A few D* Tivo questions for the group

[MathWiz579]

OK... thinking about adding a Tivo box to my D* stuff. Few questions/issues:

(1) I have no land line. I see that I could get a line for $6 a month that would cover the calls the box would make, but instead if I get a box I would likely take it to a buddy's house who has a land line and D* and do the guided setup there, then just not have it connected to a phone line. Sound like a decent plan?

(2) The one issue I have with Tivo is that it is not easily portable. Sometimes I like to watch stuff I taped in my living room and sometimes not. How do others that have Tivo deal with this?

(3) I'm also considering if I buy a box to get a cheap one then mod it and throw a big hard drive into it. Has anyone tried this and if so how well did it work?

Any other good tips that anyone has for a possibly new Tivo owner would be very appreciated!

[borghe]

1) the box NEEDS to make the daily call at least once every umm.. like 2 or 3 weeks... if it doesn't it will eventually shut down the Tivo service (DirecTV will be fine). if it were a series 1 it would be very easy to hack to make the call over the internet (both of mine are), but a series 2, though it can be done, is much more complicated (though cheaper). So bottom line is you either need to get the USB ports working on it and use a USB Ethernet adapter (hard) or you need to take the Tivo to a friends house every couple of weeks and force the call (easy).

2) This is true of every DVR. No way around it.. Two answers.. First, Tivo has a Save to VCR function that you can still send recordings to vhs.(easy) of course it takes as long as the recording is, so not really convenient. You could also get an A/V extender on it and set the base at the Tivo and the remote unit at the bedroom TV..(easy) If you had two Tivos, you could hack both of them to allow transfering files from one unit to the other. (very hard)

3) easy as cake and takes about 4 minutes without backing up and around 15 minutes with backing up.(very easy) Without getting too complicated though, non HD Tivos have a limit of 137GB per drive. So you either are maxed out at two 120GB drives or you can get two 160GB drives for a total space of 274GB. You can change that limit but as with all advanced things on Tivo, it is very complicated. (extremely hard)

//www.tivocommunity.com is a great place to get more info on this.

[mrmike]

Since I am a TiVo geek, though not a D*TV person, I'll give a go at a couple of these.

1) I'll have to defer to D*TiVo people on the landline question.  It used to be (Series 1 timeframe) that it was only used for guided setup if you had a lifetime sub and didn't need to phone home after that except for D* PPV etc.  I don't know the current state since the changeover to only monthly fees went into effect.

2) I've had excellent luck with RF IR repeaters (Recoton at the moment) and a long (35 feet or so) paired coax S-Video cable.  Home Media Option isn't available on D* TiVo's AFAIK, and would require two boxes in any case, so that's probably your best bet for simplicity.  Cost is about $30 for repeaters and $20 for cable (cheaper if you're like me and have a 1000' spool of 1694A rattling round in your basement.

3) I've done about a dozen of these mods for myself and friends and family.  They're almost trivially easy if you have a passing familiarity with the insides of a PC (plugging and unplugging hard drives and such) and aren't too scared of command line prompts.  

I will recommend backing up your original disk, though.  All it takes is one oops (I meant to plug that into the primary controller, not the secondary, AARGH) to ruin your whole day.

There's tons of info over on the TiVo community forums (tivocommunity.com)

-MM

[kjnorman]

For number 3, if you have any kind of distributed coaxial in you house, of if you any install one yourself (not too easy) you can also pipe the coaxial output from the TiVo as channel 3 feed this to your other TVs.  To control the box, you can use a device like this to convert your TiVo remote into an RF remote so that it may be used anywhere throughout the house.

I personally have not used the Remote Xtender yet, but have read good things about it and plan on using it, when I extend our TiVo output from the living room to the family room and kitchen.

Kerry

[MathWiz579]

Does anyone know if (1) the D* Tivo box makes a local call (for New Berlin) or (2) how many minutes of (hopefully local) calls per month the Tivo box uses up? I ask because ameritech has a bare-bones phone line with 60 minutes of local toll calling per month for $5.50.

[mrmike]

Since the programming data is coming over the bird I can't see why the daily phone calls would be any longer than a "test call", which is usually under 3 minutes.  All it does is call, verify service status,  and reset the clock (And the last part is probably done over the bird on the D* boxen as well).  

There is a local TiVo dial-up number in West Allis/New Berlin/Brookfield.

-MM

[jkane]

All of the above depend on "which" TiVo you get!

The series 1 is easily modifiable for disk space.  The series 2 is a lot more of a challange.  The DirecTivo is a whole different animal.

