Last Friday (the 13th) my TiVo died. I woke up and it showed just a grey screen. I rebooted and got back to the same thing. I did it a few times and it finally came up but it died again. I called TiVo and they walked me through running SMART tests on the drives (I had a Series 3 TiVo with an external 1TB WD MyDVR expander which is supported by TiVo).
The SMART test showed the internal drive failed. TiVo only had some crappy options for me. The device was 4.5 years old and I had lifetime service on it (that I had paid to transfer from my original TiVo which is still running in the bedroom). TiVo would let me buy a newer model for $270 (a $30 discount) and pay $200 to transfer the lifetime subscription to it. Or they could put a new drive in my Series 3 for ~$150 but I'd still have to pay $200 to transfer lifetime to this new fixed box. That seemed ridiculous to me. In essence they weren't offering to swap the drive but to give me a new unit. The support rep was friendly and did off that I could go to weaKnees.com and get a new drive and install it myself and not have to transfer lifetime service.
That's what I ended up doing. I ordered a 500GB drive for $169 and with two-day shipping it came to about $190. It arrived today and I installed it. The installation was easy. 6 screws to open the TiVo, 4 screws to remove the drive, 4 more to disconnect it from the drive mount and then put it all back. The TiVo came up and after going through Guided Setup was up and running in about 30 minutes.
I then connected the external drive and rebooted. The TiVo showed it was connected but didn't register the additional storage space. I rebooted 4 times and had the same problem. I called TiVo and the support rep was nice but not particularly helpful. The only advice she could offer was rebooting. She asked a supervisor and he said since I got a new drive that's probably the problem and they can't help anymore. I said it was TiVo that recommended I went to weaKnees and there is a TiVo image on the drive. I really expected them to check the system version number to make sure it was the latest or to give me some way to see error logs or something. The rep was nice enough to stay on a little longer but couldn't offer any additional help.
I called weaKnees and he knew immediately what the problem was. TiVo only supports an external drive with an original drive internal. Since I got a 500GB drive that's why it wasn't working. That's why they still sell the 250GB drive. He said they try to make this clear on the website but people miss it. I looked and it's there but I did miss it. I wondered why anyone would buy the 250GB drive for $159 instead of the 500GB one for just $10 more. The 1TB drive was $249 and I figured I didn't need that given the external.
But then it all worked out well. WeaKnees is having a sale today on 1TB drives, just $199. They're sending me one with free ground shipping. In a week it will arrive and I can swap it in and then return my 500GB drive for a refund (less a $10 restocking fee). It would have been nice to avoid the hassle but I can fix the TiVo on my own terms and I'll still have HD TV for season finale week (the TiVo uses cableCARDs so it's my cable box, if it's dead there no TV at all on that set).
Hard drives fail, I'm okay with that. TiVo wasn't very helpful. They don't have a way to replace drives and they charge too much for transferring lifetime service (which as I understand is about to go up to $500 on new machines). WeaKnees offers a much better service, was very accommodating, was faster to diagnose a problem and is more affordable.
TiVo is still the best toy I have (yeah I think even more so than my mac or iPad) and I still like it a lot better than other DVRs. I've been a shareholder for a long time and wish they could be more profitable but now I also wish they had better service.
3 comments:
Ah....so the TiVo died. That explains the excessive blogging this week ;-)
Sorry about your woes. I have become very dependent on my FIOS DVR.
How many hours of HD TV on 1 TB!
Are you able to get all of the cable channels you want with the cable card? Do you get all of the premium channels? I know you get HBO at least.
Can you save the TiVo'ed shows and then watch them on another device? iPad, iPHone or computer?
Should be about 150 hours. It's enough to not have to think about space at all. I can record (too many) series, keep some old episodes around (I think I had the whole season of The Big Bang Theory which got me through my deviated septum recovery a couple of years ago) and a bunch of movies to watch (it was the subtitled ones that I never got to and accumulated).
4.5 years ago I go the original generation of cableCARDs. I needed one for each tuner (so two) and they were one-way, so I couldn't do video-on-demand. But I did have access to all the channels I wanted (dependent on subscription). I have all the pay movie channels but not the sports ones. I also have access to netflix streaming which I've done a few times and is nice. It can also access Amazon, YouTube, can subscribe to video podcasts, etc.
I could watch a show on a different TiVo if I had another HD one (my 12 year old series 1 in the bedroom isn't networked and still needs dial up to get schedules). There are ways (I think hacks) to move shows from TiVo to my mac, moving to a PC might be more supported). I haven't been that interested in it.
TiVo did come out with an iPad app (it's mostly a remote and schedules but using a keyboard to search would be great) but it only works with the newer models, not my series 3 (annoying).
Still I'm paying about $200 for a new drive as opposed to $470 for a new model that doesn't offer that much more functionality. And now I get to unplug an external disk drive.
TiVo's strength has always been the UI. It's just so much nicer to use than other DVRs and that's hard to describe to people. The newer models have a new HD UI and I haven't played with it.
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