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TiVo Upgrade Economics
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Posted by: Percipient

If someone's already done this math then I missed it, sorry for the redundancy.

If you are planning to purchase a new TiVo for upgrade, then this information may be of interest to you. It assumes you can get a new 14-hour TiVo from somewhere for around $100 (after rebates), or a 30-hour TiVo from somewhere for around $250 (after rebates). It includes $18 for a Drive B bracket, and assumes a 60 Gbyte drive costs $188 delivered, an 80 Gbyte drive $244 delivered, and a 30 Gbyte replacement Drive A $96.

If you upgrade a 14-hour Tivo then the cost per hour for the total hour capacity that you end up with is:

Upgrade with 60 Gbyte drive ($306, 91 hours total): $3.36/hour
Upgrade with 80 Gbyte drive ($362, 116 hours total): $3.12/hour

But if you upgrade a 30-hour Tivo those costs are:

Upgrade with 60 Gbyte drive ($456, 108 hours total): $4.22/hour
Upgrade with 80 Gbyte drive ($512, 132 hours total): $3.88/hour

And if you take a 14-hour Tivo and borrow someone's un-upgraded 30 hour Drive A to make a copy to turn it into a 30-hour Tivo (I'm assuming you can turn a 14-hour into a 30-hour this way, but I haven't read that someone's done this) the costs are:

Upgrade with 60 Gbyte drive ($402, 108 hours total): $3.72/hour
Upgrade with 80 Gbyte drive ($458, 132 hours total): $3.47/hour

And if you buy a 60-hour TiVo for $599 (I think the MSRP is $699, but there should be some discounting) before they come down in price, the cost is $9.98/hour (WOW!!).

Conclusions

1. The cheapest way to the highest capacity is with a 14-hour TiVo, assuming you can get your hands on a 30 hour Drive A to copy, and assuming 14-hour TiVos can be transformed into 30-hour TiVos.

2. The 80 Gbyte drive is cheaper when measured on a per hour of total capacity basis.

Posted by: Percipient

I forgot to mention that the calculations do not include the cost of the backup of Drive A because there are too many alternatives. And for those of us who have already upgraded, say, a 14-hour TiVo with a Drive A backup, there won't be any need to create a second backup for the upgrade of a second TiVo, thereby eliminating that cost entirely. So I just didn't include it.

--Percy

Posted by: StanSimmons

Here is an old thread you might like:
http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/Forum6/HTML/000199.html

Posted by: Percipient

Another thought just struck me on a related topic. Though the medium quality level is no good for sports, I've found it not only more than adequate for movies, but higher quality than VHS tapes and even S-VHS tapes (I have an HDTV and the picture quality differences are obvious). If I've done the math right, a 60 Gbyte drive holds 47 hours at the medium quality level, about the same as 24 video tapes. If you're into building a video library then TiVo is the better way to go, as the cost is not that much more than regular VHS tapes, and is actually cheaper than S-VHS tapes.

I wonder what happens if you replace a full Drive B with an empty "blessed" Drive B or just a different Drive B (they'd have to all be the same size). If TiVo handles it and figures out what is really on Drive B after a swap, then you could leave the Drive B cable slot outside the box and change Drive B whenever you want.

Posted by: DataSnoop

quote:
I wonder what happens if you replace a full Drive B with an empty "blessed" Drive B or just a different Drive B (they'd have to all be the same size).

It won't work. If you pulled out your B-drive, you'll have to restore your A-Drive from your backup and start over if you swap in a new B-Drive.

It was a good thought though. http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/wink.gif

Regards,
DataSnoop

Posted by: Dr. Zed

If you swapped B drives, it would cease to function. The only way to do what you want would be to replace both drives. Without both the A and the B drive, neither drive will function (short of being rewritten).

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"It's like living in the future."™

[This message has been edited by an infinite number of monkeys (edited 10-24-2000).]

Posted by: Atrophy

So okay. You put in a new B drive (identical to the old one), restore A from backup and bless the new B. System boots and continues as normal.

What if you then put the original B back in?

Posted by: Otto

Putting the original B back in will still allow the system to function, but all your shows will be screwed. It's not as simple as you think.

Look at it this way:

A drive (partition 10) contains a bunch of pointers to shows.
A drive (partition 11) contains a bunch of data (shows and other stuff)
B drive contains nothing but data (shows only)

So, when you switch the drives, it works well enough, but the pointers are all pointing to the wrong stuff.

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Otto, Supreme TiVoWarrior - Moderator - AVS Forum - Tivo Underground
"If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you it will!" -- Yoda

Posted by: Percipient

Too bad! Still, it seems like it might be a good product idea, and TiVo would only have to make software changes to accomplish this. Each drive would have to have it's own directory, and recorded programs couldn't be permitted to span drives. They couldn't really sell this feature with the current hardware, though. There'd have to be some convenient docking site for Drive B.

I just won a 14-hour TiVo, and I'd like to replace Drive A with a copy of a Quantum drive from a 30-hour TiVo before adding a Drive B. I mentioned this possibility in the opening post under this topic, and no one said it wouldn't work, but no one said it would, either. Has anyone actually tried this yet?

--Percy

Posted by: HTH

quote:
Originally posted by Percipient:
I wonder what happens if you replace a full Drive B with an empty "blessed" Drive B or just a different Drive B (they'd have to all be the same size). If TiVo handles it and figures out what is really on Drive B after a swap, then you could leave the Drive B cable slot outside the box and change Drive B whenever you want.

As said, this wouldn't work. You could duplicate the husband to a new drive though and then insert the new drive. The TiVo shouldn't know the difference. (Or you could just duplicate it and leave the original in there.) Even use the device posted about before that allows you to have automatic drive mirroring. But you couldn't restore a husband to an earlier condition without restoring the wife as well because the information about what is where is stored on the wife, not the husband.

So use two such devices, one for each spouse, and pluck them in mated pairs like pulling petals from daisies. A drive duplicator will let you duplicate quickly the mated drives and put them (or their duplicates) back.

Of course, there's a presumption that there will be a continuing supply of new drives with the desired capacities. It's just a thought. I don't think it is a viable long term solution. Better to figure out the method behind MFS.

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