new to tivo

Ok, so I have my tivo now, just a humble little 40gig unit. I have already been enlightened on why people add larger drives so I have a 200 gig on it's way /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

When I swap out the drive (should be tivo formatted) do I loose my "to do" list?

Anyway, what are some tips, tricks or other neat things to do?

Oh, how the heck do you tell how much space is left other then trying to figure it out by when it will delete a show?

Brock- did you buy a plug-n-play upgrade drive? If so, you will be starting from scratch.

If you are computer literate (barely) you can backup your current unit, transfer the BU to the new unit, and then "expand" the BU so the software will see all of the new drive's space. Not hard to do if you can follow concise directions.

There is no "free space" meter per se, but the number of TiVo suggestions in your "Now Playing" list will give you an idea of how much space is left. Lots of suggestions= lots of space. Leave the suggestions on, and don't forget to "rate" them. After a while the TiVo will find (and record /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif ) stuff for you that you would never have found on your own. One of the coolest features I think, and I'm suprised that lots of folks don't take advantage of it.

A big drive is the only way to go. You never have to worry about how much space is left. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Peter

Litfuse is right, you'll lose your current recordings.

If you bought a "ready to install" drive, you should follow the instructions included with the drive. I just spent 3 days fixing 2 of my my Tivos after running into a disk problem on one. I replaced the bad drive (losing everything on it). I then decided to add a second 120 gig drive to both her main tivo and mine. I blew one command an lost everything on mine too.

200 gig will store a lot of shows. My wife had a single 120 gig in her tivo and we had the complete season for several shows at once. I had a show that was recorded in 2003 (2 years ago) that I never got around to watching.

There is a freeware app known as Tivoweb ( i run TiVo Web Project 1.9.4) that will run on your tivo and it will give you an accounting of the available space. The problem with calculating 'free space' is accounting for all the shows that are 'delete when space needed'. Is that free, or not?

Welcome to the group.

Daniel

Yes, I bought a preformatted for tivo drive, plug-n-pray It's no big deal if I have to start over, better now then in 6 months. I am pretty computer literate and a good friend of mine run Linux all the time. I figured it would be safer to just leave the existing original 40gig drive as is for a "backup". Something about if you add a second drive it then needs the first? Either way if I start with 200 and want to add more later then I have the open slot for another drive.

I turned off the suggestions feature I did it for two reasons, first I didn't want to use any extra space, and secondly and more importantly, I had no idea how it works. Are you just suppose to thumbs up and down as you flipping? Does it take into consideration as to what you have set to record or ? Does it add it, or just a suggestion or what? Once I get more space and figure out the basics I will turn it on again.

The suggestion feature is neat. It looks at what you record and finds similar subjects, genre, actors, etc. You can also use the 'thumbs' to indicate that you hava an interest in something. You can use the "thumb down" to indicate that you don't care for a particular recording.

I don't use the thumbs feature because I find it is confusing. Whan my tivo pops up a message that says it needs to change the channel to record something, it's because I chose to record something at that time. I like it that way.

I watch almost all my TV tiem shifted by at leat a bit. I change the channel, fix lunch, coffee, check batteries, etc and then settle down to watch. I usually get through the show before I catch up with the live signal. I almost never see a commercial.... well, unless it looks interesting. Then I may watch it two or three times.

Daniel

Tivo ROCKS! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/buttrock.gif

My unit is a 70hour Sanyo. I has a LOT of Dora on it that I NEED to put off onto tape. We don't "keep" many other shows, rather watch them un-live to zoom past the commercials, then delete.

It still gets a lot of wierd stuff, often 5 or 6 shows that make us say Huh? But it's easy enough to delete them.

Tivo ROCKS!

for the suggestion stuff, tivo will never delete anything that you have saved, or delete anything early. Only delete stuff that has fallen off the end of the time frame that TiVO told you it would save it for. So it's really nothing to worry about.

I turned mine off too, but for the reason that the stuff it kept insisting on recording was not even remotely interesting to me... it spent a week recording gilligans island reruns, and then later recorded another week of a knitting show! LOL, that is not in any way related to ANYTHING that I ever recorded /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif


i LOVE my TiVO, can't live without it. I watch very little TV anyway but what I do is all later on TiVO. I don't know how people with children get by with watching just whatever crap happens to be on. With it's time for a little TV at my house we have a long list of pre-parental approved shows that they can choose from and no surfing through the rest of the garbage necessary.

TiVo is great. I loved the one in the living room so much I put one in the bedroom too.. Overkill but I'm known for that.

One HD and one SD both DirecTv.

Tivo not available in Canada, like so much else...have to substitute DVD recorder. Any suggestions/help welcomed...guess I should start another thread perhaps?

Thinking of new Toshiba 160 gigabyte, which seems similar to Panasonic with Ram and RW- disc capabilities. So complex, I'm not even sure how to compare features on this stuff...sells for about $900CAD. Sure it's a lot cheaper in the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave"...

Of course, it won't decide what I might like, but not comfortable with humans doing that for me [especially governments...], let alone machines, eh?

Has anyone networked them? I just ordered the USB to cat5. I have DSL modem that feeds a 8 port lynksys unit. Can I just plug it in and it will work? Luckily I did add cat5 to the TV area when we built 7 years ago. I just have to find the other end of those wires /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

I have all 3 of mine networked. They use DHCP, so as long as your DSL modem has a DHCP server you will be fine. The data download over ethernet is nice and quick and a phone line is no longer needed. Check tivo.com for other features that are enabled by the ability to network.


There is a program to load guide data into the standalone units for people who live in areas where Tivo is not available. http://www.tivocanada.com/ It does not use resources from the Tivo comany and is not quite as complete, but it does work.

Daniel