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Tivo Quadcard Promises Thousand-Hour PVR 286

Posted by CmdrTaco from the because-1200-hours-seems-much-better dept.
edrock200 writes "The folks over at 9thtee are developing a quad card for Tivo series 1 and Tivo/DirecTV combo units...it will allow you to add 4 hard drives to your Tivo and also break the 133gb limit for each drive....this will effectively give you a 1200-hour unit with 4 320GB drives. Theres also a fairly detailed thread of the development process over at the AVS forums." Gonna need the space since scifi has decided to air 4 episodes of SG1 a day!
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Tivo Quadcard Promises Thousand-Hour PVR More

Tivo Quadcard Promises Thousand-Hour PVR

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  • MPAA???? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mwjlewis ( 602559 )
    What does the MPAA have to say about this?
    • Who cares what they think. Since when have we cared? They just haven't learned from history that technology is rarely held back back anybody when the consumers want it. Besides, they should spend more time on coming up with better plots for movies.

    • Let's see...this device allows you to watch over 1,000 hours of television programming without viewing the commercials? If Dante Alighieri were president of MPAA, the Tivo people would roam a ring of hell inbetween Mohammed Atta and the deMedici family. Valenti, on the other hand, will probably make some comparison to the Boston Strangler instead.

  • Brain Bandwidth (Score:4, Funny)

    by drooling-dog ( 189103 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @01:34PM (#4290430)
    Brain/eye bandwidth is now the real problem. Anyone working on that?
    • TiVo just needs to add optional sound output to the fast-forward features. I bet you could watch a show at the first FF level. Hell, that's how I watch Showtime soft-core porn right now...

    • Yeah, two cans of RedBull and a double-espresso.

      I find that if I ingest large quantities of caffeine -- more than 250 mg at one sitting -- that everything seems faster. That'd be me recommendation for increased brain-bandwidth. Or at least the perception of increased bandwidth.

      Large quantities of caffeine make me feel like I've got a speed-up control on my forehead and I can tweak it anytime I want. Up, down. Up, down. Up, up, up, down. Up, down.

      I also find that huge quanities increase my ability to concentrate on a single thing -- an episode of the Sopranos from my Tivo, for example -- and I swear that it *seems* faster when I'm cranked. Everybody talks faster, cars move faster, Tony beats his bartender over the head with an ice-bucket in hyperspeed. The result is that the episode makes a lot more sense yet seems to go by in light speed.

      I'm cranked now, for example. The medicinal Red Bull is residing in my digestive system, marching out all its evil little enzymes into my 'System'.

      I feel like Dr. Mullion Blasto.

      I feel like I could watch a shitload of TIVO in a split-second.

      Too much stimulation in the System, I guess.

      • Hmm... just conjecture, but the effect you are experiencing should be just the opposite effect. Your brain is slowing down so everything at normal speed seems to move faster. If your brain was speeding up, it should seem like things were going slower... like Neo dodging bullets in the Matrix.

        • Re:Brain Bandwidth (Score:4, Funny)

          by KelsoLundeen ( 454249 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @03:11PM (#4291482)
          OMG.

          That's so fucking true.

          It's like if you speed up a movie camera, you essentially shoot slow-mo, right? (If it's played back at normal speed?)

          Wow.

          That changes everything. My poor fucking brain. I gotta take another Red Bull and think this over.
    • This reminds me of an analysis I read of those '1000 Hours Free' deals that AOL hands out like hotcakes. The ones with fine-print detailing that these hours have to be used within 45 days.

      Simple math leads to the discovery that one would have to be on AOL for 22 hours, 13 minutes a day to take full advantage of the offer.

      Quit work, have a month's food stocked at the computer (or arrange for delivery), use the remaining 1 hour 47 minutes per day for dealing with disconnects, sleep, and other necessities....

      It's not temporally impossible to fully use this offer, but it would be quite a challenge.

  • Slackers (Score:5, Funny)

    by MxTxL ( 307166 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @01:35PM (#4290439)
    If you have banked 1200 hours of TV programming that you still need to watch, you've obviously been slacking off on your TV watching responsibilities. Come on, people, get with the program... you act like all you have to do all day is work or something.

  • HDTV? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Eightlines ( 536572 ) <brent@eightlines.com> on Thursday September 19, 2002 @01:35PM (#4290443) Homepage
    Quick question, I don't own a Tivo or HDTV but if you were to record an HDTV broadcast would it not require more HD space? Would this not better quality be a better use than more recording time?

