[tech74]

Hi. I'm coming in late to the game here and am looking for some help.

Right now I'm considering buying an HDTV, in this case a Sharp Aquos, LCD TV. A good friend of mine has one and also has HD through our local cable company (Time Warner here in NY).

I was wondering about keeping my current TiVo and getting HDTV through my cable company. Can a regular TiVo recieve and record the HD signal, or does it need something extra?


Thank you.

 

[dgh]

No. Current TiVos, except for the existing HD TiVo (DirecTV only) are NTSC devices. The best they can record is downconverted standard def from an HD set top box. (Which is "OK" according to some folks.) The Series 3 coming this year will do HD on cable.

 

[Stanley Rohner]

Go with the cable company DVR for now since TiVo doesn't have one yet.

When TiVo releases their HD DVR you might not want to drop $800-$1000 to buy one.

 

[tech74]

Hey everyone,

Thanks for the replies.

I wonder if TiVo would give upgrade pricing to people who already own TiVos?

Also, it would be useful if you could transfer the $200 lifetime fee over to the new one. Any speculation on if TiVo will let us do that?

 

[dgh]

They did once for the Series 2, but I wouldn't count on anything. However, as has been pointed out many times, the resale value of lifetime on ebay tends to be close to 100% anyway, so if TiVo doesn't offer it, you can come pretty close doing it yourself.

 

[classicsat]

You can set things up to watch HD direct or SD through the TiVo.

If you want to get an S3 when the time comes, you can likely sell your Lifetime S2 for a decent price, to help pay for the S3 and its service fee.