TIVO upgrade

I just got one, someone gave it to me (brand new) Just assume, correctly, that I know nothing about the damn thing. What can it do? Is it worth the subscription price? How much is the subsription price? I already have a VCR and a DVR. What am I gonna do with this that I can't do with the others?
Inquiring minds want to know.

 

so you're saying that dtv boxes report artificially inflated numbers compared to normal tivo boxes? i understand the hour ratings are estimates, but i would think that a sa tivo would report the same estimates as a dtivo box.

from what i've read, dtivo looks to be somewhere between medium and high in terms of visual quality. i've seen basic quality and it just plain sucks. the rule of thumb for dtivo compression is about 1gb per hour of record time. this isn't from the manufacturer, but from tivo hobbyists. i would be surprised if a sa tivo reported only 30 hours of record time but ended up being able to record 90 hours at that setting.

 

I don't have a stand alone DVD burner, but I've got one on my laptop. Anyone know of a quick primer online of how to extract files from my Tivo (DirecTv based) to the laptop to burn to DVD?

 

Simply stated, a TiVo is just a DVR (the best one, IMHO).

That said, if you're already happy with your DVR (likely a cable company provided service/box), you don't need to change. Current model TiVo's do not have the ability to accept a direct feed from a cable company for digital signals (HBO and the other fun channels), so you have to do some funky stuff that I hate to make it work (IR blasters that introduce yet more delay and errors in channel changing and the like).

If you just have basic cable, it works GREAT natively and is a far better service that the cable DVR, offering things like auto-recording shows that match your established likes/dislikes (you can "rate" shows to help this), auto-record from searches/wish-lists (all shows with actor x, anything with NFL in the title, all shows in HiDef, etc.), adapts to changing schedules of shows elegantly, etc. Plus it can do things like let you program it over the web, connect with your PC to display pictures and music, let you resume playback on another TiVo in the same house (pause a movie, move to your bedroom, resume it and finish).

And if you get a nice TiVo, it can record shows to DVD...

 

quick? ain't no such thing.

first thing you need to do is hack your tivo to enable networking.

http://www.thewallens.net/tivo/Tivo_unguide.html

that'll get you a dtivo that's got the same features as a stand-alone model. the problem is that the normal tivo desktop software needs a media key in order to access the movie d/l features tivo offers. dtivo doesn't have a media access key, so you need to use hacks. there are two major ones: tserver and mfs_ftp. i don't know which is better cuz neither really works all that well.

check out the forums at deal database. http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/ the guys there are crazy into tivos. make sure you search the forum before posting or they'll incinerate you for wasting their time (they are seemingly obliged to respond to newbie questions like a moth drawn to a flame).

also, you'll need a usb to ethernet device. i have a netgear fa something or other that works fine.

once you get the movie off of the tivo, you'll need to transcode it, i beliveve, if you want to record to dvd, but like i said -- i haven't gotten that far. my transfers seem to crash out on me partway thru or finish and create unrecognized files...

i've had similar disappointing luck with going from pc to tivo.

 

I kind of put this on hold but thanks for all the advice guys.