I see that it's still possible to get on ebay an early TIVO machine with no monthly charge, the Toshiba SD-H400. What no one seems to mention is, Does this require one to have cable, or do come with Over the Air capability? I forget and they don't say because they think everyone knows. :)
I believe the old TIVOs dont support digital tv.
I had Dish, got mad over their fee increases and unstable boxes. 5 buck a month extra receiver fee jacked up to 17 bucks a month.
my tivo is great and in 5 months its only need rebooted once, it just WORKS
Haha. They didn't mention that either. You saved me a bunch of trouble. (although you don't sound certain.)
Wow.
I can see how that would be better.
I'm still not willing to pay monthly, but the Philips HD-DVR has all sorts of programming weaknesses, which could easily be fixed with a firmware upgrade if they hadn't stopped spending time on it**.
So this old TIVO is not an option, but I did find a channelmaster antenna OTA DVR (I forget the model, 6000?, but these are the keywords) for when the Philips breaks or I otherwise want another. 300 dollars or so.
**Even after dl'ing the manual for the other model, I may not be able to tell if it works better, but these are the major problems with the Philips:It doesn't record the name of the show or the description. All you have is the time, the actual length of the recording, the channel, and you can watch the show in the little table of contents box. It would really help to have the name, and it could do it because it will display the name when you are watching live.
When you are recording it live, you still can't display the program name or plotline. You have to stop recording, display it, and start again.
In preset stations, you can't preset channel 2.1 but not 2.2. It's all or nothing, so channel-upping means passing through a lot of stations I never watch (like a weather channel on every network!)
If you are recording something, it turns off when done, even if it was on when it started to record.
It will only play one previously recorded selection without more manual intervention. When I'm in the basement all day, I would like it to play one selection after another, like a VCR would, so I don't have to lug my fat self up the stairs every 30 or 60 minutes.
Others things...
Neither the series one or two are HD compatible. You can connect either to a digital converter, cable or satellites.
I am using a series 1 with cable right now. The RF cable connects to the mini box and the IR sender sends the change channel commands to the mini box. Before the cable signal switched to digital the TIVO was connected direct to the cable line and used the built in turner.
Series 1 machines work without a subscription, but you won't get the guide. IIRC, they do have an OTA tuner. Series 2 machines are only good for stripping the drives out of, to resurrect trailing-edge PCs. BTDT, with 5-buck machines from garage sales. I'll pay five bucks for a 40gb drive.
You can buy a much bigger faster drive and it will work in your Series 1. You just need a Linux boot disk and the software to create the Tivo format. I currently have 137MB of a 160GB drive in use on mine. That is a lot of "best quality" recording.
To be perfectly honest it took me 3 attempts to get it right when I was forced to replace my drive. Learn from my mistake. Always do a full erase and setup when adding a new larger drive.
Colbyt
I doubt there are any old TIVO ReplayTV machines that do digital and I am not sure any of them have a guide that works with your Guvmint converter. I do not see that option with my Replay. They do support most cable/satellite boxes. You can always use them in manual record mode ala your old VCR but the built in guide is the most attractive part of these things.
I think the issues have been identifed. AFAIK, any of the TIVOs will work without paying for a subscription, but without the subscription it doesn't have the channel guide and hence you lose most of what makes TIVO great. You could still record by telling it what time and channel to record, but you can't just look at Hell's Kitchen on the program listing, tell it to record it and get a seasons pass to record all future episodes, even if they move the time slot, have an extra hour one, etc.
The Series 1 TIVO he's looking at has an NTSC tuner in it. So, it could be connected to a converter box and receive digital. The problem comes in that it won't be able to command the converter box to change the channels as needed, unless TIVO has updated the software to be able to control the HD OTA converter box as if it were a cable box. They may have, but given the age of the earlier products, I doubt it. And then, of course, only the newest Tivos support HD, so you'd be left using it to record only in std definition.
With TIVOs current pricing, you could buy a new HD Tivo and a lifetime service for I think $700. Comparing that to Cablevision pricing here, you'd be saving $15 a month and break even in just under 4 years.
Well you're right that none for sale on ebay call themselves Replay.
But they do say that you can get the guide for the next 3 days. Well it says "This unit comes with free TiVo Basic Service for the lifetime of the unit (no fees unless you decide you want to upgrade to plus service): Up to 3 days advance program guide to record you favorite programs "
I don't know what that means. If something plays every week, 1) will this TIVO be able to record it every week with one setting? It's only that you can see it listed in the grid until less than 3 dyas in advance. Or 2) can you decide no more than 3 days in advance what you want to record>
Here's the high end of what's for sale now, for 225 dollars. If you don't want to read anymore, just look at this***. (And for the record, I'm not the seller. I'm a regular here and people know I live 5 or 10 years in the past, so if I had this, I'd be keeping it. I have a Philips DVDR with HD and two settop boxes, and the specs here say everything except if this wil record from over the air! Hmmm. I could write the seller himself. I truly think he didn't mention it becuase it didn't ocur to him. Unless it says it here and I don't see it.
***Aha. He does say 181 Channel NTSC Tuner. I used to know what that meant, but I had to look it up. It's analog. No digital.So this info about using the guide can be true, but there are no stations it can tune to anyhow, iiuc. The DISHTV analog to dig. converter, which I bought, has a timer that will change stations, but if I have to do that in advance to set the station, what good is the automatic guide for TIVO? I could as easily use it with a VCR I already own, right? In fact, wouldn't TIVO set it to channel 11 or 13 when in fact, it should always be on channel 3 to go with the digital converter box?
Here's the url anyhow.
What I was asking about wasn't made "recently" but it also doesn't have a digital tuner it seems.
I found that out the hard
Darn. :(
If you click on the link in the Ebay listing for manuals, it takes you to Tivo support. Where I quickly found this table that shows what sources various Tivos will accept:
Per the table, the Series 2 with a single tuner will work work with antenna digital TV using a converter box provided the Tivo does not have the 542 service number prefix. Dual tuner Series 2 will not work with antenna digital TV.
Yes, sorry about that misinformation. The ability to use it as a basic recorder without the service apparently ended with the Series 1 Tivos. But from a practical standpoint, you'd almost always want to have service anyway, because without it you don't have the features that make the Tivo the best DVR. It looks like the basic service that comes with only some of the Tivos is very limited. It only gives you
3 days of guide, no ability to do advanced searches, season passes, etc.
I've got several DVR's but they all use proprietary disk formats and smallish drives. I recently bought a media player recorder from Tiger Direct because I got tired of archiving stuff to make room on the tiny 160GB hard drive.
Masscool MP-1370S Media Player - 3.5" SATA to USB 2.0, HDMI, 10/100 Ethernet, Coaxial, Optical (S457-1274) $83.99
For under 90 bucks new, I am thinking of getting another one if and when they add HD recording ability. The 160GB in my Polaroid DVR fills up right quick recording at XP. Right now I have a 1.5TB WD external drive connecting to the MassCool media player/recorder and later today I will see if it works with a USB hub. Hardly matters, though, since it's networkable and can store files to any machine on the network. I've had it with the proprietary junk found in Tivo, Polaroid and Panasonic DVRS.
-- Bobby G.
My Replay 45xx works fine with Dish and it worked with Comcast. They use a "blaster" (IR transmitter) to simulate the remote and change the converter channel. The guide matches your local lineup on that box. The problem is I can't get a guide for the guvmint converter or a blaster code that changes it. They could certainly do it and the folks at source forge may have a hack to make it work but it is not something you get from the host.
You still need the cable card which costs a few bucks a month.
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