TiVo Series 1 HTPC retrofit complete!

[Kirby]

It took a little longer than I had hoped, and burned through an Intel DH61AG motherboard in the process (its rear USB 2.0 and ethernet ports died after a few days) but it is finally done and fully assembled!  I decided to use the 2 LED’s on the front of the TiVo for standard Power LED and Hard Drive LED.  As this HTPC is a SageTV Client currently, I saw no need to make use of the Recording LED support on the motherboard.  Also, all of my tuners are Silicon Dust HD Homerun products and as such I can see the activity LED’s on each.

I replaced the rear TiVo fan with a Cooler Master BladeMaster 80mm PWM fan.  It runs pretty slow, about 700-900 RPM but obviously can go faster if need be.

I also pulled some old power and reset switch housings from old ATX PC cases I had here at work and hot glued those buttons (swapped the actual buttons for new ones) into the two Coax input holes in the rear of the TiVo.  Bottom one is power, top red one is reset.  I need to pull another red button cover from an old case for the power button still.

Components used:

Philips HDR212 TiVo (gutted)
Intel DH61AG motherboard
Intel G620 cpu with stock HSF and Arctic Silver 5
G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin SO-DIMM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Model F3-8500CL7D-8GBSQ
Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2MH080G2R5 2.5″ 80GB SSD (re-used from laptop)
19V 7.9A  150w AC-DC Power Adapter from mini-box.com

[skirge01]

Nice mod, Kirby!  Talk about a case being properly repurposed!  I never had the patience or tried my skills at modding, so I’m always impressed by people who do.  As a fellow SageTV refugee…  keep up the good fight!  🙂

[babgvant]

Nice!

[captain_video]

Best use for a series 1 Tivo I’ve seen in a long time.

[Kirby]

So the day I feared is finally nearing.  In a month or two, my cable provider will be adding dozens of copy-once channels, and I will want access to them without having to deal with a lone HD-PVR for tuning/recording over 30 channels.  So my SageTV time seems to be about up.  Looking at switching to media center, but in doing so I am going to have to put a recording drive in my Tivo case.  Not a big deal, it will fit right where the SSD was (as I picked up a 64GB mSata drive for a clean OS install).  

What I dont know is, what is a good drive brand/model to put in for recording?  I will have 5 tuners (all HD Homeruns, 3 Prime, 1 QAM, 1 OTA) and I want to keep heat of the drive to a minimum as my case only has the rear exhaust fan (controlled off the motherboard, PWM fan).  I dont need huge storage, as I plan to have MCE archive all recordings to my WHS2011 box.

Since I dont know how often/fast MCE will archive, that could play into the drive size calculation.  Everything is on a gigabit network, so transfers should be rather speedy.

What would you guys and gals suggest?  Green drive?  Brand?  I’m thinking I could get by with even 500GB or so, depending on how often MCE archives.  

Appreciate your input! 🙂

[Aaron Ledger]

Since you’ll be archiving to WHS, the drive size can be extremely small. Even 500GB is more than enough. The archiving typically occurs shortly after the show has recorded.

I have had good results with Hitachi 5K3000 and WD Green drives for recording. I’d go with whatever has the lower price and better warranty.

[Kirby]

Well if 500GB is more than ample, would a large SSD be better (say 128GB or 256GB)?  Or would the constant writes/re-writes kill it?  That would be the lowest heat solution?

[Aaron Ledger]

The constant writing will shorten the lifespan so it becomes a more expensive solution over time. Perhaps a good compromise would be a 2.5″ hard drive since they should be even quieter and produce less heat than the 3.5″ counterpart. I have heard good things about WD AV-25 series (320GB, 500GB).

[Kirby]

Oh, great recommendation!  I never think to look at 2.5″ conventional drives, those are very low power and low heat drives.  Just grabbed a 500GB model.  Thanks for the help!

[Author]

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