Note that the original Series3 (TCD648250) requires two CableCARDs – S-Cards or M-Cards. While the TiVo HD (TCD652160) can utilize a single M-Card. Depending on what your cable company charges for CableCARDs this may or may not be a factor in your decision. The original S3 has the fancy OLED front panel display and the Glo remote, while the TiVo HD has the basic LED indicator lights and a non-Glo remote.

They also have the older Series1 and Series2 units with internal analog tuners and support for external set top boxes, both single-tuner ($299.99) and dual-tuner ($349.99) models. They even have Pioneer TiVo Series2 DVD combo units ($399.99). These units are available in 40GB (single-tuner) or 80GB (dual-tuner & DVD) base models, or upgraded to 80GB ($19.00 S2), 500GB ($99.00 S2 – $149.00 DVD), or 1TB ($149.00 S2 – $199.00 DVD).

The real old-school Series1 units are available in Philips ($199.99) or Sony ($249.99) models, both with 40GB. Upgrades to 80GB ($19.00) or 120GB ($39.00) are available. While I could see some reasons to buy the Series2 units, I really can’t see why someone would want one of the Series1 units these days. Maybe someone really into TiVo hacking with the old TiVoWeb and the like, but even then I doubt it.

All of these units have been refurbished and tested by WeaKnees, and they come with a six month parts and labor warranty. Quantities are limited, so grab one now if you’re interested.

Via the WeaKnees Blog.

This isn’t a guarantee, and it is subject to change, you know the drill. But they seem to feel it is a fairly solid date. It it holds true, it should make a lot of people happy.

Current Shipping Status of the THR22 TiVo for DIRECTV

When will these ship from WeaKnees?

DIRECTV has a limited number of these units currently available, and has not yet started shipping to distributors and retailers. We are currently being told that we should have our initial allocation towards the end of January or beginning of February, 2012.

Of course, we are doing everything we can to speed up the timeline, and also to make sure our initial allocation will allow us to fill all backorders that we’ve taken up until that point. For the best chance of getting a unit in the initial allocation, be sure to get your order in early.

Orders may be cancelled at any time up until the product actually ships. If an order is cancelled and then reinstated, the position in the shipping queue will be lost and the order will be moved to the back of the queue.

Last Updated: 12/16/2011

More information about the HD TiVo THR22 for DIRECTV:

• Works with TiVo’s KidZone for parental controls (requires a network connection)
• Has two 30 minute buffers that are always active
• Compatible with DIRECTV On Demand (requires a network connection)
• Traditional TiVo Season Passes with all the features – and an unlimited number!
• TiVo SwivelSearch and WishList Search options (requires a network connection)
• Up to 1080p HD resolution
• Fully SWM compatible
• Includes a new DIRECTV access card
• Includes two B-Band adapters for use in non-SWM systems
• Ships with HDMI, composite, component, phone, and power cables
• NOT compatible with other TiVo Peanut Remotes
• Add an AM21 to get over-the-air HD channels into your THR22
• The following DIRECTV features are not available with the TiVo HD DVR: Whole-Home DVR service, DIRECTV iPad App remote control and live TV streaming functionality, DIRECTV CINEMA (satellite downloads), YouTube on TV, 3D, and GameSearch
• Monthly fees: $10 HD fee, $7 DVR fee, and $5 TiVo fee, in addition to your monthly receiver/lease fee. The HD, DVR, and TiVo fees are once per account, no matter how many DVRs are on the account. The receiver/lease fee occurs per unit.

But what if you’re an ANZ TiVo user already and you don’t want to have to buy a new box? Well, there have been do-it-yourself drive upgrades for a while, just as in the US. But that’s more than many users feel comfortable with – pulling the drive, copying the software to the new drive, etc. Well, now there is an easier way. Long time TiVo upgrade vendor WeaKnees.com today announced that they’re now selling drop-in replacement drive upgrade kits up to 2TB in capacity. The 320GB drive is $199.99, 500GB $249.99, 1TB $299.99, and 2TB $399.99 – all prices in US dollars. They also sell replacement remotes and network adapters for ANZ units.

