Main | August 2003 »

NYC Time-Warner customers getting DVRs

A story in today's NYT talks about the current plethora of digital cable and satellite choices for customers. It includes a note about Time-Warner's NYC customers getting DVR boxes. They are deploying Scientific American's Explorer 800, which features dual tuners and a 80Gb hard drive that records native digital signals, much like a Directivo (resulting in a much better picture free of compression artifacts). They're charging less than $10 a month for the service and the boxes are free making it much cheaper than TiVo. [via /.]

July 31, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBack

Should I upgrade my own tivo, buy a prepared drive, or have someone do it for me?

If you own a TiVo you've never upgraded but are considering it, and you've seen my writeup of my own upgrade process, and my review of a prepared drive installation, you are probably wondering what would work best for you. Before you can answer that question, a summary may help.

The DIY approach: You can go your own way

For my recently purchased Series 2 tivo (purchased for $199 - price still good until Thursday), I bought a bare 120Gb drive from newegg.com for $98, and an upgrade bracket and kit for $58. It took approximately 3 hours to complete the work, start to finish, including a couple hours wasted on research and trial and error, with about one hour of actual dismantling and rebuilding. The final product was a 188 hour TiVo at an upgrade cost of $156.

While the DIY upgrade may appear not for the faint of heart, if you've ever built your own PC you can definitely tackle this project. If you've worked with hard drive upgrades in PCs before and understand what master and slave jumpers are and what they do, you can totally do this.

The instructions that are out there are very detailed and easy to follow, and you can skip most of the tedious backup and restore steps. In reality, once I had my tivo opened up and the drive removed, I only had to connect up the two drives to my PC and run a single linux command from a bootable CD. The script was finished in a matter of seconds and the drives were prepared and ready to go.

I spent probably 15 minutes taking the TiVo apart initially, and putting the Twinbreeze kit in took another 30-45 minutes or so of reading detailed directions and piecing things together.

Middle ground: Someone does the icky PC stuff for you, you install

Your other option is to buy an upgrade drive ready to drop into your TiVo, and your task is simply to open it up, follow the supplied directions, and add the second drive. There is no shortage of small companies, websites, and professional hobbyists that offer this sort of package, including Weaknees, Hinsdale (the guy that wrote the upgrade how-to), TVrevo, 9th tee, among many others.

Looking at a few sites selling prepared drives, a 120Gb upgrade for my series 2 tivo will cost you $170 (replaces original drive only), $199, $229, or $189, depending on who you choose.

But what are you really paying for?

When you buy a prepared upgrade drive for your TiVo, you are essentially paying about double the price of a bare drive you could buy online. The dark secret of all these upgrade kits is basically that someone is sitting in an apartment running a program called BlessTiVo(scroll down to part 10, then configuration #1 to see the how-to on it). It's another single, one-line command from a bootable linux disk that takes seconds to complete. Then they tack on a $100 premium to the drive they bought for less than $100 and ship it off to you.

On the bright side, you're also paying for your valuable saved time. With most of these kits, all the steps that feel dangerous and cause nail-biting are handled by someone else. When your drive arrives, you pop open your tivo and put the new drive in, and you're done. In my DIY upgrade, I probably could have completed the drive install job in about a half hour.

I would even go so far as to say the Weaknees kit looks like the best deal of the lot, since they throw in their Twinbreeze kit. Where I paid $156 for my own drive and kit, they offer the same parts for $208 with the drive. If two hours of your time and some slight risk are worth more than $52 to you, the prepared drive and kit is a pretty good deal.

Do it for me: the clean hands approach

Most all the sites offering prepared upgrade drives also offer an upgrade service for those phobic to tivo tinkering. It's usually another $50 on top of other charges, and again, you're really paying someone to run a single command in linux and screw some drives in. I could imagine these guys getting the whole process down to maybe ten minutes with some practice. The main downside is that you have to give up TiVo for several days-to-a-week when you ship it off. The upside is aside from disconnecting your tivo and putting it into the mail, there's not much you have to do.

The cost for my TiVo upgrade done entirely by someone else would run $220 (replacing your original drive), $225, or $257.

The Verdict

Adding in my $199 cost of the TiVo, the bottom line is that my DIY upgrade cost me $355 and 3 hours of my time. If I went with an upgrade kit, the total cost would have been in the neighborhood of $400 and cost me about 30-60 minutes of time. If I would have paid someone else to do it all for me, it would cost about $425-450 and no TiVo for a week, which you can't really put a price on :). Before I set out to upgrade my TiVo, I would have guessed the price differences would be more pronounced, but keep in mind I bought an expensive kit that most TiVos do not require, so it could have been $50 less.

When weighing the options to determine what path you should take, the most important consideration is the cost of your time. If you're busy, pay someone else to do the time consuming bits for you. The second most important consideration is assessing your own level of technical expertise. If you've tinkered with PCs before, it shouldn't be any problem, but if you're new to digital gadgets you are probably better off paying someone to do it, and as you can see, it's not that much more expensive for a total upgrade service.