    • Re:HDTV? (Score:2, Informative)

      by MrR0p3r ( 460183 )
      Maybe? Unfortunately I'm not sure how the Tivo writes the video data to an HD, but I do know how other systems do it, and if you're talking about a difference in SD (standard digital) and HD (assuming 1080i resolution), then you'll need twice as much space to playback the video in realtime. Unless of course the Tivo compresses the video the same way anyway regardless of resolution.
    • I'm not 100% sure, but I seem to recall from my TiVo-Research days that there is no TiVo that will record HDTV.

      Then again that might just be in the DirecTV world.

    • Tivo's don't do HDTV, yet. (Score:5, Informative)

      by asdfasdfasdfasdf ( 211581 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @02:01PM (#4290772)
      Tivo's only do standard resolution television. Therefore, you would need a HDTV box that has a s-video out to record, and it would be recorded at standard tivo resolution (480x480) on a stand-alone (non direcTV) Tivo.

      Dish network is working on an HDTV PVR, the 921 [dbstalk.com], and Sony is rumored to be working on an HDTV unit as well, but no word whether tivo technology will be used on that.

      You should check out this forum [tivocommunity.com] For the latest on tivo technology. A few tivo employees are active contributers-- and the news always hits this place first.
    • Quick question, I don't own a Tivo or HDTV but if you were to record an HDTV broadcast would it not require more HD space? Would this not better quality be a better use than more recording time?

      By the time HDTV is in wide use, we'll probably have terabyte drives on our desktops. :-)

      But in reality, I would rather have the quantity instead of the quality. I mean, this is TV after all. Is there anything worth watching in high-definition? My friend has his TiVO networked throughout his house, and he has a 61" Mitsubishi HDTV set, and it is awesome. He gets some HDTV broadcasts, and he said you can really tell the difference. But in my mind, it isn't worth it. TV just isn't that interesting to me most of the time. What advantage do I get watching Iron Chef in high def? Now Blue Planet on the Discovery Channel would be incredible. But at this point, to choose between capacity or quality, I would go with capacity. In general, stations broadcast more crap instead of good programs. So if you are really that into TV you probably have many different shows you want to watch.

      But then again, I don't even have a TiVO. And watching the Simpsons on DVD is weird, it is too crisp and clean. The poor broadcast quality of Fox adds some charm to it. :-)

      • And watching the Simpsons on DVD is weird, it is too crisp and clean. The poor broadcast quality of Fox adds some charm to it. :-)

        Try reducing the sharpness on your television. Most people have it set way too high, and most broadcasting is more pleasing to the eye a little bit softer.

    • Tivo doesn't support HDTV just yet.

      That said, the difference would be noticable between HD and standard broadcast, and you might want to preserve that at higher quality settings (Tivo has four: Low, Medium, High, and Best) so that you see something as close to the original as possible.

      You won't use any extra space for recording an HD feed (in fact, you may take up less, since you'd be forced into letterboxing it, and VBR recording would probably make that more efficient) but you'll probably use the higher settings at about 2GB/hour just because it would look better.

      Personally, given that much free space, I'd record everything on high or best quality just because I'd hardly worry about running out of space. However, the Tivo is slow when it comes to dealing with long lists of shows, so I'd also use higher quality settings just because I'd be forced by space limitations to keep the number of shows down.
    • You can get ATSC HDTV PCI card for your PC (MyHD [digitalconnection.com], AccessDTV [accessdtv.com], etc). These cards reportedly need 10 gig per hour of recording, which is a bit more than a Tivo at Best quality will use (like 2.5 times). IMHO, HDTV would be a better use of that space.

      And while there are currently no HDTV Tivo's available, Tivo has shown a prototype one. When will it be available? Probably as soon as it becomes worthwhile ($$$) for Tivo to sell them. Tivo/Replay/etc. are having a hard enough time selling boxes that handle a format that at least 95% of the population of the US can handle!
      • When will it be available? Probably as soon as it becomes worthwhile ($$$) for Tivo to sell them.

        Given that it isn't worth it for them to sell regular TiVo's, it could take awhile! They are still losing money.

