# Tivo Sucks !!



## ukaussi (Jan 13, 2004)

Tivo refuses to do anything about my Tivo software being corrupted by latest download because it is not their responsibility as it is a Toshiba box.

what a bunch of asshats

I have had TIVO's for years and this is the way I am treated.

Goodbye to you all and good luck as I have cancelled all the accounts


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## bpurcell (Mar 16, 2005)

Ok, goodbye.


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## DTSDude (May 24, 2006)

Why not learn how to reload it yourself?


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## Riverdome (May 12, 2005)

ukaussi said:


> Tivo refuses to do anything about my Tivo software being corrupted by latest download because it is not their responsibility as it is a Toshiba box.
> 
> what a bunch of asshats
> 
> ...


What's so wrong with calling Toshiba for support for a Toshiba box? I would love to complain to the light bulb company that produces the bulb for my 61 inch TV but JVC made my TV.


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## aridon (Aug 31, 2006)

Did you call Toshiba, search for a solution yourself or just come here to ***** like a little girl?

Its a fairly easy problem to fix and if you want you could take this time to upgrade your recording hours as well.

Instead you just post here all EMO instead of looking for answers.


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## ping (Oct 3, 2005)

He also posted at the end of a four-page thread of people having _hardware_ problems with the SD-400. This is Toshiba's problem.


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## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

Lots of the Toshiba SD-400 units are dying. My Tivo Series2 is much older than the Toshiba and hasn't had a single problem, but the Toshiba's hard drive is on the verge of death.


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## Stanley Rohner (Jan 18, 2004)

The latest download didn't corrupt your software.

The hard drive crapped out.

What a crybaby.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

My kids use the SD H400 and it is working like a champ still 12 months later. I have it on monthly and after the next round of TiVo boxes into our house expect it to go back to TiVo basic and enjoy a long life as a manual recorder adn DVD player :up: 

I have the hard drive image backed up already so I do not have to cry if the hard drive goes


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## DLL66 (Oct 21, 2002)

*C-YA*


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## samo (Oct 7, 1999)

TiVo software upgrades are known to kill some small number of units. It happened with every upgrade starting with 1.1. TiVo always claims that upgrade had nothing to do with the problem and fault is with the hardware.
So, even if unit was manufactured by TiVo you would have to pay for refurbished unit (unless it was under 90 days warranty). Of course you can try to fix your unit yourself by replacing the hard drive, but I can understand your frustration. Why should you pay and/or spend time fixing something that was working perfectly fine before the software upgrade? When TiVo just started, they would replace damaged units for free (but would never admit that problem was caused by upgrade), but they stoped doing that years ago. They could offer you something just to keep you as a customer, but TiVo CS has never been known as consumer friendly (except for about a year after TiVo was introduced in retail).


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## TiVotion (Dec 6, 2002)

ukaussi said:


> Tivo refuses to do anything about my Tivo software being corrupted by latest download because it is not their responsibility as it is a Toshiba box.
> 
> what a bunch of asshats
> 
> ...


No offense, but what are you looking for? Sympathy? You won't gain it around these parts by starting a trollish, inflammatory thread.

If you're looking for help, there are plenty of folks here willing to provide it.

This whole idea of people coming here and creating topics like "TiVo Sucks!" with "I'm cancelling all my accounts" in the body of the message is really ridiculous.

Think about it:

If you want help, ask for it. People are anxious to help.

If you don't, then your post serves no purpose, because no one will care that you're cancelling your accounts.


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## gonzotek (Sep 24, 2004)

samo said:


> TiVo software upgrades are known to kill some small number of units. It happened with every upgrade starting with 1.1. TiVo always claims that upgrade had nothing to do with the problem and fault is with the hardware.
> *So, even if unit was manufactured by TiVo you would have to pay for refurbished unit (unless it was under 90 days warranty).* Of course you can try to fix your unit yourself by replacing the hard drive, but I can understand your frustration. Why should you pay and/or spend time fixing something that was working perfectly fine before the software upgrade? When TiVo just started, they would replace damaged units for free (but would never admit that problem was caused by upgrade), but they stoped doing that years ago. They could offer you something just to keep you as a customer, but TiVo CS has never been known as consumer friendly (except for about a year after TiVo was introduced in retail).


Under the current Ts&Cs, if you are currently in a 1-year or greater commitment period with TiVo for service, for a TiVo-branded DVR(e.g. not the Toshiba), the parts portion of the warranty is extended to the length of your agreement.

http://tivo.com/5.11.6.asp

That obviously doesn't help the OP any, but considering the various other negative points the commitment requirement has, at least new subscribers get a little bit of insurance for their money. They still have to pay for labor, of course.


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## sommerfeld (Feb 26, 2006)

samo said:


> TiVo software upgrades are known to kill some small number of units. It happened with every upgrade starting with 1.1. TiVo always claims that upgrade had nothing to do with the problem and fault is with the hardware.


They may even be right, in a twisted sort of way.

Someone told me recently that disk drive manufacturers quote unrecoverable bit error rates of one in 10^14.

If one of these errors hits your video or audio, you probably won't notice. but if it hits the upgrade image, the box is probably toast.

assuming a software image of 10^8 bits, where corruption of any one bit turns the tivo into a brick (not strictly true but good enough for estimation purposes), that would mean that merely from disk errors you'd expect one upgrade in 10^6 to go kablooey.

now, there are extreme measures they could do to harden the upgrade against this kind of thing but given that other failure modes probably kill far more boxes it might not be worth it to them in terms of spending engineering time to improve reliability.


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## tivoupgrade (Sep 27, 2000)

samo said:


> TiVo software upgrades are known to kill some small number of units. It happened with every upgrade starting with 1.1. TiVo always claims that upgrade had nothing to do with the problem and fault is with the hardware.


There is a difference between a small number of units dying after an upgrade takes place and the upgrade actually killing the unit.

Its important to make that distinction because the statement you've just made is that it implies (or could be inferred) that the death is a function of the software, when its not - its the hardware.

There is just as good a chance that a unit not receiving a software upgrade will die at the same time as a unit that does receive a software upgrade because a defective hard drive is a defective hard drive; its just a question of when the defect causes the failure.


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## Vroomfondel (Jul 10, 2006)

Deleted comment - not worth responding to such an infantile post.


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## DTSDude (May 24, 2006)

And as a side note , this is why I only by products from the the original producer. Like how I can't buy an ATI card not made by ATI.


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

DTSDude said:


> And as a side note , this is why I only by products from the the original producer. Like how I can't buy an ATI card not made by ATI.


Guess now you'll buy them from AMD instead.


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## aadam101 (Jul 15, 2002)

Do you call Microsoft when your computer breaks?


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## ukaussi (Jan 13, 2004)

aadam101 said:


> Do you call Microsoft when your computer breaks?


If it is the software, YES


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## ukaussi (Jan 13, 2004)

Vroomfondel said:


> Deleted comment - not worth responding to such an infantile post.


Well ya just did so guess your snide comment is more infantile


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

ukaussi said:


> Well ya just did so guess your snide comment is more infantile


 I guess if that makes you feel better ......................


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## ukaussi (Jan 13, 2004)

TiVotion said:


> No offense, but what are you looking for? Sympathy? You won't gain it around these parts by starting a trollish, inflammatory thread.
> 
> If you're looking for help, there are plenty of folks here willing to provide it.
> 
> ...


The whole idea is to ensure a broad specrum of views gets posted in the forums.

I posted in the heat of the moment and apologize if I offended anyone but TIVO did the same thing to me just over a year ago to my series 2 box. It got hosed after a software upgrade so as I had spare time I copied the image from my other series 2 to the "allegedly" broken hard drive and it worked fine after that. This proved it was a software problem and not a hard drive problem.

Then the other box got hosed and TIVO was persuaded after 3 months of discussions to exchange it.

I am in the minority but most people with the same issue are persuaded that it is a hardware issue and they just blindly agree and pony up the money.

My wife is having the BS from the manufacturer issue with her Range Rover in that it has been in the shop 40 days after only 8 months and the manufacturer just expects you to put up with it and dump the vehicle or trade it in at a huge loss. In this case Lemon Law is being persued as we are protected.

So, sorry, I won't bug you all again unless I get other news.

I may pull the drive and bring it into work to do a fixup on the file system manual using linux so we shall see.


