Author: Michael

The new DT TiVos now feature a black remote and a black lid, and the front bezel surround is a steel gray. The gray matches the standard gray of many new stereo components. The evolution of the colors of these has an interesting parallel to the progression of color changes to Apple laptops. Both companies insisted on dark grays for years, while customers ached for either light gray or jet black. Apple finally went light gray. TiVo went mostly jet black, with a highlight of light gray. It looks great.

The DT units ship with 7.2.5 software, which must have been developed along with 7.2.1 for single-tuner units. The most obvious feature that this unit doesn’t have that 7.2.2 for single-tuner units has is the “undelete” feature. For us, the most obvious is that it won’t accept drop-in “add” drives, just as 7.2.1 didn’t. We expect an update to come soon to add “undelete”; we hope that update will also add back the ability to add drop-in kits.

You’ve all probably seen that the new Series 2 TiVo DT has been announced and is available for sale on TiVo’s site (as part of a bundle with a service agreement, and, so far, only via a special email link sent to current TiVo users). We expect to have the boxes here at WeaKnees soon, although we don’t have a firm date yet.

We’ve been getting flooded with questions about the new units. First, a brief description of the new units and what they can and can’t do, then some info about our plans for them.

The new units can record two channels at once – that’s the big change. There are some limitations in how this works, basically due to the fact that most people who’d want to do this have cable TV. So that’s the most important point about these boxes: one of the two sources for dual-tuner recording must be analog cable. You can’t record two satellite channels, or two premium cable channels that have be to descrambled or unecrypted with a cable box (digital or analog). If you don’t have a cable box, both channels being recorded can be analog cable channels, but in any event, at least one must be. And an interesting note here is that antennas are not supported here – you must get the transmission through a cable (in most locations, for a nominal fee of about $10/month your local cable company will provide ‘lifeline’ cable service of the broadcast channels through the coax cable, and this works fine).

Really, the only other change from previous units is that these have an on-board ethernet jack. So if you’re connecting your unit to a wired home network, you don’t need a USB-ethernet adapter anymore. If you want to go wireless, you still need a USB 802.11 adapter (b or g – make sure it’s compatible).

These units will be available in two configurations from TiVo: 80 hour and 180 hour. Initially, the 80 hour unit will be the only one available, at a price (without service) of $249. Lifetime won’t be an available option.

As far as upgrading these units, we don’t have final information yet, but we’ll post here as soon as we do.

OK – we’re getting down to the wire here. If you still want lifetime service, you MUST get two things done before tomorrow night:

-order a standalone TiVo or a DVD TiVo

-watch your email. We’ll email you your TiVo Serial Number and the other information you’ll need to purchase your lifetime service before the cut-off

Both must be done by 7 PM Pacific time on April 15, 2006. So make sure to do the first part enough in advance that we can email you your information for the second part.