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Ultimate TV (UTV) Hard Drive Upgrade 112

Posted by timothy from the geniuses-meet-the-idiot-box dept.
BubbaJoeBob writes: "I just read this thread over at the AVSForum that jeffm7 was able to upgrade his UTV 40GB drive to a WD 100GB drive. Other users are reporting that they were also successful using the WD 120GB drive." And aside from ending up with an apparently useless original drive, this sounds much less painful and involved than various homebrewed TiVO upgrades; according to posters on this thread, it's nearly plug-and-play (with a necessary download step in the middle).
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Ultimate TV (UTV) Hard Drive Upgrade More

Ultimate TV (UTV) Hard Drive Upgrade

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  • Upgrade comparison... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tyger ( 126248 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @06:33AM (#2773084)
    The UTV upgrade is, unsurprisingly, not unlike the DishPlayer upgrade. In fact, it is pretty much the same. Surprised this was not found earlier, unless it is drive specific, and early attempts tried the wrong drive type.

    The upgrade itself is pretty painless. I do not have a UTV myself, nor have I upgraded one, but I do follow the forums. It is pretty much just putting it in and letting it download software. Only catch, from what I see, is the drive cannot have anything on it. At all. Not even an unused partition. While (In theory) slower than the TiVo upgrade, it is easier, and harder to end up with useless hardware. But I believe there is only space for one drive in UTV, so you can only get half the space of a TiVo.

    As it is, the TiVo upgrade these days is pretty painless, and is only likely to get less so. If you can swap drives in the unit, it is only a little harder to do the necessary PC work. Of course, it does require a PC. And with the drives that come prepared for TiVo upgrade, it is actually just as easy to upgrade TiVo, and much quicker to boot, involving only a few seconds to add the new drive, instead of hours to download software to install.

    • Drive noise? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by deano ( 23308 )
      I upgraded my replayTV a few months back, and I've since noticed that the 120GB drive I put in (Maxtor 5400rpm) makes a very audible clicking noise as it writes/scans... I'd just warn anyone considering an upgrade to definitely ear-test the drive first if possible... What is perfectly acceptable/quiet in terms of in-computer use, can be deafening when watching a tense moment of (intended) silence on-screen.

      • Re:Drive noise? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ghazban ( 28784 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @07:11AM (#2773161) Homepage
        Actually, maxtor has a drive utility to change the loudness of the drive. This will have a small impact on the performance (probably won't make much of a difference when used by a tivo), but from what it sounds, that'd be worthwhile. You'd have to put it in your computer and run the utility, but it's probably worthwhile. See noise utilities [tweakhardware.com] for ibm and maxtor drives.
        • Oh, that would be great if that worked! I got a Sony 30 hr tivo and added a second drive (IBM 75 GB) right away and was very pleased with the results, except for the noise.

          My concern, of course, is if this is possible to make this change now that the drive is already installed. Anyone have any experience with this?
          • It is a pretty low level program and would imagine that since there is already a setting of "loud" on the drive that a setting of "low" woiuld affect only the same part of the bios and would not endanger 40+ hours of pr0n,sci-fi, and such. I've used it on xfs,ext2,ntfs,and fat32 partitioned drives with no problems.
    • I have never upgraded a TiVo/UTV/DirecTV/etc but this sounds really suspicious. Maybe I have been a M$ victim for too long and am seeing conspiracies everywhere, but I can't imagine making it this easy to "pirate" the more expensive hardware. Are we sure that UTV is not recording the phone number & address of everyone that does this? Do they then send them a bill for the extra record time? I don't see how they could, but IANAL.

      • Re:Upgrade comparison... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Shanep ( 68243 )
        I can't imagine making it this easy to "pirate" the more expensive hardware.

        It's not pirating though. The user is purchasing another, more expensive drive to replace the old one and in the process are probably voiding their warrantee.

        The companies could probably legally prevent usage of their network with user modified hardware and certainly void any warrantee, though I doubt they would bother pursuing more money from a unit they would rather no longer support.