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## tmorehen (Dec 25, 2005)

Actually, the fact that the image from the other Tivo works points to a hard drive problem, not a software problem. Most hard drive failures are in the form of weak bits, which are created during a write operation. That's why most Tivo failures occur after a software upgrade. Re-writing the operating system to the drive often reinforces the weak bit, fixing the problem, at least until the next software update.

It's unlkely to be a software fault, as the image from the other Tivo should have the same software and the same fault. The two Tivo's should have had identical downloads - error checking virtually assures that.

BTW what was your failure mode. Did booting stop with one of the standard errors that indicate unauthorized changes to system files?


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## ping (Oct 3, 2005)

ukaussi said:


> It got hosed after a software upgrade so as I had spare time I copied the image from my other series 2 to the "allegedly" broken hard drive and it worked fine after that. This proved it was a software problem and not a hard drive problem.


That proves nothing of the sort. Software upgrades often reveal problems with the inactive partition. Copying an image to that drive may again leave the bad blocks in the inactive partition.


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## ukaussi (Jan 13, 2004)

ping said:


> That proves nothing of the sort. Software upgrades often reveal problems with the inactive partition. Copying an image to that drive may again leave the bad blocks in the inactive partition.


Well it does prove it because there have been a number of software upgrades since that time so the inactive partition at the time has been used since, most likely a few times and that TIVO is heavily used


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## ping (Oct 3, 2005)

ukaussi said:


> Well it does prove it because there have been a number of software upgrades since that time so the inactive partition at the time has been used since, most likely a few times and that TIVO is heavily used


That also proves nothing, because not every bit of the boot partition is crucial to operation, but once you have a bad one that is, well that's when it gets stuck on boot (like yours).

Sorry, but for it to have been a software problem, it would have had to kill all boxes (or all SD-400 boxes if it was a software bug that was confined to that hardware configuration).


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## ukaussi (Jan 13, 2004)

tmorehen said:


> Actually, the fact that the image from the other Tivo works points to a hard drive problem, not a software problem. Most hard drive failures are in the form of weak bits, which are created during a write operation. That's why most Tivo failures occur after a software upgrade. Re-writing the operating system to the drive often reinforces the weak bit, fixing the problem, at least until the next software update.
> 
> It's unlkely to be a software fault, as the image from the other Tivo should have the same software and the same fault. The two Tivo's should have had identical downloads - error checking virtually assures that.
> 
> BTW what was your failure mode. Did booting stop with one of the standard errors that indicate unauthorized changes to system files?


Sorry, I don't mean the actual software is bugged as everyone would be crashing etc. I mean the install program or procedure is poorly written so that when it installs it cannot deal with any issues


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

ukaussi said:


> Sorry, I don't mean the actual software is bugged as everyone would be crashing etc. I mean the install program or procedure is poorly written so that when it installs it cannot deal with any issues


It's been discussed here before, and I sort of agree with you. The only way to get around it would be to have the update program run a disck-check beforehand, and say to the user "sorry, the disk is bad, please replace it". Not sure if that's a better or worse alternative. I do know that the installation would take a lot longer.


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## JYoung (Jan 16, 2002)

Unless you run a diagnostic utility, you don't know if the hard drive is bad or not.

My personal belief is that the failure rate has gone up due to the use of Maxtor drives by TiVo.


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

If they drive detects bad sectors doesn't it mark them as such and not use them in the futrue. If you copy an image over top, it wouldn't use those bad sectors. Can harddrive self heal themselves, or do you need to run diagnostic software on it first.


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## sommerfeld (Feb 26, 2006)

greg_burns said:


> Can harddrive self heal themselves, or do you need to run diagnostic software on it first.


Sometimes; if the system overwrites a bad sector, the drive will typically substitute a good sector. But this only happens if the OS/filesystem/... is willing to overwrite that sector, and very often it will need the old (and now unrecoverable!) contents before it can write the new contents.

So, in practice, sometimes you get lucky but most filesystems have critical blocks where a bad block means you get stuck, needing some sort of diagnostic tool to zero out the block and then prune out the damaged part of the file system.

Clever filesystem design can make a big difference - for instance, Sun's ZFS will store multiple copies of critical metadata blocks. See "Ditto Blocks, the Amazing Tape Repellant", http://blogs.sun.com/bill/entry/ditto_blocks_the_amazing_tape ; as long as at least one good copy remains it can be used to repair the other copies.


