Author: Michael

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Product Information TiVo News Troubleshooting Help WeaKnees News

SDV Tuning Adapters for Time Warner – Pre-order

If you’ve got an HD TiVo and you want to get all of the channels from your cable company, you’ll likely want a Switched Digital Video (SDV) Tuning Adapter. These items are just rolling out in from cable companies around the country.

Briefly, the idea is that this enables the TiVo to tell the cable company which video stream to send down to your unit. So more options are available, since not every stream has to be sent at once. The unit plugs into your TiVo’s USB port and then you plug the cable line into it, and the output from it goes to the TiVo. See more info on our earlier blog post about SDV and TiVos.

Now Time Warner seems to have a way to pre-order the unit for any eligible customer. See this page where you can enter you zip code and confirm eligibility, then sign up!

As far as we know, the adapters will be free for eligible customers.

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DirecTV Product Information Site Change WeaKnees News

Lower Prices on DirecTV TiVo Satellite Tuner Repair

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.

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Product Information Site Change WeaKnees News

New TiVo Upgrade Kits – 1 Terabyte Drives for Most TiVos

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!

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Product Information TiVo News

SDV (Switched Digital Video) Debuting on TiVos in New Jersey

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.

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Customer Contacts DirecTV

DirecTV HD DVRs Requiring Restarts Today?

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.