Joined
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64 Posts
Hi everyone! Long time, no see (August 2004, wow!).
I wasn't an very early adopter, but I did jump on the tivo bandwagon before anyone else I knew, buying a 14hr philips refurb at a good price (read: a price I could afford) off the web. I loved that tivo, but we have since parted ways. I had expanded it with an additional 80gig drive and was loving it, but that drive died after about a year. I had done the upgrade the easy way (ie, format and plug in), leaving tivo unusable. Some kind souls here hooked me up with an image and software and I was able to get her going again. We were watching a lot less tv at this point, and I don't really have a problem with basic quality for most shows, so I didn't bother upgrading again. Then we moved, and having cell phones only (no landline), making the daily call became a pain. I took it over to a friend's to make the call every few weeks for a couple months, but that soon got to be a pain in the butt. I had also been paying monthly (kicking myself for not just going for lifetime, but I was too poor at the time) so I just decided to drop service all together and use it as a digital vcr (which worked fairly well on the series 1). Since our tv-watching was down to just a few hours a week this was no big deal. Then when we moved recently across country, I sold the unit to a friend for like, twenty bucks, and now have neither a tv nor a tivo. We've subscribed to blockbuster online and watch movies on the computer, but honestly, i'd rather have tv back. Well, the reason we moved was for graduate school and now we're starving college students again.
So... I'm looking for advice on what to get. Picture quality isn't that big of a deal for us -- we sold our old television before moving and I plan to buy a similar one secondhand here. Cost is the primary factor. We'll buy the awesome 5 tuner superHDTV series 7 tivo once all this schooling pays off. The question is: what DVR?
I've heard that one can't just subscribe month-to-month without signing on to a long cellphoneesque contract. Is that true? I've also looked for tivos with lifetime on ebay, but they seem to border on just outside what I'm willing to spend. I'm considering just going with the good old series 1 unsubed as a digital vcr, but I would enjoy the service -- I do remember being pissed off at paying 13 bucks a month, but at the same time thinking it was worth it. I'm also considering building a mythtv or other homebrew pvr, but then again, expense. I've looked into elegato eyetv as we're mac users, but the problem is that both our machines are laptops -- not ideal for a "home theatre" (in our case, a second hand tv on a milk crate) setup. I don't really need any of the awesome sharing features of the new dvrs... The series 1 was always good enough for me.
So guys, what should I do? Does anyone have a series 1 with lifetime that they'd let go cheap?
Thanks
I wasn't an very early adopter, but I did jump on the tivo bandwagon before anyone else I knew, buying a 14hr philips refurb at a good price (read: a price I could afford) off the web. I loved that tivo, but we have since parted ways. I had expanded it with an additional 80gig drive and was loving it, but that drive died after about a year. I had done the upgrade the easy way (ie, format and plug in), leaving tivo unusable. Some kind souls here hooked me up with an image and software and I was able to get her going again. We were watching a lot less tv at this point, and I don't really have a problem with basic quality for most shows, so I didn't bother upgrading again. Then we moved, and having cell phones only (no landline), making the daily call became a pain. I took it over to a friend's to make the call every few weeks for a couple months, but that soon got to be a pain in the butt. I had also been paying monthly (kicking myself for not just going for lifetime, but I was too poor at the time) so I just decided to drop service all together and use it as a digital vcr (which worked fairly well on the series 1). Since our tv-watching was down to just a few hours a week this was no big deal. Then when we moved recently across country, I sold the unit to a friend for like, twenty bucks, and now have neither a tv nor a tivo. We've subscribed to blockbuster online and watch movies on the computer, but honestly, i'd rather have tv back. Well, the reason we moved was for graduate school and now we're starving college students again.
So... I'm looking for advice on what to get. Picture quality isn't that big of a deal for us -- we sold our old television before moving and I plan to buy a similar one secondhand here. Cost is the primary factor. We'll buy the awesome 5 tuner superHDTV series 7 tivo once all this schooling pays off. The question is: what DVR?
I've heard that one can't just subscribe month-to-month without signing on to a long cellphoneesque contract. Is that true? I've also looked for tivos with lifetime on ebay, but they seem to border on just outside what I'm willing to spend. I'm considering just going with the good old series 1 unsubed as a digital vcr, but I would enjoy the service -- I do remember being pissed off at paying 13 bucks a month, but at the same time thinking it was worth it. I'm also considering building a mythtv or other homebrew pvr, but then again, expense. I've looked into elegato eyetv as we're mac users, but the problem is that both our machines are laptops -- not ideal for a "home theatre" (in our case, a second hand tv on a milk crate) setup. I don't really need any of the awesome sharing features of the new dvrs... The series 1 was always good enough for me.
So guys, what should I do? Does anyone have a series 1 with lifetime that they'd let go cheap?
Thanks