# Weaknees now has replacement HDMI cards for HD Tivo



## A J Ricaud (Jun 25, 2002)

HDMI Card
Replacement HDMI card for use with HR10-250. This card has been fully tested and will repair first generation HR10-250s (produced before 12/04) with bad HDMI outputs. $50 credit for return of broken card.
$199.00

http://www.weaknees.com/tivo-directv-parts.php

(towards the bottom of the page--$150 net)


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## newsposter (Aug 18, 2002)

What a profitable idea! For those that want to keep the rest of their reliable box, it will be a wonderful product. (instead of switching boxes with directv etc) 

2 pts for figuring out how to keep us happy and hope I never need it since I have newer boxes


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## teasip (Aug 24, 2002)

Why not just pay $99 and have yours repaired? Return time for me was within a week.


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## ebonovic (Jul 24, 2001)

I don't know... for the last year, I opted to go with the component outputs of the unit... and haven't ever looked back.

I just now use the DVI/HDMI connection for the XBOX-360
_(Edit: Correction, I posted in error... My Up-Convert DVD Player was connected via HDMI, until I got my H20.... my XBOX-360 is connected via component... sorry for that...)_

With HD-DVD; PS/3 and other units that are going to want/need the DVI/HDMI port (which a vast majority of us only have one)

Just an option to consider before cracking the case on the unit.


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## Robert Spalding (Jan 12, 2001)

the Xbox 360 does not have DVI or HDMI outputs


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## stim (Jan 10, 2002)

Robert Spalding said:


> the Xbox 360 does not have DVI or HDMI outputs


I don't have a 360, but I'm pretty sure that the "premium" version does have HDMI output.


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## kbcrowe (Dec 12, 2000)

I don't have a 360 either, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't have HDMI, there have been numurous artlcles lamenting the fact that it doesn't, and apparently never will.


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## Lee L (Oct 1, 2003)

I thought there was a 3rd party adapter for the 360 to get DVI or HDMI. I know littel about it though.

I have an HR10-250 from teh second batch that I have always wondered if the HDMI card worked since my main TV pnly suports component. I now have a second TV that does have HDMI but I dread taking the HD TiVO out. I will probably check when I move in a couple of months though.


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## ebonovic (Jul 24, 2001)

Duh.... that is what I get for posting at 11:00pm drug induced (due to a cold)

My very bad...


The XBOX does NOT have a DVI/HDMI connection.

I was using my DVI/HDMI connection for my DVD Player (which has been replaced by my XBOX 360)... I am using the DVI/HDMI now with the H20 reciever.

There has been mention that XBOX360 will get a DVI/HDMI connection option int he future, but it DOESN'T as of now. (the mention surrounded the announcement of the HD-DVD add-on, and that it may need the two way secured HDCP connetion for certain content).

Anyway... my very bad on that one.

Still stands though that I have used my component input for the last 12 months with no problems. (And HD-DVD; PS/3; ect... are set to use HDMI)


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## tivoupgrade (Sep 27, 2000)

ebonovic said:


> Duh.... that is what I get for posting at 11:00pm drug induced (due to a cold)
> 
> My very bad...
> 
> ...


Hey -

Looks like there is definitely something up for an HDMI cable without the need for the HD-DVD add-on... See GIZMODO here


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## sin4me (Jun 6, 2006)

A little off topic but, I just purchased an hr10-250 and was wondering if there was any noticeable imrpovement in picture quality by using the hdmi output vs. component output? I know hdmi will carry audio too (not necessary for my application) but there also seem to be many, many reports of problems with the port. Just trying to think what would be the best way to integrate it into my system with the best quality & least problems. Thanks


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## A J Ricaud (Jun 25, 2002)

sin4me said:


> A little off topic but, I just purchased an hr10-250 and was wondering if there was any noticeable imrpovement in picture quality by using the hdmi output vs. component output? I know hdmi will carry audio too (not necessary for my application) but there also seem to be many, many reports of problems with the port. Just trying to think what would be the best way to integrate it into my system with the best quality & least problems. Thanks


Your best bet is to try both connections first and see which looks better to you. There are many posts about this subject, ranging from HDMI looking much better than component, to about the same, to worse. Much depends on the TV itself.

