[houseofmouse]

Looking for feedback from anyone who has upgraded their hard drive on their Motorola QIP6416 HD DVR for Verizon Fios. It would seem to me that copying the disc image from the OEM onto a new drive and installing the new drive should be simple enough, but then again, I would think Verizon has thought of that already.

 

[bfdtv]



Quote:
Originally Posted by houseofmouse /forum/post/15429946


Looking for feedback from anyone who has upgraded their hard drive on their Motorola QIP6416 HD DVR for Verizon Fios. It would seem to me that copying the disc image from the OEM onto a new drive and installing the new drive should be simple enough, but then again, I would think Verizon has thought of that already.

All Motorola cable DVRs have firmware that is "hard coded" to use the maximum capacity of the SKU. If you replace the 160GB drive with a 500GB drive, the DVR will still use just 160GB. This prevents end-users from expanding their drives and it forces cable companies to buy new, higher-capacity DVRs, rather than upgrading their old ones. Here's the official AVS thread for the FiOS Motorola DVR.


If you want a higher-capacity DVR for FiOS, your only real option is the TivoHD. Here's the post I made on another forum:

Quote:
I used the FiOS DVR for the better part of a year before I got the TivoHD.


My two biggest reasons for buying a Tivo were (1) Verizon's unreliable guide data provider, and (2) limited storage capacity.


With its Motorola boxes, FiOS currently uses a cheaper guide data provider whose program information is not nearly reliable or comprehensive as TiVo's. On average, I missed several recordings per month with the FiOS DVR due to faulty guide information or improperly flagged shows. I have not missed any shows since upgrading to the TiVo. For me, reliability is the best thing about the TiVo.


The FiOS DVR has a 160Gb hard drive (20 hours HD) and cannot be upgraded or expanded. The TiVo supports external hard drive expansion. With the TiVo, you can also upgrade the built-in hard drive. It took me less than 25 minutes total to upgrade the 160Gb drive in my TivoHD with a new 1TB drive ( $110 ) which gave me over 150HD hours and 600 SD hours of capacity.


The TiVo has series recordings like the Motorola DVR, but it also does something that the Motorola DVR can't -- content based recording. The TiVo can be set to continually search every channel you receive and record all content -- regardless of date, time, and channel -- matching certain title keywords, keywords in the description, actors / actresses in the movie, directors, or subject matter. You can combine any/all of this criteria into a single autorecord search; you can make certain keywords or actors required, optional, or excluded. Here's a screenshot of my autorecord "wishlist" search for presidential debates; the items in parenthesis are used to indicate OR. Here's another example which I use to record all Washington Capitals hockey games, regardless of date, time, and channel.


There are plenty of other differences, of course. Menu navigation on the TiVo is more intuitive. The TiVo supports high-definition multi-room [DVR] viewing so you can view HD recordings from your Living Room TiVo on your bedroom TiVo. The TiVo allows you to download SD and HD recordings -- in full resolution and quality -- directly to any computer over your home network, which you can then burn to DVD or Blu-ray. The TiVo will let you view photos and listen to music stored on a computer in your home. The TiVo also lets you schedule recordings using a mobile phone .


The only areas where the Verizon DVR outperforms the TiVo is in (1) channel surfing and (2) VOD. The TiVo DVR does not support FiOS' VOD. The Verizon DVR is also better suited for channel surfing than the TiVo. The TiVo is really designed around recording and viewing recorded programs. Guide navigation is a little slower on the TiVo, but DVR function response (pause, replay, fast forward, 30s skip, etc) is much faster on the TiVo. As long as most of the programming you watch is recorded, you are going to be thrilled with the TiVo.

Note how multiple episodes of same series are grouped; the episode titles are listed inside each folder. The folders with stars contain programs automatically recorded across multiple channels with boolean search; these folder names are fully customizable. Without such grouping, a DVR with 1TB capacity and dozens of recordings would quickly become cumbersome.

Quote:
Tivo Functionality Screenshots

Recorded list
Separate Recorded Lists for adults and children

Season passes (series recordings)
To Do List
Wishlists (autorecord content regardless of date, time, and channel using boolean search)

Remove Channels from Guide
Program Guide: Grid style
Program Guide: Tivo style

Plug and play eSATA (external drive) expansion
Recording capacity with 500Gb external drive from Best Buy
Recording capacity with 1TB internal drive upgrade

Remote scheduling using mobile phone

Download SD and HD recordings from the DVR using any web browser
Automatically download certain series to your computer
Automatically remove commercials from downloaded recordings
Burn commercial-free to DVD with Dolby Digital 5.1.

Netflix on TiVo
Browse videos on a PC
Automatically transfer videos from PC to TiVo
Access and play music from a PC

Cool TiVo application for MacOSX users

I wrote the above post one-year ago, but have updated a few screenshots since.

 

[houseofmouse]

thanks bfdtv! just the info I was looking for. Unfortunately, it means i would have to go TiVo for more capacity. We had TiVo in the past and the slow channel surfing drove us nuts. We are 50% live TV and 50% recorded content viewers.

 

[bfdtv]



Quote:
Originally Posted by houseofmouse /forum/post/15444702


thanks bfdtv! just the info I was looking for. Unfortunately, it means i would have to go TiVo for more capacity. We had TiVo in the past and the slow channel surfing drove us nuts. We are 50% live TV and 50% recorded content viewers.

If you like to spend much of your time channel surfing, then TiVo is probably not for you.


Guide responsiveness on the TivoHD (with latest software) is noticeably better than the old TiVos and DirecTV TiVos, but scrolling the Verizon guide is still significantly faster.


If you used one of the old Series2 TiVos that connects to a STB, that experience isn't really comparable to a TivoHD with the integrated tuners. The old TiVos that controlled a separate STB could take 4-6 seconds to change a channel. The TivoHD changes FiOS channels about 1/2 second slower than the Verizon DVR. That said, I will agree that even a half-second extra delay can be annoying if you channel surf frequently.