PVRblog

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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]

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]

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.