Just remember that component is disabled when HDMI is connected. Some TVs will let you toggle between the inputs so HDMI does not have to be disconnected.


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## jfischer (Oct 14, 1999)

stim said:


> I don't have a 360, but I'm pretty sure that the "premium" version does have HDMI output.


Nope. I have the "premium" version and there is no DVI/HDMI support.


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## dbperkins (Oct 21, 2003)

Why HDMI? It's component in this household with toslink. Component to the Video and toslink to the receiver. Why run the audio to the video if you have surround sound set up?


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## lynesjc (Feb 10, 2005)

A J Ricaud said:


> Much depends on the TV itself.


Quoted for truth.


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## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

dbperkins said:


> Why HDMI? It's component in this household with toslink. Component to the Video and toslink to the receiver. Why run the audio to the video if you have surround sound set up?


1) HDCP - You can only get this via HDMI or DVI-HDCP
2) All digital - Most newer HDTV's will never convert the signal to analog if you send it in the HDMI port
3) Better picture - On my 1080p set, there is a clear difference, to me. You might not care, but those of us who can see a difference, do care.
4) If you have an HDMI receiver (as more and more are), it's one cable to the receiver, and one cable to the TV, with everything upconverted by the receiver.

It has nothing to do with the sound.


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## looter (Jun 18, 2003)

I've only had my HR10-250 for since March 2006. It was supposedly new from D*TV. The HDMI just died on Saturday, 6/10/06. Not sure if I should have it fixed or just live with component. I really don't see much difference in picture quality. 

Is 3 months the typical life expectancy? This is like having the realiablility of UltimateTV just without all the features.


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## MisterEd (Jun 6, 2001)

Can't you just get a new rx from D* (assuming you are under warranty) and just swap out the HDMI card and send back the replacement rx ? That way you don't lose everything else. I'm sure D* doesn't care which rx they get back. Just tell them the ssue was resolved.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

Wow. Another great deal from Weaknees. Why is it every time I see their prices I feel like I need to bend over? Only $150 for an HDMI card when a new HDTivo will only cost you $350 or less on ebay.  Ya just gotta love capitalism.


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## A J Ricaud (Jun 25, 2002)

mr.unnatural said:


> Wow. Another great deal from Weaknees. Why is it every time I see their prices I feel like I need to bend over? Only $150 for an HDMI card when a new HDTivo will only cost you $350 or less on ebay. Ya just gotta love capitalism.


And if your HDMI card fails you can go to Weakness or CCS when it is out of warranty.


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## weaknees (May 11, 2001)

We agree that the price isn't great - it's basically just based on our cost of making them available (as far as we know, we're the only company that even bothered since the price is so high). The real reason to get one is to salvage the data on your current drive. If you get a new unit (still a $200+ premium) you can't move your data over, but you can keep it with this.


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## JTAnderson (Jun 6, 2000)

What about CCS? They seem to offer repair for $100. Have they been unreliable?


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## Mark Lopez (Jan 1, 2000)

weaknees said:


> The real reason to get one is to salvage the data on your current drive. If you get a new unit (still a $200+ premium) you can't move your data over, but you can keep it with this.


Well, you could just put the new HDMI card in the old machine AND use the new HD as a second drive (if you don't already have one) AND not loose any data AND still have a 'spare' motherboard/case/etc.


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## HiHoStevo (Apr 1, 2003)

AbMagFab said:


> It has nothing to do with the sound.


It has nothing to do with sound on the HD-Tivo..... actually most HD-Tivo's will NOT output sound over the HDMI cable even though they should.... I have had 5 of them and none of them would pass audio to my Denon 2807 HDMI switching receiver.

There is however another reason to have an HDMI cable that does not have to do with the HD-Tivo... the new HD-DVD formats (including Blu-ray) will need an HDMI connection to get the best quality sound. Toslink or Coax digital simply do not have the bandwidth required for the newer sound formats.

HDMI is supposed to be the future... it is a pity that so many manufacturers do such a p*** poor job of properly supporting it!


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## drew2k (Jun 10, 2003)

Until the HDMI cards on my two HR10-250s both died on the same day, each was outputting audio on the HDMI stream to my LG plasma TV without problems. I took the LG TV digital optical out and fed that to the Pioneer AV receiver and everything was great. 