        I imagine requesting more money for a user upgraded unit, would be like condoning user upgrades and validating them as still being supported units. Easier to just void them, rather than project an image that this practice is almost acceptable from their point of view.

        Not everyone observes anti-static and electrical precautions and since the unit is not designed to be user upgradable, their legal eagles probably would have a fit at the thought of supporting the unknown. If they had thorough, easy to understand step by step instructions for user upgrades and the hardware was designed to make it easy, then it could be a different story.

        Don't get me wrong though, if I had a TiVo, I would love to drop in a couple of 120Gb drives. Actually, I would rather have a network capable unit that I could just sym link to my NFS server, especially if I could have this as combined storage for multiple units around the house. Of course, I'm dreaming a bit here, I don't know if this is possible with any of them.
        • Actually, I would rather have a network capable unit that I could just sym link to my NFS server, especially if I could have this as combined storage for multiple units around the house.

          So would I. Then there's the crowd that says "TiVo is only a mpeg en/decoder with lineups, it would be easy to duplicate." I wish someone would get busy with it. I'd be first in line to buy it.

          • Re:Upgrade comparison... (Score:2, Informative)

            by Tyger ( 126248 )
            The thing is, in the case of the DirecTV one and the UTV as well as DishPlayer and DishPVR, it isn't just an en/de-coder. They don't have an encoder, using the DBS encoded signal directly, which gets a much higher quality image. However, don't expect either company to release hardware any time soon to let you capture THAT to your computer.
    • The UTV upgrade is, unsurprisingly, not unlike the DishPlayer upgrade. In fact, it is pretty much the same.

      I could not find a description of that on the forum. But I did here [reser.org].

      Basically the piece says 'take your Dish PVR apart, put in a bigger hard drive, reassemble'.

      What I would really like to do is to modify the PVR so that I can use a removable drive. That might mean buying a new case.

      Only thing they don't mention is putting two drives in - as has been done with Tiva (plural of Tivo). I would ideally like two 160Gb Hard Drives, or bigger.

      • I believe that TiVa use a form of linux as their base operating system. Do not most linuces have an IDE limit? That is, is not there a maximum storage amount (say, around 180GB) that most linuces can recognize?

        I want to say that this was brought up on the AVSFora a while back, when the new Maxtor 100GB drives came out.

        ----
        Proud owner of a 160GB / 193 hour TiVo. Yep, over a week straight on any channel, if I were to want that.
        • Found it... and in deference to the Fora in which I found this information, I am summarizing it (thereby hoping to avoid the /. effect on their site.)

          The TiVo's OS is a Linux variant, one that allegedly assumes 512 byte sectors. This gives a 128 GiB (2^30) of storage per drive.

          I think that this works out to over 310-320 hours(assuming 8.75/7 h / GiB), or just under TWO weeks straight of a single channel.

          Just imagine all the Simpsons / Family Guy / Jackass episodes that would be! Not to mention all the HBO-only specials...
        • It appears that linux can handle larger hard drives [slashdot.org] now. According to the referenced slashdot article (and the "stuff" contained therein), linux can now handle IDE hard drives in excess of 100 petabytes. That's a pretty large hard drive.

          --MonMotha
      • It looks as though the linked article is for upgrading the original pvr box that had a 15 hour recording time. I canecled my supscription, moved and had my wife sign up to get the new box for free. I took the drive out and it was a 17 gig, cant remember the make but i tossed it into my linux box and it works fine. Their new box is the Dish 501pvr. If you look at the list of Hard drives on the link you will notice that there are things like 20 gig hd listed, so It is unlikely that that info is for the new box.
      • The drive controller in a TiVo is an ATA/33 controller. That means it can only handle up to 132GB per drive. If you put in a 160 GB drive, a lot of space will be wasted.