July 30, 2003 in Q & A | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack

Stating the Obvious: iPod and TiVo

This new piece at Stating the Obvious talks about ideas for the next generation of iPods that may store content from music labels or the Apple store, and compares the device to TiVo's success with promotional advertising.

While I was skeptical at first of TiVo's promotional messages, I have to admit I kind of like the promotions that get downloaded to my TiVo. So far they've been fairly high quality, with movie trailers I wanted to see, beautifully produced porsche and lexus ads that run a couple minutes in length, and my personal favorite, the BMW short film ads that feature prominent actors and directors. I was tired of watching the BMW short films online, in tiny, grainy quicktime windows and welcomed the full resolution ads on my TV.

Michael Sippey should be happy to note that TiVo employs many of the ideas he lays out in the Home Media Option. I'm working on a full review of HMO for this site, but one of the cool things is that it comes essentially pre-loaded with photos and music from TiVo. It might be a broadband-only feature, since I'm guessing from looking at the content, it may use about 40-50Mb of storage. The "Music From TiVo" available in my Music and Photos section features a selection of music from Universal. I can't copy or buy the music, just stream for my enjoyment, but I was happy to see my favorite Jurrasic 5 tune and a broad range of other artists from 50 cent to Queens of the Stone Age.

I actually wouldn't mind seeing this feature expanded to more than one label, perhaps to a handful of record labels. I'm always looking for new music and don't listen to much radio anymore, so most mainstream stuff is new to me. TiVo has likely turned the space into a revenue source for them, and since it offers some utility to users like me, it's win-win for TiVo and customers alike.

July 29, 2003 in Op-Ed, TiVo | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Prismiq

While searching around for a product that would let me stream video files from my pc to my TV, I found the PRISMIQ, a black box of sorts that does a lot of what the home media option on the TiVo offers, but also lets you stream video and your desktop to a TV. It offers an ethernet port and something I haven't seen too often: a PCMCIA slot to allow standard laptop wireless cards to be plugged in, giving you 802.11.

July 29, 2003 in Products | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Mounting a second drive in a TiVo using Weaknees' Twinbreeze kit

In the previous stage of the upgrade process I covered how to prepare a new 120Gb drive for a series 2 TiVo. I purposely left out the steps where you install the drive back into the TiVo, saving that process for this review.

The first TiVo I upgraded last year was a Directv comibnation tivo/satellite receiver, and it was designed to handle two hard drives (but shipped with one). Adding a drive to that machine was no problem, since it was already pre-drilled for the drive and there was even spare IDE cables and power connectors available. The series 1 and series 2 standalone TiVos require a special bracket however, making things a bit trickier (I don't know if series 2 directivos have the bracket for a second drive still).

There are other kits out there for adding a drive, but I decided to go all out, picking up Weaknees' TwinBreeze kit with the optional fans and PowerTrip. After checking out the options, it seemed to have the best fit and finish, and they offered additional things to help keep my upgraded TiVo running safely. I had heard some horror stories on the TiVo boards about kits that used velcro and adhesive to hold drives, and how they weren't very sturdy.

The kit runs a bit on the expensive side, at $58 for the full package with everything. You could conceivably buy just the $29 bracket and pick up your own cables at a place like Fry's or CompUSA, but I took the easy route. Cooling is always a problem when adding an additional drive to a small space, so the additional fan for the bracket is a nice addition along with the quieter replacement fan in their optional cooling kit. The PowerTrip is necessary if you are using a new series 2 box made by Tivo. TiVo decided to downgrade the power supplies to a very low 38 watts (the power supply in standard PCs is probably 200-300 watts), so the powertrip staggers the startup of the two hard drives, making the wattage hit a bit easier on the small capacity supply.

The Weaknees Kit

The kit is straightforward with nice printed directions that feature photos, and you can download a full color pdf version of the same from their site. I installed the small bracket fan early so I didn't have to do it later when it was inside the TiVo.

The Install

The first order of business is to attach the two drives onto the bracket and is pretty simple to do. The only trick is making sure the new second drive is pointing in the right direction (I messed this up the first time around).

Two drives mounted

Two mounted drives, from the bottom

Next, you attach the IDE cable to both drives, and feed the cable down the hole between them (which is right above the connection to the motherboard). This was easy to do, but complicated to explain in directions and I had to read it through a couple times to figure out what drive got which connector.

IDE cable attached to the drives

Once that's all connected up, you need to get the power cables connected to the drives, with the PowerTrip connected between the cables and the motherboard. The bracket fan requires a connection as well, and I ended up with a bit of a rats nest of power cables.

All cables attached, including the PowerTrip

Next, the large plastic bracket slides neatly into the old hard drive bay using an ingenious design. The last step is to secure the bracket to the TiVo. With most series 2 machines, there are brackets on the side to make this easy, but on my personal TiVo (model 24004A), there are no brackets and a couple screws are required to form a bracket (the red arrows point to the bracket holes that do not have anywhere to screw into.

Non-existent brackets for the opposite side (arrows show where special screws will attach)

In the absence of brackets, two long screws are used with spacers, and they attach on the bottom side of the tivo.

