Weaknees selling upgraded TiVo Series 3 units

The TiVo Series 3 is still slowly finding it's way to a store near you, but that hasn't stopped the folks at Weaknees from prepping a souped-up unit for those not content with the standard issue 250GB hard drive. That, of course, translates to about 200 hours of SD recording capacity, or 32 hours of HD recording, but for the real HD junkies among us, Weaknees will sell you a TiVo S3 with a 500GB hard drive for $1299, or a box with a whopping 750GB hard drive (that's 100 hours of HD recording) for $1599. For the more adventurous, Weaknees will also gladly hook you up with an upgrade kit, with a 500GB drive running you $399 and the 750GB setting you back $599. You can order now, but don't expect them to ship before September 22nd.

[Via Zatz Not Funny]

[PJE @ Sep 15th 2006 10:59AM]

That seems a little pricey...

The Series 3 HD has an external SATA connector, which should soon allow standard external hard drives to be added much more cheaply.

[Chappy @ Sep 15th 2006 11:09AM]

It is pricy, but they're selling a service, not just a hard drive. The Series 3 will only store 30 hours of HD video, and the external solution won't be ready for a while (and its specs are unknown). I definitely want 750 gigs of space, so the question for me is if it's worth an extra $200 bucks for someone else to image the drive and figure out a solution to the proprietary drive connector. I honestly don't know yet, but I'll be paying attention the reports from the first folks who use their upgrade drive.

[Jeff @ Sep 15th 2006 11:56AM]

"I definitely want 750 gigs of space, so the question for me is if it's worth an extra $200 bucks for someone else to image the drive and figure out a solution to the proprietary drive connector"

If the Series 3 is anything like the Series 2, then no, it's not worth it.

Imaging the drive is a trivial process if you're at all tech savvy. It takes about 10 minutes and just involves running a Linux boot CD on your PC with your old TiVo drive and your new drive connected to it. I wouldn't say it's something my grandma could do, but for anyone with any knowledge of computers at all, it's nothing. If you can connect a hard drive to your PC, then you can do it.

I don't know if the Series 3 really has a "proprietary" drive connector inside or not. The Series 2 just had a regular old IDE connector. If the Series 3 has a vanilla SATA connector, then you're good to go once you've imaged. Otherwise, it still doesn't seem worth it to pay $200 for a proprietary connector. Just get the connector from somewhere. It can't be more than $20 worth of electronics.

People were selling these "upgrade kits" for Series 2 machines also, for inflated prices. I just went out and bought a big hard drive and downloaded MFSTools. It was easy.

[Wry Cooter @ Sep 15th 2006 12:00PM]

Yes, Just because there is a connection for an external drive doesn't mean that the Tivo will automatically recognize it and use it (or even make back up easy).

I'm curious as to whether the Series 3 will even allow content to be easily streamed to devices like Apples iTV-- isn't the Tivo network software still missing in action for OS X?

[Colin @ Sep 15th 2006 1:14PM]

So are there any opened up pics of the Series 3 yet? I'm wondering how it looks inside.

[Roopesh Sheth @ Sep 15th 2006 1:24PM]

HAHAHAHA! Support for CrApple's proprietary TV application? That's funny. Thanks for the Friday morning laugh!

[Meltz @ Sep 15th 2006 1:38PM]

Since the "k" in the word KNEES is silent, would you pronounce weaknees like "weinees"

[Gamey McGee @ Sep 15th 2006 2:13PM]

Now if the HD Tivo's price of $799 was not $499 too much ...

[Peter Dikeos @ Sep 20th 2006 2:33PM]

I just bought one of these from Frys last week. I love the box, although a 750MB upgrade would be nice. I have not opened it up yet, but will probably over the weekend and see what the HD connector looks like.

As for networking, the Series 3 can do the following:
1) I can stream content from my PCs through the Series 3, but not FROM the series 3 to my PCs.
2) You can still get the games, Internet Yahoo goodies etc. through the Series 3.

The box is beautiful, the software rocks as always, and now the HD options make it a compelling box to own.

Once we can expand capacity and move content out of it through the network, it will be a solid 10.