  • Hours are great, but.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Art Popp ( 29075 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @01:36PM (#4290459)
    My Tivo has 60some hours of recording time. And it's more than enough. The reality of TV watching is that there is very little worth seeing more than twice. I don't know that I've ever had anything auto-deleted that I wanted to watch, and if I did, I'd blame myself for not getting around to it in the first 30 days. If you're shopping Tivos, upgrade, but don't go nuts, it's just not necessary...
    • -Record everything in best quality. Sure you have 60 hours, but that's at the lowest quality. You reallt only have 15-20 at highest quality.

      -Record entire seasons. I would have loved to record the 24 straight hours of "24" at highest quality, and kept them around for when friends come over/etc!

      -Go wish-list crazy. I love cops, and it's always showing on 243 channels at once. I could just set it to go cop-crazy, and not worry about it filling up my tivo and pushing other stuff off.
      • Go wish-list crazy

        You'll so regret this.

        My wife and I both have TiVo's, and I've upgraded both of them with a second 80G drive, giving us something like 130 hours at lowest quality.

        We both have around 18 season passes or wishlists, and whenever we shuffle them around in priority it can take up to 5 minutes for the TiVo to sort things out.

        These are both original v1 TiVo's with the speedy 40 MHz PPC CPU, so a v2 box with a 350 MHz MIPS CPU might be better off.

    • Re:Hours are great, but.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by DonkeyJimmy ( 599788 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @01:49PM (#4290608)
      My Tivo has 60some hours of recording time. And it's more than enough.

      First of all, 1200 hrs = about 700 hrs of high quality (your 60hr tivo has closer to 35hrs of high quality record time).

      Secondly, 1200 hours of tivo action would give you greater flexability with how you use your tivo. You wouldn't need to delete good shows just because you had already seen them. You could keep a collection of HBO movies instead of buying the DVDs. The entire season of Sopranos, whatever. Tivo is smart, if you already have a show, it won't re-record it (assuming the guide has the epiosde information).

      Tivo doesn't have a way of cropping a video such that only a desired scene is kept (one of my suggestions for upgrade), so you need to, for example, save the whole Conan just for the 10 second bit on The guy who's protected from three inch bees. I love that bit, but my 30 hr can't afford an hour for every scene I want to keep around to show my friends when they visit, neither could my 60, or even 120 if I had them. I'd still have the world cup on my tivo if I could, if just to illustrate what I was talking about to my friends when I complain about Kahn crushing my country =(.

      With 1200 hrs, maybe tivo will release some software that allows us to put some of our programs into archives, or have some kind of sorting tools. All they have now is a filter for the now-showing guide.
      • kudos for referencing the 3-inch bee guy. (I figure he comes from the same part of the world as the guy with the bullet-proof legs :) )

        For varying reasons I stopped watching Conan (after being an avid viewer) about a year ago - would it be worth my time to start watching again?
    • The reality of TV watching is that there is very little worth seeing more than twice.
      True, but then again I am planning to buy all of the DVD sets of the Star Trek: The Next Generation coming out this year... and the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine DVD sets coming out next year. If someone would rather get these off of broadcast/cable TV for Random Access viewing, it would certainly be a cheaper way to go!
    • To the people replying to this guy about quality.. did you ever think he has a DirecTiVo? They have no quality settings..

  • 50 Days (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Geeyzus ( 99967 ) <mark_madej@@@yahoo...com> on Thursday September 19, 2002 @01:38PM (#4290485)
    That's 50 days of straight programming. 50 days, 24 hours a day.

    It's cool, but come on, it's unnecessary. If you are 1200 hours behind in programming, you are just not going to catch up, period.

    I suppose this would be cool though if you had 4 smaller hard drives around that you weren't doing anything with, to increase the capacity more without having to buy another hard drive, or swap out one that you were already using for the Tivo.

    Mark
    • Unless you buy the latest processor simply to burn a hole in your enormous wallet,

      the true value of this will be the average person who has a bunch of extra hd's and would like a little more room on their tivo.

      Also on the swapping angle: I wonder if you could store the "Kids in the Hall" marathon, or "Law and Order" marathon on a harddrive, remove it and put it on ice for a while, then the next time you have a long weekend and nothings on plug that bad-bwoy in and watch,watch, watch, go pee, watch, watch, watch some more, etc.

    • Re:50 Days (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Fugly ( 118668 )
      That's 50 days of straight programming. 50 days, 24 hours a day.

      It's cool, but come on, it's unnecessary. If you are 1200 hours behind in programming, you are just not going to catch up, period.