So there you go, two ways ANZ users can record more.

And, as the community members love to do, they’ve starting poking at it and documenting the features, changes, specs, etc.:

Software Level:
- shipping software is 14.9b-01-7-758 out of the box.
- current software is 14.9.AB4-01-2-758

Flash Player Version: mainline3/2011.07.06.0601
HD Menu Software Version:1-9/2011.08.31-1134

New functions/features:
- MoCA support (Ethernet to Coax bridge)
- Caller ID support if phone line attached (not verified)
- Premiere to Premiere streaming enabled

Hardware differences from base Premiere:
- (details of system board here)
- Base memory doubled. Single IC providing 1GB DDR2 SDRAM.
- Disk drive is 2TB (make?). Default recording capacity shows up to 318 HD hours or 2774 SD.

Observations and/or “obvious” functions missing:
- Installing new software level seems to be faster than Premiere.
- Recording conflict screen only shows one conflict.
- Network screens updated to show MoCA info and additional screens added.

Upgrade info:
- eSata port available. No reports of anyone trying an external drive yet. Ditto Comer tool.

The Caller ID is especially interesting since none of the Premiere units have a modem built-in. And the Series3 & TiVo HD, which do have a modem, don’t currently run the 14.x software. Yet the on-box message is:

Do you want the Tivo Box to identify a caller’s name and number when the phone rings while you are watching a program?

Note: Caller ID messages can only be displayed when a phone line that supports Caller ID is attached to your DVR.

So are the older units getting an upgrade with this feature, or is it only for the Premiere family with the USB Phone Line Adapter to provide the data? The TiVo Premiere offered through Suddenlink offers Caller ID, but only if you’re using their VOIP phone service. So this seems to be different.

They’ve even started opening up their brand new boxes and taking photos of the guts. And a couple of new screens. The Premiere-to-Premiere streaming is working, and it even works for copy protected content that doesn’t work with Multi-Room Viewing. I think we need to agree on a term for streaming – I’m going with MRS, as RCN calls this Multi-Room Streaming. MRV is the old copy-based system, MRS is the new streaming system.

The Premiere Elite is also more energy efficient, drawing only 19-20 watts.

And a nice surprise, it seems the Premiere Elite has enabled the second core. Compare these lines from the kernel on a Premiere running 14.8 to a Premiere Elite running 14.9:
14.8: Linux version 2.6.18-5.1 (build@buildmaster64) (gcc version 3.3.4) #1 Wed Mar 16 02:53:03 PDT 2011
14.9: Linux version 2.6.18-5.1 (build@buildmaster93) (gcc version 4.2.0) #1 SMP Wed Sep 21 18:32:42 PDT 2011
SMP is Symmetric Multi-Processing, which means multiple cores are enabled.

I am planning to get a Premiere Elite myself. But I’m leaving town Thursday for WDW for a combo mini-vacation and a planning meeting for my wedding there in February, so I’ll probably order when I return since it wouldn’t be here in time to setup before I go anyway. On top of that my Slingbox PRO-HD seems to have died recently. I’m hoping it is just the power supply, that happened once before, but I haven’t had time to deal with it. Anyway, once I do have it I’ll give my own run down as well.

And not only are they offering the 2TB TiVo Premiere Elite with 2700 hours of SD and 300 hours of HD for $499.99, they’re offering a bundle with an additional 2TB external drive, that’s 4TB total capacity, for $849.99. That’s 5600 hours of SD and 640 hours of HD. (Why more than double? Remember some of the internal drive is reserved for the OS, swap, etc.)

Update: WeaKnees also has the Premiere Elite in their Amazon Storefront if you prefer to order through Amazon.

There’s also a video of a demo of the TiVo Premiere Elite being given at the CEDIA show a week ago, shot by Digital Trends.

Via InvestorVillage.