Screws passed through, with spacers to hold them up

shot from the side, showing small bolt on the bottom that tightens the screw

When the bracket is firmly in place, the drives are connected to IDE and power cables, you're done. The kit included a replacement fan for the factory fan, but unfortunately, my 24004A unit has a larger fan that the replacement doesn't fit.

Everything secured and complete

Once the bracket install is complete, the cover can go back on and you're ready to plug it back in and enjoy your new upgraded TiVo.

The last screw

The Verdict

With the second drive in place (and set to run quiet per my earlier instructions), there was only a slight increase in noise from the additional fan and drive. As for temperature, I moved my TiVo off the floor, and onto a speaker cabinet with some short spacers to give it air flow from the bottom. Previously, the single drive stock tivo ran around 38 degrees Celsius. With the new setup it has been running right around 32 degrees Celsius for the past week, even during a heat wave (and sans air conditioning in my new home).

The kit is a tad expensive but is very sturdy, with everything firmly bolted in. It took about 20-30 minutes to install the drives onto the bracket and the bracket into the TiVo. The illustrated instructions were clear and complete, making it a painless process. I'm very happy with the purchase and with the second fan, the temps are running great, so I'm confident this TiVo will run smoothly for a long time.

Update: In a follow-up post, I covered the question of whether you should do this yourself or pay someone to do it.

July 28, 2003 in Product Reviews, SuperTiVo Project | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

MythTV how-to

I've been considering building a media center project PC, and I was torn between choosing an open source, free software system like MythTV and Freevo, or a commercial OS like Windows Media Center. The thing that's kept me from trying the open source programs out was the complicated setup that requires some serious linux knowledge, and unknown device support.

MythTV looks fantastic, offers pretty much every feature of TiVo (recording, scheduling, playback, music and photos), and then some (picture-in-picture, weather reports, arcade games, downloaded movie playback, web front-end). Thankfully a step-by-step guide to setting up your own MythTV box has been written, and it looks very comprehensive and not insanely difficult for someone with basic linux experience. [via BoingBoing]

July 28, 2003 in How-To | Permalink | Comments (44) | TrackBack

Study: TV tuning a 'must have' for computers

According to a Jon Peddie Research report, TV tuners are a 'must have' for computers and the study further claims that up to 30 million computer users have the ability to watch TV on their PCs.

That number seems incredibly high to me, considering my own purchasing habits and what I see on the market. I've owned probably 7 or 8 computers in the last five years and only one had a TV card in it. I'm also weary of how many people go to the extra effort to make it work. Of the 5 or 6 apartments and homes I've lived in over the past few years, only one place had a perfect setup: live cable in every room (and near my desk) that didn't require a set-top box. When it works, it's great, but in my experience it's tough to get everything working together.

July 25, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Toshiba's new PVR laptop

After seeing my first Windows Media Center laptop (which features tv recording, movie, photo, and music playback and management), I wasn't impressed due to the form factor, but comments indicated that I was thinking too tivo-centric and portable PVRs have their uses.

Today Toshiba announced their new Windows Media Center notebook, and although I've seen the light on portable WMC machines, on this model I have to question the portability factor. It's based on their P25 17" widescreen system (copycat to Apple's 17" x-large pizza box?) which I've played with before. A couple things struck me about the P25 when I tested it: it's gigantic for a laptop, feeling even bigger than the powerbook, and it weighs a ton. About 10 pounds to be exact. At some point, these "portables" are going to feel more and more like lugging a desktop around. [via gizmodo]

July 24, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Preparing an upgrade drive for the TiVo

I decided up front to buy a 40Gb TiVo knowing that I could upgrade it myself cheaper than what TiVo sold the 80Gb model for (an extra $100). To start off, I browsed the forums looking for tips and found that adding an additional 120Gb drive would be pretty cheap and be pretty painless.

After reading a lot of forum posts, it seemed clear that most people say you should get a 5400rpm upgrade drive, because the extra speed of a 7200rpm drive isn't really necessary in a TiVo, and only contributes more noise and heat to the machine. While shopping around for cheap 120Gb drives online, I couldn't find anything in a slower 5400rpm setup so I just decided to go with a 7200rpm drive from Maxtor.

Oh, there are a couple issues on putting large drives into a TiVo. One is that the linux kernel used to only recognize drives up to 137Gb in size, ignoring any additional space, but with a bit more hacking it is possible to get around that. I wasn't going to use anything larger than a 120Gb drive so this wasn't an issue. The other big issue is the swap file in TiVo's version of linux. When you take a series 1 machine beyond 140Gb or a series 2 machine beyond 180Gb, if the box ever gets a GSOD (green screen of death -- a very rare major error), the required rebuild cannot properly complete because the swap file will be too small. There are ways around this, where you can increase the swap file to 127Mb reliably. Increasing to 128Mb or beyond seems to cause a lot of problems, but again, since my setup was only 120Gb + 40Gb I was in the clear.

