Re: Media Center Vs Tivo On Engadget
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I’ve owned several dozen Tivos over the past 10 years and I think I only had one hard drive failure in all that time. I’ve also never had a power supply failure or card reader issue.
The series 1 DirecTivos did suffer from power supply failures, but it was still only on a small percentage of units. The same models had some hard drive failures, but the heat buildup inside these units was higher than usual which probably hastened the failure rates.[/quote]
I guess I’m really unlucky then, since I had 4 power supplies go in my units over the years and also 3 card readers. Mind you, my cards were never removed until the reader stopped working.
[quote]That being said, you can’t really blame Tivo for hard drive failures as they can just as easily occur in a PC as a Tivo (i.e., Tivo didn’t manufacture the hard drives). Power supply failures on later models could usually be isolated to a bad electrolytic capacitor on later models (easily diagnosed by a visual inspection). A pencil eraser could usually cure card reader problems by cleaning the contacts on the card.[/quote]
I can take exception to their choice in drives and their–in my experience–high failure rate, though. They may not have made the drives, but they did choose the manufacturer. Perhaps the faulty power supplies were even killing the drives. Who knows…
[quote]Overalll, I found the Tivo hardware to be extremely reliable.[/quote]
Either you’re really lucky or I’m very unlucky. As I said previously, with the amount of time and money being spent on repairing my Tivo units, the lost TV shows, the missed recordings, and the aggravation, I quickly realized that building my own HTPC with quality hardware would cost me LESS money. I even drew up a spreadsheet with the costs over the years and expected failures, then compared that to newer Tivo units, DirecTV DVRs, switching to cable, and an HTPC setup. SageTV won handily and I don’t have a single regret about the path I chose.