TiVo Series 3 - "Official" Thread - Page 2

What/where is TCF?

Yes, www.tivocommunity.com. Sorry, I should have explained better.

Oh, believe me, they DO have them in stock. I ordered mine from CC yesterday, and it's on a local FedEx truck today for delivery. Whether I get it today or tomorrow, I'm not sure. Sometimes they sit on the delivery truck all day and don't get delivered until the next day.

But might it "re-appear" if you re-connected the drive? I don't know.

My guess is that would happen only if you did not power up the Tivo while the external drive is disconnected. Powering up would probably cause permanent changes in the file system.

Also, I'm sure the external drive is not meant to be portable in any way. It all has to do with content protection. That's what has delayed activation of the eSATA port.

I'll bet the Tivo hacking community is in for a rude awakening with this HD unit. It may turn out to be like the Sony DVR, where there are protections against replacing/upgrading the internal drive. I don't think anyone has found a way around that yet.

I was going to buy one of these until I found out that multi-room viewing and other dumb DRM restrictions were put in place. Not because I was going to do anything that content providers wouldn't want, but rather beacuse I want to be able to watch their product in more places.

The content providers and DRM-nuts are incredibly stupid: they need to understand that the more places in which they can distribute the product, the more money they can make. They are the first people in history that are actually paranoid about customers using their stuff.

So stupid. I won't buy ANY new DVR system that does not have multi-room viewing. There is NO GOOD REASON for this feature not to be enabled.

Tivo has said the external eSATA port for drive expansion will be enabled in an upcoming software update; in fact, they are apparently showing an updated version of the software with the capability at CEDIA. They are saying that a software upgrade is planned for ~November, which will add some features not available at initial release.

Excuse my ignorance, as I really know nothing about Tivo (other than it has a very zealous following), but how does one go about getting one of these "lifetime" subsciptions? Last thing I want to do is pay a monthly fee for something I already own. I'd rather pay upfront and not worry about future fees and especially monthly-fee increases.

I haven't seen any definite evidence that this may not be enabled in the future. It seems like there are many features which just have not made it out of beta (or maybe alpha), such as the external eSATA expansion. I am guessing this may be one of them. I would suspect the issue may be network traffic generated by pushing an HD program to another box in another room. From my back of the envelope calculations, if a 250GB drive has a capacity of 32 hours for HD programming (ignoring space taken up by the OS and various databases) an HD program will take up about 8GB of space per hour of programming. This means to push the program over the network would require a little over 17.3Mb/s of bandwidth. I would suspect that many people use a WiFi connection for their network connectivity, many of which would be 802.11b, which under optimal conditions is 11Mb/s. Even if you went with Ethernet, their networks may only be 10Mb/s (10base-T). They would not get consistent results streaming a program over the network unless TiVo employed some sort of compression, which may compromise quality (which may compromise THX certification). Hopefully TiVo can come up with some way to enable this, at least for those who have 100base-T or 802.11g (I'm coming from Series1, so I am not sure which standard the TiVo WiFi connector uses) employed for their network. Of course, this would still put a noticeable amount of traffic on the network and imagine if you had a second or third stream happening at the same time. Anyway, just my two cents.

That would be nice BUT it wouldn't be worth that much if down the road TIVO went belly up and the program guides got discontinued as a result. As much as I like to save money, I can live with a periodic recurring fee if it serves to ensure the continued upkeep of the program guides.

Nah, the problem is with the cablecard integration. CableLabs has to certify the device and they make that pretty tough. Tivo is currently trying to understand exactly what they can/can't do with MRV and TTG and digital content on the S3. They have stated publicly (on TCF's) that the software is there and can be enabled if/when they get things worked out from the legal end.

Dburns:

Tivo changed their pricing model a while back, you can no longer flat out purchase a lifetime sub. Current tivo subscribers who have S1 or S2 tivo's have been given an option to transfer their existing lifetime sub from their S1 or 2 to a new S3 if they meet certain conditions (must buy the S3 from tivo directly instead of retail and a couple of other things.)
There are a bazillion links to the appropriate tivo website but I can't post it, or apprantly anything even similliar to it but you know /vip will help you out)
Some folks still have lifetime "gift cards" which tivo will accept as well, they are getting a hefty premium for those on ebay right now...

Sorry, I should have said "an issue". I figured there would be licensing issues as well, but decided to focus on the engineering hurdles.

Any idea as to how long it will take for Costco to sell this new model?

Nice find on the coupon..thanks!

Sorry, double post..Stupid browser.

Yes it does. Just like the TiVo's with built in DVD-RW drives.

Dan

Weaknees has just posted preliminary S3 hard drive upgrade info. Up to 98 HD hours; up to 927 SD hours...no prices yet.

Since TVIO series 3 does not require a phone line, how do they get the TVIO Guide information over the cable network? Are they just using the cable supplied guide information? Without a phone line, how is the subscription fee enforced?

they require either a phone line or a network connection (wired or wirless). The guide data and subscription information is done via the tivo servers, not the cable.

Thanks. Didn't realize that they required an internet connection.

It's their livelihood.

CC sent the email with fedex tracking#. Preliminary tracking shows express delivery by3pm Thursday. Will see later this evening if it is actually picked up and on route.

Don't feel too bad, spiff. Consider this -- I ordered mine from CC yesterday, paid only $10 for two day shipping, and missed the FedEx delivery truck at my house by 15 minutes at lunch today. My wife had gone shopping; there was no one home; and FedEx required a signature. If either one of us had been home today, I'd be playing with it right now instead of typing this stupid post

Weakness now has pricing on its S3 upgrade kits here.