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## ukaussi (Jan 13, 2004)

ping said:


> Sorry, but for it to have been a software problem, it would have had to kill all boxes (or all SD-400 boxes if it was a software bug that was confined to that hardware configuration).


Sorry, not true as can be seen in many other electronics products used today.
Every tried updating the firmware on a DVD player etc. Sometimes people get issues.

We have 200 Blackberry users and not every 7280 takes the firmware upgrade

NONE, of the SD-400's in the country are IDENTICAL, unless maybe they are brand new. Every one will be different due to the software previously loaded and how much stuff you have and season passes etc


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## classicX (May 10, 2006)

greg_burns said:


> If they drive detects bad sectors doesn't it mark them as such and not use them in the futrue. If you copy an image over top, it wouldn't use those bad sectors. Can harddrive self heal themselves, or do you need to run diagnostic software on it first.


It depends on if the drive can do that. That's also something the OS can do.

But that doesn't help when retrieving information, only when writing to the drive. Once a sector is marked bad (either by the drive or the OS), any new information will be remapped to a new sector. The information on the bad sector may or may not be readable without using a tool to repair, and even then it might not work.

A hard drive diag tool might also....

FUBAR the drive in the process! 

So it's not necessarily a software issue, it could've been just a bad write during the upgrade, a minute vibration affecting the write head, a corrupt upgrade file, or heck, even cosmic rays. If the data in the sector is wrong, it doesn't matter if the drive is good, there's nothing you can do.

Which is probably why after a reload it began working again.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

With a mouth like that, y'gotta wonder how that little kid will grow up.


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## dazzlinblu (Mar 16, 2005)

TIVO boxes OBSOLETE and they won't upgrade!

I bought 3 Tivos since they began, I've been happy -- 2 with lifetime service, one with 3 years' service (this one still has a year and 4 mos. left), but I CANNOT USE ANY OF THEM if I want to see HIGH DEFINITION T.V.! I was told try selling them on eBay - because EVEN CUSTOMER SERVICE admits THEY'RE USELESS!

I am going to report them to the Better Business Bureau as they should upgrade their equipment as opposed to telling you to sell your old equipment and buy a new DVR from them (for $199.00 for the box PLUS the cost of the service which is no longer lifetime service unless you catch them on a good day).

When someone asks should i buy tivo? or is tivo good? i say DON'T BUY TIVO!!! DON'T DO IT, YOU WILL MOST LIKELY GET SCREWED -- at least cablevision upgrades your dvr when technology changes! thanks for listening, please be smart and DO NOT BUY TIVO!


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## ebockelman (Jul 12, 2001)

dazzlinblu said:


> TIVO boxes OBSOLETE and they won't upgrade!
> 
> I bought 3 Tivos since they began, I've been happy -- 2 with lifetime service, one with 3 years' service (this one still has a year and 4 mos. left), but I CANNOT USE ANY OF THEM if I want to see HIGH DEFINITION T.V.! I was told try selling them on eBay - because EVEN CUSTOMER SERVICE admits THEY'RE USELESS!
> 
> ...


I realize I'm feeding a troll here, but please do tell - How would you expect that upgrade to work?

Are you reporting your TV manufacturer to the BBB for not offering an HD upgrade for those as well? Do you report your computer manufacturer to the BBB because technology moves on?


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## webin (Feb 13, 2008)

I'm surprised someone with this level of intelligence was able to find and resurrect a thread from 2006. It's like Internet Fruitcake... old and moldy, but still being served up daily.


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## visionary (May 31, 2006)

Good point, what about the tv set you are using now to watch the Tivos? Isn't it also not going to work, where is its free upgrade then? You do realize they do plan to let the old Tivos operate the converters so it will work, it won't be an HD picture, but it was not before and you liked it to buy that many Tivos, so what is the problem???


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## swinca (Jun 19, 2003)

webin said:


> I'm surprised someone with this level of intelligence was able to find and resurrect a thread from 2006. It's like Internet Fruitcake... old and moldy, but still being served up daily.


Yep, all of that on his/her first and only post.


