How much space do I need in a new TiVo?

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How much space do I need in a new TiVo?

When you go to buy a PVR like a TiVo, the first question you're faced with is the size of it: do you want a 40 hour or an 80 hour for a bit more? 40 and 80 hours sounds like a lot, more than anyone could watch in a week, but try not to think in those terms when determining what works best for you. The size of your TiVo really just means how quickly things auto-delete themselves, and answering what size is best for you depends on your lifestyle and viewing habits.

Say you had a 30-40 hour maximum Tivo and you watched maybe two hours of TV a day (say, The Daily Show, an episode of Frontline, and a Simpsons episode). Typically a TiVo will record more hours than you can watch (especially as it grabs shows it thinks you might like), so there will be a good deal of attrition, and sometimes that is a problem. For the ~40hr tivo, this would mean that shows would typically last 3-4 days on your Tivo before deleting themselves to make way for new shows. If you have time to sit down and watch recorded TV every couple days, a smaller tivo drive will work fine. If, on the other hand, you only find time on weekends to watch the previous week's TV you will run into problems. Problems take the form of things like being furious that last week's Six Feet Under was deleted before you ever got to see it, and the repeats of it weren't taped because TiVo already had a copy of it (which was eventually deleted).

For me personally, bigger is better due to my habits. I go for days without turning a TV on, and sometimes I lie around all weekend catching up on the previous week or two. It all started with the last World Cup of soccer, and a 10 day vacation that started just as my tivo would be taping dozens of 2+ hour games. Right before I left I added a 80 hour drive to my Directivo that meant all the games were waiting for me when I got home. Later when I had problems with the tivo motherboard (not related to the upgrade), I decided to upgrade the fresh new unit Tivo sent me. I eventually had 200Gb of tivo storage, which meant I always had a couple dozen movies taped off HBO that lasted literally for months and months. I ended up quitting Netflix when I got this setup, and instead relied on HBO and a few pay-per-view movies to fill my needs. I had dozens of episodes of my favorte shows going back about six months.

Upgrading a TiVo after you've bought one is pretty easy if you are comfortable with taking apart your PC. If not, it is much easier to just start with a new larger drive in a new TiVo that won't need upgrading so soon.

by Matt Haughey July 17, 2003 in Q & A

Comments

Wow, all of this information is wonderful!

I think the only question I have left is, lifetime subscription or month-by-month? I can't seem to find anything that indicates how long the "lifetime" of a unit is....

Posted by: Catherine at Jul 18, 2003 8:10:57 AM

I like the blog. Just discovered it yesterday.

Also 40 or 80 hours is the capacity at the worst recording quality. If you're recording at best, or high quality you can divide those times by about 3. Like you, I say the more space the better. Once you start recording movies, especially if you have digital cable, your drive will fill up very quickly. I have a 125 hour TiVo, and I'm constantly trying to keep it from over-flowing. :-)

I would have quit NetFlix too, but I like the higher quality of DVD, the didgital surround, and the extras on DVD. What I have done is cut a lot of older moview off of my NetFlix queue, and TiVoed those movies.

What do you think of the Moxi/Charter announcement? Doesn't look good for TiVo.

Posted by: Michael at Jul 18, 2003 9:06:56 AM

Cathrine, the $299 "lifetime" option is for the life of the TiVo you buy it for, and can't be transferred to other tivos. So at the current $12.95 a month, that means you wouldn't start saving money until after the unit was 23 months old.

If you keep a tivo for 3-4 years, that's great, and you can save some dough, but remember that a TiVo is a computer, and computers wear out and get replaced by new technology. Looking back on my ownership patterns, I've had three tivos now in the past three years. I'd say 1-2 years is the longest I would keep a TiVo before getting a newer, faster one, but then I only have one TV. I could imagine if I had a house full of TVs, I'd probably keep the old ones longer and use them in other rooms.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Jul 18, 2003 9:27:07 AM

Michael, with a DirecTivo setup, you are recording pure digital mpeg streams that are comparable to DVD. I was really amazed at the quality of Directivo vs. tivo, it was like everything was taped at the highest quality, with none of the "jpeg-ness" (compression artifacts).

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Jul 18, 2003 9:29:04 AM

Thanks Matt! I really did mean "how long does a Tivo unit last, in theory". I figured monthly was the way to go, but I just hate the idea of yet another monthly bill. To bad they don't have yearly subscriptions. Oh, well, thank goodness for direct debits and card-money.

Posted by: Catherine at Jul 18, 2003 10:03:05 AM

They used to have yearly options, for $99, which was a great deal (saving $30+ per year) but they no longer offer it.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Jul 18, 2003 12:58:27 PM

The biggest problems seems to be that the Now Playing UI is not geared towards more than a few dozen shows without lots of scrolling. I would love to be able to categorize shows into 'current' and 'archived' with some sort of tabbed design and keep a complete history of a season's episodes e.g., or even create a season pass for a show and not even start watching it until the summer between seasons.

ReplayTV kind of went in that direction with it's user definable categories. In fact, I once had the entire second season of The Shield on my backup PVR (my old ReplayTV), while I was watching the first season on DVD.

Great niche content blog BTW. I'm surprised something like this hasn't been done already.

