RIP TiVo 1?

Tonight, we noticed that our TiVo hadn't been dialing in for programming updates in almost a week. At first I thought it might be the phone cord; we have two rabbits who occasionally get under the TV and chew through the phone cord (but only the phone cord; they've never gone for power cords or the cable TV cable or the audio cables). A quick check revealed no chew marks. I unplugged and replugged the cord at both ends, hoping it was a bad connection, but no dice. Finally, I dragged out The World's Longest Phone Cord and plugged the TiVo into a different outlet in another room. This confirmed our worst fear—the modem is futzed.

We had a bad lightning storm some time last week. One flash of lightning came with immediate thunder, and the smoke alarms in our house went off. (They're the kind that are wired together.) I suspected at the time that the house was hit, or at least suffered a near miss. Now, I'm more convinced, since we seem to have a casualty on our hands.

We've been TiVo users for nearly 6 years. The prospect of facing television without it is a little scary. The clock is ticking; we have less than a week of program information remaining. After that, the box reverts to a glorified VCR.

Three options have come to mind:

1. Someone we know has a Series 1 of vintage similar to ours. The hard drive in that one has failed, but as far as I know the modem still works. They can't use it because they no longer have a landline. We may try to beg, borrow, barter, or buy it and transplant the hard drive from ours into it.
2. Repair kits are available; Google for "tivo modem repair". I don't know how long it would take for one to arrive, and they seem to involve soldering surface mount components (in other words, really really small electronic parts). I can probably handle that (because Daddy can fix anything) but my eyesight isn't what it used to be. You can get a replacement modem that doesn't require cracking the box, but it costs almost as much as a new TiVo (see below).
3. We bite the bullet and buy a new Series 2. The good news is that they can be had for around $100, which is a lot less than I paid for the Series 1 six years ago.

In the meantime, please think happy thoughts for our TiVo.