I picked up a bare 120Gb 7200rpm Maxtor drive from newegg.com, a place I buy a lot of PC upgrade parts. It was only $98 at the time I purchased it, but may be less (or more) at the time of this writing. One thing about the maxtor that intrigued me was a quieting utility maxtor made called Amset. Amset lets you set your drive's speed to either ultra quiet at the expense of fast seek times to or still fast but only slightly quieter. It sounded like a great feature and everyone on the tivo boards raved about it so I decided to give it a go before I added it to my TiVo.

Small, tedious problems

I only have a newer PC running XP at home and knew that I couldn't boot the machine into XP with the new drive attached, as Win2k and XP add drive signatures that will harm the drive. The amset utility would only run in DOS so I went to bootdisk.com to find a simple win98 boot disk I could boot into and run the program. Unfortunately, my floppy drive is toast, which I found out only after searching for 30 minutes to find an old floppy in my house and finding it couldn't be recognized.

I thought I was sunk, but I noticed bootdisk.com linked to a pretty cool site with software written by a guy that has created bootable CDs that pop you into DOS just like a floppy. Eventually, I found a method to create a bootable ISO that you could also toss your own programs onto, so I burned a CD with DOS and amset. I unplugged my XP drive, popped the new drive in as the primary master, then used the DOS boot disk (ha! DOS boot!) to get a prompt and ran the utility successfully. All told it took me 90 minutes to figure all this stuff out and complete it to this point.

And now, the TiVo

The unsuspecting TiVo

I powered down my TiVo and gently removed the case, the power cables, and IDE cables from the drive, and then the drive itself. There are a couple things to watch out for when messing with your TiVo internals. One is that you should never touch anything near the power supply, as you can fry it and hurt yourself in the process. The other, and this is specific to series 2 Tivos, is to be careful with the white ribbon cable on the front of the motherboard, if you touch it, make sure it's properly seated before you ever turn the box back on, as that can also fry the whole system.

The open TiVo

The original drive removed

The only thing left to do is run some software to prepare the new drive and marry it to the original one. I used the popular and super simple-to-use MFS 2.0 tools, which can be downloaded as a bootable ISO here. Once burned, I placed the TiVo drives into my computer as suggested, with the new drive jumpered as a slave drive on the primary controller, and the original drive kept as master (with slave present for my stock western digital) on the secondary IDE controller (I kept my XP hard drive unplugged).

Drives connected to my PC

MFS Tools booting while reading the how-to

I loaded up the hinsdale how-to instructions on a separate laptop so I could read it, and booted the system up. I checked the boot sequence to see that indeed linux could see I had 120Gb and 40Gb drives attached (if it reported an incorrect size, there could be problems).

The how-to instructions are pretty complete, but entail making a backup and restoring your TiVo's original drive and writing that to a windows hard drive, but it requires a fat32 disk that I don't have handy. I decided to skip all the backup procedures, knowing that there are places online that people store and share their TiVo rom backups if I ever needed them someday (probably not -- didn't with the past TiVo's upgrade).

With that, I could skip all the way down to Step 10, and follow the first scenario, since I was adding a new B drive. I only had to run one command, typed exactly as shown in the tutorial. After a second or two, it was complete and reported a new size and approximate number of hours for the TiVo.

Success!

This was surprisingly smooth, easy, and fast. I could upgrade another tivo in probably ten minutes start to finish. Previously I had done some upgrades on a DirecTivo that required copying the original drive to a new one, then adding in a second drive and that took the better part of a day to complete, but this couldn't have been smoother.

That's it! All that was left to do was plop the drives back into the TiVo and power it up. I'm going to hold off on the details of reassembly, saving that for the next stage of upgrade which includes a review of the Weaknees Twinbreeze package.

Update: In follow-up posts, I covered the install of the Twinbreeze package and the question of whether you should do this yourself or pay someone to do it.

July 23, 2003 in SuperTiVo Project | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBack

TiVo announces new free bundled Basic service

Last week, Ryan posted a rumor that a basic tivo service was coming out and it looks like it is true after seeing their latest press release: Switching Channels: TiVo Revamps Strategy.

TiVo Basic will be freely included with some new upcoming PVR devices from Pioneer and Toshiba. TiVo Basic appears to offers live TV pausing, up to 3 days of show data that you can set recordings by hand, but repeat recordings are only by time and channel, with no season passes.

It sounds like it'll be software-upgradable, letting anyone with the free basic version move up to the regular version by ponying up the full monthly fee of $12.95. They're calling it a "trojan horse" form of marketing, though I wonder what sorts of conversion rates will be seen. My guess is most people buying a DVD player or set-top box that includes TiVo Basic would just stick with the included features, and that the convenience of extra features don't seem to be worth $13/month. [thanks rapunzel]

July 23, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (37) | TrackBack

It's alive...alive!

This is a shot from the output of my newly upgraded series 2 Tivo (project described here), after I added a new hard drive tonight. All told, it took a couple hours and I took many photos along the way and wrote a lot of notes, which I need to organize and clean up before posting the full report here. For now, my work is done and I'm off to set a few dozen new season passes.

