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Quality of Factory-renewed TiVos

Discussion in 'TiVo Coffee House - TiVo Discussion' started by jhawkstew, May 10, 2008.

  1. May 10, 2008 #1 of 11
    jhawkstew

    jhawkstew Cheapskate

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    KS

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    I'm in the market for a TiVo HD. I can get a factory-renewed one from TiVo.com for $199. So, the question is: Has anybody had experience with tivo.com's factory-renewed TiVos? Are they usually scratched and/or dinged? Do they look as good as new? Do they work as good as new?

    They carry the same warranty, I think, so I'm leaning toward getting one. Since I can get a TiVo HD brand new from Amazon.com for $266 after tax, it's only a $66 savings. If they aren't in almost perfect condition, I'm going to buy a new one.

    I saw this poll (Poll: Refurbished may be better than new?), but it sounded like people were talking about refubs from sources other than the TiVo factory.

    Give me some buying advice here.
     
  2. May 10, 2008 #2 of 11
    jjberger2134

    jjberger2134 Member

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    I bought an S2 Single Tuner reburb unit several years ago. I promptly put lifetime on the unit, and about 1 year later I replaced the Hard Drive although the original was working perfectly (expanded from 40Gb to 250GB). I have never had a problem with that unit, except for some issues that are really unrelated to the refurb status. My factory refurb unit was packaged like new. Had I not ordered a refurb, I would have never known since the packaging was perfect.

    Of course, you will find some people with less than satisfactory experiences with refurbs, but those people are in the minority. In theory, a factory refurb unit will be looked at more closely (for quality control) than new units.

    Refurb units carry a full factory warranty From the TiVo site...

    Save off regular retail prices when you get a factory-renewed TiVo DVR with TiVo service—available exclusively at tivo.com. All TiVo factory-renewed products are tested and certified by TiVo and shipped to you free of charge. Plus our regular product warranty AND 30 day Money Back Guarantee apply to all factory-renewed DVRs.
     
  3. May 10, 2008 #3 of 11
    scandia101

    scandia101 Just the facts ma'am

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    Don't mean to hijack this thread, but why not add the extra 23GB of capacity?
     
  4. May 10, 2008 #4 of 11
    stahta01

    stahta01 Simple Member

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    It is an OS Limit, you have to update the Linux OS on the TiVo to see the last 23GB and some TiVo also have a hardware issue. This TiVo is old enough that it might be an hardware problem to see the last 23GB.

    Tim S
     
  5. May 10, 2008 #5 of 11
    jhawkstew

    jhawkstew Cheapskate

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    Well, I did it. I bought the factory-renewed TiVo HD tonight. I had a hard time deciding between a 3-yr sub on a refurb (http://www.tivo.com/promo/kidzone/nea.html) or the lifetime sub on a new unit (http://www.tivo.com/promo/mothersday.html). I'm not a guy that commits to really long term things other than my marriage. So, paying the extra $200 for the lifetime, a new unit, and the wireless adapter didn't meet my "good deal" criteria. (Committing to a 3-yr sub was a bit of a stretch on my part.)

    I did get some interesting info from the TiVo.com phone sales rep. He said a number of the "factory-renewed" units are simply units that people buy, then return in the 30-day satisfaction guarantee period. He said they get a good number of people that buy the THD units, then realize they don't work with satellite services. Anything that has ever been opened by a customer has to be sold as "factory-renewed" rather than new.
     
  6. May 10, 2008 #6 of 11
    jjberger2134

    jjberger2134 Member

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    When I upgraded the hard drive, I bought a weaknees drive. At the time, drives were technically limited to 137GB (I do not know the reason - I think it had something to do with LBA48 support?).

    Since the upgrade in November 2004, I have simply never bothered to pull the drive, and re-image it with a version that has LBA48 support. So far, the drive capacity (or lack of capacity) has not been an issue.
     
  7. May 10, 2008 #7 of 11
    jhawkstew

    jhawkstew Cheapskate

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    Before LBA48 (48-bit logical block addressing) support, drives used an addressing scheme consisting of 28 bits for sector addresses, giving us 2^28 sectors. Each sector was 512 (or 2^9) bytes in size. 2^28 sectors * 2^9 bytes/sector = 2^37 bytes total = 137 GB.
     
  8. May 11, 2008 #8 of 11
    scandia101

    scandia101 Just the facts ma'am

    11,107
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    MN, greater...
    yes, I know that, but the limit is so effortless to overcome that it's been a non issue for several years. FWIW, there is no hardware issue, at least not for drives under 500GB, I've never put anything larger in an S1.
     
  9. May 11, 2008 #9 of 11
    scandia101

    scandia101 Just the facts ma'am

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    MN, greater...
    :up:
     
  10. May 17, 2008 #10 of 11
    jjberger2134

    jjberger2134 Member

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    Scandia101 - so you got me curious. Exactly how much work would it be to add the missing 23GB's of space? What tools would you recommend, and would I be able to retain all of my SP's, Wishlists, and recordings? Keep in mind, I am probably somewhere in the middle, when it comes to technical knowledge. I have imaged a couple of blank PATA drives using InstantCake, but that is about it.
     
  11. May 17, 2008 #11 of 11
    scandia101

    scandia101 Just the facts ma'am

    11,107
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    Oct 20, 2007
    MN, greater...
    You just have to put the drive in your pc and using mfstools 2.0 (maybe mfslive, but I've done no upgrading since that came on the scene), run the expansion option which is something like mfs add -x and I forget exactly how the rest of that command goes, and then you have to update to the LBD48 kernel, I believe, that is basically a menu option. It would take anyone longer to type in the commands than it does for them to execute.

    Your best bet is to go to the upgrade forum and poke around there.
     

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