D install questions

[Bob Haller]

Well I am one step closer to churning to D for TIVOs.

With a 4 receiver TIVO install is there a switch for this? One dish 4 dual tuner receivers?

Do any D tivos have a HD as big as a 721? I really would rather buy it this way. Dont want to void new box warranty upgrading somehing thats brand new. When I looked into this last 40 gig appeared the largest, is this still true?

[gcutler]

Bob, I believe you would probably need a special switch config to get the 8 lines going (4 DTiVos x 2 lines each = 8 lines). My friend had Two DTiVos and a regular reciever and in order to keep it at 4 he went single line into one of the DTiVos. Don't know what the cost was, but obviously 8 lines is not as common as 4 and thus probably requires a little extra hardware. Now of course my friend wishes he spent the extra money as only have 1 line on the basement DTiVo is now an annoyance on his part :D

Here is the Info on the DTiVo http://www.tivo.com/1.8.asp Right now they only seem to be pushing the 35 hour models. They are all upgradable http://www.weaknees.com/ So perhaps you can wait for newer models, or buy now and upgrade the hardware or a combo of 2 current but upgraded DTiVos and wait for 2 newer DTiVos to arrive? Weaknees is good because they sell drives with the TiVo OS already on them so if you have to replace the drive (instead of adding a drive) you aren't messing with OS install. As long as you can open case, remove drive, add other drive, close case, you are fine.

You might be able to get a good deal on the Series 1 models, that do not have USB ports. You might want to do some research on what the USB ports might be used for and see if you want those features. But then again with 4, you can buy a mixture of old and new and probably not be penalized if not all machines benefit from USB.

[scooper]

2x8, 3x8, 4x8, or 5x8 multiswitches are not difficult to find. What may get tricky is if your new D* oval dish has it's own built-in 4x4 - in this case, there are some models by Spaun that do the 22KHz tone on 2 ports, or you can get 22KHz tone generators.