TiVo Setup Disaster

I finally jumped on the bandwagon and purchased a TiVo. I'll be moving into a house soon with seven other people, so this is going to be one busy TiVo.

Even from the short experience I've had to play with this thing so far, I have to say, it *rocks*. Everyone I know who owns a TiVo is in love with it, so I knew it was going to be a great decision (see also: Mac/iPod, Sidekick). Needless to say, I'm now hooked and won't be able to use a regular TV ever again. :)

It wasn't love at first sight though, actually. I knew it going into the purchase, but I still thought I could get around one small requirement that the TiVo has: one-time use of a phone line.

I'd guess that most people probably still have a phone line in their house, but sadly (or happily), I am not one of them. Since I live in an apartment with three other college students, we of course just use our own cell phones. What's the point of having a land line? It would get us absolutely nothing.

Except the TiVo setup, actually. When the box arrived, I quickly got to the step where I needed the phone. Honestly, I sort of thought they were just sort of joking at first and that it wouldn't be a *real* requirement. I mean, we've got broadband (wired and wireless) so how bad can it be?

Well... bad. When they say phone line, they aren't really lying. It really, honestly, completely, and unavoidably needs a phone line. Oh sure, I scoured the Internet for hacks and spent hours trying countless workarounds. Eventually, I gave in and decided it wasn't worth it anymore - I might as well give it what it really wants. So I packed it up in my trunk and headed back to my mom's house.

Only one problem. It turns out my mom doesn't have a phone line either! She has Vonage VoIP. So does my dad. No one in our family has a phone line.

Luckily, this time the Internet workarounds proved true, and I was able to trick the TiVo into making the call over the Vonage line. Thank goodness. It updated to the latest software and is now fully compatible with my USB wireless adapter to connect to the Internet for the future.

So... it'd be one thing if the TiVo totally required a phone line and only a phone line forever (in fact, this used to be the case in the original Series 1 boxes, I guess). But the totally weird thing is that the TiVo works great with any wired or wireless network -- but only *after* the initial guided setup call.

Why'd they do that? It turns out that it's a limitation of the software. Namely, the version that ships on the box isn't actually compatible with the network stuff. It's an old OS. And once it makes that call, it's good. This is how it's been for over two years.

HUH?

It's now 2005 and many people are starting to do away with phone lines completely. Certainly any rooming college students like us aren't going to get landlines, and even people like my parents are moving their phones to less expensive VoIP services. It's very scary to me that TiVo isn't with the program here (sorry, I couldn't resist that pun). Not only is it crazy that they aren't concerned that people might not have phone lines, but what's REALLY scary is how it probably would be a super-easy change to make -- just ship the outgoing new TiVo boxes with the latest OS. They've even already written the code to make it all work without a line... but they just aren't shipping their boxes with that code! Hello, TiVo.... anyone home in there?

Really, seriously, even if you do have a phone line in your house, you're probably not going to use it for the TiVo after the initial setup. Pretty much anyone "hip" enough to get a TiVo these days is going to have broadband internet and they're going to want to use that connection instead.

So... in summary, just in case anyone was wondering if TiVo was fibbing about that phone line thing: yeah, no, they're not.

Ugh. Alright. Just had to get that off my shoulders. Now I'll go back to watching my recorded-earlier episodes of Seinfeld.

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