I guess I was lucky that my audio worked via HDMI - that is, until the cards died.


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## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

HiHoStevo said:


> It has nothing to do with sound on the HD-Tivo..... actually most HD-Tivo's will NOT output sound over the HDMI cable even though they should.... I have had 5 of them and none of them would pass audio to my Denon 2807 HDMI switching receiver.
> 
> There is however another reason to have an HDMI cable that does not have to do with the HD-Tivo... the new HD-DVD formats (including Blu-ray) will need an HDMI connection to get the best quality sound. Toslink or Coax digital simply do not have the bandwidth required for the newer sound formats.
> 
> HDMI is supposed to be the future... it is a pity that so many manufacturers do such a p*** poor job of properly supporting it!


I think you're totally wrong on all points.

HDMI from the HD Tivo does output digital sound to any receiver that can receive digital sound from HDMI. I currently have a non-HDMI Onkyo hooked up, so I can't confirm the HD Tivo.

And, TosLink/Coax(RCA) have plenty of bandwidth for all digital audio formats. What are you talking about? And what "newer sound formats"? BluRay and HD-DVD output the same, good old sound "formats" we're all used to. They just can store a lot more of them on the discs. This has nothing to do with TosLink/Coax.


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## Arcady (Oct 14, 2004)

HiHoStevo said:


> most HD-Tivo's will NOT output sound over the HDMI cable even though they should


My HR10-250 outputs sound just fine to my Samsung HDTV set over HDMI. I had to turn off Dolby Digital though. Perhaps your receiver is at fault.



HiHoStevo said:


> the new HD-DVD formats (including Blu-ray) will need an HDMI connection to get the best quality sound. Toslink or Coax digital simply do not have the bandwidth required for the newer sound formats.


That's wrong. Existing digital connections are able to handle uncompressed (PCM) audio already, which uses more bandwidth than any of the new compressed audio formats. You can output 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 and more through a toslink or coaxial digital audio connection. The audio connection in an HDMI cable is nothing more than a coaxial-style digital audio feed, using two wires.


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## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

(I bet *HiHoStevo* didn't expect to get jumped on so quickly when he made so many baseless statements. But, that's what this board does - keep people honest.)


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## weaknees (May 11, 2001)

Mark Lopez said:


> Well, you could just put the new HDMI card in the old machine AND use the new HD as a second drive (if you don't already have one) AND not loose any data AND still have a 'spare' motherboard/case/etc.


Actually, if that works, then our cards won't. Our cards are the first generation of HDMI card from the HR10-250s. You can't buy a new unit and pull the card and use it in one of these. So if you have a unit with a new-style card (generally those manufactured after November 2004) then our replacement card won't help you anyway. We don't have those cards - as far as we've seen, very few are failing from the newer revision.


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## HiHoStevo (Apr 1, 2003)

Arcady said:


> My HR10-250 outputs sound just fine to my Samsung HDTV set over HDMI. I had to turn off Dolby Digital though. Perhaps your receiver is at fault.


That is why I had DTV send me 4 additional HD-Tivo's to try... none of them worked also. I will not guarantee that Denon is not partly responsible also as most of the manufactures have been totaly slackers when it comes to HDMI... I can tell you that 5 different HD-Tivo's have not worked, while my Sony DVP-CX995V works just fine (video and audio) over HDMI. According to the supervisor I last spoke with at DTV the HDMI sound to a receiver issue is a "known issue" and it whether it works or not depends on the motherboard revision..., but they have no way of knowing which motherboard any particular unit has when they ship one out, or at least so this one particular guy told me.



Arcady said:


> That's wrong. Existing digital connections are able to handle uncompressed (PCM) audio already, which uses more bandwidth than any of the new compressed audio formats. You can output 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 and more through a toslink or coaxial digital audio connection. The audio connection in an HDMI cable is nothing more than a coaxial-style digital audio feed, using two wires.


Actually it is correct.... check over in the new HD-DVD forum (on AVS) and you will find that with the new Toshiba HD-DVD player you ONLY get the best audio from the DVD's if you are using the HDMI connection or the 5.1 analog connections. The newer formats have too much bandwidth for the toslink or digital coax...... at least that is what is being reported in the HD-DVD thread......

