I think I'm going to break down and go the TIVO route

[7up]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

Speaking of CES, it's been awfully quiet at Google. Always had hope something would appear for us old Sage faithful....

Sadly I've been wishing the same for too long as well. Since we're fantasizing, maybe Google will release a Android TV client app for their DVR which would also work with SageTV

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

... or they're trying to tell you that you need a new hard drive.

Had a really old 64GB SSD with Windows7 on it. I'm working on reinstalling everything on it

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

Lifetime is only worth it if you don't mind some basic programming and changing hard drives, as the TiVo drive will fail within four years in all likelihood. Head over to tivocommunity.com and read up on changing drives, and if that suits you. I've had four-five TiVo drives go bad in 10 years

tvmaster2,
Thanks for the info. I can swap out hard drives no problem, but not sure what you meant about basic programming. What would I need to know in that area to make lifetime worth it?

If I get a lifetime subscription, can't I just get a replacement Tivo if one goes bad and use the same lifetime subscription on it?

Thanks for any help,
Chuck

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Had a really old 64GB SSD with Windows7 on it. I'm working on reinstalling everything on it

Having the system drive crash was one of the best things to happen to my Sage setup Installed Windows 7 and Sage on the SSD and my system is faster than ever.

Sourceforge is down and preventing me from installing a PlugIn I have hosted there, other than that the reinstall went very smoothly.

I'm a happy Sage camper again.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by crarbo1

tvmaster2,
Thanks for the info. I can swap out hard drives no problem, but not sure what you meant about basic programming. What would I need to know in that area to make lifetime worth it?

If I get a lifetime subscription, can't I just get a replacement Tivo if one goes bad and use the same lifetime subscription on it?

Thanks for any help,
Chuck

Yes, and No. Yes if you don't want to do the work and pay someone else to. The Lifetime is with the serial number of the unit, although if the drive fails out of warranty, then Tivo classifies your Lifetime as EXPIRED.
So, there's a company called Weaknees I think who sell drives formatted to drop into your Tivo, thus your Lifetime lives on.
If you want to do some research, you can find the image file needed to burn to a fresh drive, resulting in the same product that company sells. The image files are specific to each model of Tivo, and can be found by looking.
Most people do it that way, as it saves a great deal of money.
Also, Lifetime units can be passed on, legally in Tivo's books, to another party. So, when you want to move on or upgrade, you can sell your Lifetime unit on eBay. Lifetime units tend to sell faster in that environment.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

Yes, and No. Yes if you don't want to do the work and pay someone else to. The Lifetime is with the serial number of the unit, although if the drive fails out of warranty, then Tivo classifies your Lifetime as EXPIRED.
So, there's a company called Weaknees I think who sell drives formatted to drop into your Tivo, thus your Lifetime lives on.
If you want to do some research, you can find the image file needed to burn to a fresh drive, resulting in the same product that company sells. The image files are specific to each model of Tivo, and can be found by looking.
Most people do it that way, as it saves a great deal of money.
Also, Lifetime units can be passed on, legally in Tivo's books, to another party. So, when you want to move on or upgrade, you can sell your Lifetime unit on eBay. Lifetime units tend to sell faster in that environment.

The high rate of failure, expense of repairs, repeated loss of all recordings, and hours or days spent getting things working again is precisely what led me to Sage. If anyone knows or decides to go this route, please let us know. While I see no reason to go back to Tivo, I would be interested in hearing whether or not things have changed.

[wayner]

Here is an interesting story on The Verge about someone who has been on TiVo for a decade and is leaving.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by wayner

Here is an interesting story on The Verge about someone who has been on TiVo for a decade and is leaving.

So, the UI hasn't changed much and isn't even "HD" in some places*. But, it sounds like he upgrades his hardware more frequently than I did, so that may be why he didn't mention hardware failures. It could also very well be that I'm wrong on that level and he just never had issues with the few boxes he had. However, he clearly did not have any major issue with those seemingly minor quibbles until they sent his bill to a collections agency. Understandably, that pisses everyone off. But, I don't think the article is a fair assessment of the Tivo universe because I don't think the article itself would exist if that little collections thing hadn't happened.

Thinking back to my Tivo days, it was always the hard drive or the power supply which failed. Given the frequent posts about HDD failures in general, I wonder what the failure rate is like on current model Tivos.

* I actually remember the slow UI conversion on my DirecTivoHD and how crappy it looked. This was back in 2005-2006. Pretty sad that... nearly 10 years later... the UI still isn't completely in HD.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

Speaking of CES, it's been awfully quiet at Google. Always had hope something would appear for us old Sage faithful....

Since they just refreshed their Google Fiber TV hardware maybe they could do some quick mods to their old Fiber extender hardware and start selling it as an HD-400 extender for original SageTV owners. <Pretty, pretty PLEASE!!>

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

Since they just refreshed their Google Fiber TV hardware maybe they could do some quick mods to their old Fiber extender hardware and start selling it as an HD-400 extender for original SageTV owners. <Pretty, pretty PLEASE!!>

And just fiddle with v. 7 a bit to bring it up to date (Youtube, etc.)