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I might actually need this app.  With two other family members and myself fighting over four Ceton tuners via extenders I can probably justify getting another Ceton card (mine just arrived today ;D).  OTOH, I might opt to wait for the SD HDHomeRun Prime when it gets released and let the family use those tuners and keep the Ceton all to myself.

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I might actually need this app.  With two other family members and myself fighting over four Ceton tuners via extenders I can probably justify getting another Ceton card (mine just arrived today ;D).  OTOH, I might opt to wait for the SD HDHomeRun Prime when it gets released and let the family use those tuners and keep the Ceton all to myself.

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[quote=”Mikinho”]
Do you have any extenders?
[/quote]
Yes.  I currently have three Linksys DMA2200 extenders that I plan to use with the Ceton.  It looks like I’ll be upgrading to Win 7 64-bit this weekend.  I might also have to consider bumping up to a bit more RAM (currently at 4GB).

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[quote=”Mikinho”]
Do you have any extenders?
[/quote]
Yes.  I currently have three Linksys DMA2200 extenders that I plan to use with the Ceton.  It looks like I’ll be upgrading to Win 7 64-bit this weekend.  I might also have to consider bumping up to a bit more RAM (currently at 4GB).

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I upgraded my HTPC to Win 7 in anticipation of acquiring the Ceton card.  I went with the 32-bit version because most of what I read about using the 64-bit version with HTPCs didn’t seem to provide any real benefit other than the ability to use more RAM.

Would there be any benefit in upgrading to the 64-bit version for use with the Ceton tuners?  Is there any reason not to stick with the current 32-bit version?

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I upgraded my HTPC to Win 7 in anticipation of acquiring the Ceton card.  I went with the 32-bit version because most of what I read about using the 64-bit version with HTPCs didn’t seem to provide any real benefit other than the ability to use more RAM.

Would there be any benefit in upgrading to the 64-bit version for use with the Ceton tuners?  Is there any reason not to stick with the current 32-bit version?

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Sorry that you had such bad luck with your Tivos.  I do consider myself lucky, especially when reading some of the horror stories people posted on Tivo forums.  I was always amazed that people were having such bad luck when all of my Tivos were humming along just fine.  Then again, how often do you see people rave about a product vs. giving it a bad rap when things start going south?  I hacked every Tivo I ever owned, and that included updating the software with patches as well as adding more storage.  I don’t know if that had any bearing on their lifespan, but you never know.

Tivo actually had several different hard drive manufacturers that they used for their products.  The original Tivos used Quantum drives which were eventually supplanted with Maxtor and Western Digitals.  It all depended on what they had on hand when your particular Tivo was being built.

Perhaps the fact that I replaced most of the OEM drives with bigger drives had something to do with my higher success rate.  Then again, many of the Tivos I upgraded simply included the addition of a 2nd drive along with the original drive and they all worked perfectly for years.  I used a UPS that had voltage regulation with all of my Tivos, which no doubt was beneficial to their longevity.  It could be a reason why your Tivos had so many power supply failures. 

If you live in an area that suffers from wide variations in line voltages or a lot of voltage spikes then the Tivo power supplies probably fell victim to your power company more than any manufacturing issues.  It could also account for your high rate of card reader failures.  I learned a long time ago that having stable line voltage is about the best thing you can do for your A/V electronics.

It seemed that most people that had bad luck with Tivos always had multiple issues with more than one unit, like they were being singled out to get the lemons.

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Sorry that you had such bad luck with your Tivos.  I do consider myself lucky, especially when reading some of the horror stories people posted on Tivo forums.  I was always amazed that people were having such bad luck when all of my Tivos were humming along just fine.  Then again, how often do you see people rave about a product vs. giving it a bad rap when things start going south?  I hacked every Tivo I ever owned, and that included updating the software with patches as well as adding more storage.  I don’t know if that had any bearing on their lifespan, but you never know.

Tivo actually had several different hard drive manufacturers that they used for their products.  The original Tivos used Quantum drives which were eventually supplanted with Maxtor and Western Digitals.  It all depended on what they had on hand when your particular Tivo was being built.

Perhaps the fact that I replaced most of the OEM drives with bigger drives had something to do with my higher success rate.  Then again, many of the Tivos I upgraded simply included the addition of a 2nd drive along with the original drive and they all worked perfectly for years.  I used a UPS that had voltage regulation with all of my Tivos, which no doubt was beneficial to their longevity.  It could be a reason why your Tivos had so many power supply failures. 