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=667248

You may read here about my "baseless" comments.......


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

> And if your HDMI card fails you can go to Weakness or CCS when it is out of warranty.


Nope. I just get on the horn to DTV and they'll send me a replacement unit under their service plan. I've already received two replacement DTivos under the plan and both have worked flawlessly. In fact, the replacement HR10-250 they sent me has worked better than the original HDTivo I bought from them. FWIW, I would never go to Weaknees for any service or products. They are grossly overpriced, IMHO, but apparently there are a lot of people that feel otherwise. More fodder for P.T. Barnum, I suppose (i.e., a sucker born every minute or a fool and his money, etc.). I've never heard of CSS so I have no opinion about them whatsoever.

FYI - I have no personal grudge gainst Weaknees, PTVUpgrade, Hinsdale, or any other service that offers upgrade drives or parts for a Tivo. What I do object to is what they charge for their products and services, especially when you compare the cost of a new drive to what their "upgrade" drives cost and the actual labor involved in performing the upgrade. For example, Weaknees charges $49 for the same replacement S1 SA Tivo power supply that you could buy for $4.50 from All Electronics Corp a while back. They're usually available on ebay for $10 or less. You can buy an entire S2 DTivo for less than what they charge for a replacement power supply.

Used Tivos are so cheap on ebay that it doesn't even pay to try and fix a broken one unless you have a really cheap source for parts. They've entered the category of throwaway items, no matter how much it pains you to believe it. The only exception may be the HR10-250, but the prices on them have plummeted recently to where you can buy a new one for less than $350 delivered to your door.


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## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

HiHoStevo said:


> Actually it is correct.... check over in the new HD-DVD forum (on AVS) and you will find that with the new Toshiba HD-DVD player you ONLY get the best audio from the DVD's if you are using the HDMI connection or the 5.1 analog connections. The newer formats have too much bandwidth for the toslink or digital coax...... at least that is what is being reported in the HD-DVD thread......
> 
> http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=667248
> 
> You may read here about my "baseless" comments.......


I trolled through the many pages of posts, and didn't see anything about what you describe. It might be there, but you need to post a more specific link.

And, even if it is there, it's wrong there as well. HDMI digital audio is exactly the same as TOSLink/Coax. There is not a bandwidth issue at all. Anyone saying otherwise is misinformed.

The only thing that's been speculated is that the video might be downrezzed over component. That's it. And even that is being debunked based on newer agreements with the movie studios.


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## Oronomus (Jun 21, 2006)

Last night I hooked my HR10-250 to a new Denon 4306 via HDMI cable. Like HiHoStevo, I also could not get my Denon to recognize the audio signal over HDMI.

I quickly solved the problem by installing an optical cable and re-assigning the TIVO audio to the optical input on the Denon.

I would like to use just the one HDMI cable for both audio and video, so I searched this forum to see if I had my settings wrong on either the TIVO or the Denon. Anyone else experienced or solved this problem with a Denon receiver? Or is HiHoStevo right - maybe my TIVO just doesn't pass audion over HDMI???


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## dougfetter (May 14, 2006)

Oronomus, I ran into this same problem with the HR10-250 & Denon 4306 receiver about 1 month or so ago. There is another thread here where it was being discussed, but the message board will not allow me to include the URL until I have 5 posts so here is the last part of the URL

showthread.php?t=296877

I ended up with the same solution that you have, that is, connect the optical output of the TIVO to an input on the Denon and remap the audio for the the TIVO whose video is coming in via HDMI.


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## AbMagFab (Feb 5, 2001)

Oronomus said:


> Last night I hooked my HR10-250 to a new Denon 4306 via HDMI cable. Like HiHoStevo, I also could not get my Denon to recognize the audio signal over HDMI.
> 
> I quickly solved the problem by installing an optical cable and re-assigning the TIVO audio to the optical input on the Denon.
> 
> I would like to use just the one HDMI cable for both audio and video, so I searched this forum to see if I had my settings wrong on either the TIVO or the Denon. Anyone else experienced or solved this problem with a Denon receiver? Or is HiHoStevo right - maybe my TIVO just doesn't pass audion over HDMI???


HiHoStevo is wrong. If anything, it's a problem with the Denon.


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