      Actually, there are certain shows that I save to videotape for later referece. Sometimes I get a lot of shows that I intend to dump to VHS backed up on my drive and it takes a couple of weekends to dump them. If I had 1200 hours of programming, the TiVo itself could become my video library. There are of course some issues regarding backing up the data and such but still, I'd love to have my entire library of VHS tapes sitting on one harddrive instead.

      Also, when you live in a household with more than one person, you'd be suprised how much space you can eat up. I have 80 hours of capacity on my TiVo and it very rarely actually has space to record TiVo suggestions.

      What I really need to do is get an ethernet card installed and figure out how to share the video files but I say bring it on, I'll take all the space I can get.
      • Also, there's the whole quality issue too. I record 90% of the shows I record at the lowest quality, I'd be able to record everything at high quality if I had that sort of space.

  • Tivo vs ReplayTV? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by joeytsai ( 49613 )
    I'm thinking of buying a PVR soon, but I'm still undecided as to which. ReplayTV seems to have more features than Tivo (ethernet, commercial skip), but I'm interested in hearing from the Slashdot folk which they prefer. Thanks for your answers!

    • Re:Tivo vs ReplayTV? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jethro ( 14165 )
      (A) TiVo has commercial-skip, but it's disabled by default. It's not really a hack since it's built-in. You hit Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select on your remote, and one of the buttons is transformed into 30-second skip. Works wonderfully.

      (B) You can fit an ethernet card in TiVo. With software version 3 and a Series 2 TiVo it's not even a hack - builtin USB port and builtin ethernet support means you can plug a USB Ethernet adapter into your TiVo.

      Either way, TiVo has a lot more, uh, aftermarket products available. You _can_ do the whole adding-harddrives thing to ReplayTV too, but it's a lot more accessible with TiVo.

      Also, you've got the TiVo+DirecTV combination, which is what put it over the top for me. Capture the MPEG stream rather than recompress, and dual tuners.
      • TiVo+DirecTV combination, which is what put it over the top for me

        Unfortunately you can't get a lifetime subscription for a DirecTiVo, which means paying whatever the current monthly fee is forever (and that fee can go up).

        We have two TiVo's, both with lifetime subs. One has already paid for itself, the other will do so within a few months.

        I may finally be able to get DirecTV, since I think that the tree that was blocking my view of the satellite fell on my house [tripod.com] last weekend (hint - this is not a good way to get DirecTV), but I'm not real interested in DirecTiVo's because of the ongoing cost.
        • DirecTV recently lowered the price of their TiVo service to $4.95/month, and it's free if you have their Platinum package. Keep in mind that the Series 1 DirecTiVo's are difficult to come by, especially if you're already a DirecTV subscriber, but the Series 2 are due out in October. I used a standalone TiVo for a year with DirecTV, but switched to the DirecTiVo box once the dual-tuners were enabled. If you thought a TiVo changed the way you watch TV, the DirecTiVo takes it to another level. This is the first fall that we haven't become upset over the networks' habits of scheduling all of the "good shows" at the same time. With 2 dual-tuner DirecTiVo's, we don't have any more conflicts!
        • Oh man, sorry to hear about your house.

          When I got my DirecTV system, the installer came over and said that there was no way it'll work, because of the trees. He didn't even bother checking. I have the dish up now (self-install... well... I got my boss to come over and install it for me). It's pointing RIGHT INTO a huge maple, and I get excellent signal.

          Which is all a moot point for you right now, really...

          Anyway. Are you sure you can't do a lifetime subscription with DirecTiVo? I recall being offered that when I signed up.

          Also, while it's true proces can go up, they've recently gone way down - the TiVo part of DirecTiVo is now like $5/month.
    • A lot of people are doing a lot of fun things with the TiVo. Adding ethernet is dirt simple as you simply have to plug in a card. You can also enable 30 second skip on the TiVo if you enter the right codes or run the right software.

      I have had a DirecTivo for about a year and unfortunately I lost my modem in a lightning storm. It would not even boot up but just hung. I ripped the drive out, commented out the modem test scripts, installed and network card, and was back in business. All in all it has worked out well for me.

      -sirket

    • Re:Tivo vs ReplayTV? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ringrose ( 549539 )
      Personally, I prefer ReplayTV.

      When our remote died, they sent us a replacement for free - even though we were off warranty.

      I'm more confident of ReplayTV's privacy policies than TiVo's.

      Don't forget the cost of the service (realistically, you'll buy the lifetime version) when you do cost comparisons. The boxes lose a lot of functionality without the TV guide service.

