[Razalus]

I have had my Sony SVR-2000 Series 1 Tivo with a turbocard Ethernet and 120gb HD for 6 years now and it has not failed me once. Recently though I have decided to finally upgrade to a Series 2 to get the HMO options and TivoToGO. I have been reading the forums and have seen a few things that I need some input on before I order my new Tivo.

1) I have been reading that all new Tivos from sept/oct 2005 with the Model number 540 have a Video encoder chip that is lower quality then a series 1. This results in lower visual quality and shows being recorded to dark. Is this true? Can some who has seen a new Tivo in actions compare it to a older one for me.

2) I was going to buy the 300 hour Humax but I noticed today that Tivo took it off their website. Does anyone know why???

3) How difficult is it to upgrade the HD on a series 2 compared to a series 1?

4) Is anyone using the PSP tivotogo feature in the beta and can comment on how well it works?

EDIT:

5) Are the Factory renewed 140 hour boxes on the Tivo website that are black the model 240?? If so I could prob get that if the 540 are inferior.

Thanks in advance and sorry for the newb questions.

 

[mick66]

1) Where the S1s have seperate chips, S2s have a combined lower quality encoder/decoder chip which results in a lower quality picture. Some people can't see a difference and others see an obvious difference. Some of the quality depends on the size of the TV screen. As far as I know, all of the current S2s have this quality issue.

2)FYI The Humax Tivos have the same inner workings as the Tivo branded 540 models, so they'd have the same quality issue.

3) Upgrading is pretty much the same.

5) I don't know if Tivo necessarily guarantees that you'll get the model pictured. If they did, I'm sure they'd mention the model number.