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I really don't get this. First you have to pay $511 for this. Then you either have to throw away money every month for the monthly fee which is > $10 a month or pay $199 to trasnfer over a lifetime subscription. One top of that you have to pay the cable company a monthly rental fee for the CableCARDs for this thing to be able to receive HD cable channels. Why is this a good deal when you can get a HD DVR from your cable company for just $10 a month?

Because the SA HD DVR's from your cable company are complete crap.

I like my Series3 Tivo, I would love it if they would enable Tivo To go on it.

I agree, this makes absolutely no sense. That is why I said previously that Tivo will be out of business soon enough due to the fact that their business makes no sense. Why the burp would I pay this insane amount of money and have a middle man monthly fee when I can just get the HD DVR for my DirectTV for like 100bucks. My HD DVR DirectTV is titties, I see absolutely no burp reason why I would need a Tivo brand $500 burp machine. burp that baconnaise, you people are morons.

Back atcha, corndoggy...

The dictionary definition of "burp loser" shows your picture. Not because of your stance on this issue, but because of your continued use of inappropriate profanity for really no good reason (and I quote you):

My HD DVR DirectTV is titties, I see absolutely no burp reason why I would need a Tivo brand $500 burp machine. burp that baconnaise, you people are morons.

Though this is horribly expensive, there are legitimate reasons people might opt for this:

1. (At least) Comcast's HD DVR's don't work properly via HDMI. So if someone was trying to wring every last ounce of picture quality from their DVR, the best a Comcast customer can currently do is to use component cables since the Motorola DVR's Comcast uses loses the HDCP handshake when you turn your TV off but leave the DVR on. This has been widely reported and though could be fixed by a Motorola firmware patch, Comcast is clueless and nobody's saying anything about when/if it will be fixed. So we're left in the dark.

2. Someone's house isn't wired for a dish and it's prohibitive to retrofit it for dish service. Some houses are impractical to retrofit a dish and distribute TV to all the places where they want to have a TV. In such situations, cable TV is about their only option for a variety of programming.

Agreed, this is an expensive item most will not opt for. But for some folks, it may be their best option.

I hate to say it but I agree with horndoggy. I have the DishNetwork HD DVR and it's pretty nice. I wish I could get shows off it more easily like you can with TiVo, but I don't wish it so much that I'd pay all that extra cash for it!

The SA8300HD DVR is better than it used to be, but it still doesn't hold a candle to TIVO. My 8300 has recently developed a penchant for arbitrarily stopping recordings that cross an hour boundary at that time with a message "recording stopped by user". It did this halfway through during the 2 hour Survivor finale but fortunately the ol' standard definition TIVO was also recording it and saved me from the wrath of spouse. Also, the 8300HD is more than $10/month when you factor in the other fees associated with the box -- there's something like a digital set-top fee, digital outlet fee in some places, taxes, etc. It's really more like $18/month. The one thing the SA8300HD has going for it is expandability, which TIVO has not yet enabled -- it may be a while since DRM may be the impeding factor. SA solves that by encrypting the external recordings so only the box that made the recording can retrieve it.

BTW, DirecTV sucks too -- in MPEG-2, they don't provide the full horizontal resolution in 1080i (1920 pixels), but cut it nearly in half (that's their nasty, dirty little secret). That's HD-lite.

Since the TIVO must have a QAM-256 tuner for cablecard, I wonder if it can tune "in-the-clear" HD cable broadcasts directly? In that case, no cablecard required, but I don't know if the TIVO program guide includes this information.

At least when the SA HD DVR breaks the cable company replace them free of charge. But if u pay $500 and pay monthtly charge on top of it and this thing breaks after warranty you are on your own. I would rather stay with the rented one from cable company if I need DVR functionality. Besides that fact, the technology changes fast and these things get out dated pretty fast.

Yes but DirectTV offers NFL SUnday TIcket, which I have to have.

First off, CableCard *ONLY* works for terrestrial QAM providers. It will *NOT* work with Satellite QAM providers -- e, you're stuck with Dish or DirecTV's HD equipment. TiVO and DirecTV split almost 2 years ago, and I'm waiting for my [SD] DirecTiVO to stop working soon. I really don't want to shouve out series bucks for a Satellite-proprietary HD DVR, so I'm switching back to cable -- either using their HD DVR, or buying a TiVO Series3.

