A friend of mine has an old Tivo. Doesn't hold very much. He paid for the "lifetime" subscription, so he doesn't want to get a new Tivo, as he'll then have to pay monthly, or pay for another full "lifetime" subscription. I suggested that he could just get the unit he has upgraded with a larger hard drive.

I of course don't know who/how this would be done, but I know people do it/have it done all the time.

Help!

http://www.weaknees.com/

Wow!
The subscription is tied to the unit, and not the user?
That sounds like a bit of a rip-off.
Sort of like a fishing license being issued to one fishing pole, as oppossed to the angler.
That seems like they are intentionally limiting their ability to sell a subcriber new gear down the road.
Very Odd.

Info on how to add a hard drive to a Tivo:
Tivo hacking site 1
Tivo hacking site 2

Curtis is right. Weakknees is great, I bought a kit for my HD DirecTivo and took me about 30 min to open, install and close it up. Went from 250 GB to 550 GB. I didn't even have to format a drive. If your friend is willing to work w/ Linux, it's not too hard to buy a cheapo HDD and format it w/ various tools.

Here's some resources and other upgrade options:

Tivo Forums
PTV Upgrade
9th Tee

Some notes on lifetime. It's not a scam, IMHO I think it's a great deal. (Then again, I love tivo.) There's 2 versions though. For standalone Tivo's, you can still get lifetime and it follows the box. So if that box is ever sold, the lifetime subscription goes with it. (Maybe buy the box from him...) For DirecTivo boxes, there used to be a lifetime for the box, but no more. DirecTV makes you pay monthly now. HOWEVER, if you had lifetime before the change, you are grandfathered and the lifetime is now w/ your account. Any Tivo you get for DirecTivo is given lifetime status, you just pay a mirror fee for any additional receiver after the first one. I have 2. In fact, I bought my first DirecTivo on ebay w/ lifetime. Then the rule change happened and it's now applied to my account.

If you do the DIY route on the TiVo, bear one thing in mind--you must have a FAT32 hard drive, NOT NTFS. If you accidentally boot off an NTFS drive while your TiVo hard drive(s) are in the machine and hooked up, say good bye to your TiVo and your lifetime subscription. That was pretty much the only nerve wracking thing about it. Also, I would recommend a round IDE cable if you can find one short enough. The ribbon is just a pain to deal with with the 2 hard drives. That said, I've never tried the round IDE cable in the TiVo.

I sent my friend the weakknees link and he'll likely have them do it for him.

thanks for the help.