# Networked Tivo - 'Account Closed' :(



## a_tivo_noob (Jan 2, 2004)

just me?? 

Message has come up this morning - last dialled in @ 3:10 on Friday 24 June - next scheduled @ 30th June - 3:14 am



> Tivo Service Account Closed - you must have a calid Tivo Service account to use Tivo functionality... blah blah blah


edit: this is not an 'altEPG' tivo (yet... it soon will be though! )


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## smatson (Mar 14, 2001)

and me


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## vassilis (Apr 28, 2002)

Yep ... it is over 

Just forced a call and got my status set to 8:Account Closed.

It was good while it lasted ...now off to AltEpg


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## a_tivo_noob (Jan 2, 2004)

cheers for confirming - that looks like my Friday night is sorted :s


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Have to post the sad TiVo guy:


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## a_tivo_noob (Jan 2, 2004)

have just done steps 1-->10 of the "AltEPG swap-over guide" (basically changed the dial-in config to change the account status from being 'closed') - only took 5 minutes...

This will hopefully ensure the next few days recordings will take place saving me from doing a guided setup


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Don't forget you'll lose existing season passes converting to altEPG,
so quickly convert them to wishlists with my tivoweb module here:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=469975


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## alek (May 22, 2008)

Mine made a successful call at 8:39 and has a next scheduled call for thursday 30 june.

Alek


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## smatson (Mar 14, 2001)

i will convert to night


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## Johnbyte (Nov 4, 2008)

alek said:


> Mine made a successful call at 8:39 and *has a next scheduled call for thursday 30 june*.


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## vassilis (Apr 28, 2002)

Yes you are right ... the call is succesfful but ... check your info page or just reboot the Tivo. The dreaded "You must have a valid account message" will come up. 

Vassilis


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## TIVO_YORK99 (Feb 14, 2001)

Reported spam.


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## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

vassilis said:


> Yes you are right ... the call is succesfful but ... check your info page


Bummer - I thought the call was too quick 

.


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

Guide data for some channels through to the 12th but you can't set recordings or access the TV guide. To Do list seems to be populated for what that's worth.
Talk about a final FY from Tivo!

Why didn't they just let the EPG data expire?


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## TIVO_YORK99 (Feb 14, 2001)

They sort of did officially.

The phone line stopped answering therefore none of the accounts were closed. Its only people using an unofficial route that have now had their accounts closed.

They could have at least warned everyone! pretty shocking behaviour really.


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## Benedict (Jun 8, 2002)

TIVO_YORK99 said:


> They could have at least warned everyone! pretty shocking behaviour really.


Are you honestly saying that you don't think TiVo warned everybody that the service was being shut down?????


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## TIVO_YORK99 (Feb 14, 2001)

They most certainly did not have to close everyone's account stopping any recordings at all!

Why not post here and tell people not to connect via the internet or their accounts would be closed?


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## alek (May 22, 2008)

vassilis said:


> Yes you are right ... the call is succesfful but ... check your info page or just reboot the Tivo. The dreaded "You must have a valid account message" will come up.
> 
> Vassilis


Yes you are right.

Boat anchor mode + true.

Alek


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## drgeoff (Nov 10, 2005)

TIVO_YORK99 said:


> They most certainly did not have to close everyone's account stopping any recordings at all!
> 
> Why not post here and tell people not to connect via the internet or their accounts would be closed?


I'm not convinced it is only networked TiVos that have been targeted with "Account Closed". Perhaps TiVo have closed all UK S1 accounts but the dialup TiVos are not connecting so don't get that status on them.


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## Trinitron (Jan 20, 2003)

drgeoff said:


> I'm not convinced it is only networked TiVos that have been targeted with "Account Closed". Perhaps TiVo have closed all UK S1 accounts but the dialup TiVos are not connecting so don't get that status on them.


Exactly.

This script should turn 5-lifetime sub mode back on so you can schedule recordings from the remaining EPG data, just make sure no more daily call connections are made to the TiVo server or it will revert back to account type 8! Setting nic_config_tivo to 'dialup' and disconnecting the phone line should be sufficient.

Spitfires mentioned a variant he had put together that will run via cron, here. And there is always the AltEPG to save the day .

EDIT: Amended ServiceStatus from 5-Lifetime to 4-TiVo Internal Testing to match AltEPG and avoid possible issues with Tivoweb 1.9.4


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## Benedict (Jun 8, 2002)

TIVO_YORK99 said:


> They most certainly did not have to close everyone's account stopping any recordings at all!
> 
> Why not post here and tell people not to connect via the internet or their accounts would be closed?


They've been telling everybody via system messages since February that the service would be shut down on 1 June. They could have bricked everybody's boxes on 1 June, but they didn't. We've had an extra 23 days service beyond that, which I view as a bit of a bonus, so I'm not going to complain over the loss of what amounts to no more than a week or so of additional use.


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

Trinitron said:


> This script should turn 5-lifetime sub mode back on so you can schedule recordings from the remaining EPG data, just make sure no more daily call connections are made to the TiVo server or it will revert back to account type 8! Setting nic_config_tivo to 'dialup' and disconnecting the phone line should be sufficient.


Brilliant - thanks so much :up:
Downloaded, unzipped, ftp'ed, telnet in and type fixsub.tcl and my Tivo is back doing what it should do with the data left in a couple of minutes.
I've just yanked the ethernet cable for now - I'll reconnect when I move it over to the AltEPG when I have more time.

:up: for the Tivo Community :up:
:down: for Tivo Inc. :down:


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## Trinitron (Jan 20, 2003)

AMc said:


> Brilliant - thanks so much :up:
> Downloaded, unzipped, ftp'ed, telnet in and type fixsub.tcl and my Tivo is back doing what it should do with the data left in a couple of minutes.


HTH 

Just for completness in case people try this at home, don't forget to run chmod before executing the file (I did; it's been a long time ). Assuming it's ftp'd to /var/hack you need:

cd /var/hack
chmod 755 fixsub.tcl
./fixsub.tcl


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

FWIW and it ain't much - mine didn't need to be chmod 'ed but I did ftp in binary mode and put it in /var/hack as suggested


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## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

TIVO_YORK99 said:


> They sort of did officially.
> 
> The phone line stopped answering therefore none of the accounts were closed. Its only people using an unofficial route that have now had their accounts closed.
> 
> They could have at least warned everyone! pretty shocking behaviour really.


TiVo's project plan tried to "do good" by users.
They gave everyone warning of the 1st June.
Users got additional grace period up to the 13th whilst the main line was deactivated.
As far as Tivo was concerned at this point, callers using the service by official means got advance guide data up to early July and BY NOT closing the accounts before the lines got disconnected, this meant users would be able to use that data until it naturally ran out.

Its only users that continued to access the service by un-official means that have been affected. Grabbing extra day's of data from Tivo's Servers through the Internet was always going to be a gamble. On the one hand each day that was successful, added an extra day to the database, but come the day the service was shut-off, you lose the lot. Sounds a lot like Vegas


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## TIVO_YORK99 (Feb 14, 2001)

Yes, that's what I meant by the "sort of". It was the right thing to do to stop the phone line as they obviously needed to close the accounts, but by stopping the access to the server then it wouldn't close the accounts.

However, I remember the post years ago by the Tivo employee that said if they do cut off the service they would do something to the boxes to allow manual recording with no nag screens and they haven't done that.

It doesn't matter so much with all your (and others) very hard work in creating the AltEPG for which my parents and my aunt are very grateful (my aunt was seriously very worried that she wouldn't have her tivo anymore - she just cannot use a lot of technology but can use the Tivo easily. She is now very pleased as I've given her a freeview box as well for Tivo to control so she's got far more channels).

So, thanks a lot Dave and others - espically for providing a new dialup number as well as my aunt doesn't have broadband of any kind.


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## digital_S (May 15, 2002)

TUT, can't believe having no service stops the box from recording!! 

[Note, I'm on dialup, so isn't just the networked TiVo]

I was on account status 3: account in good standing (or whatever it was) even after the TiVo phonelines first went off!
I then changed to the other official number (the 0207 one) and I had 2 days, until this morning after the call and now account status "8: Closed, call" - (pointless as we obviously can't call!!) 

Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the extra 23 days we've "squeezed" out of our service, but considering the amount of tenners I've paid every month since 2002....!!!!

I registered with the Alt-EPG a while ago, but now is the time to actually use it!
Just hope I don't get charged loads for using an 0845 number. 
(Will need to contact BT and add it to my "friends and family" list)


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## SteveMcC (Feb 18, 2004)

Trinitron, Thanks very much for the script. At least we can now schedule our upgrade tp ALtEPG at our convenience. Cheers, Steve


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

I contacted Tivo's email support on several occasions and asked if they intended to close accounts or let the EPG expire - they simply didn't respond.

It's hardly a secret that many people added network cards to their systems - something that saved Tivo phone costs for years - a posting here would also have allowed people to move to the AltEPG in a planned way rather than waking up to a zonked box.

