Upgrading Your TiVo HD Using WinMFS

Posted on Friday, April 18, 2008 by MegaZone

Steven Kim at EngadgetHD has done a nice article on upgrading the internal drive in your TiVo HD using WinMFS. Some people prefer upgrading the internal drive over using the external My DVR Expander because it is one less box to have in the entertainment center, one less device to connect to power and cable to the TiVo, and one less device to potentially fail. Plus a bare SATA drive will generally cost less, and you can get a larger drive, such as 1TB. (Note that I use the My DVR Expander on my Series3, which hasn’t been upgraded, so I don’t think it is a bad solution or anything.)

Note that if you do upgrade the internal drive, you lose the ability to just plug-in an external eSATA drive for additional capacity. You can still add an external eSATA drive, but you want to image and ‘marry’ the two drives simultaneously and install them in the TiVo at the same time. And if if you disconnect the external drive it doesn’t recover like it will with the standard eSATA support.

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Universal Finally Announces Their Blu-Ray Plans

Posted on Friday, April 18, 2008 by MegaZone

Universal was the only studio to be HD DVD exclusive from the launch of the format until its death. Since HD DVD went defunct and Universal turned Blu, we’ve been waiting to hear what their BD release plans would be. Today they finally dropped a press release detailing their initial BD plans, and it looks like they’re jumping in with both feet. They’ve got a number of blockbuster titles lined up for Blu-ray in 2008, and beyond, beginning with Heroes: Season Two.
Continue reading →

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TiVo Gets Social With Facebook

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 by MegaZone

TiVo has just launched a new Facebook application called ‘My TV‘. You can add the shows you watch, rate and comment on the series or individual episodes, recommend shows to friends, schedule recordings on your TiVo (via links to TiVo Central Online), and more.

Quickly playing with it, there were a few glitches, but it is a new application and will hopefully evolve. It would be nice if it could pull in your existing Season Pass list from TiVo, right now you have to manually enter the shows you watch into the application – there really isn’t any integration with your TiVo account. But this is definitely a step in the right direction for TiVo, IMHO. As I said recently, I think TiVo needs to do more to exploit social networking and the community of TiVo users. This is a good start, and I think the next logical step would be to port this application to the Google OpenSocial platform which would allow it to work on MySpace, LiveJournal, Orkut, Friendster, Plaxo, LinkedIn, and many other social networking sites (pretty much everyone who isn’t Facebook, which has decided not to join the party) – TiVo could even use it on their own site.

I’d love to see more integration between applications like this and TiVo accounts so that information can be shared to make it easier on users and to allow advanced functionality. Even integration into the TiVo itself, for example, being able to flag a program while watching it so it reminds you to comment in the application, or being able to recommend a program to friends in your network right from the TiVo. I guess we’ll have to see where they go with this. In the meantime, check out the new My TV app.

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Sony (Re-)Confirms Downloadable Content Coming To PS3

Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 by MegaZone

In a post to PlayStation.Blog, Peter Dille, Senior Vice President, Marketing & PLAYSTATION Network, lists a number of updates, games, and features coming to the PlayStation3 in 2008. The one I’m most interested in is the long-awaited downloadable content. Sony has been talking about providing real, full-length entertainment video downloads (not just trailers and such) for a while now, and it sounds like it is finally getting close:

Many of you have been hearing rumblings about a video service that will allow you to download full-length TV shows and movies via PLAYSTATION Network for North America. While I don’t have any new announcements here for the PlayStation Nation, it’s already been confirmed that we’ll be offering a video service for PS3 in a way that separates the service from others you’ve seen or used. Ultimately the goal of the PLAYSTATION Network service will be to break through the overwhelming clutter of digital media to give you the TV, movies and gaming content you want. More on this very soon …

I’m very curious as to what Sony will offer, especially if they offer HD downloads with better quality than what the others are offering today.

Posted in Broadband, Gaming | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Don’t Forget To Enter The TiVo HD Giveaway

Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 by MegaZone

Just a little reminder, the deadline to enter the TiVo HD Giveaway is Friday night at midnight EST.

Checking my remaining points, I think I’ll be doing one more TiVo HD giveaway with similar rules for the readers.

But here’s the deal – it looks like I’m three donations shy of having enough TiVo Rewards points for a third TiVo HD giveaway. If I have enough points donated by April 28th, the last day you can give someone a referral, then not only will I do the third giveaway – but it will be open to anyone. All it will take is a comment, no need to link to anything. (Yes, I realize I’m asking for comment hell on that post.) And I’ll take it further – if people manage to really funnel the points my way, an additional seven referrals, I’ll do another one just like it. (A TiVo HD is 35,000 points, and referrals are 5,000 points each.) So three more means one TiVo HD in a wide open giveaway, 10 more for two, 17 for three, etc… not that I think 17 will happen, but stranger things…

Posted in Site Updates, TiVo | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments