External eSATA enclosure for TiVo HD play

[gskeller]

Was looking at the TiVo web site and saw they now marketing an external eSATA enclosure for Series 3 and TiVo HD players. Anything special about these boxes? I have several eSATA enclosures /w drives laying around and would very much like to use one of them. What's the catch, if any.

[WK-Michael]

We have them also:

http://www.weaknees.com/esata

For the TiVo HD (not the TiVo Series3) ours need to be attached by us here with our PCs. TiVo's 500 GB ones will just plug in.

[gskeller]

So my take on this whole HD TiVo external drive hookup is that it is not as straight-forward as plugging in an external drive into a PC(other than TiVo's offering). What is so special about these external TiVo eSATA storage enclosure and drives? Proprietary SATA hardware or what? To my mind hooking up one of these boxes should be no different than adding a second drive. Hard to believe the process is that convoluted!

[WK-Jeff]

The TiVoHD is trained to recognize only that specific drive, but we are able to marry our eSATAs to the TiVoHD if we have the TiVoHD in our shop.

[gskeller]

Sounds like it is more trouble than it's worth. Just get a bigger drive, right?

[WK-Jeff]

Certainly a good option, yes.