        Most people on the AVS Forum agree that you're better off with quiet, cool drives than fast ones. The consensus is that the "best" upgrade for most people would be two 5400 RPM 120GB drives.

        Most people don't do this though. They take the existing 20 or 30GB drive and make that their "A" drive, then add a big "B" drive (80, 100, or 120 GB). 5400 RPM drives are preferrable since they tend to be quieter and run cooler.

  • Ut-oh (Score:3, Funny)

    by CodeRed ( 5676 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @06:34AM (#2773088) Journal
    This just must be illegal!

    Kind of like chewing a pencil. That was not the intent of the maker, therefore reverse engineering the wood is a violation of the DMCA as well?

    I give this a week before you hear about DMCA implications.
    • DMCA enforcement will likely eat poo, should someone go after a consumer with it. These boxes fall wholly within fair use limits, just like VCRs. I'm not sure any particular company is up to that legal fight just yet, even the MPAA. Once they tear into it, the DMCA will hit some serious scrutiny, and likely some serious assault.

  • Help! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Geoffd1 ( 466931 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @06:40AM (#2773099) Homepage
    I tried to upgrade my VCR as per the instructions, but it didn't work. Can somebody help me?

    • Re:Help! (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by hawk ( 1151 )
      Me too!


      :)


      hawk

      • *sigh* (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )
        yet another 14 year old moderator who doesn't remember the perpetual december . . .


        for the younger folks: the grandparent post was a joke. Once AOL connected to usenet, there were some clueless statements, but even more trolls like the above. They would invariable end up swarmed with posts with nothing more than "me too" from aol.com addresses. Some offered porn, with instructions to post the request. Others offered improbable upgrades, such as impossible compression or speed, or, as the above pointed to, vcr or sattellite "enabling" for pay channels.


        hawk

        • Too bad /. doesn't have an AI (I mean, besides Hemos). They could program it to detect those of us with brains and give some credit. For the sake of argument, lets call them "Kudos". Lets say the scale would be 1-10. A normal user would start off with "0". Before getting any "Kudos", you would need to be an active poster for a predefined period of time, have no more than "x" negatively moderated posts, and already be at your maximum karma.

          These theoretical "Kudos" would be calculated based on many factors. Activity of UID proportional to age, Sustained number of posts moderated highly, years of formal education (For no other reason than efficency of thought process). These "Kudos" points would then be plugged into an equation which, like the Karma system thoretically was supposed to do, would enable you to be hailed as "Enlightened".

          There are a number of reasons which I will not get into that lead me to believe the moderation system is flawed. One reason I will mention, however, is taken directly off of Quit Slashdot Today! [washington.edu], which is: Technical opinions refereed by popular vote means lousy technical opinions.

          For Instance - Since you've posted ~1600 comments, Have a UID you could sell on e-bay for lots of money, and are an established member of academia, you would get, say 6 karma points. Users such as myself who value the intelligent posts, instead of the opinions of 14 year olds caught up in the heat of the open source counterculture.

          (These opinions are not neccecarily those of me. Being human, I am prone to sudden attacks of multiple personality disorder. One of these personalities has a particularly quixotic nature. He tends to post rants on slashdot all day.)
          • Incomplete thought. frontal lobe malfunction. Rebooting..
            OK.
            OpenBrainOS v0.1.1-SMP 2 lobes + FoldedCortex
            Warm boot - Medulla Oblongata already initialized
            Disabling math.o, Enabling sciences.o, Enabling opinionated_bastard.o
            Entering runlevel 3
            [root] brain:~# ./finish_thought --personality=slashdot --thought=/lost+found/slashrant520102

            Anyways. ...Users such as myself who value the intelligent posts, instead of the opinions of 14 year olds caught up in the heat of the open source counterculture would benefit from such a system. If there were a way besides karma to measure the overall "Worth" of a user, my slashdot experience would be much better.

            [root] j00ve been 0wned:~# echo "DOH!"
            • Yes, another type of scoring system would be nice. I'm getting closser and closer to giving up slashdot enitely by the day . . .


