[atmuscarella]

I see that engadet has an article about Dishnetwork using USB storgage on there VIP622 DVR. It is somewhat interesting because they are using the external USB drives as storage not as additional recording space (you manually move recordings to the USB drive for storage and then have to manually move them back to the DVR to view them). Which is basically what you can do with TiVoToGo and a PC.

So is there any technical reason TiVo couldn't do the same thing with a Series 2 or 3 TiVo?

Thanks,

 

[OLdDog]

Yes. They technically don't want to.

Actually it is, probably, slightly possible but TiVo probably figures that the networking features are good enough.

Also the additional drivers might over tax the system.

 

[rainwater]

I'm pretty surprised Dish is using USB although I assume those boxes don't have eSATA. eSATA is much more efficient than USB so it would make no sense to use USB. Using eSATA is just as efficient as installing the drive internally (unless you use a crappy enclosure).

 

[atmuscarella]

When I was thinking about this several thinks came to mind.

One was a potential revenue stream for TiVo they could make/sell one USB external drive/enclosure and only support that enclosure like they are doing with the TiVo HD unit and the USB WiFi adapter.

The second thing that came to mind was the difference between capacity and storage. External eSATA for the Series 3/TiVo HD adds capcity, the external drive is married to the internal drive. If TiVo allowed external USB drives to be used as storage it would be somewhat different. You would not need to leave the USB drive connected and it should be able to be used by any TiVo you have. I guess if you were a real pack rat you could pile up lots of these drives just like some people used to do with VCR tapes.

Thanks,

 

[steve614]

I would like that idea implemented in Tivo.
But they already have TivoToGo, etc., and I feel if this were possible, the only people that would use TTG would be the people that actually burn their shows to DVD.

 

[ZombiE]

I would like to think that this is a step forward for Tivo as well to get the eSata port officially enabled on the S3 and S3 lite. But I really like the idea of being able to swap out drives without jacking up the recordings.

+1 for Dish?

Z

 

[stevel]

The major reason TiVo designed and sold their own adapter is that they could not keep up with the frequent design changes of the retail adaptors. Often, manufacturers would introduce an incompatible design under the same model number. It was a bonus that they could also include extra processing in the adaptor to offload the CPU.

When the S3 was first announced, TiVo said that it would sell its own eSATA drives, but I think they may have reconsidered.