I have a series 2 and use the USB to ethernet adapter for resolving the phone line issue.  I'm not sure if the feature was added via an "update" to series 1's, but since the series 1 is modifiable, it is a feature you can add.  I've "heard" the DirecTivo is not modifiable (yet), and that they have no support for the USB port.  I could be wrong.

As far as getting into a different room, I suspect they all have an RF output port on channel 3/4.  That's what I use.  I opted for a Xantech IR extender.  It uses the coax running between the rooms instead of RF into the air.  I find it more reliable in my home.  But I seem to live in a radio wave noisy hole.  

The first questions is, are you going to buy a used series 1, buy a new series 2 and use the video in with it's lower recording quality, or buy a DiercTivo to get the higher quality direct digital recording and loose the additional features.  Tough decision!  Good Luck making it.

[MathWiz579]

If I just call D* and order the Tivo service and the $99 box, what will I be getting: Series 2 or DirecTivo? I also wonder if I need a different dish... I do have a round dish but I heard something about having a dish with two knobs on it for the dual tuner, and I only have one knob pointed at the dish.

re: the multiple room thing I have decided at this point to start out with one Tivo box, see what I can easily do with it, and if we feel the need for another room to have Tivo to just go out and buy a second box.

I have heard that there are Tivo boxes that exist that can make the calls via wireless internet... that would be sweet for my place. Making the calls via USB-ethernet connection wouldn't work as well because the Tivo would be in a different room than the ethernet hub and I don't want to run cords all throughout my apartment.

Can someone point me to a good website that shows how to upgrade the HD of a new Tivo box? I've seen some old posts on tivocommunity.com with instructions from 3 years ago, but I don't know if these instructions work the same with newer boxes.

Thanks again for all the feedback.

[borghe]

all easy answers.

first, you can limit the number of calls made by simply unplugging the unit and only plugging it in twice a month.

as for a dish, you NEED a dual LNB dish to fully appreciate Tivo.. this isn't the same as a multi-satellite dish which it sounds like you are referring to. A multi-satellite dish is the oval dish with multiple "knobs" on it.. a dual LNB dish can be a round one, it just means that the "knob" has two coaxial lines coming from it. if there is only one coaxial line on the LNB, then you won't be able to record two things at the same time. it is actually very easy to replace a single lnb with a dual lnb, but it will obviously require running another cable also (though you might get free installation if you order directly from DirecTV).

if you get a second box, you HAVE to make sure you have a dual LNB dish. if you currently have more than one receiver in your house then you have a dual lnb dish (single LNB can only support one receiver total).

only series 2 stand alone boxes (not DirecTivos) can use wireless ethernet out of the box. Both a series 1 and series 2 DirecTivo can use wireless ethernet, but it is anywhere from slightly difficult (series 1) to fairly difficult (series 2) to get this working. If you are familiar with linux and command lines it isn't the end of the world.. if not, you may have your work cut out for you.

//www.tivocommunity.com is the greatest general tivo forum in the world.

//www.dealdatabase.com/forum is the best hardcore tivo hacking (nothing illegal) forum in the world.

http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hinsdale-how-to/ this page will tell you exactly how to add a hard drive to your tivo.. don't let the size of the page scare you.. it really only takes about 4 minutes.

http://www.9thtee.com/tivoupgrades.htm this place sells everything you could possibly need, including all in one upgrade CDs for in depth hacking on your Tivo.

I will be very blunt with you... Tivo is far and away the biggest reason I will never switch from DirecTV.. DirecTV is a decent service, tit for tat with cable.. HD is give and take, but Tivo is another world. Anybody who argues that TWC DVR is comparable is crazy... my base Tivo gives me these features over TWC DVR:

program suggestions based on my viewing habits

automatic recording of my most matched suggestions

wishlists - searching and recording based on keywords or portions of words in the title or description. also searching and auto-recording by actor and director.

one button recording during many commercials for shows.. commercials for "10.5" for example had a little icon that if you pressed thumbs up it would automatically setup to record the show.

things I have done to my Tivo that makes it ever more invaluable:

caller id - not only does it show on the TV who is calling, but it stores it in a log which is useful because

tivoweb - I would be lost without this.. web access to everything in my tivo... I can schedule recordings from work, view tivo logs (like callerid), maintain my shows, do program searches, all from a web broswer

tivonet - what makes it all possible. ethernet to your tivo. telnet and ftp acces.. also can be used for other stuff like bringing up weather, sports scores, instant messenger logins, etc.

show archving - I can pull shows off of my Tivo in digital format (exactly as sent out from directv) and burn them off to DVD.

show transfering - I can transfer shows from the living room to the bedroom and vice versa.

and more....

DirecTV and cable are a horse apiece. But Tivo is a thoroughbred that won the race pretty handedly.