Get a TiVo free after MIR [na]

Greebo

Greebo

N9017H - C172M (1976)
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Retired Evil Overlord
I'm a regular visitor to Slickdeals.org and will occasionally post deals on my regular sites that I find there.

http://www.slickdeals.org/#p6000

CircuitCity has the TiVo Series2 Digital Video Recorder for $200 - $100MIR - $100MIR = Free.

If you want another TiVo, or just want to try it out, this is a great way to get started. This deal is for a 40hr TiVo.
 
That second $100 rebate requires activation, though. Still a great deal but activation is $12.95/month or $300 lifetime (I'd go with lifetime). TiVo is the best thing since sliced bread... :)
 
Well, yeah, except they don't really do that. Any info they collect is not personalized. Also, I don't really care who knows what I watch on TV anyway.
 
I don't really care if TiVo knows how many times I scroll back during the Superbowl Halftime. :) We love our TiVos!
 
If you already have Tivo the second box activation fee is half price. But don't be surprised if you wait 6 months for the rebate
 
No kidding? Only $150 for lifetime activation then? Ah, think I gotta pick myself up another TiVo!!

Edit: Doh - the discount is only for monthly service. Lifetime is still the same... :(
 
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No No

Lifetime activation of still $299. Only the monthly fee is half price with a second box. But if one box has a lifetime fee the second box can get a monthly fee discount.

And, of course, hack your Tivo box with drives from this company

http://www.weaknees.com/
 
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Greebo said:
I'm a regular visitor to Slickdeals.org and will occasionally post deals on my regular sites that I find there.

http://www.slickdeals.org/#p6000

CircuitCity has the TiVo Series2 Digital Video Recorder for $200 - $100MIR - $100MIR = Free.

If you want another TiVo, or just want to try it out, this is a great way to get started. This deal is for a 40hr TiVo.
Click to expand...

they need to make 300 hour TIVOs!

I have about 40 hours of movies, 40 hours of the Daily Show and climbing (I can't bear to delete them) and I keep watching and deleting Oprah. (yes, I'm one of them - NOW. I just started watching her in January - had never seen it before and some are pretty good!)

pass the bon bons someone.
 
You can upgrade your TiVo to about 240 hours max - or maybe it's 320.., but it requires custom installations that void your warranty. You have to install two new IDE drives and the max size tivos can handle is either 120gb or 160gb, I can't recall off hand.
 
I'm not sure those limitations are right, Chuck - I've seen some huge upgrades. The sky's the limit...! :) Unfortunately my old Series 1 has been upgraded to only 80 hours and it's not enough! The network card hack is the best though - no more phone line and you can do all kinds of funky things with it. It really is literally a "hack" though - you use a hacksaw to cut the case to pass the network cable through!
 
corjulo said:
But don't be surprised if you wait 6 months for the rebate
Click to expand...

I bought a TiVo for myself, and then another for my mother for Christmas. Got both rebates back in less than a month. I was shocked.
 
I've been renting a DVR from my cable company for $5.00 per month and I love it. I only holds 30-40 hours, but it allows me to copy shows to VCR - for which I bought a DVD recorder. My wife and I regularly burn movies and TV shows to DVD for our collection.

I would love to get rid of it and it and replace it with a TiVo unit but the outlay in cash for programming is just too much to justify IMO.
 
If anybody would like to purchase an 80hour Tivo, send me an email at home: helicfi@adelphiadelete.net. I now have a DVR from Adelphia that lets me record HDTV signals, which Tivo does not do, so I have one available. The content has been wiped, and it was in service for about 3 months, I have all of the goodies with it, except the box.
Robert
 
Chuck, I could have sworn I've seen people advertise for much larger upgrades - the TiVo forum probably has more info but it's more fun here... :) I'm trying to decide if I actually need a second TiVo in addition to my Series 1. Actually I just found a guy selling 2 Series 2 TiVos on Craigslist, a TCD130040 with lifetime and a TC24004A with no service, $115 for both. But I haven't figured out what I would actually do with them...
 
AirBaker said:
Anyone know if the HDTV Tivo has a rebate available?
Click to expand...

Nope. There is no HDTV TiVo.

There is an HDTV DirecTV DVR with TiVo. :)

The best street price is the $800-$850 range.

It's almost guaranteed to be obsolete in 2-3 years at best. DirecTV is moving to new birds, to a different band and MPEG4 to allow more HDTV content. Neither will work on the old receivers.

