TiVo hacks flourish

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The easy route

I now have 4 Tivos. I bought one for my son so he could record his favorite cartoons without hassling over videotaping when we go away for a week. Then I liked it so much I bought one for me and my wife so we could time-shift and time-compress what we watch. Bought another for the second house. Then got an HD one for cable with 120 hour capacity. Cost for all 4: $249 plus $5/week each. The first one came in a package from DirecTV - $99 for the satellite dish, wiring, installation, Tivo, and two rooms of receivers, of which I opted to install only one. The second one cost $99 from DirecTV including installation, using the other two feeds from the dish. The third one at the second house cost $49 (recent price drop)including the dish, installation, wiring, and a second receiver, again from DirecTV. The most recent one cost nothing from Cox Cable when I upgraded to HDTV feed on my digital cable, which was a no charge upgrade plus $5/month. Records both SDTV and HDTV, although the user interface and remote are funkier than DirecTV's. I wanted to upgrade anyway to see what HDTV was like. Discovery channel has absolutely awesome cinematography.

A few years ago, I bought a Soundblaster PC kit from Tiger Direct and spent all kinds of time building it, waiting for correct drivers, futzing with limitations (32 GB drive limit), and finally getting semi-good recording. I also built a box with an ATI card to check that out. I build machines all the time - I've done over a hundred, and have about 20 hanging around, most of which I donate, after tinkering with them, to area schools, so it's not as if I can't nail a box together myself. But the hassle factor is no contest with an out of the box Tivo experience. I'm writing this on an eMachines Media PC, T3096. It works OK, but was much more expensive and is lower in image quality than Tivo.

My take is that if you want to Tivo things, get a Tivo. If you want to futz with things for the fun of it, futz away - but it will cost lots more, be less capable, noisier, less integrated, and more Windows-glitchy than the Tivos. And if you are trying to roll your own to save money, you're insane, even if you value your time at minimum wage.

But I still build boxes for the fun of it - I'm just not confused about why I do it. It's a hobby and a learning experience. An expensive one, to boot.

And though I'm tempted to hack one of the Tivos and expand the capacity, I'm not entirely sure I want to take one off-line to do so. Plus I have enough hassle finding the time to watch what will fit on the 40 GB drive the DirecTV boxes come with.

And yes, it's $20/month for the subscriptions. Big deal. I spill that much wine in a month.

Posted by: gsteele531@...   Posted on: 11/12/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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