Tivo -- Still the way to go?

Man. I'm telling you. Cox Cable makes it very hard to figure out how to get DVR from them.

 

Ouch, baby. Very ouch.

 

is Tivo compatible with all Cable providers? I need to get it by June as well but I'm concerned about all the stuff you just don't know about until you buy one then you realize you need the extra stuff.

I'm going to be in a serious time-crunch, so I want all the necessaries to record every WC match (not HD).

 

Should be. Usually, you'd have to have the TiVo control your cable box, but I don't know if the newer units have ATSC/Cable Card tuners or not.

A stock TiVo will not have anywhere near enough storage to do this without dumping the recordings to VHS or DVD (or copying them off to your computer) on a fairly regular basis. You'll have to hack it to add extra storage.

 

Has anyone mentioned how the Tivo victory in the courts over Dishnetwork and their version of the DVR will impact dishnetwork subscribers?

 

BTW, I did the math today and the size of the array has grown to 1500 GB (6 * 250GB data drives + 2 * 250GB parity drives) for about the same amount of money. $560 + tax/shipping for the drives, and about $400 for the rest of the system (MB, proc, case, PS, fans, controller, GB ethernet card).

I got space on my credit card...

Once 350GB drives become reasonable, you get to a 2TB array. 500GB drives make it a 3TB array. Schwing!

 

I just bought a straight up DVR + DVD Burner combo device.
I'm not attached to any cable/satellite provider, and there's
no monthly fee that I'm stuck paying. I don't get any of the
glitzy features, but my goal was just a "modern VCR" without
the archaic tapes (using DVDs now instead). Mine's a LiteOn.

 

Phillps has a DVD Recorder that has the World Cup 2006 Germany Logo on it. I was wondering it says it uses VCR Plus to record...will this be good enough? is VCR Plus listings reliable?

They don't have Tivo's with varying HDD sizes?

 

I would say TIVO is for sure one of the best PVR's outthere. The reason is probably because they've been in the game so long. I have two Directivo's, one is a standard definition tivo and the other one is a High definition TIVO. They are both rigged up so they can be integrated into my wirelless network. I can pull any show I want into my computer and burn it if I ever run out of space.


By the way, if noone here has seen HIGH DEFINITION soccer I just uploaded this quick clip. HDNET has recently started to cover mls games again. This will give you an idea of how the world cup will be looking like this summer.

 

Out of curiosity, how did you do this?

 

It wasn't an easy learning curve but basically you pull the drive out of the tivo. YOu put it in your pc and boot into a unix based OS, ( I used a bootdisk for unix) Don't boot into windows with your tivo drive in there as windows will overwrite into you drive and it won't work like bofore. I made a backup of system files. I then replaced the file that keeps security on the tivo with a modified one. After this the tivo is a basically a unix based OS, I addedd appropiate sys files to it so that it can run a server, it can run a SHELL , I can telnet into it, I can FTP into it. I can stream videos from the tivo to my computer without having extract them. There are alot of cool hacks for tivo's. Its sort of like a gray area, i don't think its illegal to do this. you are just giving more functionality to your already cool box. if you want more specific instructions i made a more detailed post at this forum . this forum is a gold mine of information and how to modify your tivo. If you want to give it a try, its worth it. But like i said you are going to have to learn basic unix commands and concepts.

 

DealDatabase is da bomb for TiVo hacking! These guys are cutting edge - like editing compiled executables with a hex editor.

TiVoCommunity is another good web resource.

 

What is Tivotogo?

 

The ability to skip ads may be in jeopardy

Sachin

 

While owning a depreciated version of the hardware (DirecTiVo Series 1) means that I miss out on some great features like TiVoToGo, it also means that the feature set is virtually locked. I'm still on version 3 of the TiVo software, and that will likely never change.

 

So does that mean there is DRM associated with the files transfered, or are you just saying that you need to have a DVD burner and DVD burning software on your system?

 

1. Preventing you from fast forwarding and skipping DVR adverts.
2. Preventing you from changing channel once adverts start.



1) If they remove the "instant-skip" option, then that will suck, but at least you can still old-school fast-forward, right? 2x speed is still better than nothing at all.

2) That will suck, if that's the case. That's almost a reason NOT to get Tivo -- The box that does everything, including channel change-prevention.


But they forgot something. At least you can still leave the room and refill the nachos during the commercial break. What are they gonna do, have something shoot a staple out of the Tivo during a commercial and pin you to the wall?



Then again, if this stuff is true, i'm sure there'll be a hack.

 

Is this software d/led or purchased separately?

 

I ask only because my DVD player can play multiple file formats like mpeg, avi, divx. DRM stands for "digital rights management."