Wanting Tivo... which unit is best for here?

[BenMorgan]

I'm from the UK and have a Thomason PVR10 back in the UK which my parents now use. I loved it to death... I desperately want Tivo over here as MySky is frankly a massive pile of dung. I know I can get another Thomson quite cheaply from the UK but I'd more than likely be allying it to a Sky *spit* Digital box here and probably not using the Analog aerial signal (receptions only average where I am in Welly anyway). Would I be better off getting hold of a US Series 1 TiVo rather than going with what I know and bringing a Thomson over from the UK?

Recommendations? It seems a lot of the software here is more geared towards the Philips units?

[BenMorgan]

Actually reading some other posts jaidev, it looks like you own and run pretty much everything available that works here ;)

What's your preference??

[Skolink]

A TiVo from the 'States is way cheaper than from the UK. If you don't need the PAL tuner, get one from the States.

[jaidev]

I prefer the UK units, although a little more expensive, I run the sky decoder in RGB mode and run the Scart outputs through an active unit to convert to Component out. The picture quality is quite good..
Also the built in PAL tuner requires no modification to work here..

[BenMorgan]

I reckon I might go for grabbing a Thomson... price seems to have dropped on them a lot over in the UK plus I'm going home there for Xmas! Biggest thing though, they look awesome ;) matter of taste I guess but I miss my big silver monolith!

[thomson]

Thomson units can be picked up for about 50 GBP, but even the most basic shipping is 75 GBP (if you are bringing it back as luggage it is 10-11Kg). A US Philips unit can currently be picked up on Ebay for between 20 and 65 USD with shipping adding an additional 83 USD. Network cards can be sourced for either 83 AUD or 95 USD (including shipping to NZ).

I do prefer the UK Thomson units if for no other reason that they run v2.5.5 of the TiVo software.

[TimesOwn]

I think the Thomsons are best for NZ users because:

They already are configured by design to include

PAL Tuners
NICAM Stereo
2 inputs

which takes away the need to add these things to the hardware!

The higher price of these units seems to suddenly become the cheapest option when the above are taken into account. While the SCART connections are supposedly technically superior (if the RGB works) they do add cost to convert to the RCA connections more generally used in NZ. Hope this helps someone as these seem the real differences to me!