Well you could hook up a Slingbox to the Tivo and watch the Tivo in the bedroom on a laptop or a monitor connected to a PC. I do this at my house. Excellent video quality.

I expect to see all TiVo functionality in open source in due course. Maybe by the time it surfaces, I'll have tapped into some deep unacknowledged need for more television than I could possibly sit through, enjoy, or care about.

I don't care about THX, my stereo equipment is ancient, but I do have a 42" Sony Bravia 1080p. Now that I have dumped Dish and am with RCN, I am going to get a Tivo (before that I had a DirecTv Tivo).

So which do I need?

Tivo HD or Tivo Series 3. Again, I don't care about THX. And RCN will send me a M cable card, which I heard only works in the Tivo HD?

Thanks. Answer quick? so I can return to the land of Tivo
!!!I HATE THE RCN DVR!!!

Series3 and Tivo HD are two names for the same thing.

So get either.

Series 3 is quite different. It comes with a 250GB drive instead of 160GB, it can take any eSATA drive for example, plus it comes with a nifty backlit remote. That said, if I am not mistaken, TiVo has discontinued it...

Apparently, TIVO is only selling the Tivo HD.

So I can get it direct refurb from the Tivo website for 179USD. Any better deals?

Tivo has been out of stock for series3 for months. I bought 2 elsewhere. Try pricegrabber.com for both new and refurb units.

MisterNice

Ah, then Wikipedia was wrong (or I read it wrong). Shocking!

What a depressing thread!

I LOVE Tivo! But they only sold the Tivo Series 1 in the UK for a short while before pulling out. The Tivo can still get the full Tivo Service thankfully but as I have moved to an HD Plasma my Tivo hardly gets used as the connectivity doesn't do the rest of my kit justice.

Tivo US...PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE relaunch back in to the UK! I hear rumours they may launch a Freesat Tivo box so fingers crossed that rumour is true!

I don't have a home phone line.

Any recommendation on whether to get some USB wireless adaptor or some sort of powerline adaptor?

I always had trouble getting powerline ethernet to work - they have to be on the same circuit, there couldn't be too much wiring between them, etc. USB wifi is easy.

Only certain USB wifi adapters work with Tivo, however. If you want 802.11g and/or WPA encryption support, you have to buy the Tivo brand USB wireless adapter. ($40 from Amazon; $60 from tivo.com)

If you just want 802.11b and/or WEP, you can get any of the list of supported ones for your model Tivo on tivo.com.

HD and S3 can take any esata drive, but the tivo software won't do it automatically on the HD for anything besides the supported esata drive. Anyway, it's still doable, just not as easy. I don't remember if you have to open the box or not, but if you do, you might as well just install an internal 1TB drive and forget about expansion via the esata port on the HD. (Once you expand the internal drive, I don't think it will do any automatic expansion via the esata port any more.) Anyway, there's an esata expansion FAQ in the tivo community forums in the S3 forum there. You can go read that if you want all the details.

HD supports M-cards in multi-stream mode. S3 can only do one channel per S or M card.

If you really want the backlit remote, you can buy it separately.

Chichow, if you need to use a single M-card, you will need the HD. They could send you two cards (M or S) if you get the S3 though, but they may charge you more for it.

Anyway, there are benefits to both the HD and the S3. I don't remember all the other differences. IIRC, I think the HD supports more total disk space than the S3. The S3 may have a 2 TB limit.

I have an S3, since before the HD was available.

Also, for the HD and S3 (and most modern tivos), only the Tivo USB wifi adapter is supported. They dropped support for other usb network adapters. I have it and it works fine. As stated, you can find it discounted on amazon.com. Both of these also have built in wired networking. That means that if you have a spare wireless bridge around (or one of the routers that can be turned into a bridge with a firmware change), you can also use that, if you need wireless.

-David

I have the opposite experience. I couldn't get a wireless to work for anything, despite line of sight from the wireless adapter fifteen feet to the wireless router. I switched to a Homelink system, and it has worked with no glitches, save I can't access my photos on my computer. I now have my Tivo in the basement, and router upstairs and it still works.