can still save a few bucks by purchasing from an online retailer and then calling Tivo to add subscription. The subscription pricing is always a bit more expensive for your first box, but there isn't a way around it.

Jason

[Ladd Morse]

Welcome to the club!

I also have two Series One boxes, purchased in 2002 with Lifetime on both. I got an HD set about three years ago and used a Comcast Motorola DVR while waiting for TiVo to release an HD box. And when they did, continued to wait until the price went down.

About three months ago I purchased a TiVo HD (not the TiVo HDXL) and got LifeTime service for it for $299 -- a $100 discount from $399 because I had other LifeTime boxes on my account.

Bought a 1 TB drive for $89 (after mail-in rebate that I may get someday) and, using a neighbors' PC and the free WinMFS program, formatted the 1 TB drive and enabled acoustic management in about five minutes by following the menu prompts.

Opened the TiVo case, popped the old drive out, put the new drive in, put the lid back on and fired it up. Voila! 144 hours of HD goodness.

It is so nice to be using the TiVo software again, and to be able to record OTA again.

[jeffw_00]

thanks for all the input guys -this helps a lot.

Forgot to mention - I did buy lifetime when I bought the unit (back when lifetime cost $199), any hope at all of transferring it??

I see the unit for $250 at amazon right now, free ship...

Is the "green" WD AV-GP WD10EVCS OEM at newegg a good drive? (I rather buy from Newegg than Buy).

Ladd-morse - thanks! that sounds just like what I want to do.

/thanks
/j

[Bob723]

The HD TiVo has been on sale at 6ave.com for $208 with free shipping. Use code AFLTVO208 and the price should show up at checkout. I see it is sold out right now but they indicate you can get delivery before the end of January. I just recently got my second HD from them.

[steve614]

Forgot to mention - I did buy lifetime when I bought the unit (back when lifetime cost $199), any hope at all of transferring it??

I would suggest that you call Tivo and ask. Couldn't hurt. Ask for a supervispor.
Try several times, if necessary. You may come across a sympathetic CSR eventually.
If not, get a TivoHD, then get the lifetime service with MSD, then sell your lifetimed S1 to help recoup the cost.

[jamesweber]

Is the "green" WD AV-GP WD10EVCS OEM at newegg a good drive? (I rather buy from Newegg than Buy).


/thanks
/j

Great Drive (same one I use), but have noticed a few posts about newegg not packaging the drive well and people having to send it back for replacement, so I tried Buy.com. Drive came in within 2 days and had no problems with it. (Newegg is also my first choice usually) Pretty much a coin toss I suppose.

[mattack]

Forgot to mention - I did buy lifetime when I bought the unit (back when lifetime cost $199), any hope at all of transferring it??

Nope.. You missed the (pay) lifetime transfer offers that happened. There were $199 offers to the S3 & TivoHD a few years ago.. That's how I ended up with a S3 & a TivoHD (and I still don't have a HDTV).. That's when lifetime was supposedly going away totally.

You can get lifetime for $299 if you have an existing subscription -- which you do. You then could sell your lifetime S1s on eBay. They'll still fetch something.

[HerronScott]

thanks for all the input guys -this helps a lot.

Forgot to mention - I did buy lifetime when I bought the unit (back when lifetime cost $199), any hope at all of transferring it??

I see the unit for $250 at amazon right now, free ship...

Is the "green" WD AV-GP WD10EVCS OEM at newegg a good drive? (I rather buy from Newegg than Buy).

Ladd-morse - thanks! that sounds just like what I want to do.

/thanks
/j

I don't think that NewEgg has the WD10EVCS. I believe they have the WD10EACS. I would recommend the WD10EVCS from Best Buy which is currently $111.99 with free shipping as it's a really good price for a drive which is supposed to be designed for DVR's.

Scott

[jeffw_00]

Thanks everyone - I think I'm a few weeks from the disk - need to decide to order (real close) get the unit (mail order), get the cable cards in, use it for a bit, then when I'm sure it won't infant-mortalitize, upgrade the disk (maybe even wait for 90 day warranty to run out). No harm in this approach, right? Disk cost might even come down...

ONE LAST QUESTION: Are there any PQ (picture quality) issues with the HD-TiVo? (on Digital cable, not OTA)

thanks!
/j

[Ladd Morse]

one other tip, that you will probably find by reading the eSATA upgrade threads:

In preparation for a visit from your cable company, over the course of at least several days, perhaps a week, get the new Tivo ready for the cable card(s) installation and for replacing the hard drive.

After you purchase our new HD TiVo, hook it up to cable and/or antenna wires, phone line or network connection, etc. Power the TiVo up and go through the initial setup routines. It will take a day or two to receive the current software upgrade.

Go to your account on TiVo.com and enable "allow video transfers" and "enable video downloads". This will generate a MAK (Media Access Key) that will show up in your TiVo's System Information after a call or two.

Start entering in desired Season Passes and Wishlists.

When preparing the new 1TB drive for use, if you will be doing a full copy of the factory TiVo drive (i.e. copying recorded shows, season passes, etc. in addition to the basic Tivo file infomation), feel free to let the TiVo start recording shows like crazy. If you will be doing the five minute prep of the new drive (i.e. NOT transferring recorded shows, season passes, etc. from the factory drive to the new drive) don't record shows that you don't mind losing. Here's where your current Comcast DVR helps out -- you just need to use it for one more week. :)

If you elected to go the five minute disk prep route, one tip that is handy to know is that a day or so before you replace the factory drive, go into your TiVo menus and turn on "Kid Zone". This is a feature that drops the TiVo into a password protected state if unused for four hours. The reason why you want this featured enabled is that a side effect of having Kid Zone enabled is that if all of your Season Passes and Wishlists are copied to the TiVo Mothership, and after you drop in the new, blank 1TB drive and re-run Guided Setup, all of your Season Passes and Wishlists will be download and put in place also. You won't have to re-enter everything all over again. After all the information is download properly, you can turn off Kid Zone, if you don't wish to use it for the original intentions.

