# What do I do with my old TiVo?



## jpl (Jul 9, 2006)

I have an old D* DVR with Tivo. It's a Philips DSR7000, and it died on me about 6 weeks ago. Based on the troubleshooting I saw over at weaknees, I think the harddrive went. Although there was a serious electrical storm the night before (and weaknees indicated that such a problem could be due to a power hit), I still think it was the harddrive. The reason - my DVR was hooked up to the same surge protector (not a very good one, I'll admit) as my tv, stereo, dvd player and vcr, and they were all fine. Plus, my DVR had been freezing - ALOT (it came in spurts - once a day for a week, and then nothing for a couple weeks - and there were times it froze twice a day).

Anyway, I got the new R15 for our living room,replacing the Tivo. I thought about getting the Tivo fixed, and putting it in our family room, to replace a standard receiver we had down there. I pinged a handful of repair shops around here (I didn't want to do this myself, as I have no idea what I'm doing, and I didn't want to spend money on parts that would just sit on the shelf). Every place that got back to me said that they couldn't fix it and that I would have to send it back to D*.

Since then I took advantage of the DVR4U2 promo, and got a second R15, replacing the standard receiver in my family room. I have no interest in a third DVR at this point, so my Tivo is just taking up space. The question I have now is: what do I do with it, aside from, as the D* CSR who initially sold me the R15 told me, making it into a plant-stand? Is there anyone out there that takes old D* Tivos for spare parts? Just wondering... any help would be appreciated.


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## captain_video (Nov 22, 2005)

Sell it on ebay as a parts unit. Installing a new hard drive is a relatively simple task and only requires some basic computer skills. Check out the Tivo Community Forum or DealDataBase.com for info on upgrading a Tivo. You can also do a search for Hinsdale's How To for a detailed set of instructions for installing a replacement hard drive. 

You can buy backup images of the software from PTVUpgrade.com in the form of an InstantCake CD image that you download and burn to a CD-R. The CD is bootable and will walk you through the process of installing the software on your new hard drive.


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## morgantown (Nov 16, 2005)

Putting in a new HD is pretty easy in the scheme of things. Since you have no use for it, just order the cheap stuff now and pick up a nice new HD when the price is right. Leave it as a "winter project" as the satisfaction of fixing it yourself is worth it alone. 

Then you have a back-up...or just sell it on Ebay now.


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## captain_video (Nov 22, 2005)

What I'm surprised about is that you transitioned to the R15 from the DTivo without having to do it kicking and screaming. I haven't personally had the misfortune of owning one but everything I've heard from former DTivo owners is that the thing is a total piece of crap by comparison. I would definitely look into resurrecting the DSR7000 and then get rid of the R15 as quickly as possible.


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## Igor (Jan 3, 2005)

captain_video said:


> What I'm surprised about is that you transitioned to the R15 from the DTivo without having to do it kicking and screaming. I haven't personally had the misfortune of owning one but everything I've heard from former DTivo owners is that the thing is a total piece of crap by comparison. I would definitely look into resurrecting the DSR7000 and then get rid of the R15 as quickly as possible.


May be the growing number of users that like R15 do not spend time defending it. It is much more fun to highlight an issue than to describe a feature. I have both but pratically only use R15. I find it better for browsing other channels and like many other features; but this is a matter of taste (I guess).


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## jpl (Jul 9, 2006)

captain_video said:


> What I'm surprised about is that you transitioned to the R15 from the DTivo without having to do it kicking and screaming. I haven't personally had the misfortune of owning one but everything I've heard from former DTivo owners is that the thing is a total piece of crap by comparison. I would definitely look into resurrecting the DSR7000 and then get rid of the R15 as quickly as possible.


I know, I keep reading that as well. In fact all of 2 weeks before my tivo died, a co-worker had the same problem. He complained endlessly about the R15 -- he just didn't like the functionality. I was glad that my tivo was holding up, for the time being (that daily freezing started getting old, though). Then mine kicked it, and I braced myself for the worst. And to be honest, at first I wasn't thrilled that it wasn't tivo... then, after getting used to it, I found that I really didn't mind the R15 functionality... then I started liking it. Then I started to, gulp, PREFER the R15 to the tivo. I know, I know... that doesn't match what others have said about it on this forum, but there's alot to the R15 to really like. There are things that aren't so great (not having the 2 live buffers, and having the 100 show limit in the todo list come to mind), but overall, I like the enhanced D* receiver functionality.

When we first got our tivo (nearly 3 years ago), to be honest, I wasn't crazy about it either. The DVR side of things were fine (and I started to really get used to being able to record on the fly). But I found it lacking in the standard D* functionality. For example, at the time D* supported interactive functionality with use of wink technology. The Tivo didn't. The guide was horribly slow (10 - 15 seconds for a refresh between scrolls was just agonizing). I also didn't like the fact that the guide appeared on top of the show I was watching. And my biggest bone of contention - having the two modes - live tv and tivo central.  I just couldn't understand why I couldn't access my menus while watching tv. And there were little things - like no screen saver. That really made me scratch my head -- why in the world would a DVR, that could freeze live tv for 30 minutes NOT have a screen saver. And the tivo got hot pretty quickly, and it was heavy and loud.

Overall, I do find the tivo superior at the DVR-ish stuff. The menus are more consistent in functionality, and it's very intuitive and robust (although those who say that tivo has no problems just aren't being honest - I've had it skip recordings on me, and I couldn't get it to record first runs of Monk for me to save my life!). The menus were also "prettier" on the tivo - sounds silly, but it made stuff easier to read on the screen.

The R15 is superior on the D* receiver functionality, though. It's quiet as anything, small, light, and stays completely cool. It has bugs. I've stumbled on some... but overall, when comparing the two, I have to say, the R15 edges it out for me.


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## jpl (Jul 9, 2006)

morgantown said:


> Putting in a new HD is pretty easy in the scheme of things. Since you have no use for it, just order the cheap stuff now and pick up a nice new HD when the price is right. Leave it as a "winter project" as the satisfaction of fixing it yourself is worth it alone.
> 
> Then you have a back-up...or just sell it on Ebay now.


I think this is the best idea I've heard. Guess I couldn't mess it up any more than it already is  When I tell people that I don't like messing around inside of a computer, they look at me funny. I have a degree in computer engineering, so it doesn't jibe with their understanding of me. I tell them "the degree means that I learned how to DESIGN a computer, not replace a hard drive..." Still and all, I agree - it probably can't be that hard (in reality I'm just lazy when it comes to that stuff), and if I can find the parts cheap, it may be worth giving it a shot. Although, my wife generally hides things when I break out the tools


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