There are only 7 HDTV channels on DirecTV now. The good news with the DVR is it works with over the air digital HDTV via an antenna which is really good here but it's not everywhere.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/realestate/yourplace/chi-0504220222apr22,1,3702244.story
 
I believe there is a HD Tivo. But it runs on the old Tivo 1 software. Robert, is that a series2 Tivo you want to sell?
 
There may not be an HD TiVo - but if your HD Tuner composite output is hooked up to your TiVo composite input, won't you still get HD quality recordings (provided the TiVo is set to record at "best quality"?
 
Yeah, I know its the DirecTV version. So you're thinking it wont work with the new satellites? ARGH....

I can get one for roughly $700 at cost from retailer-type friends. Still 150 more than I want to pay...
 
Greebo said:
There may not be an HD TiVo - but if your HD Tuner composite output is hooked up to your TiVo composite input, won't you still get HD quality recordings (provided the TiVo is set to record at "best quality"?
Click to expand...

Hmm... will you get the dolby digital stream too?
 
Don't know - I don't have HD (refuse to pay >$1000 for a boob tube) - but I kind of doubt it... the TiVo doesn't have digital audio input IIRC, only output.

My non HD DirectTV TiVo however, does record dolby :) But it ain't HD, like I said.
 
I got an awesome deal on the Microsoft Ultimate TV a while back. $100 after the rebates. Its been working great for the past few years. Does record in DD when available.
 
Greebo said:
There may not be an HD TiVo - but if your HD Tuner composite output is hooked up to your TiVo composite input, won't you still get HD quality recordings (provided the TiVo is set to record at "best quality"?
Click to expand...

No.............
 
Greebo said:
There may not be an HD TiVo - but if your HD Tuner composite output is hooked up to your TiVo composite input, won't you still get HD quality recordings (provided the TiVo is set to record at "best quality"?
Click to expand...


No way. HD is 720 or 1080 lines. Broadcast SD TV and DVD is 480 lines.

An SD TiVo just makes a digital copy of the 480 line analog SD signal. The quality setting just determines how close the digital copy comes to the original. The more space it can use, the more bits the better the copy. It still can only play back the 480 line SD that went in.
 
BillG said:
Chuck, I could have sworn I've seen people advertise for much larger upgrades - the TiVo forum probably has more info but it's more fun here... :) I'm trying to decide if I actually need a second TiVo in addition to my Series 1. Actually I just found a guy selling 2 Series 2 TiVos on Craigslist, a TCD130040 with lifetime and a TC24004A with no service, $115 for both. But I haven't figured out what I would actually do with them...
Click to expand...


There was a hard limit on the number of blocks per logical disk partition due to the 32bit lba in the Linux kernel in the TiVo. That held it to a 137GB maximum per drive. Now there are hacks replace the kernel and TiVo is shipping a newer kernel with an 48bit lba.

The effective limit now is the size of two hard drives. Since you can now get 300GB drives, you can say close to 600 hours. There is another limit. The TiVo isn't designed to keep track of that much content so the functionality tends to get slow. Mine with 2 120Gb and/or 160Gb drives are at the tripping point in speed.

Do what I most of us do and have multiple TiVos. I own 3. 2 are stacked next to each other in my living room. I need a life.
 
mikea said:
Do what I most of us do and have multiple TiVos. I own 3. 2 are stacked next to each other in my living room. I need a life.
Click to expand...
Is TiVo to the point where ReplayTV is where you can play content on one machine that is stored on a different machine?
 
inav8r said:
Is TiVo to the point where ReplayTV is where you can play content on one machine that is stored on a different machine?
Click to expand...

MRV (Multi Room Viewing) is available now on current Series 2 or later standalone TiVos. I have a Series 1 and Series 2 DirecTivo so I don't get to play until I hack may way to those features.

You can also transfer the (DRM laden) content to play on one or more PCs using TiVo2go.

MRV "Media Center" is theoretically what the DirecTV DVR will have when Rupert tosses out TiVo entirely. With front end receivers that can play content that is recorded and stored on a central unit.

I'd put my money on the likelihood they won't pull it off anywhere near as well as TiVo does.

Jann has the "highly rated" Motorola 6412 DVR from Comcast. It's nice that it does do HDTV and works mostly. Try telling it you want to record every episode of "Desperate Housewives" when when it was last on yesterday. Pain!

Only TiVo is TiVo. For example you may notice that there are no tick marks you can jump to when you FF and REW, so you watch it slog to get where you last left it. TiVo has a patent on that, among other innovations.
 