They also have 40GB TiVo Series2 units for $299.99, with upgrades to 80GB, 500GB, or 1TB for $19, $99, or $149, respectively. All of these units are refurbished. Shipping is free on all units, and they come with a six month warranty. Note that product lifetime service alone is $499.99 for new subscribers, and $399.99 for subscribers adding an additional unit to an existing account. So this is a cheap way to get lifetime if these units meet your needs.

Via WeaKnees Blog.

The way WeaKnees does this is by using an external RAID1 drive enclosure. This replaces the internal drive in your system.. Basically things are re-cabled to use the external enclosure as the primary storage system instead of an internally mounted drive. They’re offering the external storage configured in 2x320GB, 2x500GB, 2x750GB, or 2x1TB capacities. Note that since the drives are mirrors and store the same data, two 1TB drives gives you 1TB of storage, not 2TB. You have the same 1TB stored redundantly on two drives.

WeaKnees is selling pre-upgraded TiVo HD DVRs and pre-upgraded DirecTV DVR Plus models. As well as upgrade kits for the TiVo HD, TiVo HD XL, and DirecTV DVR Plus models.

TiVo has said that they’d be focusing further development on the TiVo HD platform architecture, so this comes as little surprise. In fact, we’ve talked about it here before. It’s a shame, though, for those looking for the premium experience offered only by the Series3, with its THX certification, fancier remote, and front-panel OLED display, not to mention larger hard drive.

Before long, we’d hope to see the stock TiVo HD kicked up a notch with its own larger hard drive; as more and more of what people watch shifts to HD channels, a twenty-hour capacity for HD recordings will seem stingier and stingier. Western Digital’s My DVR Expander external hard drive helps, and expansion kits and services from third parties like DVRUpgrade and WeaKnees are great for those who don’t mind modified hardware, but simply put, the average consumer wants to buy a standard product that’s all he or she needs.

So, as we wistfully recall the dear, departed TiVo Series3 (and as aficionados scramble to find remaining stock on store shelves or from DVRUpgrade and other online vendors with small stocks), we look forward to future configurations of the new flagship product, the TiVo HD.

And this unit could also receive OTA HD channels – which are uncompressed, and therefore the highest quality HD broadcasts you can get, if you can get them.

This is not true. OTA HDTV is compressed using MPEG-2. (There are further encoding tricks used to squeeze the HD signal into the available 6MHz band.) And if the channel decides to use their band for multiple channels – remember digital OTA channels can have up to six sub-channels – they may turn up the compression level to squeeze the HD content into less of the bandwidth, to allow for the sub-channels to be carried. So OTA HDTV is compressed, and it is compressed to varying degrees.

Now, the claim that OTA HDTV are the highest quality HD broadcasts you can get, well, that’s debatable. Generally it is probably true. Most of the OTA HD channels, at least during prime time, devote the full available bandwidth to one HD signal and compression isn’t very high. But many cable providers carry the OTA digital signal as-is on their networks. So you may get exactly the same HD signal over cable as OTA. It is easier for the cable provider to just pull in that MPEG-2 stream and stick it on the cable as-is than it is to decode it and then re-encode it. And since broadcast channels are only a handful of their lineup, it is no big deal. So OTA often has no quality advantage over cable, with the very same signal carried by both.

Satellite, on the other hand, has more bandwidth restrictions. DBS providers have been known to use resolutions such as 1440×1080 instead of the full 1920×1080, and to use higher compression levels. So in a side-by-side comparison, the satellite signal is probably not going to look as good as OTA. But is the difference so great as to really be noticed in normal use? That probably depends on the size of the TV and the viewer, but for most users it probably isn’t such a big deal.

They also decided to eventually add new HD channels in a more compressed format called MPEG4 to allow for more channels to be sent simultaneously. Obviously, more compression means a lower quality signal, so the MPEG4 channels are often called “HD Lite” – better than SD, but not quite as good as MPEG2, and even further away from OTA quality.

