TiVo gets the best of me

I haven't blogged about TiVo in a longtime, though I continue to be very happy with the service. Recently,though, the power supply died in my six-month-old TiVo Series 2 unit. Whilecovered under warranty, this required Humax to send me out a new unit,as the power supply can't be replaced separately. So, a new (well,refurbished) unit arrived on Friday. It's date of manufacture, inMexico -- December 9, 2005. Interesting supply chain metric there.Anyway, knowing that it was just the power supply that was out on my oldTiVo unit, I planned to swap the hard drives between old and new upon thenew unit's arrival. I wanted to get at all those saved episodes ofDora the Explorer for my daughter, of course. So, I opened up bothunits, saw that the contents were entirely the same, and proceeded to switchthe hard drives. Once complete, I connected the new TiVo, and gotnothing but a blinking green light. Oops. I figured I was busted on the hard drive swap, so I switched them back. Plugged it in, and same blinking light. Weird...could TiVohave shipped me a broken replacement? A couple of hours later, I thought I'd take another look inside and seewhat might be wrong. There are very few moving parts on the TiVo,so there wasn't much to go wrong. I discovered, though, that I hadin fact screwed up one of the few things that could go wrong. I hadconnected the ribbon cable to the hard drive upside down. Notoften that an interface connector will go in two different ways, but thisone apparently does. Once I righted this, the unit booted up justfine. Note: I suppose this means I will have to give back my geekmerit badge. Now I had a new problem -- the old hard drive was causing an error in thenew TiVo box, and I couldn't even so much as watch the existing recordedprograms until the hardware problem was resolved. It appeared I wasindeed busted on the hard drive swap. Bummer. Sadly, I putthe new HD back in the new unit and was off and running.The last challenge was when the new unit asked me to activate. Goingto Tivo.com/activate and following the steps provided me with the opportunityto sign up for TiVo monthly service again. Already being $300 intothe last unit for lifetime service, I was concerned that the new unit didn'tmap up to me as a subscriber. So, I went the old fashioned way andpicked up the phone. There I was reassured that my lifetime servicewas indeed transferable to the new unit, and they took care of this forme. I just spent ten minutes putting all my "season passes" on thenew TiVo. In the meantime, I've missed about three weeks of Law &Order/Law&Order CI and am going through withdrawl. Anyone happento TiVo the last few weeks?

By Ed Brill for IBM | December 20, 2005 -- 03:21 GMT (19:21 PST) | Topic: Hardware

I haven't blogged about TiVo in a long time, though I continue to be very happy with the service. Recently, though, the power supply died in my six-month-old TiVo Series 2 unit. While covered under warranty, this required Humax to send me out a new unit, as the power supply can't be replaced separately. So, a new (well, refurbished) unit arrived on Friday. It's date of manufacture, in Mexico -- December 9, 2005. Interesting supply chain metric there.

Anyway, knowing that it was just the power supply that was out on my old TiVo unit, I planned to swap the hard drives between old and new upon the new unit's arrival. I wanted to get at all those saved episodes of Dora the Explorer for my daughter, of course. So, I opened up both units, saw that the contents were entirely the same, and proceeded to switch the hard drives. Once complete, I connected the new TiVo, and got nothing but a blinking green light. Oops.

I figured I was busted on the hard drive swap, so I switched them back. Plugged it in, and same blinking light. Weird...could TiVo have shipped me a broken replacement?

A couple of hours later, I thought I'd take another look inside and see what might be wrong. There are very few moving parts on the TiVo, so there wasn't much to go wrong. I discovered, though, that I had in fact screwed up one of the few things that could go wrong. I had connected the ribbon cable to the hard drive upside down. Not often that an interface connector will go in two different ways, but this one apparently does. Once I righted this, the unit booted up just fine. Note: I suppose this means I will have to give back my geek merit badge.

Now I had a new problem -- the old hard drive was causing an error in the new TiVo box, and I couldn't even so much as watch the existing recorded programs until the hardware problem was resolved. It appeared I was indeed busted on the hard drive swap. Bummer. Sadly, I put the new HD back in the new unit and was off and running.

The last challenge was when the new unit asked me to activate. Going to Tivo.com/activate and following the steps provided me with the opportunity to sign up for TiVo monthly service again. Already being $300 into the last unit for lifetime service, I was concerned that the new unit didn't map up to me as a subscriber. So, I went the old fashioned way and picked up the phone. There I was reassured that my lifetime service was indeed transferable to the new unit, and they took care of this for me.

I just spent ten minutes putting all my "season passes" on the new TiVo. In the meantime, I've missed about three weeks of Law & Order/Law&Order CI and am going through withdrawl. Anyone happen to TiVo the last few weeks?

Originally by Ed Brill from Ed Brill on December 18, 2005, 10:34am