July 22, 2003 in SuperTiVo Project | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Some PVR news

In the news today, DirecTV is trying to spur on their slow Directivo sales by offering NFL highlights every Monday morning from the previous day's games. You have to have both a DirecTivo and an NFL subscription, which seems to make the new feature almost pointless. If you already have a Directivo and the NFL package, wouldn't you already have caught the highlights when you recorded them? People are already paying a couple hundred bucks for the NFL option, I don't see throwing some highlight reels in as incentive enough to pickup the DVR for another two hundred bucks.

The hard drive manufacturer Maxtor posted their second quarter earnings, showing a nice profit. The money-quote from the CEO: "We were especially pleased with the growth in hard drives sold to consumer electronics OEM customers, primarily for PVR, DVR and set-top box applications." Nice to see other companies making cash off the largely profitless world of PVR sales.

July 22, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Hinsdale Upgrade Kits

Last June, when I was having problems keeping content on my 35hr DirecTivo for more than a couple days, I decided it was time to upgrade. At the time, I didn't have a PC at home (just a mac laptop — my PC was in the office), so I weighed my options. I'd need to spend about $100 for a 80Gb drive and try my luck at the how-to guides that were out there. The Hinsdale how-to is highly regarded as the most basic and user friendly of upgrade guides but I still couldn't see myself properly completing the steps on the first try, and I figured it'd take a weekend to get it right (if at all).

I noticed the guy offered a shortcut: prepared hard drives ready to bolt right in. The price was (and still is) about twice the price of a bare hard drive purchased from an online retailer, but I figured I was risking more in terms of damaging my own hardware and my time. I purchased an 80Gb upgrade drive (I paid $199 at the time) and had it overnighted. The package showed up as promised, featuring a single page, color printout instruction sheet, a CDR backup of the tivo operating system, and the bare hard drive [Photo of package contents]. Lucky for me, the series 1 DirecTivos were designed to handle two hard drives even though most shipped with one. It only took a few minutes to mount the new drive. I had to take the cover off, remove the drive tray, take two screws out for use in securing the new drive, then I connected the power cables and bolted the cover back on [photo of second drive mounted on drive tray, back inside the tivo]. After powering it back up, the TiVo's settings page showed the new increased capacity [photo of 108 hours].

Because my model was specifically designed for two drives, all told it was ten minutes work and I was very happy with the final product. I saved time and headaches, and got exactly what I needed: more space for recording shows. The guy was even quick on email when I sent questions before and after the purchase. If your PC building and unix skills are low, and you're looking for the easy way out and don't mind spending a few bucks extra to have someone else do the dirty work for you, the Hinsdale upgrade kits are great. Since I bought the upgrade, I noticed a few other outfits offering the same thing: Weaknees, PTV Upgrade, and TVRevo.

Next up, I'll review the process of doing it yourself (following the directions to prepare your own hard drive) and finally I'll wrap it up with a side-by-side comparision in terms of price and time to upgrade via both methods.

July 22, 2003 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

TiVo upgrading with a mac

The vast majority of TiVo upgrade guides require the use of PC, and there are scant resources and programs for the mac, even though OS X is now a BSD based operating system (meaning most basic linux tools work in BSD as well). Over on the TiVo underground, member A@ron asked for help and got little in response. He eventually found software and figured it out, and posted a full guide to TiVo upgrading using a mac as a result.

July 21, 2003 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Cozying up to Hollywood. Ick.

An AP wire article about ReplayTV and TiVo cozying up to Hollywood's wishes is a little bit disturbing in how far upstart companies have to go to please the big networks. While it makes good business sense to court Hollywood and make sure they're not going to sue you out of existence (like Sonic Blue), hearing that copy-protection is always on the table, limits on what you can do once you've recorded something, and even controls on something as low-bandwidth and quality as a cell phone makes my head spin.

It's like they're the mob and they run the town so you better play by their rules or they'll snuff you out.

July 21, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Linksys WUSB11

The Linksys WUSB11 is TiVo's suggested usb-to-802.11b adapter for the new series 2 TiVos. The TiVo store offers it for $64.95, though I got mine at Amazon for $49 with an additional $10 rebate.

My first thought was how amazingly small the unit was. I suppose it's basically just a PCI card combined with some usb circuitry, but from the pictures on the Amazon site, I assumed it was the size of a desktop PC. The photo to the right is the unit in the palm of my hand.

The signal strength was great, though my base station is only about 30 feet from the TiVo, with no obstructions (second story loft down to the first floor). It doesn't require a power adapter which is great (my outlets are already crowded with gadgets), drawing power from the usb connection. It plugged in, grabbed an IP, and has worked fine ever since. I think it's going to be one of those set-it-and-forget-it kinds of products (the kind I love — they don't require futzing around every so often).

The biggest and only drawback to this in regards to a TiVo is that you must have the 4.0 TiVo OS in order to use it (which requires a Series 2 box as well — Series 1 owners can use a slightly more hacky TiVo Airnet from 9thTee). If not, you'll run into the problem I had, where you'll have to use a phone-line (or usb-to-ethernet if you have the 3.2 OS) to force an update to the latest OS before it will function.

Once the setup was complete, the unit has worked flawlessly, it's small, fairly cheap (40 bucks after rebates), and I'll be getting updates every 30 minutes or so from TiVo, all without ever needing a phone line again.