This just conflates several issues and is flat out incorrect for the most part. Does MPEG-4 provide more compression than MPEG-2? Yes. Does that mean a lower quality signal? Absolutely NOT. MPEG-4 is simply a newer, more efficient compression algorithm. For the same image quality, MPEG-4 will produce a lower bit rate, requiring less bandwidth aka higher compression. And at the same bit rate, MPEG-4 provides a higher quality image. The reason satellite providers, and now cable providers, are switching to MPEG-4 from MPEG-2 is because they can get the same image quality with less bandwidth.

Now, can MPEG-4 channels look worse than an MPEG-2 channel? Of course, but it has nothing to do with the compression algorithm and everything to do with the level of compression. Turn up the compression on MPEG-2 and the image quality drops. Same with MPEG-4. A general rule of thumb is MPEG-4 is twice as good as MPEG-2 – resulting files are half the size for the same quality. But you can always turn up the compression, and say produce an MPEG-4 file 1/4 the size of the MPEG-2 file. Odds are it isn’t going to look as good as the MPEG-2 file, of course. But that’s not MPEG-4 vs. MPEG-2 – that’s higher relative compression vs. lower relative compression.

More people are more familiar with audio compression than video compression, due to iPods, Zunes, etc. Consider MP3 vs AAC. MP3 is short for MPEG-1 Layer 3 audio, and it is a fairly early audio codec. AAC is short for MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Coding, a much newer and more efficient codec. The AAC files sold through iTunes are mostly 128kbps AAC and most users think they sound pretty good. But most users think a 128kbps MP3 is low quality, and to be as good as a 128kbps AAC track the MP3 needs to be 192kbps or even 256kbps. Many people have trouble distinguishing 256kbps AAC from uncompressed audio, while MP3 needs 384kbps-512kbps, or even higher, for the same performance. The MP3 codec is less efficient, and therefore requires more bits to produce the same audio quality as the more efficient AAC encoding. It is just a different way to encode the source signal, which requires fewer bits.

Also consider that MPEG-4, specifically MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding) aka H.264, is one of the codecs used on the best sources of HD video available today – Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD. Both formats support three codecs – MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC, and VC-1 (a standardized version of WMV9, which is of similar performance to MPEG-4 AVC). Most of the titles available on both formats use AVC or VC-1, and they’re considered to be the best HD content available. The quality has more to do with the encoding than the specific codec used. Since the discs have finite storage space, and further limits on transfer rates, etc, in the specs, studios use AVC because it allows them to store more content at a higher quality than MPEG-2, generally speaking.

Saying that because MPEG-4 allows more compression ‘obviously’ means a lower quality signal is just plain wrong. MPEG-4 allows more compression (than MPEG-2) for the same quality signal. Now, the actual quality will vary channel to channel simply due to different levels of compression. DirecTV, and DISH Network, are known to compress less popular channels more than the popular ones, reserving transponder bandwidth for the popular content. And it is entirely possible to have MPEG-4 channels that look better than MPEG-2 channels, when you have MPEG-4 will lower compression levels and MPEG-2 with higher compression levels. For the same bit rate, MPEG-4 will look better. There is nothing ‘HD Lite’ about the new MPEG-4 channels.

I was disappointed to see these statements, since WeaKnees is normally more accurate than that. But the write-up, overall, is OK.

I rarely had issues with the default 250GB drive in my S3, and since I added the official 500GB eSATA drive I have more space than I know what to do with. As more of the content I like moves to HD, I’ll probably need the space though. Right now, most of what I record is still SD.

How much will this TiVo-of-plenty set you back? $1599 after the current $200 rebate. It is an expanded Series3, not a TiVo HD, so you do get the nice remote, fancy case, and THX certification for that money. That’s worth it… right?

I asked DVRupgrade about their plans to offer a similar unit. They said that, while they do currently sell ‘off the menu’ upgrades, such as 2TB units, as special orders, they do not currently have any plans to make a 2TB unit a standard offering on their site. They cited a low demand for the larger capacity units, likely due to the higher costs, even with an increase in demand due to the current $30 Hitachi rebate. They prefer to stress the higher reliability of single drive units over the dual-drive configurations.