TiVo Trauma II: The Sequel

For the past several weeks, we've been living in a sort of TV purgatory due to another round of TiVo problems. An errant power surge was not the cause this time; I addressed that with a beefier surge protector block for the entire A/V setup, and I'm considering adding an uninterruptible power supply, which is basically a battery backup, the type of thing people sometimes use with their computers.

No, this time the unit was faulty. It had a couple of instances where the sound would disappear, necessitating a manual restart (which takes about five minutes), and sometimes it wouldn't fix the sound problem the first restart cycle. After I'd had it about two months, it started rebooting itself at random. The first time that occurred was while we were watching a previously recorded show. The random restarts got more frequent, and one or two times they happened while the unit was turned off.

Then it started getting stuck in the restart cycle, and the only way to get it to work right again was to leave it unplugged for a while. 12 to 24 hours would buy us another couple of days of use until the next random reboot. So this meant that not only could we not record shows, we couldn't even watch shows we had already recorded. Fortunately the TV watching schedule is lighter during the summer months, but it's still hugely inconvenient, and it's my fault for not contacting them the first time it happened.

I finally did contact tech support (tip: the wait is usually much shorter if you do it via live web chat, and you don't have to sit through the incessant, very annoying marketing barrage that interrupts the incessant, very annoying hold music every 20 seconds or so) and after nearly an hour of unplugging and restarting I was instructed on how to perform a diagnostic test, but at that point I needed to disconnect from the conversation. When I attempted to run the test a few days later, the unit rebooted during the test. I tried again a few days after that and the same thing happened.

When I contacted support again, I was told that the diagnostic is supposed to repair any problems the unit might be having, so that made it pretty clear to them that it was defective. But at that point I had to contact support via phone, and I found out that the phone support person had to open a whole new case, even though I already had an open case file from my chat sessions. I'm sorry, but that's just a really fucking stupid way to handle customer support, and I don't care if anyone from TiVo sees this.

During that conversation (which I waited ten minutes on hold to have), the rep tried to get me to go through all the stuff I had already done, but I told her to look at the written chat transcript in my file where the rep clearly stated "your unit is obviously defective... you will need to contact support by phone to discuss replacement options." I was insistent, and it got the rep to initiate my replacement order.

But wait, there's more... the HD TiVo units require two CableCards, which serve as tuners. When I had to swap out the unit back in March, I pulled the CableCards and popped them into the new unit, and they just worked. Apparently this is highly unusual, and this time I had no such luck. So I called Comcast yesterday (tip: there's usually a local number on your bill, or at least some other number than 888-COMCAST, and it gets you talking to people who are likely in your service area; in my case, they happen to be about half a mile down the street).

The tech support rep was really nice, but after going through some steps with me to attempt to configure the cards, he said a tech would have to come to my house. That's happening Thursday morning, so until then I have a working TiVo but no way to record anything on it. Technology is great, until it doesn't work.