Remember back in July when I blogged about how TiVo was offering a Series 2 DT DVR along with a free TiVo wireless adapter and a $15 Amazon Unbox gift all for only $97.94? Well, here’s a little reminder that the offer I just mentioned is about to expire. According to TiVo’s website, the offer ends on Sept 7, 2007.

If you decide to take advantage of this offer, I would appreciate it if you put me down as your referrer (raianoat AT gmail DOT com) when you activate your TiVo.

TiVo.com has launched a new TiVo rewards sweepstakes. To take part in the sweepstakes, all you have to do is refer a friend to the TiVo service between now and Nov. 15, 2007. One lucky winner will receive following merchandise (totaling in at $3039.97): TiVo HD DVR, 50” HDTV, TiVo service for one year & a TiVo Wireless Adapter. Each time you referrer somebody you will automatically get your name added to the hat. Along with the grand prize, TiVo also has fifteen Flip Video camcorders that they are going to be giving away. Official rules and more details can be found here.

If you’d like, you can always enter my email address (raianoat AT gmail DOT com) when you activate your TiVo. If I were to win this sweepstakes I would be completely ecstatic!

TiVo is getting creative with their offers. This time, TiVo is offering a $15 Amazon Unbox credit plus a free factory refurbished TiVo wireless adapter ($41.78) to anybody who buys a 80 or 180 hr dual tuner Series 2 TiVo from TiVo’s website. The offer ends July 23rd.

This isn’t a bad deal especially if you’ve been wanting to check out Amazon Unbox (which I highly recommend you do). The offer also includes free shipping which is a plus…

If you decide to take advantage of this offer, I would appreciate it if you put me down as your referrer (raianoat AT gmail DOT com) when you activate your TiVo.

Update 1/4: I know I need to select a winner. Give me a chance…my son is sleeping right now :).

Update: I’m a little surprised that only three people have posted a comment thus far. What’s the matter? Doesn’t everybody like free stuff?

In the spirit of the Holiday Season, I’ve decided to have yet another contest. This time around, the winner of the contest will receive a slightly used TiVo wireless adapter.

Here’s how the contest will work. Between now and December 31st, 2006; attach a comment to this post that includes a link to your favorite article on TiVoBlog.com. In the comment, also indicate why this is your favorite post. The winner of this contest will be selected randomly by my 22 month old son (I will put each comment in a hat and let my son pick one).

Here’s some additional rules:

• Only one submission per user
• Winner must live in the continental USA
• Winner will be selected randomly from the list of comments

site’s archive or search for it via the search box in the upper right hand corner of this page.Good luck and have fun!

Here’s a post that I put together prior to TiVo announcing their new pricing structure. I thought I’d publish it even though I am taking a break…

Are you wondering what you should get your TiVo fanatic for Christmas? Here’s a list of some of the best accessories and TiVo DVRs that every TiVo geek would love to receive on Christmas. Feel free to recommend any item that I haven’t mentioned.

• Sling Media Slingbox PRO ( SB200-100 ): The Slingbox allows you to watch what you’ve recorded on your TiVo from anywhere you have an internet connection.
• Logitech Harmony 890 Advanced Universal Remote Control: This is a great remote especially if you have multiple devices each with their own remote. I don’t currently own one but I’ve heard a lot of good things about the Harmony remotes. Anybody have anything to add to this?
• TiVo TCD648250B Series3 HD Digital Media Recorder: The Series 3 TiVo will allow yo u to record multiple shows all in high definition. It’s by far the most advanced DVR on the market. If you’re feeling really nice, you can also pick up one for me :).
• TiVo Wireless G USB Network Adapter for Series2 DVR (AG0100): This is a must have if you want to network your TiVo. By networking your TiVo you can access your music and pictures on your computer as well as several other features including TiVoToGo.
• TiVo TCD649080 Series2 80 Hour Dual Tuner Digital Video Recorder: If you don’t have the cash for a Series 3 TiVo (mentioned above), I would recommend that you go with this TiVo. It doesn’t allow you to record HD but you do get dual tuners so you can record two shows at once.
• TiVo Hacks: This a great book for anybody who wants to hack their TiVo and access some new features/capabilities.
• TiVo Upgrade Drive: Both Weaknees and DVRupgrade provide upgrade drives so you can add more recording capacity to your TiVo.

