# Can I just buy a new TiVo?



## NickB (Jun 29, 2002)

I don't have a land line, so I figure it's gonna cost £33.50/month to get the new TiVo on top of the £150 'activation' fee.

I'm quite happy to buy a replacement for my perfectly usable S1 and pay whatever for another lifetime subscription, but I'm not paying £33.50 for a bunch of channels that I don't want and will never watch.

What are my options?


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## Pine Cladding (Aug 4, 2001)

Have a look here http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=467459


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## NickB (Jun 29, 2002)

Cheers, but doesn't really answer my question. Basically, I don't want to watch anything other than free-to-air stuff. There's enough on there to satisfy all my viewing requirements. So all I want is a HD recorder with the abilities that my S1 has. I don't want to get any further into bed with VM than the cable broadband I have.

Guess I'll have to look at another PVR?


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## nocomp (Jan 31, 2003)

Yes you are right VM will need you to take some kind of TV channels package to get any tv from them

I guess you best bet is to get a free view HD pVr


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Remember your S1 will continue to work with the alternative EPG.


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## richard_hamblen (Nov 7, 2002)

package summary courtesy of 'Nialli's unofficial blog on Virgin Media's high definition and TiVo cable TV services'



> TV Package HD channels (available for no extra monthly fee)
> M: BBC1, BBC HD, ITV1, C4, 5
> M+: add Film 4
> XL: add ESPN, FX, MTV Networks, National Geographic, Sky 1, Sky Living, E4, SyFy, Discovery, Eurosport


Put simply you need to buy a package to get VM tv service.
right now VM are only offering tivo with the XL package.
My view would be if you are not interested in a premium TV package, why would you have a premium STB.

You also have restriction on the ondemand services when on a lesser TV package so you are throttling the features the VM tivo box offers.

So you have 3 choices...
1. stick with your S1 tivo (and do the tweaks to up the record quality and except it isn't HD) - hack are published elsewhere on the various forums.
2. us a different pvr and accept you wont have tivo if you want to record HD
3. wait for a bit. VM have stated that there will be more boxes in the family and they have a long term goal to switch ALL customers to tivo platform.
(this might be a few years out though)


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## scgf (Oct 24, 2000)

I am giving serious thought to buying a Humax Freeview HD PVR when our region switches off analog in August. I've have been analysing what I record and it is mostly content from the BBC and Channel 4 - much of which I would be able to get in HD on Freeview. The Humax has two tuners and allows you to watch another channel while it is recording two as long as the channel to want to watch is in the same multiplex as one of the recording channels.

I've had the new VM TiVo and quite honestly, it's nothing to write home about - messy, slow UI and poor SD picture quality. It really offered me nothing extra that I wanted to use - and I never thought I'd hear myself say that, having been a big supporter of the S1 TiVo. 

Saving nearly £360 a year and being able to watch effectively the same channels as before sounds pretty attractive to me!


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## tdenson (Oct 3, 2002)

scgf said:


> I am giving serious thought to buying a Humax Freeview HD PVR when our region switches off analog in August. I've have been analysing what I record and it is mostly content from the BBC and Channel 4 - much of which I would be able to get in HD on Freeview. The Humax has two tuners and allows you to watch another channel while it is recording two as long as the channel to want to watch is in the same multiplex as one of the recording channels.
> 
> I've had the new VM TiVo and quite honestly, it's nothing to write home about - messy, slow UI and poor SD picture quality. It really offered me nothing extra that I wanted to use - and I never thought I'd hear myself say that, having been a big supporter of the S1 TiVo.
> 
> Saving nearly £360 a year and being able to watch effectively the same channels as before sounds pretty attractive to me!


I moved to a Humax from a Tivo S1 a few years back and hated the thing. After a couple of years ended up throwing it out and buying a Topfield (which wasn't much better). It was buggy, unreliable and the UI was poor. Frustrations included the ability to have padding or Series Links but not both together.


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## Nimbus (May 29, 2004)

richard_hamblen said:


> My view would be if you are not interested in a premium TV package, why would you have a premium STB.


You are joking right ?

Given that we can now get HD via freeview or freesat, and a massive choice of channels, all for free...( ignoring the tv licence obviously ), my view would be why would I want to pay someone a near fortune, for a few extra channels, when I could have a Tivo that recorded enough content to keep me happy all day..

I understand why there is no new 'freeview' Tivo, and I think we are kidding ourselves if we think there ever will be, but I'd still like one ! No other recorder comes close..


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

Nimbus said:


> Given that we can now get HD via freeview or freesat, and a massive choice of channels, all for free...( ignoring the tv licence obviously ), my view would be why would I want to pay someone a near fortune, for a few extra channels, when I could have a Tivo that recorded enough content to keep me happy all day../


Well there's approx 50 channels on Freeview and 160 on the XL pack, so I don't think it's at all accurate to describe it "a few extra channels". And we can certainly discount 90% of the Freesat channels as being minority interest.


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## scgf (Oct 24, 2000)

tdenson said:


> I moved to a Humax from a Tivo S1 a few years back and hated the thing. After a couple of years ended up throwing it out and buying a Topfield (which wasn't much better). It was buggy, unreliable and the UI was poor. Frustrations included the ability to have padding or Series Links but not both together.


I went from a S1 TiVo to a Toppy and loved it. If I could buy a Freeview HD Topfield which allowed the use of TAPs I would buy it right now! Yes it does lack some of the TiVo functionality, but it provided me with everything I wanted from a PVR.


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