      If you really _do_ intend to hack the box, sure, get TiVo. But if you just want a box you can plug in and record things, I like Replay.

  • with only one tuner? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by diesel_jackass ( 534880 ) <travis...hardiman@@@gmail...com> on Thursday September 19, 2002 @01:42PM (#4290537) Homepage Journal
    1000+ hours is awesome, but what good is it if you want to record more than one channel at a time?

    Are there any tuner hacks to TiVo?

  • You're watching? (Score:4, Funny)

    by aufecht ( 163961 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @01:43PM (#4290552) Homepage Journal
    Taco wrote "Gonna need the space since scifi has decided to air 4 episodes of SG1 a day." I thought we were boycotting ScFi until they decided to bring back Farscape ;)

    • Re:You're watching? (Score:5, Funny)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @01:57PM (#4290720) Journal
      Just like they're boycotting the MPAA unless a Star Wars or Star Trek movie comes out.

      They're also boycotting the RIAA untless N'Sync releases a new CD.

      You see, the plan is to boycott only quality entertainment, and watch/listen to only crap.

      That way the industry execs get terribly skewed statistics on buying trends, and go bankrupt when they jointly produce "Star Wars vs. Star Trek II - Lance Bass's Big Adventure".

  • I think the point of this.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Frank of Earth ( 126705 ) <frank@fper3.14kins.com minus pi> on Thursday September 19, 2002 @01:44PM (#4290553) Homepage Journal
    .. not that you don't actually need to record and save that much TV/Movies on your Tivo, but rather it can be done and Tivo doesn't seem to be preventing it.

    What makes Tivo so popular to "hackers" is that Tivo does not seek legal action on every little hack that is developed. Of course, if one would create a hack that bypasses the subscription process; that's a different story, but they seem to be pretty open to hacks such as these.

    Too bad we can't say the same for xBox. I would really love it if I could also use my xBox as a MAME console.

    • Re:I think the point of this.. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by logicTrAp ( 2864 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @03:15PM (#4291512) Homepage
      Well, they don't sue you but they are taking steps to stop you. As far as I know, since this hack requires a new kernel it will not work on the new series 2 TiVos (ie the only ones you can buy new now) since they have "PROM lockdown" code preventing any changes from being made to the system; similarly you can't run TiVoWeb on the Series 2 either. It's possible that someone will break this in the future (it's been done for the DirecTiVos) but I wouldn't overstate the case about TiVo being "hacker friendly."

  • now.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by shren ( 134692 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @01:45PM (#4290565) Homepage Journal
    Now, if those 4 drives are a raid array, and I can keep my shows through a disk crash, then I'm impressed. Otherwise, nah.

  • Great, but (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rupert ( 28001 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @01:51PM (#4290646) Homepage Journal
    1) I don't see 320GB drives up on Pricewatch [pricewatch.com] yet. The biggest they list is 180GB, and those go for $348 (incl. shipping). So downgrade your Tivo to 700 hours and up the cost by $1400.

    I think the nice thing about this would be if you could arrange for a whole season of (say) Stargate to be on one physical disk (doesn't have to be huge). Then pull out the disk, stick it on a PC and archive it to DVD or whatever. However, I don't know that the Tivo's filesystem and apps allow for this. Anyone know?

    • Re:Great, but (Score:3, Informative)

      by OneFix ( 18661 )
      The Tivo's video file system is kept very hush-hush. Tivo doesn't want any more problems from the MPAA. You can find a few places that mention it, but those are generally "underground" forums. The general Tivo hacking community steer clear of this very topic because of the potential problems it could cause.
  • There has to be a catch. There is always one. I still like my VCR. I have a lot of tapes, and I will just buy more when I need them. As for Stargate SG-1, I will record the Stargate SG1 series, but as soon as I can will buy the the Series on DVD because it is out in a box set for the first two seasons. Currently, it's just series 1 [barnesandnoble.com] and 2 [barnesandnoble.com] so far. Better quality and more permanent.

  • 1500 _DAY_ TiVo (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    iSCSI + TurboNet 100Mb Tivo ethernet + iSCSI software initiator + 36TB iSCSI SAN target == 36000 hours or 1500 days.

    SAN box can present as many 120G devices as you want, thus missing the ATA limit.

    TiVo root FS allows you to add a number of devices to assimilate, so you just add all the iSCSI disk devices. I think there is 8K of device name space.