Disclaimer: All of the links above reference my Amazon associates account

Buy.com is running a special on the TiVo branded wireless adapter.  For $44.99 you can get the adapter with free shipping!  Not a bad deal.

Thanks Eric.

I recently purchased and installed a TiVo branded wireless adapter (review here). Like the super geek that I am, I wanted to know how well this adapter compared to my previous wired setup. I hope that this post will help you decide whether or not you should go with wireless as opposed to a wired setup. For me personally, I decided to switch to wireless simply because I didn’t want to run CAT5 to my living room (call me lazy).

In order to perform this comparison, I transferred a 1/2 hour show (773 MB) to my computer using my wired adapter (Linksys USB200M). The transfer took from: 7:55AM - 8:34AM (~39 minutes). Once the transfer was complete, I powered down my TiVo and installed the new adapter. I also restarted my computer after I deleted the transfered show. Once the new adapter was installed, I performed the same transfer using my new wireless adapter. The wireless transfer took from: 9:00AM - 9:47AM (~47 minutes). As you can seem from these results, the wireless adapter took ~8 minutes longer than the wired adapter.

Unfortunately, since I don’t have another wireless adapter I was not able to see how well the TiVo branded adapter performs compared to another wireless adapter. In any case, comparing a wired adapter to a wireless adapter is really kind of useless other than the fact that it shows you whether or not a wireless setup is ideal for your situation. For my situation, I am willing to sacrifice 8 minutes. Normally I setup a transfer using TiVoToGo and then walk away from my computer. When I come back later in the day my transfer is complete. So for me, it doesn’t matter if the transfer took 8 minutes more.

Here’s a summary of what I’ve concluded based on this unscientific test: Go wireless if:

• You’re not concerned about your transfers taking a couple extra minutes
• Running a cable is difficult or you’re just lazy
• You already have an 802.11g network. I tried 802.11b before but I was unhappy with the performance.

Go wired if:

• You transfer a lot of shows from you TiVo and every minute counts
• You tend to watch your shows while they are being transferred. I didn’t test to see if I could watch the show while it was being transferred however, a wired connection would obviously perform better under this circumstance.

This past weekend, I finally got the chance to install my new TiVo branded wireless adapter. Prior to installing this adapter, I had my TiVo connected to my network via a Linksys USB200M adapter. The Linksys adapter has worked fine however, I recently moved my TiVo into the living room and I’ve been too lazy to run a new network run. Also, I’m going to be moving soon and I don’t think that I am going to run wire in the new house. I use to have a 802.11b wireless adapter for my TiVo however, when TiVoToGo was about to be released I upgraded to a wired connection.

Upon taking the new adapter out of the box, I was extremely surprised with how small and sleek it is. As you can see from the picture below, the adapter is smaller and thinner them my iPod Nano with a silicon case. Since it’s so small, you really don’t notice it even if it sits directly on top of your TV.

Installation was a snap. All I had to do was plug the new adapter into my TiVo and everything just worked. In my opinion, the biggest drawback with using a wireless adapter is that TiVo does not currently support WPA encryption (there are ways to do this however; I didn’t want to bother with a bridge). Because of this, I had to downgrade my wireless security to WEP (128 bit). Come on TiVo lets fix this.

Other than the WPA issue, I am extremely happy with my new wireless adapter. Transferring shows from my TiVo to my PC was speedy (more to come on this later). Also, to my surprise I didn’t have any noticeable speed issues when I tried to play my mp3s and view my photos. In the past when I had an 802.11b adapter installed I remember thinking that it was a little slow whenever I tried to perform these operations. TiVoToComeback was also fast. I tried transferring an episode of The Office back to my TiVo. I was surprised that I was able to watch the show while it was being transferred without any pauses or delays. In fact, I was even able to fast forward through some of the commercials.

I would definitely recommend this adapter to anybody who is thinking about connecting their TiVo to a wireless network. The adapter costs a little more than other wireless adapters however, it’s nice to be able to plug it in and have your wireless connection work right away. Since the adapter is “TiVo certified”, you don’t have to worry if you purchased the right version or anything like that.

In the near future, I plan on putting together a post which will compare the TiVo wireless adapter to my old Linksys wired adapter. Check back if you are interested in reading this comparison.