Posted by: Joost Schuur at Jul 18, 2003 2:17:56 PM

Joost, with the newest 4.0 OS (only available in Series 2 TiVos I believe), you get the equivalent of folders to help organize shows. They call them "Groups" and here's a good review of it from another blog.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Jul 18, 2003 10:26:25 PM

Catherine,

I personally feel Lifetime is the way to go, if you can afford the upfront fee. The lifetime subscription is for the lifetime of that tivo box (not your lifetime) So if you plan to keep the tivo for 23 months (almost 2 years) get the lifetime, since 23 months at $13 a month (what the monthly fee is) to reach $299. So it's like getting the listings after that time for free. So let's say you're paying month to month and you have your tivo for 3 years... you would be paying $468 for the listings.

I have had my first tivo for close to 2 years now, so the lifetime subscription has already paid for itself. (it was cheaper when I got it on that first one and paid for itself in 16 months) That tivo is still working great and I don't plan to replace it any time soon. The older one I have is a bit slower than my newer tivo, but not enough to replace it. -- Besides if I did decide to replace the older one having the lifetime subscription on it would help it's resale value (people often sell their older tivos on ebay)

Have you bought a Tivo yet? or are you still just thinking about it? If you haven't gotten one yet, go get it! you will love it! You will never again end up watching some infomercial when there is nothing on tv... as your tivo will always have something you would like waiting for you! Plus you will never have to rush home because you forgot to set a VCR to record a program you want to see. You won't have to hurry off the phone if someone calls you when you're watching something... you just hit pause.

Posted by: rapunzel at Jul 18, 2003 10:54:38 PM

One more thing to consider when deciding to buy a 40 hour or an 80 hour unit, it what kind of tv do you have? I have an older 27" tv and most things look fine in basic (if it's something I am going to keep I will record it in high) But I noticed when setting up my parents Tivo on a newer 50" widescreen that anything less than high looked pretty bad. Thus, they only have about 40 hours of recording time on that 80 hour unit. I really feel like bigger is better in terms to storage space.

Posted by: Rapunzel at Jul 18, 2003 11:01:04 PM

Alas, I'm stuck in The Land That Time Forgot, known as DirecTivo, which doesn't go through the normal software upgrades of standalone devices. I don't know when I'll be seeing 4.0. Among other things, this locks me out of HMO and prevents me from hooking my TiVo up to the Net and doing all the cool stuff everybody else is doing with that.

Posted by: Joost Schuur at Jul 18, 2003 11:26:57 PM

Yep, Joost, I was in the same boat as you a few months ago. I've given my DirecTivo away and am building up my new standalone unit (got cable in my new place, but already miss directv) so I could play with all the new technology.

I sent a polite letter to DirecTv's customer service, asking them when I could get a chance to pay them another $99 for the HMO, which I wanted asap. I got a form letter back saying they did not have a date for HMO support and that I should wait.

That was the one big downside of TiVo selling off that wing of their business. You're now a prisoner of Directv, who barely seem to understand the TiVo.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Jul 18, 2003 11:36:05 PM

Count me in as another person who was considering NetFlix but couldn't see the reason after having Tivo plus HBO / Showtime / Encore. I've got scads of films that I haven't watched yet that date back to last fall. I haven't rented a DVD in over a year.

Posted by: Marcus Brown at Jul 19, 2003 9:22:45 AM

Speaking of sorting: I'm on a DirecTivo setup with 3.1 and since I have about 109 hours of space scrolling was annoying.

Here's how to set up sorting in the Now Playing list.

Posted by: Andre Torrez at Jul 19, 2003 12:31:22 PM

Why not set those important shows as "Save until I delete"?

This way, only optional shows and shows that TiVo decided to record on its own will be pushed off the plate, but the important ones will always remain.

--
Cedric

Posted by: Cedric at Jul 21, 2003 8:34:40 AM

Yeah, you can do that Cedric, though it fills up a TiVo's space quickly if you're away.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Jul 21, 2003 8:46:10 AM

Rapunzel -
I don't have it yet; I'm moving in a couple of weeks and will pick one up then. I originally thought that I could get a PVR through the cable company, but, alas, that only works on the other side of the river (but, Kentucky's cable is a lot cheaper, so I guess it works out alright!). I understand how it takes two years for the lifetime subscription to pay for itself; what I haven't been able to find is any information on how long I can expect a TiVo to last. The posts here have been helpful in that regard.

Seems interesting to me that you can transfer the lifetime subscription with the box - I guess it makes sense becuase you're buying it for the life of the box, but business sense says you can double dip if you make it non-transferable.

This blog is a great resource for people thinking about getting it to this - it's made me so excited I'm tempted to get one before I move!

Posted by: Catherine at Jul 21, 2003 11:23:20 AM

There just never seems to be enough room!

Posted by: Todd Lokken at Oct 7, 2005 10:31:07 AM

hi guys,
can you
I got a tivo from an old friend who was selling his stuff after his tivo drive crashed, i have a hard drvie with me 120gb, how do I instal it just to use as a normal PVR not the tivo programming. what do i do , please refer or suggest.
thanks

Posted by: nigel at May 26, 2006 1:21:20 PM

How much space do I need in a new TiVo?

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