TiVo Community Forums Archives - Tivo may disable your hard drive.

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Tivo may disable your hard drive.
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Posted by: personal92082

I'm learning about hard drive upgrades right now for the first time. (Don't ever buy a thirty hour Tivo!) One seller of a 150 hour drive upgrade states "Tivo may at any time disable the ability to use this kit."

Does anyone have any experience with this? What are the odds of waking up one day and finding a message on my TV that Tivo was offended that I upgraded my hard drive and will no longer permit me to use the service?

Posted by: unoriginal

quote:
Originally posted by personal92082
I'm learning about hard drive upgrades right now for the first time. (Don't ever buy a thirty hour Tivo!) One seller of a 150 hour drive upgrade states "Tivo may at any time disable the ability to use this kit."

Does anyone have any experience with this? What are the odds of waking up one day and finding a message on my TV that Tivo was offended that I upgraded my hard drive and will no longer permit me to use the service?

Chances are about zero (at least on purpose). TiVo has stated that they don't care about people upgrading their TiVo's hard drives. They are simply saying that they do not support (as in customer service calls) the upgrade. TiVo is just covering their butts in case they change something in the TiVo's Operating system that somehow messes up an upgraded TiVo they don't want to be held responsible for it.

Posted by: DLiquid

If they did this they would anger a large percentage of their subscriber base. TiVo knows exactly how much hard drive space we all have (unless you don't subscribe), and they have never done anything to deter hard drive upgrades. It's one of the reasons so many people love TiVo, and also one of the things that has helped to create these forums and this community. I don't think TiVo will ever disable systems with upgraded drives.

Posted by: TiVoPony

I am not aware of any discussions within TiVo regarding this topic. None at all.

I suspect that you've run into a seller who does not want to risk any returns should we change our minds. Always a good thing to do, but to my knowledge not really necessary in this case.

Pony

Posted by: personal92082

Thanks Tivo Pony. Say, I suppose you would be the person to ask what the biggest bestest direction to take would be for upgrading a Philips HDR312. What is the best hard drive you can recommend...one that includes the idiot video for a green like myself?

Posted by: andyf

If you really want an idiot proof upgrade try www.ptvupgrade.com .

They send you the hard drives ready to go. Pop the hood, replace the hard drives, replace the hood and you're done. Plus they give great support if your drives go bad within the warranty period. (3 years for Maxtor I think).

They even provide the correct tools to open the box and unscrew the drives. No trips to Sears necessary!

Posted by: Leon WIlkinson

quote:
Originally posted by personal92082
Thanks Tivo Pony. Say, I suppose you would be the person to ask what the biggest bestest direction to take would be for upgrading a Philips HDR312. What is the best hard drive you can recommend...one that includes the idiot video for a green like myself?

TiVoPony isn't the person to be asking on this!! He works for TiVo so It wouldn't be wise for him to post on some thing like this. UNLESS we do something stupid and put a backup of a lower SW version then the box came with. Then we will see if he really is like TiVolutionary. ;)

So if you have TiVo series 2 do not put in a 1.3 backup in side of it.

do what andy said, that is so easy I even did it. Taht si asying alot. :D

Plus, I even put in the Turbonet card.

Posted by: controlio

There are a lot of "if they wanted to"s in your TiVo. Yes, TiVo knows if you have an unauthorized space upgrade... they just don't mind and have no intentions of minding in the distant future. Could they disable your unit? Sure. But they won't. It just doesn't make good business sense.

If they wanted to, they could force you to revert to your original TiVo drive. If they wanted to, they could make your TiVo's LEDs blink subliminal messages. If they wanted to, they could have your TiVo dial into a special number and give a TiVo technician full shell access to your unit. If they wanted to, they could force your TiVo to record every show that Corey Feldman appears in. Do they want to? No.

Sometimes you just need to trust the people you do business with. :D

Posted by: stevel

No TiVo representative is going to come out and say anything that suggests it's ok to open the TiVo box and modify it, much less make recommendations on how best to do it! As has been frequently said in this forum (and in all the instructions for doing upgrades - if you open the box, you're assuming ALL the risk for what you do.

By noting what TiVo hasn't said, most of us feel comfortable regarding disk upgrades, not worrying about waking up one day and finding that TiVo has disabled our boxes due to increased storage. It's even more clear that the TiVoNET and TurboNET cards are ok.

Software changes to the disk, however, are on shakier ground. At a minimum, some software mods (TiVoWEB, for example), may need rewriting once in a while. Other software changes might stop working entirely at some point.

Posted by: LoadStar

*** watching as a random TiVo technician pencils down "hmm... force everyone to watch corey feldman stuff... good idea..." ***

:D

Posted by: phone1

Software/OS providers don't care what hardware you run their stuff on.

Cable/satellite providers don't care how big your TV is.

TiVo's a content/service provider - why would they care what you do to the hardware? :confused:

Their only concern is unauthorized or fraudulent usage of their software or service.