It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye
I have run up against a brick wall. And it’s in the form of the last nine episodes of this year’s recently concluded season of Carnivale.
For those unfamiliar with Carnivale… Like David Lynch’s seminal “Twin Peaks,” Carnivale creates a metaphorical universe of a road carnival in the 1930s that’s almost nightmarishly dense in symbolism and clues. TiVo is made for stuff like this, as it allows quick jumping back and forth between episodes, as well as a higher resoultion way to click frame by frame through the visions, dreams and other visitations the shows characters have inflicted upon them. Was that a crescent moon reflected in the wolf’s eyes as he stared down the evil preacher on a remote road? Back it up three frames and call your friends to discuss.
Here’s the rub. By recording at Best Quality, I’ve eaten up about 3/4 of my 40gig box, making it damn difficult to record anything else of length.
At some point, I may hack my box and add another hard drive, but a bigger issue is in play here.
When am I really going to re-view these episodes? I’ve seen them. My wife, mother, brother and I have discussed them at length. Short of having the cable go down for a month straight, I will never watch these eps again.
I should delete them. Alas, I cannot.
So, TiVoverse, how do you handle the shows you TiVo? Watch and toss? Record over to digital tape and then burn to DVD? Fill one machine up and move it to the A/V closet and get another?
Tell us.
April 26th, 2005 at 7:12 pm |
Here’s what I did…. I got enough referrals to get myself a new 140hr TiVo. Now I don’t have that problem :).
April 26th, 2005 at 8:28 pm |
Mostly watch and delete. My main TiVo is a Pioneer DVR-810H, so I’ll dump things to DVD-R if I really want to keep them.
And with TiVoToGo I’ve been meaning to turn one of my old, unused PCs into a media server with a few big drives (it already has a RAID MB), just haven’t had the time.
April 26th, 2005 at 11:49 pm |
Well, there are lots of things you CAN do, I don’t know which would be the best for your situation… I have 4 TiVOs and about 2.5 Terabytes of storage online in RAID 5, most of my storage is full (believe it or not) with video, dumped from my TiVOs with TivoToGo, captured from my Firewire enabled cable box, captured from one of my HDTV Tuner cards, or dumped from my girlfriend’s DV camcorder. The easiest solution is to use TivoToGo and burn the episodes to DVDs using Sonic MyDVD on Windows (or if you have the storage, just keep them on disk). However, you see the software lock-in there… You could follow many of the guides on the web to upgrade the single disk in your TiVO to a 120 GB model (or a 400 GB model if you have a new 540* unit with the LBA48 support) while preserving your recordings. I personally have replaced the drives in all of my TiVOs with 120 GB disks. And for all those wondering what the heck I do with all this video, no, I probably won’t watch most of it… I’m one of those guys who finds more joy in messing with the technology than actually using it for what it was intended…
April 27th, 2005 at 12:21 am |
You can pick up a 200GB Seagate (whisper quiet drive, with 5 year warranty) for around $80 after rebate. Just swap out the 40gb drive in there with this one. 200GB will give you 225 hours at basic. Its easy to do. You’re crazy not to.
April 27th, 2005 at 9:03 am |
You will have to do a little more work to get a drive larger than 137GB to work unless you have a TiVO that uses an LBA48 Linux kernel, but it is possible. I would also recommend replacing your old 40 GB drive rather than adding another drive. A lot of people who are running two drives in their TiVOs (especially without the kit to stagger drive startup and the additional fans) are having problems with their power supplies and overheating. I have no problems with single drives, even though I exclusively use 120 GB 7200 RPM Seagate drives (instead of 5400 RPM models).
I recently read something about the TiVO “Video Publisher” tool and I am wondering where I can get more information on this. Is this tool available to the general public or only to TiVO partners or what?
April 27th, 2005 at 11:59 am |
Home Media + Nero Express + DVD burner in PC = TiVo quality unDRM’d DVDs. I hate having that many shows clogging up my menu. I archive to DVD and move on.
May 5th, 2005 at 1:06 am |
This show is absolutely brilliant. My recomendation is to purchase the DVD of the series when it comes out. Reward the makers of this series for such a wonderful peice of art.
I think a 3rd series is in doubt at the moment but with sales of DVD’s they might reconsider making a 3rd.