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## shady (May 31, 2002)

I'm actually impressed. The search function obviously worked spot on for him/her


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

shady said:


> I'm actually impressed. The search function obviously worked spot on for him/her


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

ukaussi said:


> ...My wife is having the BS from the manufacturer issue with her Range Rover in that it has been in the shop 40 days after only 8 months....


Well, I guess if someone was ***** enough to buy a Range Rover, I guess they should expect that kind of problem....


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## headroll (Jan 20, 2003)

webin said:


> I'm surprised someone with this level of intelligence was able to find and resurrect a thread from 2006. It's like Internet Fruitcake... old and moldy, but still being served up daily.


I blame vbulletin's suggest thread engine. Obviously found this thread when the user typed TiVO SuCks!

-Roll


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## TheGreenHornet (Nov 1, 2007)

I thought it was interesting that this guy on this ridiculous crusade to report Tivo to the BBB came under bicker&#8217;s scathing remarks from two years ago. Where are you bicker to let this guy have it?

I hate these kinds of posts from these people that pop on the boards to make unrealistic irrational complaints about Tivo. I wanted to watch hi def television so I bought a plasma television and upgraded my Sony Trinitron. I then upgraded my series 2 to a series 3. 

As a bonus, TiVo jumped through a few hoops to release a software upgrade so that my series 2 will work flawlessly with a digital converter box. What a value that upgrade is to many consumers with older TiVo&#8217;s who do not have the finances to upgrade in these difficult economic times. 

And HOORAY for TiVo who holds their long time customers in high esteem who have older S2 units and analog television to give them an opportunity to extend the life of the product with today&#8217;s digital television technology. 

As with other negative newbie posters this guy will disappear quickly once they are sufficiently flamed.


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

Wow. Join date 2005 and only one post. Must not be a lurker - otherwise he/she would have realized a long time ago that only the newer series 3 platform DVRs handle HD.


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## newskilz (Jul 11, 2008)

JYoung said:


> Unless you run a diagnostic utility, you don't know if the hard drive is bad or not.
> 
> My personal belief is that the failure rate has gone up due to the use of Maxtor drives by TiVo.


Perhaps I am just in the dark, but I'm guessing you know for a fact that TiVo switched their hard drive manufacturer? And unless things have changed recently, Maxtor is one of the better hard drive brands out there reliability wise. But alas, I guess that part is just MY opinion.


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## JYoung (Jan 16, 2002)

newskilz said:


> Perhaps I am just in the dark, but I'm guessing you know for a fact that TiVo switched their hard drive manufacturer? And unless things have changed recently, Maxtor is one of the better hard drive brands out there reliability wise. But alas, I guess that part is just MY opinion.


You realize that it's been _two years_ since I posted that?

But at the time, TiVo had been using Maxtor Quickview drives in their Series 2 units (I recently reconfirmed this when I put my original drive back into my Series 2 for a couple of weeks).
I do IT support for a living for an international company and we had serious failure issues with Maxtor drives that were manufactured a year or so earlier.
(It was bad enough that Dell was proactively replacing these drives.)

To be fair, it's my opinion that every drive manufacturer goes through a period where they have a rash of bad drives and I avoid that manufacturer for a while. Maxtor was on my list at the time.

Of course, this is all academic since Maxtor was purchased by Seagate a while ago.


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## j1-ohio (Oct 31, 2008)

I totally agree with you. Tivo is terrible. Why would you want to pay for their service if they can't get good programmers to code the software. Let me suggest something to you guys! It's called MythTV. It's way better than Tivo. It runs off Linux. It deletes commercials and automatically transcodes your recoded tv shows. For those of you who want to save money on a dvr or need help building one shoot me an email and I can provide you with information.


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## drewman (Apr 16, 2000)

Can MythTV (which is a fine DVR don't get me wrong) record encrypted QAM HD channels direct from cable?

(can't believe I'm feeding a troll that resurrected a resurrected thread.)


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## j1-ohio (Oct 31, 2008)

I'm not sure about recording HD channels. I don't have an HD tuner so I can't say if it works or not. However I managed to find a link that might have the answer to your question. Here is the link. http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/PcHDTV_HD-5500 I hope this helps. Let me know if you have anymore questions.