July 20, 2003 in Product Reviews, SuperTiVo Project | Permalink | Comments (47) | TrackBack

First thoughts on Series 2 TiVos

After some initial setbacks (had to take the box to a friend's house to use his phone line, which required 3 forced calls to pick up the 4.0 OS), the SuperTivo project is finally underway and I'm enjoying the new Series 2 features. In the past few hours of tinkering, here are some highlights and lowlights of the new system:

highlights

The new 34-button remote makes an already great tool even better. They've added a few new buttons, including a TV input button and info buttons, and a single remote can now power two different systems in a house.

My favorite new feature on the remote is the finer-grained "universal" remote control capabilities. In the past, the power/mute/volume buttons could be programmed to control the TV. The problem was, once I got a home theater system, I stopped using the TV's built in speakers altogether and those two buttons became useless on the Tivo remote. So that forced me to use two remotes at all times, one to turn on the TV and control tivo, the other to control the volume and system input. I wanted to get down to one remote and almost sprang for a whole Pronto system.

My prayers were answered with the new remote. I can have the tv power button work the power on my tv, but the mute and volume buttons work with my home theater setup. I can finally go down to one remote, and it even works with my home theater system that offered almost nothing in terms of codes for its universal remote.

Other things I noticed right away were the Now Showing list has sort options which enables you to make Groups (folders) to organize shows. That'll be great when I've got 50-100 things in the list.

Getting the Tivo onto my open, wireless network was fairly smooth, and updates after switching to the network were very quick and started happening automatically every 30 minutes or so.

lowlights

One problem I found after changing to a network setup: when repeating guided setup, the tivo box still tries to use a modem even though I'm successfully connected to a wireless network. I couldn't escape the guided setup's failed phone calls until I added the backdoor network dialing prefix. When your call fails, you have to change dialing prefix, telling it to use ,#401, or [pause] [enter] 4 0 1. Then it connected in seconds and finished setup. I shouldn't have to know how to complete this hack for a network-connected Tivo.

A couple hours ago, I purchased the Home Media Option for it, but so far forced connections haven't seemed to download and install the software yet (though the box is going through its first batch of network data, which warned me that it'd take 4-8 hours to complete first). When I've got the HMO running, I'll post a full review.

Next up for this project is adding in the second 120Gb hard drive and Weaknees Twinbreeze upgrade bracket and parts.

July 20, 2003 in SuperTiVo Project, TiVo | Permalink | Comments (29) | TrackBack

Panasonic DVD/DVRs

Panasonic has announced new 120Gb and 160Gb DVRs that also features a DVD writer for watching movies and dumping to disc. They claim an hour's worth of recorded TV can be burned to a DVD in 5 minutes or less. It also features SD memory card input and output, and DV camera input. The smaller capacity unit is set to come out in the US in the fall, and this looks like a promising new way to share TV shows with friends, though the article had scant info on the operating system or features of the DVR. [via gizmodo]

July 19, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Future of TV

Unlocking the future of TV is an article featuring ample quotes from TiVo's president, Marty Yudkovitz. The first generation of TV required changing a handful of channels by hand, the second brought remotes, cable, and hundreds of channels, but the third generation, he says, is allowing customers to control TV with DVRs like TiVo.

This article also features TV execs dragging out the old boogeyman, that commercial skipping/forwarding is going to ruin their business models. As TiVo still sits below a million users, I wonder how many years the big networks are going to continue repeating that line instead of devising new ways to pay for shows. Do they not see the future that is coming, whether they can do anything to stop it or not? [thanks Brad]

July 19, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

ReplayTV Hacking

While TiVo hackers remember obscure linux directives, ReplayTV owners looking to add additional hard drive can enjoy a nice upgrade GUI for windows. The ReplayTV Hacking site is a great resource complete with FAQs and detailed instructions on using their upgrade applications. The ReplayTV hacking community looks pretty robust, with mpeg extraction programs, community forums, and community sites.

July 19, 2003 in ReplayTV | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

CBS News on the Home Media Option

Larry Magid has a glowing piece for CBS News on the Home Media Option: "TiVo: Endless Entertainment." It mostly focuses on the multi-room viewing option and mentions the slow throughput of 802.11 networking. With an hour of TiVo taking up a Gb of space, moving a 2 hour movie could easily take more than an hour to transfer between boxes wirelessly. He also notes the high cost of this kind of setup. While convenient, it'd run the average person $249 * 2 (for the tivos) + $99 +$49 (for two subscriptions to the HMO) = $650 (ouch!)

July 17, 2003 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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.

July 17, 2003 in Q & A | Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBack

ReplayTV vs TiVo on Captioning

James Beary is a deaf ReplayTV owner and recently shared his frustrations and offered a positive review of TiVo in regards to closed captioning, based on feedback from deaf TiVo owners. [thanks Joe]

July 17, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Onebox Media Center

Niveus has released a Windows Media Center PC that aims to be more of an entertainment unit, than a PC. I've heard from owners of previous media center PCs say that at weird times using the remote in front of a TV, you find a task that requires you to go back to your desk and interact as a computer. It sounds like this company has bundled some of their own software to make the PC moments possible on a TV screen (with a mouse on the remote), though this review seems to find it tedious at best. [via Gizmodo]

July 17, 2003 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The story of an upgrade

Michael over at Cruftbox has a nice little writeup of recent upgrades to his TiVo, with photos.

