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help me decide on 2nd TiVo
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Posted by: murgatroyd

A friend of mine has just taken advantage of the upgrade to S2 offer and now his Philips 30 hour TiVo needs a good home. Should I adopt it?

What version of the software might it have shipped with? Also, it may have one of the video bugs since when we first talked about it, he mentioned it had problems, but I can't remember now if it was the bug where you can't tune in one of the channels or what the problem was.

Pros: it's a nice price, and I'd have a 2nd TiVo before I went out of town in March, instead of waiting until my birthday. I could set up the 2nd TiVo for Figure Skating and leave my other programming alone on my Sony. It wouldn't cost much to put it on monthly for a few months. I'd be getting it from somebody I know and I already know about the problems with it upfront. We could agree to meet somewhere in the middle so it wouldn't have to be shipped anywhere.

Cons: It's old (he's had it longer than I've had mine). It's small. It may have problems. And it would mean I wouldn't get a Series 2 for my birthday because I'd already have a 2nd TiVo.

Maybe I could ask him to let me borrow it until April. ;)

Jan

Posted by: phone1

I think all Philips shipped with 1.3, per Dave's thread about it. You could use it manually if you want to. I don't know what they're asking, but for $100-125 I'd go for it.

I don't know about any unresolved channel reception issues for these, I thought the only problem was for certain earlier Series 2's on Ch. 27.

Posted by: JPriller

Pro: most old Series 1s are easy to add a second drive to, except some models of the HDR312 which shipped with two drives (but it can still be done). The new TiVo-brand Series 2 units really have too wimpy a power supply for two drives (though solutions are coming), don't know about the Sony Series 2s.

Con: it probably won't get new software updates, like grouping and whatever other improvements TiVo may be working on.

Posted by: murgatroyd

quote:
Originally posted by phone1
I think all Philips shipped with 1.3, per Dave's thread about it. You could use it manually if you want to. I don't know what they're asking, but for $100-125 I'd go for it.

I don't know about any unresolved channel reception issues for these, I thought the only problem was for certain earlier Series 2's on Ch. 27.

Yeah, he wants $125.

I need to talk to him again about the video problems, though.

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

Edited to add: thanks to phone1 for the nudge to Dave's thread -- I had seen it before but forgotten it was there, thus didn't think to search for it.

Jan

Posted by: murgatroyd

quote:
Originally posted by phone1
I don't know about any unresolved channel reception issues for these, I thought the only problem was for certain earlier Series 2's on Ch. 27.

Turns out my friend has antenna only and was having trouble with signal strength. He'd come home from vacation and find his TiVo on the Blue Screen, so all the stuff he wanted to record while he was gone wouldn't be there. He says it never happened while they were at home, only when it was unattended while they were out of town. TiVo customer service tried to help but they were never able to figure out what the problem was.

It'll be interesting to see if it likes cable as a video source better....

Jan

Posted by: biker

quote:
Originally posted by murgatroyd
Turns out my friend has antenna only and was having trouble with signal strength. He'd come home from vacation and find his TiVo on the Blue Screen, so all the stuff he wanted to record while he was gone wouldn't be there. He says it never happened while they were at home, only when it was unattended while they were out of town. TiVo customer service tried to help but they were never able to figure out what the problem was.

It'll be interesting to see if it likes cable as a video source better....

Jan

My getting low signal strength your tivo will go to a blue screen. By changing to a better signal source it should stop going to a blue screen.