As more and more DirecTV TiVos age, we’re seeing many, many more satellite tuner failures. What was once a rare repair job for us has become much more standard, and that being the case, we have a lot more experience with this type of repair job, and we’re able to fix them much more effectively. 

So we’ve reduced the price of these repairs, and now they are a very compelling alternative to getting a replacement unit. Repairs start at just $129. See the full information on our DirecTV TiVo Satellite Tuner Repair page.

We’ve just begun selling 1 Terabyte hard drives, fully prepared and ready to install in all Series2 TiVos. This includes the DirecTV units, and the TiVos with integrated DVD players and burners. We’re using the AV line of Western Digital Green Power drives for these kits, so there’s even a power-use reduction over older drives!

Here’s a screenshot of a 1 Terabyte drive installed in a Pioneer 810H. This is a combo DVD-TiVo unit, and since it has an internal DVD burner, it only has space for one hard drive. So the 1 Terabyte kits give these units a new maximum capacity of 1360 hours. This information also applies to the combo units from Humax and Toshiba.

For standalone Series2 TiVo units (from TiVo, Humax, AT&T, and Sony), a single 1 Terabyte drive maxes out at 1270 hours of space at Basic Quality. See the screenshot for capacities at other recording qualities.

Finally, for all of the Series2 DirecTV TiVos (brands include Hughes, Philips, Samsung, RCA, and DirecTV), these units get up to 973 hours of all-digital recording space.

These kits are ready to go and begin shipping today!

It’s finally happening, Switched Digital Video is live - at least, a bit.

A user in New Jersey with Comcast cable service received a letter from Comcast. He followed up, got an SDV tuning adapter, and he’s using it. Many of the details still aren’t clear, but what is clear is that the TiVo supports the adapter, and the cable company supports TiVos using the adapter.

The customer, jtmal0723, started a thread at TiVoCommunity with details. He’s also posted a picture of his Cisco SDV adapter.

We’re watching this closely, and we’re very happy to see that this hurdle has been overcome technically. 

TiVo has added a large amount of information and new screenshots to their SDV page.

Thanks to TiVoBlog for the original post!

EDIT: Regarding this specific hardware, Cisco has a product information sheet here. And this is a picture of the back of the unit. The cable from the wall passes through, and the USB connection attaches to the TiVo.

Well, it looks like our customers aren’t alone. We’ve had several customers call with HR2X problems, that were solved by a simple restart. And it looks like this affects a pretty large group of people - at least, those who care to go online to report it.

The problem, as reported, is that the unit seems to be off, and is unresponsive to the remote. Pulling the plug and rebooting the unit seems to solve the problem

More at Engadget.

WeaKnees was invited to be on Sound and Vision Radio to discuss the world of DVRs. Hosted by Mike Etchart every Saturday from the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, the show is part of the magazine of the magazine of the same name.

Michael and Jeff discussing TiVo Upgrading on the radio

This was our first time on a radio show. We’ve done some TV in the past, and we’ve certainly been covered a bunch in the print media.

If you’d like to hear the show and missed it this morning on RadioAmerica you’ll be able to get in soon on iTunes as a podcast. Watch this iTunes page for the October 4, 2008 episode!