Tivo

Three days ago I received my brand new Tivo Series3 HD DVR.  On the day it arrived, I made a very disappointing discovery.  The Series3 HD DVR does not connect to a cable digital receiver, you have to get a CableCard from the cable provider to connect the DVR directly to the cable connection on the wall.

This means that I couldn’t use my DVR until I went out and got a CableCard, and since I didn’t get my Tivo from UPS shipping until around 5 PM, I had maybe 10 minutes to make a 12 minute trip to collect one that evening.  So, on to the next task of getting the Tivo through Guided Setup and connected to my wireless network using 802.11g and WPA-PSK encryption. (That’s Wi-Fi Protected Access – Pre-Shared Key to non-technical folks… which means that my wireless signal is encrypted with a passphrase that I pre-share between the wireless access point and the client device, like the Tivo box.)

So I hook up this fancy Tivo Wireless G, USB antenna, only to discover that it won’t work.  It keeps insisting that I must use WEP, which I don’t like because it’s less secure than WPA, but I decide, ok, I’ll go WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy, another Wi-Fi encryption scheme) and use an access list to prevent unauthorized MAC addresses from connecting to my access point.  Except that it won’t work.

Why won’t it work, you ask, as confused as I was at first.  After all, the Wireless USB antenna is from Tivo, the DVR is from Tivo, this should work, right?  Wrong.  Tivo didn’t start supporting the G band wireless signal (even on their own antennas) until software version 8.1, and quite coincidentally, the Series3 DVR that I receive has 8.0.1.  So I cannot get the antenna to work properly with WPA or 802.11g, and I’m having no luck getting WEP to work properly with anything (not even my laptop.)

After several hours of reading through the Tivo online support and browsing the internet, I realize that 8.1 is the fix for the problem, but in order to get 8.1, I have to connect the Tivo to the network.  So I hunt up enough CAT5 cable to string a run from my modem to the Tivo box on the other side of the house (50+ feet of CAT5 cable, strung from upstairs on one end of my house to downstairs on the other end of my house.)  Except that the 50 foot CAT5 cable I have has some loose copper pairs within the RJ45 jack, which means that the signal goes out if you twist the cable just so…

Naturally by now, I’m having lots of fun.

Once I finally get the Tivo on to the network, I discover that Tivo will not permit me to download the latest software (to even get myself on to the wireless, so that I can finish the configuration of the stupid device) until after I register and pay for service from Tivo.  So now I’m forking out money for a product that doesn’t work, in the hopes that the 8.1 software upgrade will allow the device to work over my wireless, so that later I can  go to the cable company and pick up a CableCard to only then get the Tivo connected to the cable feed and start watching TV on it.

As it happens, 9.3a is the current software release.  According to information I dug up 8.1 was released in 2006.  Which means that in the last 1.5 years, no one has bothered to upgrade the Tivo device that I purchased (or it was intentionally manufactured with non-current release software on it.)

As it also happens, 9.3a works well with my wireless access point using 802.11g and WPA-PSK.  It even can be further secured by adding the MAC address of my Tivo wireless adapter to the access list (thus preventing unexpected guests from hacking my wireless network and having access to my computers, tivo, bandwidth, etc.)

So, now I have a working Tivo unit (4 hours later) but still no cable card.

Day 2 (day after I received my Tivo DVR) I go to the cable company, and through a series of misfortunes, it takes another 4 hours to get the cable company to pair the CableCard with my account…  during this time I have access to almost no channels, and I discover that the CableCard will not support On Demand functionality, so if I want to use On Demand I must keep the cable company’s digital receiver (an additional monthly charge from the cable company to have both the receiver plus a CableCard.)

Many hours poorer and a few dollars lighter than I expected, I finally got my Tivo Series3 HD DVR operational.  In the end, only 1 feature makes Tivo more attractive than sticking with the cable company’s combination DVR/digital receiver.

1. Tivo allows you to export your recorded programs to your PC for storage & later viewing (both on your PC and by pushing it back to the DVR, and the upgraded PC application permits you to convert the recorded program to a format compatible with your iPod)

After 8 hours, and significantly more cost…  I’m not sure that it was worth getting the Tivo Series3 HD DVR.  Basically I paid close to $1000 to be able to back up recorded programs…  For a lot less, I could have got a cable combo DVR/receiver and just bought 500 movies (at $20 each).

I’m feeling ripped off.