If you live in an area that suffers from wide variations in line voltages or a lot of voltage spikes then the Tivo power supplies probably fell victim to your power company more than any manufacturing issues.  It could also account for your high rate of card reader failures.  I learned a long time ago that having stable line voltage is about the best thing you can do for your A/V electronics.

It seemed that most people that had bad luck with Tivos always had multiple issues with more than one unit, like they were being singled out to get the lemons.

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I’ve owned several dozen Tivos over the past 10 years and I think I only had one hard drive failure in all that time.  I’ve also never had a power supply failure or card reader issue.

The series 1 DirecTivos did suffer from power supply failures, but it was still only on a small percentage of units.  The same models had some hard drive failures, but the heat buildup inside these units was higher than usual which probably hastened the failure rates.

That being said, you can’t really blame Tivo for hard drive failures as they can just as easily occur in a PC as a Tivo (i.e., Tivo didn’t manufacture the hard drives).  Power supply failures on later models could usually be isolated to a bad electrolytic capacitor on later models (easily diagnosed by a visual inspection).  A pencil eraser could usually cure card reader problems by cleaning the contacts on the card.

Overalll, I found the Tivo hardware to be extremely reliable.  It was the only DVR platform that could be hacked as well as upgraded with larger hard drives (and it still holds that advantage over any other commercially available DVR).  ReplayTVs and Ultimate TVs could be upgraded with larger hard drives as could the Dish 501 PVR, although the Dish required a JTAG and some serious hacking skills and was extremely limited in the specific drives that could be used for the upgrade. 

ReplayTVs could be upgraded with just about any IDE drive.  The Ultimate TVs also had some drive limitations, but nowhere near as stringent as the Dish 501.  The Tivos and early Dish DVRs were also the only ones that allowed you to extract recorded programs to your PC.  The Tivo required hacking to enable this but the Dish drive had to be physically removed and installed in the PC to perform the task.

Many other DVRs have come and gone but the Tivo has persevered.  Aside from the DVRs supplied by the cable and DSS providers, they are about the only game left in town other than an HTPC and a Moxi.

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I’ve owned several dozen Tivos over the past 10 years and I think I only had one hard drive failure in all that time.  I’ve also never had a power supply failure or card reader issue.

The series 1 DirecTivos did suffer from power supply failures, but it was still only on a small percentage of units.  The same models had some hard drive failures, but the heat buildup inside these units was higher than usual which probably hastened the failure rates.

That being said, you can’t really blame Tivo for hard drive failures as they can just as easily occur in a PC as a Tivo (i.e., Tivo didn’t manufacture the hard drives).  Power supply failures on later models could usually be isolated to a bad electrolytic capacitor on later models (easily diagnosed by a visual inspection).  A pencil eraser could usually cure card reader problems by cleaning the contacts on the card.

Overalll, I found the Tivo hardware to be extremely reliable.  It was the only DVR platform that could be hacked as well as upgraded with larger hard drives (and it still holds that advantage over any other commercially available DVR).  ReplayTVs and Ultimate TVs could be upgraded with larger hard drives as could the Dish 501 PVR, although the Dish required a JTAG and some serious hacking skills and was extremely limited in the specific drives that could be used for the upgrade. 

ReplayTVs could be upgraded with just about any IDE drive.  The Ultimate TVs also had some drive limitations, but nowhere near as stringent as the Dish 501.  The Tivos and early Dish DVRs were also the only ones that allowed you to extract recorded programs to your PC.  The Tivo required hacking to enable this but the Dish drive had to be physically removed and installed in the PC to perform the task.

Many other DVRs have come and gone but the Tivo has persevered.  Aside from the DVRs supplied by the cable and DSS providers, they are about the only game left in town other than an HTPC and a Moxi.

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[quote=”jennyfur”]
The cost comparison is in the article’s conclusion. However the author compares only one Tivo Premiere (with a lifetime subscription, so no monthly fees) to a Media Center PC w/cablecard so it’s a much closer race with no clear winner. [/quote]
I must have missed that the first time through.  The cost comparison is still way off base because it only compares a single Tivo Premiere with lifetime vs. a Media Center PC with cablecard.  It would take two Tivo Premieres with lifetime to create a fair comparison since the Ceton tuner has four tuners vs. only two for a Tivo Premiere.  That clearly puts the HTPC in the winner’s circle, IMHO.

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[quote=”jennyfur”]
The cost comparison is in the article’s conclusion. However the author compares only one Tivo Premiere (with a lifetime subscription, so no monthly fees) to a Media Center PC w/cablecard so it’s a much closer race with no clear winner. [/quote]
I must have missed that the first time through.  The cost comparison is still way off base because it only compares a single Tivo Premiere with lifetime vs. a Media Center PC with cablecard.  It would take two Tivo Premieres with lifetime to create a fair comparison since the Ceton tuner has four tuners vs. only two for a Tivo Premiere.  That clearly puts the HTPC in the winner’s circle, IMHO.

