I have SA8300HD with eSATA 500gb WD drive connected. I have been reading some about the TiVo Series 3 HD. Is there a benefit? I guess I would have to order to cablecards? What if I move to satellite? Thanks in advance.

I have SA8300HD with eSATA 500gb WD drive connected. I have been reading some about the TiVo Series 3 HD. Is there a benefit?

Better reliability, Amazon Unbox, TiVoCast, music and photo viewing, all the other TiVo features... and well, it's a TiVo. I have a Series3, and I'm very happy with it.

I guess I would have to order to cablecards?

Yes - the difficulty of that will depend on your provider. Time-Warner (at least in Albany, NY) was pretty easy to deal with; some others are less so. Call them up and ask them.

What if I move to satellite?

Well, then you're kinda boned; unfortunately if you want an HD DVR, there's nothing that works on cable and satellite services. It's either rent the unit from the provider, or get a TiVo; there's not a lot of middle ground there.

I have SA8300HD with eSATA 500gb WD drive connected. I have been reading some about the TiVo Series 3 HD. Is there a benefit? I guess I would have to order to cablecards? What if I move to satellite? Thanks in advance.

I was in a similar situation to you in Durham, NC. I was relatively content until my 8300HD starting having trouble with corrupted recordings. The 8300HDC that TWC gave me to replace it had Navigator which is essentially a still-born product. I actually purchased a Series 3, but I returned it as I learned of the problem with SDV (Switched Digital Video). The cable companies are limited on bandwidth, so the way they will get around this is is to stop broadcasting channels over the cable. SDV is the answer they have come up with. Your cablebox will request the channel you want to watch from a central server which will send a stream of data to the box and "tune" the channel. This is a decent solution to the problem, but it breaks the cablecard Tivos since they cannot talk back to the central server. They are supposed to be working on a work-around, but it is not available yet, and there are no guarantees it will work well.

This convinced me to switch back to Satellite to get a good HD DVR. I chose DISH, but DirecTV is a good choice as well.

Ted

Hi guys, not sure if this is the thread i should be posting this question, but here goes:

I will be buying a Sony KDS60A3000 and will be getting Comcast digital cable with whatever HD box Comcast gives me here in Pembroke Pines, Florida (inbetween Miami and Ft Lauderdale). Would I be better off, that is, get better reception and have less problems with the actual brand Tivo unit, or would it be no better than the generic unit the cable company will offer me?

yankeman: Because of the SDV issue, I'd suggest taking the Comcast box. Picture quality on the Comcast vs. TiVo boxes should be identical because of the digital medium. See if you can get one from Motorola; they're way better than Scientific Atlanta.

yankeman: Because of the SDV issue, I'd suggest taking the Comcast box. Picture quality on the Comcast vs. TiVo boxes should be identical because of the digital medium. See if you can get one from Motorola; they're way better than Scientific Atlanta.

Wow, then the SA boxes must be largely unusable, as I just bought a TiVo HD so I didn't have to deal with the POS Motorola box I've been limping through the last few months.
One advantage of the TiVo S3/HD is that when you move you can take your box with you, and if you're not watching much cable (or they stupidly go SDV), it works perfectly well as a OTA DVR.