    The only problem I see is that the TiVo probably
    doesn't have the CPU horsepower to drive a software based iSCSI initiator fast enough to record...

    plus i haven't ported any of the iscsi initiators to PPC.

    one of these weekends....

    B
  • Step 1. Buy All In Wonder Radeon 7500 for $150 retail...

    Step 2. Record TV shows using point and click interface in VCD format...

    Step 3. Use software that came with CD-R drive to burn VCD's of your favorite movies and TV shows... (74 min per CD and playable in nearly any DVD player!

    This is a cheap and effective alternative to TIVO of any sort considering that you probably already have a CD-R drive, and the AIW card is relatively inexpensive... Also, you can store 1000 hours of programming for far less than a single 320 GB drive will cost *when* it becomes availiable. As an added bonus, the VCD's that you burn are very portable and can easily be taken to friends' houses as well as stored for years to come...

    • use ShowShifter pro to encode in DivX Pro/SVCD. VCD quality really bites. VHS is superior.

      BTW if it were just for PVR, AIW Radeon is overkill. My *vintage* AIW does the task of capturing live streams just fine.

      AIW 128 would be reasonable. USB versions get enough throughput to do the job well, too.
      • SVCD/Divx Pro is better quality, yes, but when played back on a television, there is very little noticible difference, and the formats you mentioned are not so easily playable on nearly any DVD player. AIW Radeon 7500 has hardware MPEG2 encoder and free TIVO-style programming guide, which are the only two reasons I chose this over an older AIW board...
    • Umm, no. All you've done is reinvent the VCR using VCD instead.

      And you'll need one big-ass cabinet to store 1200 disks.

      The difference between a TiVo and a PC with a TV tuner card is like the difference between a 1950's B&W console and a home theater.

    • Puhleeze! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tswinzig ( 210999 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @02:41PM (#4291198) Journal
      First of all, you're saying it's cheaper, but it's not. You're leaving out the cost of your computer, hard drives, etc. Now add $150 for the special video card. And to top it all off, what you're left with is nowhere near as easy to use or as convenient or as smart or as living-room-appearance-friendly as TiVo.

      Although it would be nice to have an easy way to pull and archive video off TiVo, it's not crucial, and if it was, I could use one of the TiVo net hacks to implement it.
    • Step 4: WindowsXP crashes for the 15th time that day right in the middle of Farscape.
      Step 5: go buy some dedicated hardware to solve this problem.

      or maybe this:

      Step 4: Run my MSVC compile during Buffy.
      Step 5: My old Underpowered P3 can't keep up with the MPEG-1 encoding and the compile at the same time.
      Step 6: Buy faster processor and new motherboard (no longer as cheap...)
    • I mean really, there's always someone who says:

      Get old (486/Pentium/PII), install capture card, xxx GB disk, xyz software, burner and its "as good as Tivo".

      Occasionally you can substitute in "install linux, xwindows, etc" in there someplace.

  • Neat, but kind of messy... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dmadole ( 528015 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @02:06PM (#4290827)

    From one of the linked pages:

    • Requires external power supply to power extra drives.
    • Additional cooling recommended.
    • Will operate in a DTivo but there is insufficent room to mount the additional harddrives.

    I know from my own Tivo that heat is definately a problem in these things with only two drives.

    What might fit the ticket a little better would be a firewire (or serial ATA ?) interface and external drives in a separate case, with separate power supply. Unfortunately, I calculate USB to be a bit too slow for simultaneous record/playback at high quality.

    Or, even better, how about SCSI with external drives? Well, maybe it's not better, given the price differential on SCSI drives. Hmmm.

  • Missing the point (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gorimek ( 61128 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @02:08PM (#4290848) Homepage
    I think we have 10 comments already on how you don't need this much to keep up with your tv watching. Which is of course true.

    But what makes this compelling to me is as a permanent storage medium. You can store entire seasons of many of your favorite shows. Every Seinfeld, Buffy, +20 other shows episode available within a few seconds, in perfect broadcast quality for ever.

    I'd pay for that!
    • No, I think that you are missing the point of the other posters. You need to remember that there is no TiVo for your life, so therefore you shouldn't be obsessing about whether you have "every Seinfeld, Buffy, +20 other shows episode available within a few seconds, in perfect broadcast quality for ever".

      eBay the TiVo. Go outside. It's an amazing world out there.

