TiVo and DirecTV receiver dead

Both my DirecTV receiver and my TiVo got fried in an electrical storm last night, and they were plugged up to a surge suppressor. Dammit!

So do you guys think I should grab a DirecTiVo? I know the video quality will be better and the storage will be lessened, but what other pros and cons are there?

I've got a TurboNet. Will I be able to use that? Can I upgrade the storage of the DirecTiVo as easily? I'll not be able to grab shows off of it, though, right?

If you get a Series 1 DirecTivo, you can use your existing Turbonet and grab shows off it.

Series 2 does not have the edge connector that is present on the Series 1 motherboards. Instead, it has 2 USB ports on the back. You can use an USB ethernet adapter to grab guide updates and software updates, but I don't think there has been any luck ripping shows off a Series 2 yet.

With that said, DirecTivo is much better than DirecTV receiver + TiVo. Dual tuner is a killer app.

Oh yeah, dual tuner. I forgot to mention that one.

Where can I get a series 1 DirecTiVo? And are there any drawbacks about that vs. Series 2? The software upgrade issue, maybe?

Right now, Series 1 and Series 2 DirecTivos have the same software features.

However, Home Media Option (HMO) is available on the Series 2 Stand Alone units. Tivo hasn't made arrangement with DirecTV yet to bill HMO to DirecTivo owners, so it's not available yet but probably will be in the future (my opinion).

Other than that possibility, both Series 1 and 2 have dual tuners. The USB in Series 2 could also be used to stream shows to other Tivos in the house in the future as well. I am hoarding Series 1 DirecTivos because of the ripping ability. I have 3 now. Need more.

The storage can be upgraded as easily as it can on any of the other TiVo's.
A series 2 DirecTiVo should be an easy find for $200...hmm a quick checo of Best Buy says $250...
For a series 1, ebay is probably your only bet and it might cost.

I think I'll just go buy a new one down at the Circuit City tonight. Thanks for the input, guys. Maybe I can eBay my TurboNet.

This is the best deal on a series 2 for current subscribers right now. I think it's still valid since someone in the office got it a couple weeks ago.

You get the Series 2 box, installation, and the proper equipment (multiswitch if needed) to use the dual tuner feature. Pretty slick deal.

Thanks, but it's dead now and I don't feel like waiting.

my DirecTV receiver and my TiVo got fried

Moment of Silence, please...

Sadly, this is one of my greatest fears along with my empeg suffering a similar fate... Life would not be the same.

Like robricc says, DirecTiVo 1 is the way to go...

I like really like tivo but I don't fear it getting fried because it is easily replaceable.

It's all the Season Pass info for 30+ programs and all the thumbs up/down data that would be a major inconvenience. My TiVo and I are very happy with our current state of program selection and recording... *knock on wood*

But it's probably a good thing that my biggest fears in life are only about TiVo and empeg... Or else I'm just apathetic to everything else in the world...

How much you want for the TurboNet?

My buddy has a series 2, and he loves it. We did a drive upgrade and it went very well. He says someone got USB working, so tonight we will go try to get his working. He really wants to extract from it. I'll post here on our results.

First off, I don't know that it's not dead, and I don't have any way of testing it. Other than that, I'll get back to you.

Rob,

This is slightly OT, but how are you extracting the shows off the DirecTivo? I have a GXCEBOT DirecTivo and a Series 2. I've hacked the GXCEBOT to upgrade the storage but I would like to extract some of the stuff off of it eventually. Could you give me a quick How-To? TIA.

Doing a search on tivo extraction reveals this thread (among many others). It has lots of links in it for extraction from series1 Tivo and DirecTivo's

And I would add to that thread that I started by saying this: video extraction sucks.

It's a long, overcomplicated process. However, it may be easier on DirecTivo, but I'm not certain what the differences are. Certainly the video quality on my extractions were not nearly as good as they were on the TV, which doesn't make sense to me since it's all 1's and 0's at that point. I'm pretty sure it was mostly to do with the resolution differences, though.

Anyway, I'm quite content with my Turbonet card simply being used to download guide data, as that means I no longer have to drag out the 100' phone chord every other day and do it manually. Turbonet is wonderful for that.

So for now, I'll be waiting until the right DVD recorder comes out.

And I would add to that thread that I started by saying this: video extraction sucks.

And I'd like to add that if you want video extraction, buy a ReplayTV. Fire up DVArchive, download the program, run the "chop comercials" program that just came out, burn to CD, and you're done. It's a beautiful thing.

Matthew

Edit: But we still don't have Satus Bars. We have to get drunk in dive bars instead.

Just to follow up, my friend's HDVR2 (Series2 DirecTivo) now has working ethernet. We followed the guide here on how to do it. We only got as far as Tivoweb. We tried installing it, but are having errors. We have gone over the instructions multiple times. At 1AM this morning we decided to call it a night. We will try more tomorrow. But it worked following that guide!

Well, technically you're doing more than ethernet. Getting Series 2 boxes to access guide data over ethernet is as easy as using a USB to ethernet adapter. If you want to do more with it (Tivoweb and all that), that's what you'd need those instructions for. I just want to make sure people don't think it's too hard to access guide data with Series 2 machines.

Anyway, I wasn't aware that you could do that stuff with Series 2 yet. I'll have to read up on that. Tivoweb is cool, and I may start using that again. It has some very cool tweaks you can make to your machine.

The USB is disabled by DirecTV in DirecTivo's. Different from SA (stand alone) series 2's. The Home Media option is not available to DirecTivo owners. More hacking is required to first enable the USB ports, and then get the ethernet working. It is easier with a SA series 2.

Oops! Sorry for getting the two confused. That's strange. I need to look at the different models again.

This is why I stopped trying to hack my Tivo, I got all turned around. Today mine decided it was going to stop connecting via the wireless bridge, and I had to go and reset the router and change a bunch of settings to get it working again. Still, I'm glad that the company built these back doors in.

Its funny, with the S2 DirecTivo, TiVo recently figured out they left the back door in, they took it out in the latest software release. So to hack it you have to put the previous kernel back on. Then it uses a MIPS processor instead of a PPC one, so in hacking it you have to make sure that the files are compiled for MIPS. My next hack on my Series 1 Stand alone will be to increase my drive capacity, using the Lba48 kernel hack. Not sure on the size though... 600GB in my Tivo enough?