              But then, I've never gotten around to figuring out trn scoring, either :) I'm sure there's a man page *somewhere*, but it's become well hidden since strn was folded into trn . . . and someday, I'll find out what happened to the "p" command in rn . . .


              I used a scored newsreader on a mac for a while,which would let me flag people with insane adjustments, but the rest of the newsreader meant it was still easier to telnet to unix and use trn :)


              I toy at time with a bbs-like system, modeled after those, but organized in rings. The whole world could see and join the outer ring, while each succeeding inner ring would be joined by invitation . . . I'm interested in as much to see how it would as for participation, wondering if it might restore the environment of old usenet (which was partially captured by a small fraction of the bbs's)


              hawk

              • Thats a very interesting idea. I used to run a BBS, and that system worked very well in the message boards, which were pretty active locally. I never was big in Usenet - Just the local BBS net and occasionally the fidonet. I tried to get involved in conversations in usenet, but my favorite debate areas were the Religion, Psychology and Human Sexuality groups - Places where debates rage on and on, constantly. Mostly secularists vs. fundimentalists in all groups. Without getting too political, those discussions have been raging since the beginning of time, and i don't know if ANY progress has been made.

                Now I occasionally hang out on comp.unix.solaris, helping where I can. There's just too much chaff and not enough wheat nowadays, for my taste. I've been wanting to give up on /. recently - I agree with most of the points on the "Quit slashdot today" site.. but, its like an addiction.. can't.. quit.. Slashdotics Anonymous, anyone?

                I need to get back into usenet. Unfortunately, being the introvert I am, I don't want to get accustomed to a new group of people. In my opinion the time has come for slashdot to adopt a general forum. Just toss it over there --- with the ask slashdot, etc. That way we can discuss things we want to discuss, without being moderated down. Just rotate the boards once a day, and archive after 2 or 3 weeks like normal. That would stop flame..

                Jeez, im ranting on and on and on and on about nothing inparticular. my apologies.
                • I was away from usenet from 85 until 94. As near as I can tell, those newsgroups were carrying on the exact same arguments as when I left, with different people repeating the same lines. creation/evolution, abortion, the heinlein flamewars, etc.


                  The "Imminent Death of Usenet" *did* happen after the perpetual december, but a few newsgroups survived, and there's still a couple of places for us, uhh, dinosaurs. I'd mention them by name, but not here :)


                  btw, it seems your wish was granted with the friend/foe system . . .


                  hawk

  • This is an awesome hack! The high prices and small capacity of the M$ UTV bundled drives is what has kept me from buying just yet. I want at least 100 GB for plenty of standard TV shows as well as for high quality audio and/or HDTV for my movies and such. This is what I have been waiting for!
  • If you can't seem to use a drive after you've removed it from a UTV, that's because it's probably using a special partition (not 0x83) that can't be read by any conventional software, or the disk has been written to in an unintelligible way. So what you need to do is completely wipe the drive with a low-level format, i.e., writing zeroes to the drive. Then you can repartition it as 0x07 if you want to be able to get productive use out of it.

    Here is a link to Western Digital's utility that allows you to low-level partition their ATA drives (the WDC seems to be popular in these devices):

    http://www.wdc.com/support/download/dlg/dlgdiag.zi p [wdc.com]

    • Shit, do some research. They tried it in the forum and it doesn't work.
      • Well, even if the low-level format WON'T work, I bet you can still go to the manufacturer's site and enter the drive serial # and see if it is still under warrany... Most drives are warrantied for ~3 years or so. If it is, just call for an RMA # and send the drive back and get a free replacement. As a computer tech, I've done this countless times..
        • Having worked for a hard drive manufacturer, I can tell you that this almost certainly will *not* work.

          When a hard drive manufacturer sells drives to an OEM (like Dell, or Gateway, or your set-top box maker), they're sold as OEM drives with no end-user warranty.