I really don't think it would have been too hard for Tivo to make an official posting on Tivo.com that explained how they were going to phase the end of service.

The lack of communication has really soured the last few days of my (official) Tivo experience.


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## steveroe (Oct 29, 2002)

Spam in post #30 reported.


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## einstein (Jul 19, 2001)

Trinitron said:


> HTH
> 
> Just for completness in case people try this at home, don't forget to run chmod before executing the file (I did; it's been a long time ). Assuming it's ftp'd to /var/hack you need:
> 
> ...


you can also change the IP address, "dial" Test Connection to AltEpg, when Account is changed to Internal Tetsing 4, Guide Data is Available again.


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## dchsimpson (Jan 23, 2004)

Trinitron said:


> HTH
> 
> Just for completness in case people try this at home, don't forget to run chmod before executing the file (I did; it's been a long time ). Assuming it's ftp'd to /var/hack you need:
> 
> ...


I copied the two files into /var/hack and chmod 755 fixsub.tcl, but I could not run the script.

TiVo: {/var/hack} % ls -l fixsub.tcl
-rwxr-xr-x 1 0 0 1616 Jun 24 18:00 fixsub.tcl
TiVo: {/var/hack} %
TiVo: {/var/hack} % ./fixsub.tcl
bash: ./fixsub.tcl: No such file or directory
TiVo: {/var/hack} %
TiVo: {/var/hack} %


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## filbert (Sep 24, 2001)

Had same problem and literally posted the same thing just after you. Some googling later

The answer...... tivosh /var/hack/fixsub.tcl

So that has now run and the account is set back to 5 but the Tivo then saidit has not made a successful call for more than 30 days and so I couldn't see the guide data still. Left it a while and re-ran the script and now all seem fine and I can see that data again.

Phew well done to the OP of the script


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## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

filbert said:


> Hmm. Don't understand this. Why won't fixsub.tcl run?


Somewhere along the line you have changed the line endings to Windows format rather than Unix (perhaps you viewed the file in Wordpad?).

Anyway as you discovered you can also run it with 
tivosh /var/hack/fixsub.tcl



filbert said:


> So that has now run and the account is set back to 5 but the Tivo now says it has not made a successful call for more than 30 days and so I can't see the guide data still. Doh what gives?


Restart the TiVO.

http://www.tivoland.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=728

.


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## dchsimpson (Jan 23, 2004)

filbert said:


> Hmm. Don't understand this. Why won't fixsub.tcl run?
> 
> Any pointers?
> 
> ...


Thanks for that. In the mean time, I reset mine by doing a test call to the altepg server. This will give me time to cut across at my leisure.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

steveroe said:


> Spam in post #30 reported.


And since your report of the report was the next post after the spam, it became Post #30 as soon as the spam post was deleted.


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## sjp (Oct 22, 2001)

unitron said:


> And since your report of the report was the next post after the spam, it became Post #30 as soon as the spam post was deleted.


he was at thirty with himself


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## dvdfever (Jun 2, 2002)

Trinitron said:


> HTH
> 
> Just for completness in case people try this at home, don't forget to run chmod before executing the file (I did; it's been a long time ). Assuming it's ftp'd to /var/hack you need:
> 
> ...


Sorry, but I've had a brain fart and it's been a long time since I access my networked TiVo via telnet, but while I've ftp'd the file across, I can't seem to actually telnet into my TiVo because my PC (Windows Vista) isn't recognising the command 'telnet' when I try 'telnet 192.168.0.20'

I know I'm missing something incredibly obvious and I have had a quick search on this forum, but if someone can put me on the right path that would be immensely helpful. Thanks.


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## drgeoff (Nov 10, 2005)

@dvdfever

Google: windows vista telnet

http://www.arsgeek.com/2007/03/20/enable-telnet-in-windows-vista/


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## dvdfever (Jun 2, 2002)

drgeoff said:


> @dvdfever
> 
> Google: windows vista telnet
> 
> http://www.arsgeek.com/2007/03/20/enable-telnet-in-windows-vista/


Ah, thanks very much. Didn't realise it wasn't enabled in Vista. I thought I was going mad (well, just maybe not today )


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## a_tivo_noob (Jan 2, 2004)

... and the awesome (well for me) news is that I switched to ALTEPG and got away without doing a complete 'clear and delete everything' - just did a guide reset thingy and its been up and running for a week now...

only gripe was (and its all my own fault) is that the recordings on my 'to do' list didn't record due to the obvious guide changes... fortunately, glastonbury has been repeated all week and family guy is repeated at the weekend


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