Another one bites the dust :-(
Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2022 1:22 pmI always thought that I might be the last (wo)man standing using a Series 1 TiVo, as I watched the AltEPG call stats steadily dropping down year by year. But, after 20 years, I’ve finally unplugged my faithful friend for good 
.
The picture and sound quality of my (Freeview) TiVo recordings has long suffered by comparison with the (Freesat) channels and streamed content on my TV (and lacks subtitles too). So we had stopped bothering to TiVo any BBC programmes – watching those on iPlayer instead, and using TiVo just for progs with adverts.
Lately, the TiVo has also been a bit flaky (with a couple of GSODs when starting up after lengthy power cuts). But it was the increasing electricity prices which finally prompted us to pull the plug. We used a power monitor to try and figure out what was contributing to our quite high base load, and estimated that the TiVo was drawing about 27W in standby (costing ~£80 pa at our current price cap rates). I’m not sure how accurate the 27W figure is (maybe the true value is lower), but I see that the specs in the TiVo manual give the power requirement as 40W (would it be much less in ‘standby’, given the TiVo’s recording something all the time anyway?). Add in a few more Watts on top for the associated aerial signal booster, STB (both running 24x7) and SCART-HDMI adapter, and the whole setup may be costing us nearly £100 pa.
We briefly considered replacing TiVo with a Freesat 4K recorder (1W standby, 9W on). But positor1’s less-than-glowing review of that from a couple of months ago was enough to dissuade us.
So we’ve instead paid £40 for a year of All4+ (although that now turns out to be advert-lite, rather than ad-free), and may also stump up £4pcm for ITV Hub+ from time-to-time. And we’re enjoying no longer having to sit in the dark to watch any programmes filmed in poor light, and not having to repeatedly rewind to figure out unintelligible bits of speech!
But I will certainly miss having all of my favourite programmes in one place, and new series magically appearing even when I wasn’t aware that they’d come back. Does anyone know of an app/service whereby I could set up alerts for my favourite shows?
I now have the following kit going spare if anyone wants it - free to collect (Maidenhead, SL6 postcode) or I’m happy to post further afield to anyone willing to cover the postage costs:
> Thomson Scenium Tivo Series 1 PVR10UK, 500GB AltEPG HDD, Cachecard w/RAM, power lead, IR control cable, peanut, User Guide – full working order (although recent GSODs may suggest the HDD is on its way out?)
> Another TiVo box, which I only bought in case I ever needed to replace any bits of hardware in mine. So I can’t guarantee that it works.
> Another cachecard, also purchased as a spare. I assume it works, but haven’t tested it.
> A TiVo Glo backlit remote control, BNIB. Purchased at some expense, but I never got around to setting it up.
Lastly, a huge thank you to the AltEPG team for doubling the life of my TiVo , to everyone who’s helped answer my queries in this forum, and to Steve at TiVoHeaven, Mike Redrobe and Dave Healey for supplying me with the hardware to keep me up & running over the years. All the best to the 70 or so remaining users – I’m sorry to be leaving our little group of devotees
.
Ruth
.The picture and sound quality of my (Freeview) TiVo recordings has long suffered by comparison with the (Freesat) channels and streamed content on my TV (and lacks subtitles too). So we had stopped bothering to TiVo any BBC programmes – watching those on iPlayer instead, and using TiVo just for progs with adverts.
Lately, the TiVo has also been a bit flaky (with a couple of GSODs when starting up after lengthy power cuts). But it was the increasing electricity prices which finally prompted us to pull the plug. We used a power monitor to try and figure out what was contributing to our quite high base load, and estimated that the TiVo was drawing about 27W in standby (costing ~£80 pa at our current price cap rates). I’m not sure how accurate the 27W figure is (maybe the true value is lower), but I see that the specs in the TiVo manual give the power requirement as 40W (would it be much less in ‘standby’, given the TiVo’s recording something all the time anyway?). Add in a few more Watts on top for the associated aerial signal booster, STB (both running 24x7) and SCART-HDMI adapter, and the whole setup may be costing us nearly £100 pa.
We briefly considered replacing TiVo with a Freesat 4K recorder (1W standby, 9W on). But positor1’s less-than-glowing review of that from a couple of months ago was enough to dissuade us.
So we’ve instead paid £40 for a year of All4+ (although that now turns out to be advert-lite, rather than ad-free), and may also stump up £4pcm for ITV Hub+ from time-to-time. And we’re enjoying no longer having to sit in the dark to watch any programmes filmed in poor light, and not having to repeatedly rewind to figure out unintelligible bits of speech!
But I will certainly miss having all of my favourite programmes in one place, and new series magically appearing even when I wasn’t aware that they’d come back. Does anyone know of an app/service whereby I could set up alerts for my favourite shows?
I now have the following kit going spare if anyone wants it - free to collect (Maidenhead, SL6 postcode) or I’m happy to post further afield to anyone willing to cover the postage costs:
> Thomson Scenium Tivo Series 1 PVR10UK, 500GB AltEPG HDD, Cachecard w/RAM, power lead, IR control cable, peanut, User Guide – full working order (although recent GSODs may suggest the HDD is on its way out?)
> Another TiVo box, which I only bought in case I ever needed to replace any bits of hardware in mine. So I can’t guarantee that it works.
> Another cachecard, also purchased as a spare. I assume it works, but haven’t tested it.
> A TiVo Glo backlit remote control, BNIB. Purchased at some expense, but I never got around to setting it up.
Lastly, a huge thank you to the AltEPG team for doubling the life of my TiVo , to everyone who’s helped answer my queries in this forum, and to Steve at TiVoHeaven, Mike Redrobe and Dave Healey for supplying me with the hardware to keep me up & running over the years. All the best to the 70 or so remaining users – I’m sorry to be leaving our little group of devotees
.Ruth