          Since we're usually talking about hundreds of thousands of drives, the drive manufacturer plans for a certain number of failures based on recorded failure data, and provides an additional number of drives in the same contract cost. Let's say the order is for 100,000 drives, and the expected failure rate is 2%. The drive manufacturer would supply 102,000 drives under the contract, obviating the need to provide warranty service. Any failed drives would be replaced by the equipment manufacturer, out of the stock of spares.

          - Dave

    • Re:You need to low-level format old UTV drives (Score:5, Informative)

      by Shanep ( 68243 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @10:37AM (#2773608) Homepage
      the disk has been written to in an unintelligible way.

      Yeah, dd'ing it with /dev/zero ought to fix it.

      So what you need to do is completely wipe the drive with a low-level format, i.e., writing zeroes to the drive.

      A commonly used phrase, incorrectly used for ATA drives. "Low level format" comes from the days when it meant a real low level format, where tracks would literally be repositioned (old MFM and SCSI drives could do this). IDE drives are low level formatted at the factory and cannot be re-low level formatted outside the factory. IDE drives recalibrate themselves due to changes in heat, they calibrate off tracks or special encoding (gray code?) between tracks, written at the factory which are on areas that are not user writable.

      Then you can repartition it as 0x07 if you want to be able to get productive use out of it.

      HPFS/NTFS? Nah, 0x83 and 0xA6 for me.

      Here is a link to Western Digital's utility that allows you to low-level partition their ATA drives (the WDC seems to be popular in these devices):

      Since the popularity of ATA has taken over the desktop from MFM and SCSI, the "low level format" term has remained. However, in the IDE World, it only means "completely zero every user addressable block" on the drive and NOT "reposition tracks", since ATA drives don't need and are not capable of such a feat at even the leet haxor level.

      The term is erroneous for ATA drives, however it has been so commonly used that even the drive manufacturers refer to thier zero-out tools as low level formatters. They're not.

      I don't know if modern SCSI drive are capable of this or use the ATA method? Anyone?
      • I'm not too sure about Linux, but I remember in DOS, you could use the debug.com utility to call a memory address in the disk controller (albeit for SCSI and MFM only) that would invoke a low level format utility. I'm not sure if it exists/works anymore.
        • in DOS, you could use the debug.com

          What a blast from the past! I remember that. Yeah like 4 or 5 bytes and then whoosh!

          That calls a system BIOS program to do the dirty work does'nt it?

          I used to actually enjoy typing in debug listings from magazines like Compute!, to muck around with the utils, etc. I remember a util called prune that was a deltree before the days of DOS deltree, which did a great job of pruning dirs and also fucking up file systems every now and then. : ) I guess thats what you get with 50 byte programs without error checking. ; )

          Before that though, I was even sicker, back when Compute! mag was a C64 magazine, they had literally pages and pages of multi column HEX listings for utils and games. Some of the games were actually pretty good arcade games, considering thier size. First you had to type in the assembler in BASIC (really just a check summing program) and save it (to tape for me), then use it to enter the HEX listings, the "assembler" could inform you when you got a line wrong, based on the checksum.

          Man those were the days.

          • Re:You need to low-level format old UTV drives (Score:4, Informative)

            by cscx ( 541332 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @11:16AM (#2773761) Homepage
            This DEBUG script I found should low-level format any IDE drive:

            F 200 L 200 0
            a 100
            mov ax,301
            mov bx,200
            mov cx,1
            mov dx,0080 (Note: use 0081, 0082, 0083 for 2nd, 3rd, 4th harddisk respectively)
            int 13
            int 3
            (hit ENTER to enter a blank line here)
            G=100
            q

            Yeah debug.com sure brings back memories. For a second I tbought the dd command had something to do with the post, not your .sig!

            • For a second I tbought the dd command had something to do with the post, not your .sig!

