Tivo Hacks. 100 Industrial-strength Tips Tools 2003

Hack 28 Testing Your TiVo's New Capacity

Wondering if your new hard drives work? Let's find out .

After all that hard work and time looking at the guts of your TiVo, now it's time to find out if all that hard work paid off.

Reconnect your TiVo and plug it in. Watch it boot up. If it gets that far, then this is a really good sign! Surf your way to TiVo Messages & Setup System Information and check out the line that starts with "Recording Capacity." What does it say? Mine's shown in Figure 2-7.

As a rule of thumb, your TiVo should, on average, hold about 1.2 hours per GB of hard drive storage in standalone models (without a built-in DirecTV receiver) and about 0.875 hours per GB in the DirecTV with TiVo models. If you have a total of 150 GB of storage in your standalone TiVo, you should be able to store about 180 hours of programming at basic quality. In a DirecTV with TiVo, the same 150 GB will yield up to 130 hours.

If for some reason the number is not right, go over the directions with a fine-toothed comb. But if it is right, then congrats! Time to set that Season Pass to record all the soap operas that you could ever watch.

Chapter by Michael Adberg and Jeff Shapiro, WeaKnees.com (2001-2003 Adberg Consulting LLC)