My wife and I lost yet more shows when our Time Warner DVR (SA 8300HD) suddenly decided to stop recording without warning.  And considering that popular opinion is that Time Warner's new Navigator software sucks even more than the software we've got, it became clear to us that it was time to jump ship.

So I logged onto Amazon and ordered the TiVo Series3.  Then I did some browsing around the TiVo community to congratulate myself.  I'm glad I did...  It turns out that there is a pretty serious issue with the TiVo Series3 boxes on certain cable providers.  You see, the TiVo Series3 uses the CableCARD 1.0 spec.  A lot of big cable providers are moving parts of their channel lineup to a new technology called Switched Digital Video (SDV).  SDV is not compatible with CableCARD 1.0.  So as a given cable provider moves channels to SDV, a CableCARD customer would lose those channels.  There's no way of knowing when or what channels would be affected - It all hinges on how Time Warner decides to maintain their network.

Today, I doubt it would impact us.  In all fairness, I would probably be very happy with the Series3 at first.  But what about in a few months?  Years?  How long would it be before my $660 TiVo (Amazon's price) became a boat anchor?  I'm a geek, and I enjoy being an early adopter, but not in this case.  The technology is already partially obsolete with a good potential of becoming further obsolete in the very near future.  I love you TiVo, and you're doing some cool things, but I can't accept that.  Give me a call when you roll out the Series4.

So we started thinking outside the box, and we decided to drop our terrestrial cable (except for RoadRunner)  in favor of Dish Network and their very well received HD DVR.  The installer comes Thursday.