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I’ve been looking over the installation instructions from the Ceton site and discovered a few things I found interesting as well as a bit confusing.  

The instructions have you installing the Ceton card and hooking everything up and inserting the cablecard and then running the Digital Cable Advisor.  It says that the Extras Gallery may not be shown and that it gets downloaded when you run the installer software.  I’m running Win 7 Pro and the Extras Gallery with the Digital Cable Advisor icon is present.  I decided to go ahead and run it since it’s just checking to make sure your system meets the minimum requirements to handle a cablecard tuner.  It seems a bit silly to install the hardware first and then run the advisor.  If your system doesn’t meet the minimum requirements you may have to uninstall everything to get it up to speed.  I’m guessing that not all versions of Win 7 Media Center include the Extras Gallery.

One thing I found interesting is that it requires 4GB of RAM as a minimum requirement.  I do have 4GB of RAM so my system passed.  The weird thing is that I’m running the 32-bit version of Win 7 Pro, which only allows 3GB of RAM to be used from what I understand.  It seems to me that in order to have 4GB of RAM available that the 64-bit version of Win 7 would also be a requirement.

I just scanned over the installation instructions again and I just realized that the product key for the tuner required during the configuration process is apparently generated when running the Digital Cable Advisor.  This is probably why they have you install the tuner card and cablecard prior to running it,  I think it took less than five minutes to run through it so I’ll just rerun it after I get my Ceton card.

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I’ve been looking over the installation instructions from the Ceton site and discovered a few things I found interesting as well as a bit confusing.  

The instructions have you installing the Ceton card and hooking everything up and inserting the cablecard and then running the Digital Cable Advisor.  It says that the Extras Gallery may not be shown and that it gets downloaded when you run the installer software.  I’m running Win 7 Pro and the Extras Gallery with the Digital Cable Advisor icon is present.  I decided to go ahead and run it since it’s just checking to make sure your system meets the minimum requirements to handle a cablecard tuner.  It seems a bit silly to install the hardware first and then run the advisor.  If your system doesn’t meet the minimum requirements you may have to uninstall everything to get it up to speed.  I’m guessing that not all versions of Win 7 Media Center include the Extras Gallery.

One thing I found interesting is that it requires 4GB of RAM as a minimum requirement.  I do have 4GB of RAM so my system passed.  The weird thing is that I’m running the 32-bit version of Win 7 Pro, which only allows 3GB of RAM to be used from what I understand.  It seems to me that in order to have 4GB of RAM available that the 64-bit version of Win 7 would also be a requirement.

I just scanned over the installation instructions again and I just realized that the product key for the tuner required during the configuration process is apparently generated when running the Digital Cable Advisor.  This is probably why they have you install the tuner card and cablecard prior to running it,  I think it took less than five minutes to run through it so I’ll just rerun it after I get my Ceton card.

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I’ve been a long time Tivo user and just recently started using Win 7 Media Center.  I had been using XP Pro and BeyondTV 4 for my OTA DVR chores as well as watching various types of video clips, DVDs, and Blu-Ray rips stored on an unRAID server.  With the (hopefully) upcoming arrival of my Ceton tuner I will finally be retiring my Tivos after a 10+ year association.

I didn’t read through the full laundry list of advantages for each setup on Engadget, but I do take exception when they call it a tie with regards to storage space.  They indicated that either platform can be upgraded to as much storage as you want.  They obviously did not do their homework in this area or they would know that Tivo has a limit on the size of the hard drives they can use.  You’re also limited to the internal drive plus an add-on external drive.  I could easily set up a shared folder on my 18TB unRAID server for use with the DVR function in Win 7 MC.  I still have lots of room for expansion should I ever decide to upgrade it further.

I don’t recall reading the cost advantages of a Media Center PC vs. a Tivo in the article.  Had the author actually done such a comparison he would have quickly realized that a Media Center PC with a Ceton card is an absolute steal in comparison.  The only monthly fees attached are for a single cablecard.  You’d need two Tivo Premieres with two cablecards and Tivo service agreements for both Tivos, which could easily meet or exceed the hardware costs of a topnotch Media Center PC.  If you add in the capability to play DVDs and Blu-Rays, then the HTPC wins hands-down.

I love my Tivos, but I won’t miss the expense of owning them.

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