      • No, I think that you are missing the point of the other posters. You need to remember that there is no TiVo for your life, so therefore you shouldn't be obsessing about whether you have "every Seinfeld, Buffy, +20 other shows episode available within a few seconds, in perfect broadcast quality for ever".

        So, to extend your line of thinking, anyone who buys a Sopranos season 1 DVD set or a Simpsons season 1 DVD set, etc is inferior to your mad social skillz and needs to get a life, yo.

  • Replaytv 4000s and up can support dedicated video servers (with the help of programs like DVarchive [sourceforge.net]). You could put terrabytes of storage on the server, service both replaytv and pcs, and implement fault tolerance. Who wants a noisy, hot, electronic device in their living room?

  • Why this is cool: it enables a new mode of usage (Score:3, Interesting)

    by IvyMike ( 178408 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @02:12PM (#4290883)

    Don't think of it like your current Tivo, where you record shows to watch later in the week; instead, think of it as a video archive machine. I was just going through my old video tapes last night, and was amazed by the things I have on tape that I totally forgot about. Imagine that instead of having every episode of the Simpsons on tape somewhere, you have every episode archived and instantly available on your Tivo. And heck, you would probably put all of your home videos on it; now you can re-watch the birth of your son at the push of a button!

    Of course, this probably actually requires more space than 1200 hours (you would want redundancy, so RAID eats some of that, and you would want to record in a higher-quality mode, eating even more.) This is ridiculously expensive today, but I bet that in 5 years, the "Tivo video archive" will be common.

  • Whether or not this is necessary, or the right allocation of home disk storage, I find it oddly charming to think of a terabyte disk array as a home appliance.
  • ..you can capture nearly all of the SNL skits that weren't funny!

  • Why you need 1200 hours (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bluestar ( 17362 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @02:20PM (#4290966) Homepage
    Haven't we all been waiting for a way to archive all our movies the way we've archived our music? Just because TiVo records 1200 hours worth of programming doesn't mean you have to watch it all!

    Mine has 120 hours of capacity and I've always got some Hitchcock and Woody Allen movies along with the regulary Buffy, Simpsons and West Wing stuff.

    More capacity means I can keep stuff on the TiVo much longer and still use it like muggle TiVo owners do.

    And no, you CAN NOT make a PC do this with ANY capture card. TiVo's software rocks. It's like Mac OS X vs. DOS. It's got Coax, RCA and S-Video inputs. It's got Coax, RCA and S-Video outputs. It's virtually silent. On-screen programming guide. Two-button recording. Wish lists. And a whole bunch of other stuff you just can't appreciate until you have one.

  • In unrelated news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Lonath ( 249354 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @02:26PM (#4291044)
    Copyright Industry Association of America spokestrog Vilary Halenti today lamented "the emergence of a new and more deadly form of IPiracy that will soon raid the and pillage the IP repositories of this great nation. The IPirates have upgraded from their little rubber dinghies they used to IPirate Copyrighted Protected Digital Intelletctual Property and are now getting TiVo-class heavy freighters that they can use to IPirate even more than ever before. We are disappointed that the US hasn't gone after these terrorists with the same vigor that they've gone after the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We can only hope that Rep. Berman's legalized hacking for rich copyright holders bill will set the precedent necessary for giving us the broad powers we need to defeat the IPirates."
    • Oh, by the way. Seeing as how my google search for the word "IPirate" came up with nothing really relevant, you must refer to this as IPirate (tm) or IPirates (tm) or IPiracy (tm) from now on. *lick*

  • Speed probs (Score:2, Informative)

    by kirkb ( 158552 )
    The main reason that most people hack the original Tivos is to get more HD space so they can record more shows. The problem with this is that when you update the "Season Pass" (the list of shows to record), it gets slower as the list gets longer. A lot slower. Modifying a Seasons Pass with > 20 programs can take minutes. A friend of mine has to wait for 10 minutes every time he updates the list. A 1000GB Tivo would be completely unusable.
  • ..is an algorithm to compress all the grunts and "Whoa's" in DBZ so you can watch a weeks worth of episodes in 30 minutes.

  • But in the end (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MrChuck ( 14227 )
    it's still TV. And without TV, your life would not entirely suck.

    With only 2-3hrs/week of TV, yeah, you'd be fine.

    1200HRs of TV means you are look at the TV too much. Even over a year.

    • wow, thanks for telling everybody how to live there life.

      it's still the internet. And without the internet, your life would not entirely suck.
      With only 2-3hrs/week of the internet, yeah, you'd be fine.