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## alansh (Jan 3, 2003)

> The card supports ATSC, unencrypted QAM 64, unencrypted QAM 256, and NTSC transmission reception.


So, no. You're only going to get encrypted channels with a CableLabs approved device, which none of the MythTV devices are.


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## gonzotek (Sep 24, 2004)

drewman said:


> (can't believe I'm feeding a troll that resurrected a resurrected thread.)


It's Halloween, a monster double-resurrection seems perfectly in line .


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)




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## I Like To Watch (May 30, 2006)

ukaussi said:


> My wife is having the BS from the manufacturer issue with her Range Rover in that it has been in the shop 40 days after only 8 months and the manufacturer just expects you to put up with it and dump the vehicle or trade it in at a huge loss. In this case Lemon Law is being persued as we are protected.


Given the volumes on info available regarding the Range Rover's deficiencies, why would you even consider buying one? 

Buyer Beware...


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## rainbow (Feb 8, 2008)

TheGreenHornet said:


> .... I wanted to watch hi def television so I bought a plasma television and upgraded my Sony Trinitron. I then upgraded my series 2 to a series 3.


1st, what is so funny is that i had not realized this was a 2 yr old thread when I started reading it!

anyway, reading TGH post above brought a question to mind that i have had. I have a sony triniton that has a digital comb filter, whatever that is, but it is not a digital tv.

I saw some kind of theatre system at Costco over the wknd and the guy told me that it had an HD tuner in it. So, if I got that system w/the HD tuner, and hooked it up to my sony triniton, would that enable my tv to become an HD tv?


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## LoREvanescence (Jun 19, 2007)

rainbow said:


> 1st, what is so funny is that i had not realized this was a 2 yr old thread when I started reading it!
> 
> anyway, reading TGH post above brought a question to mind that i have had. I have a sony triniton that has a digital comb filter, whatever that is, but it is not a digital tv.
> 
> I saw some kind of theatre system at Costco over the wknd and the guy told me that it had an HD tuner in it. So, if I got that system w/the HD tuner, and hooked it up to my sony triniton, would that enable my tv to become an HD tv?


Huh? I guess Costco's employees are worsethen best buys

It would be impossible to turn a analog SD tv like the Triniton into a HD TV. This is because the screen can not out put the resolution. It is limited by 640 x 480. Now, if you hooked the tv up to a home theater system with a HD Tuner, what will happen is the audio will be the 5.1 Dolby Digital, and it will take the HD video feed, and out put it to your tv in SD letter boxed. It would be like playing a widescreen dvd on a dvd player to your tv that happened to be hooked up to a good sound system.

A digital Comb Filter only cleans the analog signal, it has nothing to do with DTV or HDTV.


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## rainbow (Feb 8, 2008)

Thanks for your response, LoREvanescence . That is what I figured, but I am getting so confused about all this stuff that I was beginning to think I might not be 'seeing the forest for the trees'.


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## user583232 (May 7, 2010)

A fair warning about TiVo and why TiVo sucks. 

Short version: I paid for a lifetime subscription. TiVo cancelled my account, claimed I called and cancelled, and claimed they credited my account. I never called and cancelled my account and they never issued a credit to my credit card. Now I have a useless TiVo machine with no service and I'm out over $300.

Details: I used to always brag about TiVo and have purchased 6 TiVo machines. I have been a TiVo customer for years and currently have three TiVo boxes "running." I have to put quotes around running since TiVo took it upon themselves to turn off one of them, which I paid a lifetime subscription for. I received and email warning and I emailed back to TiVo and even attached screenshot showing I had a lifetime subscription and never received any response. The proceeded to shut off my box. I then had the pleasure of calling TiVo. Should you ever call them, be prepared to be on hold forever. After giving up on two previous occasions, I finally planned my day around it and was able to get through after about 20 minutes of being on hold. The customer service representative was less than helpful. He claimed I called and cancelled my account, which I had not. I explained I had a lifetime subscription and he insisted I cancelled my account and claimed my credit card was credited. My credit card was never credited and I explained that. He then claimed their records showed they issued me a credit and he blamed my credit card company and said I had to take it up with them.

I called my credit card company and they confirmed I never received a credit from TiVo.

