Tivo Notes from a Fan

Some notes from a Tivo fan.

Tivo with HD rocks! Oh the clarity and colors! Add a CableCard, and you’re off. The Tivo pulls in the updated channel guide and readjusts Season Passes with the correct channels.

Tivo HD recordings are huge! Only problem with recording in HD is the file size. 90 minutes of HD content weighs in at about 12 GB! Try transferring that over WiFi. Takes hours. Then to convert and edit? We’re talking an order of magnitude of difference.

Try out iTiVo. I’ve been using Roxio Toast with Tivo Transfer to get recorded shows to my Mac and iPhone. But then I found the open source iTiVo which does the same thing but for free. And it can transfer and convert videos in a combined step compared to Toast which involves a two step process (Tivo Transfer then Toast to convert).

Adding additional storage capacity is easy if you buy the Tivo Expander. From mixed research, it sounded like you could add any external eSATA drive to a Tivo HD unit to add extra storage. I tried and killed a perfectly good drive. Not sure what happened but the drive got so hot, I think it burned itself out. I then went with the approved WD 500 GB Tivo/DVR Expander and no problems. Now I can record HD content without worrying about running out of space.

Tivo Holiday Packages with Lifetime Service is available again. Tivo is bundling a Tivo HD or HD XL, the lifetime service, WiFi adapter, and $50 of entertainment for $600. Sounds expensive but well, well worth it.

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