      1200HRs of the internet means you are look at the internet too much. Even over a year.

      feel free to replace theninternet with Books, movies, walking, etc...
      so why is it too much?

  • Not to rain on their parade, I like saving shows as much as the next packgeek and it is nice to just let the TIVO record what it will and then delete what you aren't interested in.

    The problem is, when you get up to only 100+ gig of storage space on it, even with the memory modifications, the TIVO takes a while to bring the recording lists up (~1-2 minutes on my full 120 single drive unit). Having all that space isn't really going to do much if it takes 5-10 minutes everytime you want to look through your recording list. On the bright side, the guys at 9th tee know this already so I have high hopes for a solution when the drive expansion unit becomes available :)
  • With 1200 hours of Television programming, I could start MY OWN network.

    Star Trek, Farscape, South Park in the day...

    Hot Les Porn at night.

    $1 / month service charge, no commercials, anyone interested? Heh.

  • Not developed by 9thTee (Score:5, Informative)

    by stevel ( 64802 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @02:57PM (#4291366) Homepage
    "The folks over at 9thtee are developing..."

    NOT!

    The QuadCard, like the AirNet and TurboNet adapters also sold through 9thTee, were developed by a TiVo user named Nick Kelsey (known as "jafa" on the TiVo Community Forum.) 9thTee is the distributor - though I don't want to take anything away from them, they have been remarkably supportive of the TiVo community and they deserve kudos for taking the financial risks of selling these add-ons.

    It is truly amazing what Nick has been able to do with his electronics expertise.

  • Shows the weakness of TiVo's software (Score:5, Informative)

    by seligman ( 58880 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @03:45PM (#4291838) Homepage
    This is cute and all, but imo, it'll end up doing the same thing that the 2x120gb upgrades do to the TiVo: Just show how miserable the TiVo is at dealing with a big number of programs.

    It does work, but the results aren't something I'd like to deal with. One big list (at least you can change the sort order with the latest version of the software). No folders, no searching. Oh, and from what I hear, it can really slow down the TiVo. My un-hacked TiVo takes minutes to exit the season pass manager, and often stumbles for a few seconds pulling up the now playing list. I'd hate to think how long I'm staring at the "Please Wait" display if I had one of these uber-upgrades. Heck, it's bad enough on my unit: Which of the four South Parks is the one I haven't watched yet, and which three are the ones I'm saving for my SO to watch? No way to know from the list, and since it's a show on Comedy Central, there's no way to know without going into the program itself because guide data is sketchy.

    Until TiVo really speeds up there system (assuming they can, there's not a lot of horsepower in your average TiVo box), and adds some more advanced options to organize and maintain shows, I think I'll just stick with my ~35 hours. 100+ hours is a nice idea, but IMO, TiVo just doesn't scale that well yet.

  • Some thoughts about this (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BigJimSlade ( 139096 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @04:35PM (#4292384) Homepage
    Glad to see that this will sit on the existing IDE channel and not eat up the PCI slot (I just got my TivoNet installed last week!)

    Here's what I see as the problem with this much storage:
    1. 1st gen. Tivos are *reeeeally* slow. I know when I get a lot of programs on my 80gig Tivo that loading the "Now Showing" menu takes a long time. I can store about 100 hours. Multiply that wait time by 12... you see the problem.
    2. If speed of the interface is not an issue, what about sheer navigation issues? That I know of, the only way to page thru all your recorded programs is by *date*. So for you to effectively keep track of all your programs, you have to remember what date they were recorded on. Someone would really need to revamp the interface in order to allow usefull navigation of older programs (maybe saving programs in folders or something? Automatically putting older TV shows in a folder for that show, movies in a movie folder, etc.)

    If these issues can be resolved, I bet quite a few geeks would actually get some use out of 1200 hours of programs.

  • 1200 HOURS! (Score:3, Funny)

    by _ph1ux_ ( 216706 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @04:51PM (#4292518)
    Hmmm... Thats all well and fine... but a bit excessive I'd say. I dont currently own a tivo - many of my friends do - and although I think they are nice, I dont think that I miss all that much not having 1200 hours or any other number, worth of space for recording.

    however! please contact me when they have come out with a tivo that has an automated DVD burner in it - where I can schedule a show to be recorded - burned - deleted all while I am out at the beach!

  • What's with the Orinoco card in the photo? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @09:26PM (#4294299)
    Is the unit also modified with 802.11?

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