TiVo HD XL DVR

I’m on over six years of life on a lifetime subscription for a Series 2…it’s saved a LOT of money and is still going strong. I’ve only heard of literally one or two people who were disappointed they invested the (considerable) money on a lifetime option rather than spend $10 or $15 every month.

Tivo’s got some of these themselves, but they are refurbished, and they carry only a 90 day warranty on labor (1 year on parts).

Can anybody at Woot confirm that this is a full year warranty on both parts and labor?

I actually whipped up a spreadsheet (hello, nerdlinger, I’m looking at you…in the mirror…) comparing the costs of a new TIvo Premier XL (the current generation), Woot’s slightly older model HD XL, the refurb’d HD XL on Tivo’s site, and the various lifetime plan options that Tivo has available to existing customers like me…you get $100 off the $400 lifetime subscription of any additional box you buy, even if you buy it from another vendor like Woot. (Current customers might be interested in a “half off lifetime sub” promotion Tivo is running on refurbed HD XL’s which cost more than Woot’s, but enjoy a bigger lifetime sub discount.)

The warranty is the wild card. If Woot’s box offers a full year parts & labor, that’s worth the $50 extra that it will cost (all totaled up) for Woot’s unit plus the $100-discounted-lifetime-sub.

What about the square trade 3 year warranty for 28 bucks

Forget the WiFi adapter. Buy a WiFi Bridge (you can often find them cheaper than $59 – Froogle Search) and hook the Tivo to that.

The advantage is that, if you have additional Ethernet devices in the same location, you can also buy a hub or switch, plug all of your devices into that and hook the switch to the bridge.

That’s what I do.

Got one of these last month or so when they were on here. You can use this code to get $100 off a life time subscription

PLSR

It worked for me when I activated mine last week. I don’t know if you need to be a new subscriber or not.

Were you a new subscriber or did you already have Tivo service?

Does WMC act like a DVR, as in you can program what to record, etc? I’m running XP, and am not planning on upgrading to Win7, and want to do exactly what you did. But what’s stopping me is losing my DVR.

Square Trade’s warranty doesn’t kick in until the initial warranty period is over, so if the included warranty is similar to Tivo’s refurb warranty (90 day labor, 1 year parts), after the initial 90 days there might be a lengthy chunk of time in which you have to pay for labor (i.e., at least the cost of the box itself).

And even then, it’s still an aftermarket warranty where you’re dealing with the lowest local bidder who (let’s face it) isn’t too motivated to fix your stuff. Square Trade’s warranty is a good deal, no doubt, and I’ll probably get it if I buy this box, but I confess it’s more to guarantee that I can get the life expectancy needed to make the lifetime sub pay off. (At less than $200, I’ll take my own chances that the box will last three years, but at $500 including service, that’s a bigger chunk of money to risk.)

OK, will someone give me a dirct comparison here to…say…my FIOS HD/DVR Box? I understand the storage is much greater and it links up with the internet, but other than that i see fees and similarities that make it about the same as my DVR…am i missing something here? i still have to pay for the same cable service, right?

Someone break it down for me, please.

I had an account with expired service from an old box I had about two years ago.

Yes, you still have to have access to TV services.

Tivo box + tivo service + TV channel delivery = total story

Many cable companies now provide access to all three, or something non-Tivo they argue is equivalent (totally bs, in my opinion…Tivo has designed something awesome and friendly that I’ve never seen equaled in a remote-control driven unit). With a cable service providers Tivo box, you pay maybe $15-20 per month to have the box, which includes networked service to the Tivo box that keeps it informed about what programs are scheduled on what channels, so it can record stuff properly. If

Alternately, you can, of course, buy your box either from Tivo, Woot, or somewhere else. You’ll need to feed it tv channels via Analog cable, digital cable, or over-the-air via antennae. You still need service to tell the box what’s playing on what channel and when. Tivo service costs (depending whether you pay monthly, pay yearly, etc.) $10-15 unless you go all-in on a lifetime sub at $399

Personally, I recommend the lifetime option, it’s saved me a TON of money on a 6 year old Tivo box that I love using and use almost everyday.

I bought both my Tivo HD and Series 3 from woot and I love them.

