Seagate recently confirmed that it intends to discontinue production of IDE/PATA hard drives. If this were absolutely true, it would be BIG news for TiVo owners, the vast majority of whom have PATA drives in their DVRs. These PATA drives, as they age, are failing more and more.

As many of our customers know, TiVo owners with a failed hard drive can resurrect their DVR with a new, reliable DVR hard drivre. We have found that Seagate’s DB35 line of hard drives–which are specifically tailored for use in DVRs–are well-suited replacements. That is why it would be BIG news if these drives disappeared…and why it is big news that Seagate is letting them live, at least for now.

Seagate fully recognizes that an existing DVR, unlike a PC, cannot easily convert from a PATA to SATA hard drive. As a result, Seagate informs us that it is committed to its DB35 line of drives (PATA) at least until the end of 2008, and possibly beyond that time. We also fully expect that legacy DVRs will continue to demand PATA drives, so drive manufacturers who produce reliable drives for the DVR market will have orders to justify the continued production.

It is indeed very interesting to learn that PATA drives in PCs may start disappearing…but not so, at least for now, for the DVR aftermarket.

After a bit of a delay, we’re happy to announce that our shipment of TiVo HD boxes has arrived and we’re now shipping all units–stock and upgraded capacities.

Our upgraded units are the largest capacity boxes available anywhere, with 144 hours of HD in our 1TB units.

As always, email us with any questions.

We are happy to announce that we have started shipping upgrade kits for the TiVo HD DVR. We expect to have upgraded TiVo units shipping shortly. We will be getting a large shipment of TiVo HD units—plenty to cover our existing orders. For pricing and additional information, please see here.

For the curious, here is a screenshot from a TiVo HD DVR with a 1TB hard drive inside: