# I guess I screwed up...



## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

This evening, my Roamio Plus arrived to replace my Premiere. First, I called in a purchase of lifetime purchase. Then, I started a network connection to obtain schedule data and pick up the lifetime purchase. While that was running, I called RCN and within a few minutes, we had the Cablecard moved from the Premiere to the Roamio and paired.

Alright, ready to go! Hmm, the main menu still says:



> Please Activate Service
> Go to UNKNOWN and enter your TiVo Service number to activate the UNKNOWN. The UNKNOWN will not work without an active service subscription.


How long is it going to take for the box to pick up the lifetime service? Now that the Cablecard is paired to the Roamio, I can't just put it back into the Premiere to pick up tonight's season pass recordings, and 8pm is less than an hour away...


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## andyf (Feb 23, 2000)

It takes up to 24hrs for service to be activated. You shouldn't need service to up to 7 days to get guide info and record shows.


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

So I'm seeing that it can take up to 24 hours for the lifetime service to be picked up. When I log into tivo.com, I see the entry for my Roamio, but it says:



> We're still processing your activation. Try again in 24 hours.


I guess I should have left the Roamio powered and running with a network connection without a Cablecard for a day until it picked up the service, while still using my Premiere with Cablecard to watch TV? This wasn't really the smooth transition I had hoped for. I suppose the fault is mine for not doing my homework on how long the activation would take.


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

andyf said:


> It takes up to 24hrs for service to be activated. You shouldn't need service to up to 7 days to get guide info and record shows.


Hi Andy,

Thanks for the response. Previous attempts to bring up the guide resulted in an error message, but I just tried it now and it worked! I guess it just needed some time to get its bearings.

Whew, crisis averted!


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Yeah it can take a while after GS completes for the guide data to be indexed. Back in the old days when we had slow S1/S2 units GS wouldn't even let you use the TiVo until it had finished indexing the data and the indexing could take 6+ hours. So you'd get a new toy and wouldn't even be able to use it until the next day.


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

Thanks Dan!

The next hurdle is that when I attempt to access my Premiere from the Roamio to transfer its recordings, the Roamio says:



> The Family Room DVR's My Shows could not be displayed because of a network problem. Press LEFT to return to the My Shows List.


Both devices are on wired connections. I'm using a green gigabit switch. I wonder if I haven't picked up the firmware with the fix... I guess I'm off to do more research.

Sigh.


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

Same issue...

Until your service has been activated you cannot use network connected functions like MRS or MRV.

You can force connections and se if it picks up your service quicker - but you will most likely have to wait until tomorrow to use that functionality.


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

bradleys said:


> Same issue...
> 
> Until your service has been activated you cannot use networked connected functions.
> 
> Your can force connections and se if it picks up your service quicker - but you will most likely have to wait until tomorrow to use that functionality.


I wish the error message told me it was related to the service/activation, and not just "a network problem"...

Thanks bradleys.


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## andyf (Feb 23, 2000)

Also, when your service is activated "all" TiVos in your house must perform a connection so they all know about each other before you will be able to connect to them.


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## bmgoodman (Dec 20, 2000)

I just went through these same things a few days ago. Despite all the poor error messages, after about 24 hours I could see both my other Tivos from the Roamio, and I've been transferring shows for over a day now. Everything is much better than that first day, when I'd rate the experience as UNKNOWN.*

*Oops, sorry, I mean TERRIBLE.

Now if they can iron out the other bugs, I think I'll be fine.


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

bmgoodman said:


> I just went through these same things a few days ago. Despite all the poor error messages, after about 24 hours I could see both my other Tivos from the Roamio, and I've been transferring shows for over a day now. Everything is much better than that first day, when I'd rate the experience as UNKNOWN.*
> 
> *Oops, sorry, I mean TERRIBLE.
> 
> Now if they can iron out the other bugs, I think I'll be fine.


Even though my service is still shown as "pending activation" on the TiVo webpage, I am now able to transfer season passes and shows to the Roamio. Things are definitely much less frustrating now, but I still agree with your rating of UNKNOWN for that first day of setup...

The batch transfer of season passes was great! The one-by-one transfer of shows, not so much. I seem to recall reading about using some kind of utility to do a batch transfer. Off to do some more forum-searching!

We're getting there...


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

When I attempted to copy all 124 season passes over using the online season pass manager, the copy terminated with



> We're sorry, something did not work right.
> 
> The action you attempted to take did not occur. We are unable to give you more information about the error at this time.
> 
> We recommend trying the action again.


I was able to copy them over in smaller batches, but it randomized the season pass order within each batch.

I ended up resorting to transferring them one at a time, starting at the top, which preserved the order.

Sigh.


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## Time_Lord (Jun 4, 2012)

chrispitude said:


> When I attempted to copy all 124 season passes over using the online season pass manager, the copy terminated with
> 
> I was able to copy them over in smaller batches, but it randomized the season pass order within each batch.
> 
> ...


I too couldn't copy them all over at one time, I did them about 10 or so at a time.


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

Time_Lord said:


> I too couldn't copy them all over at one time, I did them about 10 or so at a time.


It irritates me that it doesn't preserve the order within each batch, although I suppose with six tuners, it doesn't matter.

In the pop-up dialog that asks to confirm channels, sometimes some of the shows in the batch are missing even though there are multiple channel choices. Also, the same channel randomly appears with or without a name and description.

I suppose none of this really surprises me.


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

I got to about 60 season passes copied, and the copies stopped working reliably. Now I consistently get the "something did not work right" error, even trying to copy them one at a time. Sometimes, logging back into the season pass manager page makes it work again, sometimes it does not.

Still trying to slog through this, although I'm rapidly getting to the point where doing them manually one-by-one will be faster.


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## andyf (Feb 23, 2000)

Probably want to give it an hour or so while your TiVo digests all the stuff you've already done.


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

I'm up to 75 season passes, and after half an hour of trying to get copies to work, I'm giving up. You win again, TiVo. (Or is that "I lose again"?)


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

You should try kmttg...

http://sourceforge.net/projects/kmttg/

It can copy SPs that are not currently in the guide and retain their proper order. Works WAY better then TiVo.com and it's free.


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

Dan203 said:


> You should try kmttg...
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/kmttg/
> 
> It can copy SPs that are not currently in the guide and retain their proper order. Works WAY better then TiVo.com and it's free.


Man, I can't win. I installed kmttg1p0. It didn't auto-detect my TiVos, but I got around that by entering their IP addresses. After doing that, I see a main tab for each of them and each tab displays the list of recordings on that TiVo, but when I go to the Remote administration tab, the drop-down list of TiVos is empty. I found on the forums that you need to enter your TiVo.com user name and password into the configuration window. I did that, exited out, and now kmttg1p0 hangs whenever I run it (no GUI pops up, process hangs). If I edit the config file to make my password incorrect, the GUI starts. It doesn't like something about trying to log in to my account.

I'm off to debug...

Edit: Progress! It looks like this was because I was running kmttg1p0i on a virtual Windows 7 machine on a linux box; something about the virtual machine's NAT or the linux firewall must be interfering. Oddly, kmttg0p8r worked fine back in the day, but clearly the virtual machine is giving me grief now.


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

Wow, kmttg made the transfer of 140 season passes TRIVIALLY easy! Dan, thank you so much for the heads-up! I am mad that I wasted so much time with TiVo's own webpage this morning.

Now I'm off to figure out how to transfer my shows without losing the metadata...

Edit: Based on this thread, I think I'm just going to bite the bullet and do TiVo-to-TiVo transfers.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Yeah I just found kmttg myself and I was amazed at how easy it was to transfer the SPs compared to what I had to go through when I moved my wife from her S3 to her Premiere last year. 

As for transferring shows... TiVo to TiVo is the only way to guarantee you retail all the metadata.


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

I just emailed this to TiVo support:



> I just purchased a TiVo Roamio Plus, and needed to transfer 140 season passes from my Premiere to my Roamio. I tried using the online Season Pass Manager to do this. Initially I tried to transfer all 140 season passes at the same time, but it failed with:
> 
> "We're sorry, something did not work right.
> 
> ...


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

Dan203, and anyone else who's transferred a bunch of recordings from another TiVo to your Roamio, did you have any issues with the transfers stalling? In my show list, there was a show listed as transferring, but it was stuck at zero duration. I left it overnight, and it's still there listed as transferring. I stopped that transfer and deleted the show, hoping the Roamio would continue with the next transfer in the list. But now, it's not transferring anything, and I know there were still more shows that I had marked for transfer that it has not gotten to yet.

If I mark any new shows for transfer, it simply tells me it will add them to the queue. That's great, except nothing is happening...

Is there a way to see a history of what's transferred, the current transfer activity, or a list of what's still pending?

Or is it time to do a restart, then manually figure out what's left, and retransferring those?


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## andyf (Feb 23, 2000)

The ToDo List should show pending transfers. Try a reboot.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Yeah that happens on occasion. You usually have to reboot both TiVos to get it going again.


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