so long, series 1

  Purple tivo 
  Originally uploaded by mathowie

Our beloved Tivo Series 1 kicked the bucket this week, dying a wheezing, whining, hard-drive clicking death after more than seven years of reliable service.*

Normally I'm not the type to mourn the passing of a device -- after all, how many have I willingly tossed recycled in the same period?  But there's something to be said for that simple, well-designed box that changed the way we watch television.  It paused while we went for popcorn, treated us to the entire back catalog of Sports Night, reliably delivered hundreds if not thousands of hours of season passes week after week, and kept us sane and entertained during countless 3am feedings.

Rest in peace, old friend. The house may be quieter without the constant whine of your tired, old, underpowered and undersized hard drive, but trust us -- we'll miss you.

* Don't panic, though, we have a Series 2 in the living room; the Series 1 was the luxurious second Tivo that lately was responsible for recording endless episodes of Arthur and Mickey's Clubhouse. Sorry, kids.

Comments

[Jasmeet]

Could you in theory replace hard drive?

[Michael Sippey]

In theory, sure! But I think it would cost about as much to get a new Tivo, and the new ones have all the bells and whistles plus a truly shiny new gloss on the UI. And I'd have to go through all that well-documented hassle about getting the drive imaged with the Tivo software, etc., etc.

Basically, I'm lazy.

[alan taylor]

Awww. Ours died a few months back, also probably about 7 years old. We replaced it, but I still can't bring myself to throw the old thing out yet... something sentimental about it. The HD still has episodes of Bear in the Big Blue House that were some of the first TV shows my daughter ever saw.

[Greg Knauss]

Our one and only TiVo is a Series 1, from 1999, with old-school lifetime service. It's on its third hard drive and we update the program listings via modem, the way God intended. They'll pry the remote from my cold, dead hands.

[Nima Badiey]

Not to worry. Our Tivo's HDD kicked the bucket a while back with a ton of valueable "Thomas the Train" videos. Needless to say, the young master was not a happy camper that week (lots of crying an hurt boo boo faces thrown in our general direction).

Besides, I bought this TIVO back in the day when you could buy a lifetime subscription and didn't want to start paying monthly fees again, so a quick call to the guys at weaknees.com, and I got a new Tivo imaged 160GB hard drive in the mail. 15 minutes later, I had the new drive installed and the old Tivo was back up and running!

My wife and I don't have a prenup, but if we did I would so get the Tivo!