              ; ) Just having a dig at the Linux kernel developers, from the recent VM system changes and system instability and extreme thrashing slowdowns I seemed to be getting since upgrading to 2.4.10.
            • Don't most (all?) IDE drives just pretend to do the low-level format and in reality do absolutely nothing?
              • "IDE" drives (not ATA or ATAPI, read: ancient) would mostly selfdestruct if low-level formated by one of those ancient BIOSes. That's one reason that's not a BIOS setup option anymore.

                At any rate, yes, you can indeed, execute a true field low-level format on IDE, ATA, and ATAPI drives. You may need specialized software to do it, however. (OnTrac Disk Manager used to have this capability for a very large number of drives, but they no longer sell that version.) If you actually have the need to reinit an IDE drive, you might as well buy a new one -- the error requiring the reinit _will_ come back.

        • IIRC, on MFM controllers you could jump to the low-level formatting utility by entering the following at DEBUG's dash prompt:

          g=c800:8

          I'm not sure if SCSI controllers ever had this feature, since most of them have a config utility that's accessible after POST when the BIOS is initialising the controller.

  • has provided much more in-depth information regarding this upgrade, including a complete step-by-step on (what's currently) Page 4 of the board... (posted 12-29-01 01:02 PM)

  • Tivo upgrades painful?? (Score:4, Informative)

    by smartin ( 942 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @08:38AM (#2773312)
    this sounds much less painful and involved than various homebrewed TiVO upgrades.

    Where is this guy coming from? I just upgraded my Tivo and was amazed at how painless the process was. Yes you do have to bless the new drive, but with the availability of utility boot disks and CD's it is trivial to do.
    • Compaired to other PVRs to upgrade, the TiVo is more complicated and does require more steps. It's not harder, just more stuff to do. ReplayTV has some very nice windows software to do their upgrades.. Something like that for TiVo would be nice.

    • Re:Tivo upgrades painful?? (Score:4, Informative)

      by jjo ( 62046 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @09:34AM (#2773433) Homepage
      While the first-generation TiVO upgrade procedure was (apparently) somewhat painful, the current procedure is very easy. Using the Hinsdale How-to TiVO Upgrade [newreleasesvideo.com] guide, I was able to upgrade my TiVO in two hours, including a backup of my original drive.

      My formerly 40-hour TiVO now has a 130-hour capacity. I love it!
    • I agree. I was surprised that the TiVo upgrade was described as painful. I upgraded mine about a year ago and as clumsy as I am, I just breezed through it. Complicating matters was the fact that I did it on my Mac no less. My 14 hr Tivo, purchased for $179, now is a 91 hour TiVo. I didn't back up my original Tivo HD, so perhaps that's why my experience was so painless....
  • >...this sounds much less painful and involved than various homebrewed TiVO upgrades...

    It doesn't take 10 minutes to upgrade (add a second hard disk) to a TiVo. What's so painful about that?

    This xmas, I found five 20-hour TiVo's at Wallmart for $129 each, added $100 40GB drives (making them 72-hour). They made excellent xmas gifts, and they don't require much work at all.

  • UltimateTV vs TiVo (Score:4, Informative)

    by Snowdog ( 3038 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @10:49AM (#2773652)
    For those who are trying to decide between UltimateTV and TiVo, or who (like me) own one type of unit and are thinking about switching to the other, here's a pretty comprehensive TiVo vs UltimateTV comparison [tivonews.com].

    In a nutshell, TiVo beats UltimateTV in almost all areas.

    One other bit of information that may be significant: UltimateTV requires that you have a DirectTV satellite dish -- it will not work with standard cable TV.
  • Linux fans should take note. This is what Linux market leadership looks like. Everything Microsoft does in the PVR market is defined in terms of TiVo. UTV users speak of upgrades 'easier than TiVo', software upgrades coming real soon now that will 'lift UTV over Tivo' and so on, and so forth.

  • But it does not seem that anyting like that is coming to Scandinavia anyday soon. I have heard someone talking about a similar thing on the drawing board, but who knows.

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