Buy a Series 1 or a Series 2?

[mduvall216]

Greetings,

I'm switching from cable to satellite (thanks to a 25% increase in cable rates!) and am evaluating the Tivo option. I'm wondering if it is worth buying a Series 2. From what I can tell, a Series 2 allows me to display pictures and play mp3s from a networked computer which are cool, but I'm not interested in signing up for any extra package.

I already have network through out the house and am interested in of course hacking the box and adding a larger hard drive but I'd also love to be able to extract videos and burn to DVD. Is it easier to hack Series 1? Would the Series 2 provide any other benefit to the hacking potential?

Any comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Potential Newbie Tivo Hacker, Matt

[TheWickedPriest]

If you're going to DirecTV, their Series 2 combo receivers do NOT support HMO (mp3, pics, etc.). However, they're very cheap now ($100, plus $5 a month vs. $13 a month for a standalone), and you get a perfect picture (no reencoding), and dual tuners.

I don't know about relative ease, since I've never had a Series 1. Those who have seem to think they're easier. But you certainly CAN hack a Series 2, and extract video from it.

[AlphaWolf]

series 1 is easier to hack, and the turbonet is capable of higher bandwidth than the series 2's USB ports.

[captain_video]

Series 1 models have more hacks that can be applied to them but the series 2 models are getting easier all the time. Sleeper's tivoscript makes performing the monte hack ridiculously easy and maybe even easier than installing 2.5Xtreme with any of the updates. There don't seem to be any locals issues with the S2 units like the S1 models have.

Video extraction is just as easy with either model and I believe the USB 2.0 adapters actually transfer slightly faster than a Turbonet. I get about 1.3MBit/sec with my Turbonet (still running the old drivers) and the Netgear FA120 USB 2.0 adapter I'm using is getting me about 1.5MBits/sec. The USB adapters are definitely more cost effective than a Turbonet and easier to find ($30 for USB 2.0 vs. $70 for a Turbonet). Series 2 models are plentiful and getting to be dirt cheap.

Series 1 DTivos still fetch a premium price on ebay and you don't always know what you're getting. I've currently got three S1 DTivos and two S2 models with two more on the way. Right now I've got all of them hacked with everything I need them to do and frankly, I can't tell any difference between them when it comes to features or performance. The S2 units do take longer to boot than the S1 models but there are fixes for that from what I've heard. I believe alldeadhomiez has a stripped down U5 kernel that allows a monte'd drive to boot faster.

[AlphaWolf]

Hmm...one thing I might mention, I have never had one problem with the locals on my S1 unit, nor have I run into the 28% problem everybody notices. It's either luck or the fact that I always run the latest tivo s/w version, which IMO is faster than 2.5.X anyways :P

[captain_video]

All three of my S1 DTivos are at 2.5.2 and I've only seen the 28% problem once. If you've never had a problem with locals then you've been extremely lucky. It is probably attributable to using OS version 3.1 instead of 2.5.2 since the whole locals issue began with version 2.5.X.