Recording Capacity: 136 hours

I just completed upgrading our new DirecTV R-10 TiVo from 70 hours to 136 hours. This was the simplest mod I've ever performed. In the past I had used Hinsdale's How To when upgrading my Series 1 box with a second drive. The process is much more streamlined now and since I was simply replacing my single drive with a larger one and not saving any recordings, I followed the shorter Weaknees guide.

Simple and quick. And now our R-10 has extra capacity. I will say that the R-10 is of much lower build quality than the Series 1 Hughes or Series 2 HDVR2 models I have. The sheet metal is thinner, the panel buttons don't feel as solid, and even the screws holding the case together are inferior. I guess this is how they double the storage to a 70 hour model and still sell it for $99 to all customers.

The R-10 has a few key features: it is running the 6.1 software which includes folder support and menus are much faster. My older unit had also become very noisy. It also supports LBA48 so I could have opted for a larger drive (up to 320GB), but I'm cheap and wanted a quiet drive. The best deal for a super quiet drive happened to be for a Samsung Spinpoint 160GB which is still an upgrade from my modded Series 1 which was 120GB and double the stock storage of 80GB.

It's TiVo. I think we'll be happy!

And I finally got credit for converting someone to TiVo through the TiVo Rewards program. Unfortunately, DirecTV TiVo referrals don't count. But if you get someone to sign up for standalone TiVo service, the referrer can get credit to use for some cool stuff. I just wish they had started this program a few years back.

Labels: tivo

Posted by Chris on 1/05/2005 01:04:00 AM :: Permalink   
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