July 17, 2003 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

DirecTv and the Phillips DSR 6000

In early 2002 I purchased a Phillips DSR 6000 from American Satellite, at a cost of only about $30 with shipping and tax. I was a new customer of DirecTv and if I stayed for a year, the TiVo would essentially be nearly free. Many retailers still offer deals such as these.

This was my second TiVo (first being a 35hr Series 1 machine I won in a TiVo contest in 2000), and my first time as a Directv user. I was instantly impressed at the picture quality of digital TV. Having owned a ~10 year old 27" mid-range television for the past few years, I never really thought I'd notice higher quality input but it was instantly apparent: the crystal clear picture was a definite improvement. Phillips has since replaced the DSR 6000 with a newer DSR 7000 model built on the Series 2 Tivo system, but the system served me well and I hear they are still in great demand on eBay due to their hackability (to get free directv, not just tivo hacking).

Directv and Tivo combined

I've since spent considerable time using Directv without a Tivo at the homes of friends and family and I must say that after trying it both ways, a Tivo is pretty much mandatory for satellite TV. I've often said that Tivo helps you "squeeze the shit of TV into a few diamonds" and when you're talking about a channel lineup that includes literally hundreds and hundreds of channels, it becomes very difficult to locate and watch your favorite shows. I went from a basic cable system of 50 channels to my ~300 or so on Directv and found that navigating the immense number of choices, and remembering what time to turn on each was daunting. A Tivo was perfect for grabbing a show no matter what channel or time it was on. After a few weeks of finding new favorites by word-of-mouth and a little surfing, the Tivo was filling up quickly and shows were only lasting a few days.

TiVo features, reliability, and upgrades

This model was very easy to upgrade, due to it being designed to handle two hard drives from the factory. After a few months of perfect operation, I sprang for a 80Gb prepared upgrade drive (a review of that is to come), cracked the case and installed it. With the expanded capacity I enjoyed longer shelf life for shows before their self-deletion and it wasn't until the unit was about six months old that problems arose. Reading the Tivo community site, it appears that reliability has been a common problem for the 6000, and on one hot (100 deg F/37 deg C) day the machine up and quit. The unit felt hot to the touch and I realized that airflow around the unit was more important than I thought.

After failed reboots and calls to customer service, the unit was shipped back to Directv and a refurbished replacement arrived shortly (I kept my 80Gb drive, they didn't say anything about the voided warranty). The replacement TiVo worked fine with the upgrade drive added, though for some reason the internal fan was very noisy. I suspect it was a return due to a lose ball bearing fan, and the Tivo Community again helped me find a cheap replacement fan that was more efficient and silent. I did my best to improve cooling around the unit to prevent a repeat of the previous failure.

A couple months passed before another problem cropped up as the factory hard drive encountered a problem that sent the Tivo into continuous reboots. The Tivo Community had similar threads on the problem, and they all pointed to hard drive errors. I did some diagnostics on the drive and figured it was time for a replacement. I purchased a 120Gb drive and ended up preparing it and copying the old data off the damaged drive. With the new drive setup my tivo was sporting 200Gb of space and all my saved shows were still there. Over time, about the only drawback of having so much capacity seemed to be that the Now Showing list would take a good 30 seconds to load, due to the slow processor and tons of data. Many shows were being saved for months on end and a full Tivo meant there were a good 150-250 entries.

Conclusion

Over the 18 months or so that I used the DirecTivo it served me well and I plan to go back to Directv from the cable system I'm on in my new home. To be honest, reliability was definitely a problem though I found ways of working around it. For that reason, I will probably spring for a new series 2 DirecTivo. Though I must say I'm hesitant to go with a series 2 directivo since DirecTv has crippled the USB ports and held off on the Home Media Option (with no definite plans to enable either anytime soon).

Directv with combined Tivo is a great system though, and I found it made the vast number of choices manageable.

July 17, 2003 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBack

PVRs and the gay cutting edge

While there were jokey stories a few months ago ("Tivo thinks I'm gay!") about TiVo's recommendation system suggesting shows an owner didn't know they liked, it turns out that Forrester Research has found gay consumers are among the earliest technology adopters. They are "two times more likely to own PVRs like TiVo" and use the internet for shopping and research. Who knows, maybe someday we'll see technology advertised directly to this market, instead of TiVo's subtle homophobic commercials of the past (I'd link to their ad called "Educational TV" but I can't find a free copy of it online).

July 16, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

How to setup a new TiVo without a phone

Since I moved recently, I went with a Vonage phone that works with my cable modem instead of opting for a standard landline from the local teleco. I knew going in that Vonage clearly states: "We do not currently support DirecTV and TiVo."

So instead, I checked around the TiVo Community and noticed a lot of people happy with their Linksys wusb11 wireless adapter. The problem I found tonight is one of the first steps in the guided setup requires a call to TiVo. All the TiVo docs about getting your machine on a LAN present screens from a fully functioning Tivo, and there didn't seem to be a way around it in the setup.

