Tivo Series 3 to 1 TB Hack

Nice coverage on Engadget of a hack to take the new, high-definition Tivo Series 3 to 1 Terabyte (1 TB).

Engadget Article

This gets your Tivo Series 3 up to 131 hours of high definition programming, which is not bad, but doesn’t quite match the 170 hours I enjoy on my DirecTV Tivo today (I have an upgraded box).

I have to say, having over 100 hours of storage definitely changes the way you use your Tivo. When we had 30 hours, my wife and I would rarely record movies, since 30 hours covered just about 2 weeks of average recording. Dual tuners made it worse, because you could actually now catch competing shows.

With 170 hours, we’ve never run out of room, and anytime we want to catch a movie we missed in the theater, we record it off one of the cable movie channels.

We’re one of the last hold outs who have not upgraded to HD yet. We’ve largely been waiting on a solution to two large problems in this area:

1) A decent, HD Tivo solution with 100+ hours and that doesn’t break the bank.
2) A solution to the fact that a new TV & setup means replacing our cherry entertainment center (purchased in 2001).

As usual, I have more faith in technology to solve problem (1) than problem (2).