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corjulo said:
I believe there is a HD Tivo. But it runs on the old Tivo 1 software. Robert, is that a series2 Tivo you want to sell?
Click to expand...

yes, it is was purchased in December of 04.
I will even throw in the USB plug network adapter that I bought to plug into my network so you do not need to plug in a phone line.
robert
 
UPDATE: Circuit City isn't listing any rebates for the 40 hour TiVo anymore. While there have been typos with online sales before, I doubt that's the case here because they had the message "Free after rebates and activation" on the Digital Video Recorders page. If you got in on the deal, enjoy your free TiVo (assuming those rebates come).


And Tivo does indeed offer multi-room viewing. It has for about a year now.
 
corjulo said:
UPDATE: Circuit City isn't listing any rebates for the 40 hour TiVo anymore. While there have been typos with online sales before, I doubt that's the case here because they had the message "Free after rebates and activation" on the Digital Video Recorders page. If you got in on the deal, enjoy your free TiVo (assuming those rebates come).


And Tivo does indeed offer multi-room viewing. It has for about a year now.
Click to expand...

You're right. Being that I don't have a Series 2 standalone TiVo I wasn't hip to all that is currently available. I corrected the above error.

http://www.tivo.com/1.0.demo.asp

Ironically, many of TiVo features, like TiVoweb and Multimedia were first implemented as hacks by the TiVo underground.
 
Luckily, since I work for Comcast, I get their HD DVR service for free. But in reality, it's only 9.95 a month for normal customers. I think it's a better deal than TiVo (I used to work for TiVo, too), because if something goes wrong with the TiVo once its out of warranty, you have to buy a new one. With Comcast's DVRs, if something goes wrong, we don't even charge to come replace it (at least here in Albuquerque).

I wouldn't go back to TiVo now that I have Comcast's DVR. It also has 1 hour of buffer, vs. TiVo's 30 minute buffer.

The only thing it doesn't do is predictive recordings, like TiVo Suggestions.
 
I didn't want TiVo (what?!? another subscription to watch tv?) so I got a Toshiba RD-XS52 which has a 160 GIG harddrive and will burn DVDs. This was bought thru AMAZON at $355. Beats renting more stuff from the overpriced cable companies.
 
With all this Tivo talk one might mention all the buzz about Apple computer getting ready to jump into the set top box race. If they don't do it by July first then I would say don't bother. New laws take effect that will all but destroy the DVR. After July 1 ANY manufacturer of a device capable of recording video digitally must recognize and adhere to broadcast flags the prevent recording. This include any computer cards. The law is headed for a supreme court challenge but at this point July 1 is the cut off date. If your going to buy something do it by then.
 
NickDBrennan said:
Luckily, since I work for Comcast, I get their HD DVR service for free. But in reality, it's only 9.95 a month for normal customers. I think it's a better deal than TiVo (I used to work for TiVo, too), because if something goes wrong with the TiVo once its out of warranty, you have to buy a new one. With Comcast's DVRs, if something goes wrong, we don't even charge to come replace it (at least here in Albuquerque).

I wouldn't go back to TiVo now that I have Comcast's DVR. It also has 1 hour of buffer, vs. TiVo's 30 minute buffer.

The only thing it doesn't do is predictive recordings, like TiVo Suggestions.
Click to expand...

Didn't Tivo and Comcast just sign some big deal?
 
If you have DirecTV tivo only costs 5.00 a month. I got a Directivo with 80 hours for 199.00 on sale 3 months ago.
 
Robert said:
yes, it is was purchased in December of 04.
I will even throw in the USB plug network adapter that I bought to plug into my network so you do not need to plug in a phone line.
robert
Click to expand...


Robert
I tried the email address you provided and it got pounced. I sent a private message via POA instead
 
What's on your Season Pass

woodstock said:
they need to make 300 hour TIVOs!

I have about 40 hours of movies, 40 hours of the Daily Show and climbing (I can't bear to delete them) and I keep watching and deleting Oprah. (yes, I'm one of them - NOW. I just started watching her in January - had never seen it before and some are pretty good!)

pass the bon bons someone.
Click to expand...

Wow, I thought I was the only one that Tivos the Daily Show religiously.
The Daily Show, PBS's News Hour (especially Fridays Shields and Brooks segment) West Wing and Star Trek (OK I'm such a geek, I admit it) and ABC nightly news, although not as good now that Peter Jennings is sick..
 
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