I decided to call customer service and get the secret backdoor to skipping the call. The customer service phone number listed on the TiVo site has turned into what my friend Merlin dubs "phone jail". You can't hit buttons, skip to a live person, or otherwise get around a slow talking robot that requires you to speak in order to issue commands. Eventually when the robot couldn't help me they gave out the real customer service number: (505) 348-2800. After talking to a human it was revealed that you can't setup a brand-new tivo without a landline. The reason he said, was that TiVo doesn't ship all new units with the 4.0 OS, and without it, LAN connectivity doesn't function. He said that hopefully in the next six months, setups without phonelines would be possible, but currently it was not.

July 16, 2003 in SuperTiVo Project, TiVo | Permalink | Comments (328) | TrackBack

I want to give you money TiVo

As much as I love TiVo, their website has been giving me fits. The first problem I encountered was ordering it. Despite entering in my contact information exactly like it was on my bank statements, the site refused to sell me one and kept giving me invalid home address errors. I spent an hour on the phone with their customer service, only to be told they got the same errors when they tried it. My bank meanwhile was giving approval codes and I got a call from them asking me if I really authorized the purchase of 10 TiVos. The problem was never resolved and I ended up ordering it after a recent move and update of my address with the bank.

Tonight I tried to activate the new series2 project TiVo, but I encountered error after error. I repeated my entries several times, attempting to figure it out. It appears at least for me, that I can't activate a TiVo and also order the Home Media Option or change the system name of my TiVo, even though those are options on the signup page. Worse yet, I get an unhelpful error (in red text, it says error, try back again later and then there is a long string of ascii that appears to be a hash of some sort). By skipping the Home Media $99 and keeping my cryptic name, I got through, though I guess I'll try to adding the Home Media option later.

TiVo, I want to give you my money, if you'd just let me do it.

July 16, 2003 in SuperTiVo Project, TiVo | Permalink | Comments (23)

Linux PVR

Telly is a new linux-based home media device that can record TV, play DVDs and music CDs, and store movie, music, and photos on the 80Gb drive, offers networking, and sports a web-based interface to boot. It includes a subscription-free program guide, but at $899, it seems pretty pricey for a linux-based system. [via /.]

July 16, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Windows Media Center going mobile

I must say it sounds like an odd use of the new Windows XP Home Media Center, but Toshiba is now offering a laptop featuring the OS.

I guess the part that doesn't make sense is that the home media center does stuff like record television and manage a library of music, movies, and photos, but this laptop is portable. Doesn't that defeat the time-shifting if you have to come home to plug your machine so you can tape your favorite show?

July 16, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Charter planning Uber PVR

The cable company Charter Communications is planning to offer a PVR to customers that has some incredible features. Dual tuner (so it can work with multiple TVs), recording, DVD player included, HDTV capable, ethernet networking, plus home media options for music and photos. Sounds like everything possible aside from DVD recording of TV.

July 16, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

The parts list

Here's a sampling of what is going into the project tivo:
Maxtor 120Gb hard drive
Weaknees TwinBreeze Complete upgrade kit with a PowerTrip
Linksys WUSB11 Wireless-B USB Network Adapter
Window kit + EL cable

This will yeild a 160hr TiVo for about the suggested retail cost of a 80Gb TiVo. It will be quieter than a standard TiVo, use less power, and look better in the process.

July 16, 2003 in SuperTiVo Project | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

And So It Begins...

Using the deal mentioned in the previous post, I've just gotten my hands on a $199 bone stock 40Gb Series 2 TiVo, model number TCD24004A. This machine will the be basis for an ongoing project outlined here in text and images, tentitively called the SuperTiVo Project.

I'll be upgrading just about every aspect of the machine, and along the way I'll post how-to articles about installations and configurations, and reviews of products used in the box. I'll be starting with adding the TiVo to a wireless home network, then adding a 120Gb hard drive will take place. After that, internal upgrades (new fans and wiring) will be done. I'm planning to install packages such as tivoweb, and hopefully I'll be publishing information from this TiVo directly on this site.

July 16, 2003 in SuperTiVo Project | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

TiVo Deals

TiVo is currently offering their best prices yet on Series 2 units. If you go to http://tivo.com/help, you'll find 40Gb units at $199 and 80Gb units at $299.

July 16, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

AOL and TiVo

AOL has announced a partnership with TiVo, allowing AOL customers to program their TiVos via AOL's interface. The service requires a Series 2 tivo and sounds like it's one feature from the Home Media option, but without the cost. [via Gizmodo]

July 16, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Welcome

This is the first kick-off post for this PVR blog. PVR stands for Personal Video Recorders, also sometimes called DVR for digital in place of personal. Things are TiVo, Replay, Myth, Freevo, and any number of emerging recording technology will be covered here. This will be a team effort, featuring all sorts of PVR owners as writers. We'll cover reviews of available systems and products, books about systems, news about the field, and walkthroughs of hacking your PVR.

July 6, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack