Phil online

I have had DirecTV service for about 9 years, Tivo for 6 years and Vonage for 2. I love them all dearly, but they don’t all work well together.

Well, DirecTV doesn’t like Vonage. It won’t complete its calls to the mother ship. Apparently this isn’t required for long-term service, though, as I haven’t completed a call in years, to my knowledge.

Tivo’s modem works just fine on Vonage. I really need Tivo to make its daily call, so I’m glad I don’t have any hoop-jumping to worry with there.


Now for my dilemma: I want a new Tivo. I want the DirecTivo from DirecTV for $99. The problem is, when you go to order that thing, it asks you right there to “check this box” asserting that you have a landline. I don’t have a landline! Is this a knock at Vonage? Is it a knock at all cell-phone-only-folks? A landline? Seriously? What century is this?

So I did some research (just a little) and found out how much the World of Tivo Hacks has grown since last I looked. Oh my god, there’s so much to know! I don’t have time for all this; and fortunately, I can afford to pay not to learn it. So I did. I bought me a 150-hour DirecTivo with a bunch of (legal) hacks pre-installed on eBay. No phone required.

But here are some things I didn’t know going in. (If you’re a Tivo hacker junkie, this is all kindergarten stuff for you. No need to tell me that.)

1. DirecTivo needs a phone line for the initial setup call. Probably this has to go through DirecTV and won’t work on Vonage. I didn’t want to pay for it and risk a problem, so I went to eBay and found a DTivo that “never needs a phone line”. It’s worth the extra $50 it probably cost me to already have the hacks installed and the assurance that the phone line is “taken care of”. I assume he already made the first call, but more likely he installed a hack that obviated it.
2. DTivo doesn’t suppor a network card. That means it can’t do the “phone calls” on the network.
3. DTivo can be hacked to run the new software, in which case the network interfaces (USB) work just fine. Whee! No phone required!
4. DTivo gets daily programming information from the satellite feed. No phone required!
5. DTivo doesn’t get software updates from the satellite. Hmm.. I wonder if it will get it from the network…?
6. My new hacked DTive will let me schedule recordings over the internet, record two shows at once, play MP3’s and JPGs, export content to my carputer, and more. Or so I heard.
7. There’s something called a RID Tivo which is harder to hack. I still don’t know what it is. Apparently “what is RID” is such a n00b question that no one bothers to ask or answer it.

My DTivo should arrive today (unless they needed a signature). I’ll try to post an update once I get it all installed and working.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 8th, 2005 at 3:20 pm and is filed under General, 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.