TiVo Series 2 DT TCD649

TCD649
Year Released                                2006
Year Discontinued                                2010
Capacity                                         Varies
Current Version                             9.3.2c*

The Series 2 DT is the last Series 2 model released, as it was released in 2006 alongside the TiVo Series 3. The TiVo Series 2 DT ditches the "Nightlight" of the previous model and features a black and silver faceplate with the TiVo logo in the middle. The biggest internal change was the inclusion of 2 tuners for recording 2 analog cable programs at once. The back of this unit features the same ports of the TiVo Series 2 TCD240 and the TiVo Series 2 TCD540. These units will continue to receive guide updates if it has been activated with the "Lifetime" service previously. TiVo will no longer re-activate Series 2 units.

Hardware

The Series 2 DT contains a Broadcom BCM7318 running at 266MHz, 64MB of DDR RAM running at 133MHz, and two Broadcom BCM7042 MPEG-2 encoder chips. The Series 2 DT either came with a 80 GB or 160GB hard drive.

Limitations

Series 2 units compress their recordings to fit them onto the low-capacity hard drives. Despite advertising and the box itself stating that it can record ex: Up to 80 hours, that is only if you are using the "Basic Quality" setting on the TiVo, which records in 352x480i with a low bitrate, resulting in "blocky" and low quality video, that could be even worse then VHS. "Best Quality" goes up to 480x480i with a average bitrate of around 3500kbps. While this looks fine on a old CRT television, scaling this up to a more modern LCD TV or computer would look soft and blocky.

The Series 2 DT only works with Cable or Satellite. Antenna is incompatible, most likely due to the FCC banning selling of TVs, VCR, etc. without "DTV Ready" tuners a year later, forcing TiVo to have taken it off the market after only a year.

Models

The Series 2 DT has two models.

Model	Released	Hours/HDD Size	Notes	Image
TCD649080	2006	80 hours = 80 GB
TCD649180		180 hours = 160 GB	Upgraded to a 160 GB hard drive. This model is rarer.