You will want to go through the cable card install process before putting in the new drive. The pairing and authorization of your cable card(s) writes this info to the hard disk. Having this done before swapping out the factory hard disk ensures that you have this cable info on the original hard disk when you start the disk preparation process by doing a "truncated backup" of the factory hard disk to your computer -- about 400MB. This way if you ever have problems with the new drive, you can pop the old drive back in and your cable stuff will still work because the pairing and authorization info is on the factory disk you've had up on a shelf for a year.

This pairing and authorization info will be transferred to the new 1TB drive a few minutes after you do the backup of your factory hard drive; when you continue with the disk preparation by copying this backup file from the computer to the new disk and then following through with the other disk prep steps. I used WinMFS and it literally was just a couple of clicks, no typing long strings of cryptic code as I had to do when I upgraded the Series One boxes.

To recap, get the out-of-the-box TiVo completely ready and setup for the cable card authorization process and the disk swap process by ensuring that the software is updated to current; do all the other stuff because it is useful and helpful.

Note: given that I wrote all this off the top of my head, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I left something critical out; if and when this is pointed out to me, I'll revise the above tips. Most if not all of the info was gleaned from the very long, but nicely summarized at the beginning, sticky discussion thread "External eSATA Drive Upgrades" (or something like that) that actually covers internal drive upgrades also. Please do your own research to the point that you feel comfortable with what you will need to do.

Good Luck!

[jeffw_00]

Thanks - the only confusing thing is the KidZone =- I thought WinMFS transferred ALL your config data (including wishlists, etc) by Default - Now you're saying I need to turn on KidZone for this to happen?

Thanks

again - is there any talk on the forums of PQ issues with the new HDTiVO and a good cable signal? I don't see much but figured it couldn't hurt to ask

Thanks
/j

[retired_guy]

FYI, I've never turned on KidZone and all of my config data did transfer to my 1TB drive from the original 160GB HD drive when restoring the truncated backup. Regarding PQ, there are many posts on the issue; I've been very happy with PQ. The HD records the cable signal as transmitted bit for bit so the recording has no quality loss. If one uses HDMI and native mode, in all but a few oddball (there's a series of postings on this topic) cases, the picture is transmitted to the TV bit for bit accurate. Many don't use native mode due to the delay some TVs take to adjust settings for different channels; I'm one of those. I "fix" the output at 720p since that's the resultant format that my TV supports anyway and hence my TiVo converts any 480 or 1080i signals to 720p; I find that this gives me a picture almost identical to native. But you'll probably want to play with this a bit to see which output format from the HD is best for your situation.

[jeffw_00]

thanks retired guy- the only PQ posts I could fine were related to OTA or poor Cable signal strength -

are there ones for people with GOOD cable signal strength I should look at? I'm ok with 'native' mode...
thanks
/j

[retired_guy]

I think most of the problems people have are for those with poor cable signal strength; when I had some original problems with signal quality, I did get problems in PQ, but Comcast came out, measured what was happening and fixed the signal problem (I needed a new splitter) and since I've had no problems in PQ. With GOOD cable signal strength, I don't think there's an issue regarding HD picture quality other than problems that can be caused by a bad HDMI cable or connector; however, sometimes one does gain from a bit of adjusting on the TV itself.

[jeffw_00]

Gracias.

So the one last silly qn I have is..

Suppose the TiVo fails out of warranty and it's not the HD and it's not the power supply and it's an upgraded TiVo.

I need someone to 'repair' it (probably replace main board) otherwise I lose my lifetime service. Are there people that do this?

Thanks
/j

[lrhorer]

thanks retired guy- the only PQ posts I could fine were related to OTA or poor Cable signal strength -

are there ones for people with GOOD cable signal strength I should look at?
'Probably not, because (with the possible exception of some FIOS subscribers) ordinarily there won't be any problems, and people don't generally bother to start a thread when they aren't having any problems.

[lrhorer]

So the one last silly qn I have is..

Suppose the TiVo fails out of warranty and it's not the HD and it's not the power supply and it's an upgraded TiVo.

I need someone to 'repair' it (probably replace main board) otherwise I lose my lifetime service. Are there people that do this?
That's not a silly question. TiVo does, for $149 plus shipping, as I recall. I don't know of any 3rdparty vendors who have started repairing units, yet, but you might check on DVRupgrade's or Weaknees' websites.

[jeffw_00]

I heard TiVo won't touch upgraded units

[ZeoTiVo]

I heard TiVo won't touch upgraded units
I would not say it that completely. First of all you are out of warranty in your question, and that is really what is being affected by opening the case.

What you will most likely find is that TiVo will do the 'repair' for 150$. This will entail they transfer your lifetime to a refurb unit of the similar model and ship that to you.

[jeffw_00]

Great - much less than the cost of new unit + lifetime
thanks!
/j

[lrhorer]

(is the pony still around?)
You mean TiVoPony? If so, then yes, he is.

[lrhorer]

I heard TiVo won't touch upgraded units
Oh, one other thing, if you purchase an upgraded unit from DVRupgrade or Weaknees, then they definitely will handle warranty issues, and I would think they would also repair any out-of-warranty upgrade unit purchased from them. I just don't know if they handle repairs in general.