TiVo in a motorhome

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caltex

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 14, 2005
Posts
731
Location
North Texas/Northern California
Anyone have experience with a hard drive video recorder in the RV?  I would like to put one in the motorhome if it would be rugged enough to survive the bouncing.  Does anyone know if these units ?park? the heads when turned off, maybe giving a better chance at survival?
 
caltex said:
Anyone have experience with a hard drive video recorder in the RV?

I use a Directv Tivo in my MH and I love it.  The disk heads will park if you remove power but, many leave the Tivo running while driving.

Phil
 
Our DirecTivo has been running continously for 4 years and 40,000 miles with no problems. ?You can't turn a Tivo off, the switch that looks like an on/off switch just puts it in standby. ?It continues to run in that mode. ?You have to remove power from the unit to actually turn it off.

If you hit bumps hard enough to bother a hard drive, you'll probably not be too comfortable yourself :) ?The only time we turn ours off is when boondocking to conserve battery power.
 
We also have a directTV tivo.  Works fine and we love it.  Hardly ever watch live TV anymore.  Several of the framily have tivo.
 
Caltex,
The hard drive in a Tivo is the same as the ones in your desktop computer. The heads will park when power is removed. Unless you will be using an auto-tracking antenna while travelling and the unit is powered on, you shouldn't have any problems. On the other hand, as Ned said, you have to be travelling some pretty rough roads - too rough for people travel - to do any damage even while powered on. They draw about 40watts, so powering them down when boondocking is a good idea; especially if you'll not be using it for an extended period. That being said, try to remember which programs it is scheduled to record either one time or on a season pass, so you don't miss out on them. Just go into DIRECTV Central, Pick Programs to Record, To Do List, and jot down what you see there. 
 
Anyone have experience with a hard drive video recorder in the RV???

I run two TiVo's in our motorhome with no problems...I record the auto races while driving down the road. The hard drives are subject to failure but this happens when sitting in a house also. Just like your computer.<G>

Terry
At Yuma, AZ
 

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