Tivo Woes

I don't realize how much I rely on my Tivo until something isn't working correctly. Yesterday I watched a downloaded Amazon Unbox movie and today-- some of my network-related features are not available at all. One of my Unbox items is just gone. Some of my home network features are simply not there.

I did the usual tests, restarted the Tivo, double-checked all the network controls, and then called Tivo Support. Within minutes I was on the phone with Shawna. She pinged my Tivo, did not see anything wrong with my services from her end, and then had to put me on hold while she spoke with her manager. Turns out that they have experienced a server outage with certain servers that only run the network functions, like the Swivel Search, Amazon Unbox, and certain transfer and related services. Their techs are working on it and hope to have those network services up and running in 24 hours. It was great to discover these services are not available on their end and that the fault is not on mine. I was worried that something had gone wrong in the OS or with my network.

M had a similar issue recently; her Tivo, my old single-tuner one, started acting really strangely. It rebooted, lost connections, didn't react to things correctly, and was making a lot of noise. Being a tech person herself, she was able to make some analysis which led her to believe the hard drive was failing. We went through my friends at Weaknees.com and she got a new hard drive and fan for the unit, installed it, and everything was okay. But for those 4-5 days while she performed her analysis and then waited for the parts to arrive, she was a bit lost-- she also hadn't realize how much she had come to rely on the Tivo and all of its wonderful tools and features. She was beside herself until she fixed it and everything turned out okay.

The Tivo makes things so easy. It is far superior to any VHS recorders and most PC DVR functions. Some of the newer DVRs from cable companies and the like have just as good systems, however, most of those are ripping of Tivo's services (and a few lawsuits have been used by Tivo to correct this). When comparing a DVR, the companies always compare theirs to Tivo-- the best general DVR system available. This ease of use and powerful scheduling service is exactly what makes it so hard to do without when/if something goes wrong.

Now I just have to wait until the systems come back online from their end and I should have all my functionality back. Just have to be patient and not get a huge urge to download from Unbox or Swivel Search a favorite actor.