Phil online

I received my upgraded and hacked Tivo via Fedex yesterday. It’s not “illegally” hacked, as far as I can tell. Everything seems on the up and up. It has a bigger hard disk, the 4.x software, some extra third-party stuff installed, and the USB/WiFi enabled. I bought it on eBay. I probably overpaid for it, but I consider that extra cost worth it for the “you don’t need a phone line” assurances of the seller.

I called DirecTV to activate it. I danced around in their voice-mail-hell for a while, then finally pressed Zero for a human.

I had put one of my receiver cards in the DTivo and it told me it was “the wrong card”. The DirecTV dude seemed surprised that I had received a box with no card in it. He said a new card was normally $20, but that he would send me one for free because of the situation. He also told me that it said “wrong card” because I had a receiver card in the unit instead of a DTivo card. “Wait while I transfer you…”

The girl[*] who answered now knew nothing of any of this. “It costs $20,” she insisted. Ok, I explained, no problem. But she also said I should have received a card since the receiver was brand new. (She confirmed it had never been activated.) When I mentioned something about the “wrong card” she said, “That’s just because that card hasn’t been married to that unit. Want me to activate that one?” Sure! I said. And she did.

Then, she told me I’d have to make the first daily call in order for the Tivo functionality to be activated. Sure enough, the Tivo “Pick a show to record” screens were telling me to call Tivo (voice) to activate the unit. Dang. Maybe I will have to borrow a landline somewhere, I thought.

Then she said, “Do you want to go ahead and add the Tivo service onto your DirecTV bill?” Um… yeah. Why wouldn’t I want that? So she pecked some keys, had a whoops or two, and eventually said, “Ok. It’s taken care of now. Make sure you make that daily call to download updates and activate the service.”

“Ok,” I assured her. Then I checked my Tivo functionality, and — TA DA! it worked. No need for a daily call at all!

Now, it turns out that my USB WiFi adapter (which sucks, by the way) doesn’t work on my Tivo. So I had to order a different one. I ordered one recommended by Tivo from NewEgg that I found on PriceWatch. Actually, I ordered three. That should save me from having to run CAT-5 all over the house right away, too. Should be here in a few days.

However, I still have to run a cable for the 2nd DirecTV tuner. That’s going to be a must-have feature, I can tell.

So far, the only downside to this unit that I can see is the guide. It uses the “old” DirecTV program guide instead of the Tivo Guide. I guess that can be good in some ways, but I really preferred the Tivo descriptions and ratings (the DTV listings don’t have “stars” next to the titles).

Also, the DirecTV listings are slooooow! Why are they so slow? Man! I thought my receivers were slow because they are 12 years old. Guess not. Can’t they speed things up by caching the listings? Does everything have to be downloaded in real time or something? Maybe it’s just that it’s so busy getting guide data for two weeks in advance. Maybe it will speed up later. But I’m skeptical.

So now, here’s my to-do list:

• Run a 2nd feed for the dual tuner without ruining the wall
• Try a “test call” to see if I can do a daily call on Vonage
• Get the unit on the network with my new WiFi adaptor
• Download a show to the carputer for Tivo-on-the-road
• Learn how to schedule recordings over the web

[*] can I call her a girl since I called him a dude? or do I need to say lady? or woman? or female-person? My grandfather called everyone younger than 90 a ‘kid’. Political correctness has never been my strong suit. Apologies to any non-girl-like female persons I may have offended.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 9th, 2005 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Carputer, Technology, Tivo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.