TiVo update

For those of you know have been reading this blog for awhile, you know how important my TiVo is to me. I'd say it comes in second after my computer/internet connection. TV without TiVo sucks majorly; and the DVR on my comcast box is barely better than nothing. And you can imagine how frustrating (and a little scary) it is that the hard drive seems to be dying, evidenced by ever more frequent pixellation and sound dropouts--even at the higher quality settings. It breaks my heart to see Omi go all pixellated and silent! (Okay, that sounded really lame.)

I emailed PTV Upgrade this morning and actually got a reply today! They assured me that even replacing the drive would not affect my lifetime subscription. Apparently the whole drive thing is a little more complex than I'd heard: the original machine apparently has one drive, most likely partitioned. If you order a 'replacement kit' (as opposed to an 'add-on kit') you get two drives, and it doesn't cost any more. They recommended the replacement since they seemed to agree that it sounded like the drive was about to die. The downside is that I will have to reload all my Wishlists and Season Passes. I guess the software must be stored in ROM somewhere, but what about the software upgrades? I wonder if they'll have to be reloaded. So many questions. I guess I'll find out. Anybody out there an expert?

Ohh, I just went to a competitor site and they recommended replacement as well if your unit is over 18 months old! Mine is like six years old! And as I read on a forum yesterday, six years is pretty damn good for a drive that is constantly being written and re-written. (TiVo is on all the time. While you are on a channel it is recording that live television by default. You switch a channel and it starts recording that one.)