I got online with TiVo, which still took about 30 minutes to get a representative. The guy looked at my account and agreed something did not look correct; however, he would have to send it to a supervisor to look at. Even though he did absolutely nothing to rectify the problem, except pass it along, he seemed helpful. He told me someone would call me and I asked if they would leave a message with a number I could call back without being on hold forever, since I don't answer calls I don't recognize, since they're oftentimes sales calls. He said they would leave a number that was a direct line. Did they ever call and so much as leave a message? No.

Bottom line: TiVo can take your money, claim you cancelled, claim they refunded your money, and leave you with a useless TiVo box and out hundreds of dollars. But they'll make sure they wait a few months, so you don't even have recourse with your credit card company. TiVo SUCKS.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

user583232 said:


> A fair warning about TiVo and why TiVo sucks.
> 
> Short version: I paid for a lifetime subscription. TiVo cancelled my account, claimed I called and cancelled, and claimed they credited my account. I never called and cancelled my account and they never issued a credit to my credit card. Now I have a useless TiVo machine with no service and I'm out over $300.
> 
> ...


Something not adding up, you can cancel TiVo Lifetime Service within 30 days of payment and you can dispute any charge with your credit card co within 60 to 90 days of the charge so even if TiVo made an error on your account your credit card co should handle the dispute. If TiVo cancels your lifetime service after 30 days the service would have to be xfered to another TiVo, I can't see how TiVo/credit card co. will not help you fix this problem.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

lessd said:


> Something not adding up,


Ya think. Moxi would never do such a heinous thing as plan ahead to get your money and then cancel the service. They have a much better business plan of keeping customers around.


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## WizarDru (Jan 18, 2005)

user583232 said:


> Short version: I paid for a lifetime subscription.











*RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE!*

You and I have a different definition of 'short', apparently. You're story doesn't really track all that well. How long exactly was it between purchasing a lifetime subscription and cancelling it? You're saying that they cancelled your service and claimed to refund your money but never did, but neither your bank nor credit card company was able to take any recourse? And you have documentation? I suspect you're leaving some details out, here.

I've had reason to call TiVo multiple times in the last 10 years...and I've never had a bad experience. Not with billing issues with credit cards, not with adjusting a billing mistake they made, not with adding new TiVos or even with initially setting my original Series 1. I don't doubt folks DO have problems with them...but my experience usually suggests that it is not the norm, by a long shot.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

these kinds of threads always rise from the grave right around any action on the TiVo DISH dispute. I am not sure if it is DISH fans or open source software folks or maybe a combo....


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## janry (Jan 2, 2003)

ukaussi said:


> Tivo Sucks


I wish mine came with that option.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

ferrumpneuma said:


> Altered Beasts Sega Genesis?


awesome game


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## WizarDru (Jan 18, 2005)

ferrumpneuma said:


> Altered Beasts Sega Genesis?


Ding! We have a WINNAH!


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## NCRaleigh (Jun 3, 2009)

I just cancelled my Tivo service after months of trying to get help with a Series 3 HD box that was still within warranty. The box kept freezing up on analog channels. I was told that this "gray screen" problem was a known problem with no fix available. How's that for great service (NOT.) I have 3 Tivo boxes and have subscribed to the service for over 5 years. I have been a great proponent of Tivo with all of my friends and relatives but no more! I just got back from Charter Cable with their DVR. This is a very sad day. Tivo is not what it used to be :-(


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## CK Dexter Haven (Aug 6, 2007)

ZeoTiVo said:


> awesome game


:up: Agreed.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

NCRaleigh said:


> I just cancelled my Tivo service after months of trying to get help with a Series 3 HD box that was still within warranty. The box kept freezing up on analog channels. I was told that this "gray screen" problem was a known problem with no fix available. How's that for great service (NOT.) I have 3 Tivo boxes and have subscribed to the service for over 5 years. I have been a great proponent of Tivo with all of my friends and relatives but no more! I just got back from Charter Cable with their DVR. This is a very sad day. Tivo is not what it used to be :-(


I have had one Series 3 running for over three years without cable cards, just analog cable and never had the Gray Screen problem, or any re-boots, (except service updates) so i think the cable signal itself may play a part in this problem. (The onscreen clock (SPS9S) will not survive any re-boots, that why I can make that re-boot statement)


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