So I should pay more attention
I’ll admit it, I’m a moron. I had a temporary lapse in judgment about my TiVo. Perhaps I should have read the manual. 
Thanks to MegaZone over at www.tivolovers.com for some insight into my TiVo woes. All of my wishes are actually available. I opted not to moderate his comment (it was a little too combative for my tastes), but I will share/respond to some of his insights.
1. He claimed that “Upgrading the drive in your TiVo isn’t hard if you have basic PC hardware skills.” I highly disagree. I’m not aware of being able to just download the TiVo OS anywhere. The unit is useless to me as a doorstop. Hacking the TiVo is/was intimidating. I know basic Linux, but it is far from easy to upgrade with just hardware skills. It does require a lot of research.
2. Although I was aware TiVo finally released a dual tuner model, I wasn’t about to spend the insane amount of money to upgrade. I’d rather try to hack the thing again then pay for the lousy ‘deal’ they offered current TiVo owners. Also, if I remember correctly, I would have to re-agree to the current terms of service and I wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the sweet lifetime deal I’m currently enjoying. I don’t want another monthly bill and my lifetime membership hasn’t paid for itself yet. Besides, I still think they are way late to the market with this feature.
3. I don’t care if it is a minority market, there is a demand and I’m demanding it. To be fair, DirectTV does make a HD model.
4. I’m just dumb. TiVo does this. It didn’t work before because I would never record at ‘Best’ quality. However, if you will record at the highest quality, it will attach the cached portion of the show. Big DUH moment for me.
5. I was unaware, but TiVo does have a grouping feature, so I appreciated the tip. You can toggle a group view for your shows by title if you press 2 on the ‘now showing’ screen. While I would hope for more flexibility than that, this is more than enough to pacify my request for grouping.
PTVUpgrade.com sells ‘Instant Cake’ CDs which have all the tools *and* the software image on them. Connect the drive to the IDE controller of a PC, boot the CD, follow the wizard prompts, and you’re done. The CD costs $20 and you can have a physical copy mailed, or download an ISO to burn your own so you don’t have to wait.
There used to be FTP sites with the images, but TiVo cracked down on those. Still, if you ask in the Upgrade forum at TiVoCommunity.com, or the hacking forums at DealDatabase.com, amongst others, someone will invariably send you a message with pointers to a downloadable image, or offer to send you the image directly.
If you have a working TiVo, then you already have the Image. You can just copy the image from the current drive to a new drive. You can buy ready-to-run bootable CDs with the tools - again PTVUpgrade.com sells those, as do others, or you can download the tools and make your own boot CD. The “Hinsdale How-To” is the classic guide: http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hinsdale-how-to/
There is also an interactive, step-by-step guide presented by WeaKnees.com: http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/index.php
I used the Hinsdale instructions and a homemade tools CD to upgrade my first Series2 and a Series1 in early 2002, and my housemate at the time updated his Series2 at the same time.
More recently I had that S2 corrupt itself last year. And while I had another S2, and could’ve done it ‘from scratch’, I’m busy and lazy, so I picked up Instant Cake for it and used that - it was a snap. Well worth $20 for the ease of use. (I sold that S2 to a friend once it was working again - he’s since upgraded the drive again to get more space. I’d added a 120GB to the existing 60GB, he replaced both with on 250GB.)
As for HD - I’m waiting for it myself. I was just explaining why it isn’t out yet. The only standalone HDTV DVRs that have hit the market so far have all been pulled from the market due to poor sales. TiVo has been working on the Series3 steadily for over a year and have stated repeatedly that it will be out for the holiday shopping season this fall. So it is coming, and hopefully there will be enough demand to sustain it. But it is expected to be fairly expensive as they’re targetting high end users with it. The HDTV DirecTiVo listed for $1,000 when it came out.
Of course, the Pioneer DVR-810H TiVo w/DVD listed for $1,200 when it was new, and the DVR-57H Elite was $1,500 IIRC - maybe even more. I picked up the 810H when it had only been out a couple of months, with a steep online discount, and paid a bit over $700 for it - plus lifetime, plus HMO, which wasn’t free yet back then.
Are you aware of other easter eggs like 30 second skip or the onscreen clock and elapsed time indicator?
Enter Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select while watching a recording. Then hit the Advance button when you want to jump ahead 30 seconds.
SPS9S turns on the clock & ETI.
Entering the same code again turns either one off (it is a toggle), and they’ll reset if the box reboots.
There’s also ‘SHAGWELL’ - Go into Browse By Title and enter “SHAGWELL” as the title, then hit Thumbs Up. A little surprise.