Philips Standalone TiVos

A Philips HDR112
Philips HDR112/HDR312
Year Released                                1999
Capacity                                         Varies
Current Version                                3.0

In 1999, Philips released the first TiVo box ever available for purchase, the HDR110. The HDR110 contained a 13GB hard drive, same as the HDR110, which was released soon after, and replaced the HDR110. This TiVo can only be used as a "dumb DVR" or "digital VCR" after TiVo switched guide data providers from Gracenote to Rovi in September 2016. They released an update to Series 2 - 6 TiVos, but Series 1 TiVos did not receive that update.

Hardware

All of the Philips Series 1 units (even the Sony SVR-2000 and Thomson PVR10UK) use the same internal parts, including the same motherboard, hard drives, power supplies, etc. The Standalone Series 1 units all have the same specifications:

IBM PowerPC 403GCX running at 54 MHz

16MB of onboard RAM

Inside of a Series 1 Standalone TiVo. Note that that hard drive would usually be on the very right side

Limitations

Series 1 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 20 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.

Series 1 units do not support folders, sorting, or a "Recently Deleted" folder. If you deleted a recording on the Series 1, there is no way to recover it without hacking.

Models

Philips released multiple different models between 1999 - 2001. These models do not differ in functionality, only in hard drive capacity and the front faceplate.

List of models, 1999 - 2001

Model	Released	Hours/HDD Size	Notes	Image
HDR110	1999	13 GB = 13 hours	The first TiVo ever released. This design a oddly large TiVo in the middle (while also still having the smaller one in the bottom right corner)  but otherwise looks similar to the later models.
HDR112			Equivalent to the HDR110 with a different faceplate
HDR212	2000	20 GB = 20 hours	Uses an all-black faceplate.
HDR312		30 GB = 30 hours
HDR612	2001	60 GB = 60 hours	This was the last standalone TiVo Series 1 Philips released, it has an inverted faceplate and the highest capacity of any Series 1 TiVo from the factory.

Trivia

• Series 1 TiVos can record from any composite/s-video/coaxial source by tricking the unit into thinking you're using a cable box.

• You can still set the clock over the internet by using a Network card such as a TurbotNET. This is pretty important because as these units age, most of the clock batteries are at the end of their life and cannot hold any power, and there's no other way to reset the clock on the Series 1 without doing a service connection.

• The very first Philips HDR110 to roll off the production line was displayed at TiVo Inc's headquarters. It's currently unknown if it's still being displayed.

• These TiVos have a few second delay between when the video signal from the cable/satellite box or TV signal is coming in and when it's actually displayed on the TV screen. Try playing a video game like that!

• The firmware of the Series 1 TiVos can only recognize up to 2 160GB hard drives, making 344 hours the max possible hours on a unmodified Series 1 TiVo. There are ways around this.

Remote

Philips Standalone TiVos were the first to introduce the now-iconic TiVo "Peanut" remote. It got the nickname "Peanut" due to its peanut-like shape. This remote has 32 buttons and it's compatible with almost all TiVo models (not all features are accessible on newer TiVos using this remote due to it's limited buttons) and even the DirecTV models (excluding the Sony SAT-T60) (click to enlarge)

Tutorials

Series 1 hard drive replacement

Series 1 hard drive upgrade

Series 1 backup/restore

Series 1 network card installation

Back to Series 1