Secondly, CableCard is *ONLY* mandated 1-way right now. e, you can receive (and descramble) content, but you can't request it. So you can't use this with Pay-Per-View and other capabilities that require "feedback" to your provider.

Third, not all cable companies provide CableCard for free. They could charge the same amount as providing you a DVR. Some like TiVO's approach (which I do), so some might find it worth it. Understand what you *ARE* paying for -- *YOUR* equipment, and TiVO has been "less receptive" to "Big Media" as of late, including offering SATA ports on the TiVO Series3 for near-unlimited expansion.

Lastly, it typically costs *NOTHING* "up-front" to try out your cable company's HD DVR. From there, you can decide if you like it or not, or if you want buy something like a Series3 TiVO. I'm going to start with my cable's HD DVR next month. And if and when I don't like the experience, I'm going to buy one of these when they drop below $400 -- although $511 is pretty damn good for the equipment you get.

InvaderZim - I believe the TiVO Series3 has one (1) "SD" NTSC and I'm fairly certain also one (1) "HD" ATSC (over-the-air QAM) tuner, in addition to dual QAM CableCard tuners. I'll check that again to be sure.

InvaderZim - I've seen reading that it can feed all three (3) types to both of the two (2) recoders -- NTSC, ATSC (over-the-air QAM) and CableCard (terrestrial QAM).

TheBS: my understanding is that the TIVO series-3 had six tuners: two ATSC terrestrial high-definition tuners for over-the-air HD, two NTSC standard definition tuners for either SD analog cable or SD OTA, and two QAM-256 tuners for digital cable. You can use any two tuners at a time.

The CableCard simply unscrambles the scrambled digital cable signal -- either HD or SD -- that's received by the QAM-256 tuner. Cablecard shouldn't be required for non-scrambled digital transmission. In my location (and most others, from what I understand), the local HD channels are broadcast "in the clear" digitally over the cable. My Sony RP TV (950XBR, 70" 3-panel LCD) can tune these cable HD transmissions directly -- they show up on channel 82.1, 82.2, 82.3, etc. because it has a built-in QAM-256 tuner.

Since the TV can do it, I suspect that the TIVO-3 can also do it, but the program guide would have to provide the channel information. If that's the case, then no cablecard would be required except for stuff like ESPN-HD, HBO-HD. So it's probably a moot point.

The lack of two-way doesn't bother me because I don't use on-demand video. That's all SD (we have HD-on-demand, but the selection of movies is very limited) and if the kids want to watch something, they can use the digital cable box on another TV.

I own 2 TiVos ... a series 1 (80hr) and a series 2 (140hr), both with lifetime. When those die, I'll fix 'em ... sell 'em on eBay for $200-$300 a pop, and move onto a PC-based PVR.

The language doesn't bother me just the gratuitous use if it. I like foghorny's pre-emptive "you people are morons" comment.

I've got to agree also. When they first appeared on the market with their ripoff subscription based business model I opted for a non-tivo SD PVR instead and it works well. I have a DirecTV HD Tivo now and the only way I rationalized the fee was to consider it as the fee for the additional tuner which was waived. While there are some excellent features, Tivo's (especially the crippled H10-250)are far from perfect. Especially now that it records undesirable disk wasting content(ads and such)that I can't opt out of.

Seems like this thing is way too expensive for all but the die-hard enthusiasts. I would rather deploy a myth box. Myth can be a PIA to set but there are vendors selling turn-key myth boxen with support now. They also come with HD Tuner cards but I don't think there's cablecard support. Too bad 'cause Tivo is titties(!) but I can't see how they can support their business model.

Actually, my HD PVR is only $5 a month. So buying this thing would be about 9 years rental of fees

Just call it "Thievo" since they are clearly trying to rip you off.

I love TIVO threads! Just goes to show that with the right marketing strategy targeted at the right dim wits you can sell them air and convince them that they are cooler because of their purchase.