Some things to know…

The cable guy really isnt the one who activates the card. When he gets there all he can do is push the card in and read the info to the people who are supposed to activate it. All he needs to know is how to get to the info screen and where the card goes. If he gets someone on the phone who has no idea how to enter the info the card spits out then he is screwed. I work for a cable company and do these often. I never have a problem. Make sure you set it all up and have it hooked up to an internet source before the cable guy gets there. Just dont hand him the unopened tivo box.

If you plan on using netflix on this you either need a hard line into tivo or the wireless N adapter with an N router. The G adapter is only good for updates. HD streaming will give you problems with the G adapter. The hard line is very recommended as Tivo doesnt give a huge buffer to the streaming.

Depending on your cable subscription you may have to remove channels from the tivo. It saves a default channel list and if you dont fix it when you search for shows, shows will come up for channels you dont have and you will end up recording nothing.

Offer your installer a drink. Its hot out there!

At least in my case the tivo is a superior box. Not only in features and ease of use but the video processor is better meaning the picture looks better. Ive seen HD cable boxes put out a horrible picture but my tivos are crisp and clear. If you are serious about wanting a great DVR experience then get this box. Its worth the money. I get cable boxes for free or at a huge discount. I still use tivo. I never used on demand before I had tivo and with netflix i dont miss it at all.

TiVo Website

Both you and the OP are wrong on multiple levels. Some of these posters seem to be talking about pre-CableCard TiVo boxes. If you have digital cable, you just rent a CableCard from the cable company for a very small fee (like in the $2 range) and they install the little CableCard inside the TiVo and activate it. At that point, the TiVo can now receive every channel that you subscribe to, including digital encrypted channels and any premium channels you can get on your cable box. You don’t need to plug the TiVo into your cable box and you don’t need to keep your cable box (but you can keep it if you want to use it separately for on-demand cable programs that CableCard doesn’t support).

A PC-based DVR does not have a CableCard slot* so it can generally only do one of two things:

  1. It can plug into your cable box and use an IR cable to tell the cable box to change channels, etc. That’s an ugly, kludgly, stupid solution and I wouldn’t recomend it to anyone, ever (sorry to be blunt, but really, it is).

  2. It can record non-encrypted OTA or analog channels, and in some cases non-encrypted digital cable channels. Cable companies are in the process of dropping all analog channels and encrypting all digital cable channels except the most basic ones, many of which you could receive with an antenna anyway.

For me, that makes a PC-based DVR basically useless; not even as worthwhile as the slow and quirky DVRs with small capacity that the cable company rents out. A TiVo is in a completely different class with regard to features and ease of use (and in this case, capacity as well).

*Yeah, I know that a CableCard slot device for a PC at least exists. However, every time I’ve looked I found approx 1-2 very expensive options with annoying limitations/issues making them cost prohibitive and useless.

Here’s are some comparisons to TIVO:

DVRs - Digital Video Recorders: Reviews

Ed Bott: TiVo versus MCE versus my cable company (2005)

TiVo vs. DVR

Dish Network DVR Compare to Directv TIVO

Yes. On-Demand (like from Comcast) relies on their cable box to be a client for the video stream. Cable cards don’t have that type of function (yet) so you loose VOD and Channel 1 and the on-screen guides and such.

I have two Series 3 TiVo’s, both with cable cards, and I don’t miss the on-demand stuff at all. I’ve got hundreds of hours of recorded stuff to watch when I’m bored, and if I want a new release movie or a current TV show episode or something that would be available on-demand, I just hit up a Redbox for $1 or Hulu or something.

Cable cards basically just let you get the (now) all digital cable signal and convert it, and also enable the premium channels when you pay for them. It works like a cable box, just not with all the bells and whistles.

If you want to keep On-Demand, just keep your cable box too, and plug it into a separate input. I don’t see why this is so difficult for people to understand. Often the first digital cable box on your account is “free” anyway so you might not even save anything by returning it unless it’s a DVR that has a monthy rental charge. If it’s a DVR you may well be able to trade it for a free non-dvr HD digital cable box. Policies and such of course vary from cable provider to cable provider. And the TiVo has its own on screen guide so saying that you’ll “lose” that is misleading.

That review’s over five years old.

Or to put it another way, too old.

OK, here’s my question: Is there any way to use this thing without paying for the subscription from Tivo? In other words, can it be used as a manual DVR device? Thanks.

Thanks - I’ll look for a newer one and add it. I’m a big Ed Bott fan.