TiVo has announced the beta release of a website aimed specifically toward smart phones including the iPhone. In fact, the layout has been formatted perfectly for an iPhone. This is something I’ve been hoping for (see my TiVo mobile post back in September) for quite some time.
I haven’t had a ton of time to try the site out, but the basic functionality I like on the website is there. I can program my TiVo from afar, and fast. In fact, it’s faster, easier, and more direct than the regular website. So, for now, I’ll be using my phone to catch shows that I forgot to set when I was home.
One thing TiVo: how about a nice icon for my iPhone home screen? I can even think of a logo you can use . . .
Here’s the way the current button comes up:
It’s pretty bland. But, hey, if the functionality is there, I’ll use it.
If you’ve ever had a hard drive fail – in your computer or in your DVR – you’ve experienced tremendous frustration, if not disaster. Your data is gone, and usually recovery isn’t feasible.
Fortunately, drives do not fail often, and the hard drives we use are specialized and made for DVRs, reducing the likelihood of failure. However, when 50 episodes of Blues Clues or Sesame Street go down the drain, or if the entire season of Lost is, um, lost, there can be serious family ramifications.
We’re happy to tell you that you can now sleep well at night–we’ve got your back, er, backup.
WeaKnees is now shipping backup systems for DVRs. Upgrade your current DVR to a storage backup unit, or buy a complete new DVR, already set up with backup.
Here’s how the backup system works: we put all of the storage outside the DVR into a special external case that holds two drives. Each drive holds an identical copy of your data. If one drive fails, the other one takes over, seamlessly. You will not notice a thing on your DVR. It will function exactly as it does now and was intended to function. However, if either drive fails, a light on the front will flash alerting you to the failure. You will have plenty of opportunity to then pull the failed drive out and replace it with another…and the unit will automatically copy all of your data from the good drive to the new drive. (For the technically-inclined, this is a standard RAID1 architecture, applied to DVRs. With a backup system in place, your DVR will rely solely on the external drive system and will no longer use the internal drive.)
WeaKnees Backup System External Storage Unit
Our customers have been asking us for years for better ways to protect their data, and we’ve come up with several products to meet those needs, including the TwinBreeze brackets with extra cooling, the PowerTrip startup delay, and our pioneering use of DVR-specific hard drives in upgrade kits. These backup systems are the latest tools in our arsenal in our attempt to keep your TV experience error – and interruption – free.
If you’re looking for a complete TiVo or DirecTV DVR with a backup system, use one of these links, and find the backup option on each page:
If you already have a DVR and want to get a backup system up and running without losing anything you have, contact us for help. We can copy everything from your current DVR onto the backup.
We’re leveraging years of computer RAID technology here and adding our years of DVR experience to create the most stable DVR ever!
As always, if you have any questions, just contact us!
If you’ve been watching the evolution of hard drives over the years, you’ve probably noticed the change in interface from IDE to SATA. SATA (or Serial ATA, or Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) is a newer front-end for drives that includes lots of improvements in speed, design, and features.
SATA to IDE Converter
But if you’re a TiVo user, what you need to know is: Series2 TiVos use IDE drives, and production of IDE drives is slowly grinding to a halt. So, at WeaKnees, to make sure we can provide an uninterrupted stream of TiVo Upgrade Kits and upgraded TiVos, we’ve been pounding on a whole pile of adapters with different configurations and chipsets, and we’ve sourced the perfect adapter.
It’s all-in-one, with no detachable parts, except the jumper (to toggle from master to slave). It’s fairly small (although not quite small enough to fit in the TCD130040 and the TCD140060 units). And it’s totally compatible with TiVos.
So if you order a one Terabyte TiVo Upgrade Kit from us for a Series2 unit, you’ll be getting one of these adapters in your order, since Terabyte drive are only available with SATA interfaces. And, as time goes by, more of the smaller capacities will start to ship in SATA format, with these adapters.
We’ve added another replacement TiVo remote to our array of remotes. This is one we haven’t had before – it’s the replacement for the Toshiba TiVo with a DVD player (but not for the Toshiba TiVos with DVD burners – but we have those too).
This was one of the few TiVos that wasn’t compatible with the traditional TiVo Peanut remote – the others were the Sony TiVo units.
This remote has been very hard for us to source, but we finally got a decent enough supply to keep them in stock and to put them up on the site.
I know, I know, it sounds like we just re-published a story from years ago. But the Humax DRT800 DVD TiVo is back, and we’ve got a bunch of them, refurbished.
Humax DRT800
So if you’re looking for the all-in-one DVD/TiVo combo, and you want FireWire so that you can import videos from your camcorder, this is the unit. It plays CDs, DVDs (both commercial, and burned), and it burns DVDs. It’s a great way to backup your family videos, and it’s great for people who want to archive TV shows and be able to burn DVDs to send to friends and family.
This unit can also do all of the networking that other Series2 TiVos can do, and it’ll work with converter boxes if you’re using an antenna and concerned about the February 2009 digital changeover.
