TVSquad

The TiVo Series3 ships with a 250GB hard drive. That provides enough storage space for 30 hours of high definition or 100 hours of standard definition recordings. If that's enough for you, DVRupgrade and WeaKnees both selling modified TiVo boxes with larger hard drives, or upgrade kits for anyone who already has a TiVo.

If you have a bit of know how, you can buy an off-the-shelf hard drive and do the upgrade yourself. But part of the appeal of DVRupgrade and WeaKnees is that they make the process easy. How easy? About as easy as taking the old hard drive out of your box and replacing it with a new one. No need to prepare a hard drive or install any software. No need to understand anything about Linux.

Of course, opening your TiVo's case does mean voiding your warranty. So we wouldn't suggest ordering an upgrade kit unless you're pretty sure you know what you're doing. Fortunately, TiVo Blog has put together a pretty good video showing exactly how much technical knowledge you'll need to install an upgrade kit. DVRupgrade shipped them a 750GB (100 hour) hard drive, screwdriver, and instructions. Check out the video after the jump.

Shinco has come up with a unique way to add personal video recording functions to an LCD TV without driving up the cost. Leave out the hard drive.

The 32-inch TV has a USB port and ships with a 2.5-inch USB hard drive enclosure. Of course, you can plug your own 3.5-inch case, a flash card reader, or pretty much any other form of USB storage you like into the TV.

The TV includes a single tuner, so you'll only be able to record one program at a time. And you can't watch one live show while recording another. But it does included an MPEG-4 decoder, so you can watch prerecorded shows while making new recordings.

The TV is available for HK$6280, which is about 805 US dollars. But it's not clear that we'll be seeing this model in the US any time soon.

[via Gizmodo and Everything USB]

We just saw a post on the WeaKnees blog announcing that the TiVo retailer is shipping upgrade kits for the new TiVo HD. In a few more days the company will be ready to ship pre-upgraded TiVo HD units as well.

The other day we told you that the new boxes include a slight change to the TiVo file system which means that the old software tools for preparing hard drives weren't working. But the hacker community doesn't take that sort of new sitting down, and sure enough, a member of the TiVo Community Forum has posted an alpha version of a new tool that works with the TiVo HD.

If you're the handy sort, you can use the WinMFS tool to replace the 160GB hard drive that comes with the TiVo HD with a larger disk on your own or order an upgrade kit from WeaKnees or DVRUpgrade. Or if you can hold out a few days longer, both companies should receive shipments of TiVo HD units which they will be upgrading and selling.

Shortly after TiVo announced the TiVoHD, 3rd party TiVo upgraders like DVRUpgrade and WeaKnees began taking preorders for upgraded units with larger hard drives. The stock unit has a 160GB hard drive, which is just large enough to store 20 hours of HD content.

There's just one problem. It turns out the MFS Tools software that has been allowing users to upgrade TiVo drives for years doesn't work with the new box. That's because TiVo made a slight change to the file system, which apparently could enable hard drives larger than 2TB. It's not clear whether that means you could slap a 3TB drive into a TiVoHD right now (assuming one existed), but support may be enabled in the future.

Anyway, it looks like a member of the TiVo hacking community has been hard at work developing a new tool called WinMFS that allows you to prep an upgraded hard drive using Windows. Previous tools required a Linux box. Anyway, he's managed to throw a 500GB hard drive into a TiVoHD, and plans to publicly release WinMFS soon, which means you may be able to upgrade your box by the time it arrives. Or order one from a 3rd party retailer.

[via TiVo Lovers]

Digging the Apple TV, but not a fan of its anemic hard drive? Sure, Apple's released a 160GB version for $100 more than the 40GB AppleTV. But if you're a big movie/TV fan you might want to store more programming than you could fit on such a puny hard drive.

Lucky for you, the Apple TV hacking community has released tools for enabling external storage. In fact, the hack is more sophisticated than that. It enables the Apple TV to boot off its internal hard drive while using an external hard drive as its primary storage drive. In other words, plug in your 750GB drive to store all the movies you can handle.

Remember to backup your unit before attempting the patch. This is certainly warranty-voiding stuff. But if you've got an Apple TV, and an intel-based Mac or Linux/Unix machine lying around to execute the script, we don't see why you wouldn't want to at least look into applying this hack.

[via Gizmodo]

Western Digital has released its new DVR Expander, which lets you record up to 300 additional hours of standard definition or 60 hours of high definition television programming.

If DVR Expander sounds to you like a fancy name for a 500GB external hard drive, you're right. But this particular model has been designed for and tested with the Scientific Atlanta 8300 PVR, deployed by cable companies across the country.

Basically, the DVR Expander should work with any PVR that has an eSATA port. That should include the Series3 TiVo. Although TiVo hasn't officially enabled the use of the eSATA port on Series3 units, hackers have found it's not too hard to turn it on. We see no reason why the Western Digital hard drive wouldn't work.

The DVR Expander is available now for about $200.

Ever since TiVo launches the Series3 high definition box last year, users have been staring longingly at the eSATA port on the back of their TiVo units. It's supposed to allow you to plug in an external hard drive, but TiVo hasn't enabled that feature yet.

As is usually the case with these things, the members of the TiVo Community Forum have stepped in to finish the job. So here's the hack to activate that eSATA port on your Series3 TiVo. It only seems to work on an unmodified box, so if you've already cracked the lid and upgraded the internal hard drive, there's no guarantees. Also, this hack has been tested on boxes running TiVo 8.1.1 software.

Okay, I'm going to let the fact that Apricorn intentionally misspelled "expander" to make it sound more "x-streme." I'm even going to overlook the fact that their product is really nothing but an external hard drive. Why? Because it's nice to see some third party companies promoting hard drives for use cable company PVRs.

And Apricorn's even doing it at a reasonable price. $129 gets you a 250GB hard drive, while $199 gets you 500GB. Both units can be plugged into Scientific Atlanta 8300 boxe with eSATA ports. That should cover a large number of Cox and Time Warner cable customers.

The DVR Xpander includes a stand, eSATA cable and power adapter.

Dear TiVo,

What I am about to say may come as a surprise, because we have spent three wonderful years together. There really were some good times. Remember when you thought I would like Rikki Lake because I had a season pass to Survivor and American Idol? We had a good laugh then, didn't we? I'll never forget the first time you remembered to record Scrubs for me when I couldn't make it home in time to watch. And, how about the time we upgraded our satellite to a dual input and you really got to show off how you could record two shows while we watched something from the Now Playing List? That was unforgettable.