I've had a Series 2 TiVo for several years now and have enjoyed every minute of it. From the moment I first tried the TiVo in my parents' DirecTV satellite unit, I knew I wanted one. Now, a hundred episodes of Good Eats later, I haven't regretted the purchase. It's probably one of the few electronic devices in our home that my wife gets more use out of than me.
But there are still some terrible annoyances to my TiVo that drive me nuts.
As soon as I could, I added my TiVo to my home network via a wireless adapter. A networked TiVo adds TiVoToGo support (so recorded shows can be streamed to other networked devices), allows the device to receive scheduled recordings through the Web more frequently, and more recently allows usage of the Amazon Unbox service (something I'm looking forward to trying out soon).
However, getting my TiVo networked took longer than I would have hoped since TiVo was pretty slow to add 802.11g support to their unit and I wasn't going to buy an obsolete wireless adapter. Since then however, every TiVo service update is a roller coaster ride of compatibly cross your fingers. Will this update break my network settings or won't it?
The most recent service update from last Fall seems to have made the Series 2 TiVo's wireless support rather flaky. Any time I make changes to my router's settings or reboot it, the TiVo seems to have problems finding the gateway (the dreaded "The gateway (router) could not be located" or N07 error). If you do a Google search for this problem, you'll find that it's a rather common problem. Potential solutions range from moving your wireless adapter to the other USB port (?!?!) to rebooting the router, rebooting the TiVo (a painfully slow process), or rebooting both. I can say from past experiences that I've had success with all 3 of these troubleshooting methods on various occasions although which one works at any given time is always a toss up.
At other times, the TiVo seems receptive to using DHCP while other times it won't work unless I specify a static IP address. Recently, I signed up for ViaTalk VOIP service which necessitated adding a LinkSys VOIP adapter to my home network. The unit was configured to use DHCP out of the box. I don't use DHCP on my home network, but had it enabled as the TiVo was on one of it's "I like DHCP" kicks. I only had a single IP address in the range and it was statically assigned to the TiVo. After increasing the DHCP range to make room for the VOIP adapter, I seemed to be in business. I was browsing through the settings of the VOIP adapter in my web browser when all of a sudden I was presented with a welcome message from TiVo congratulating me on hooking up my unit to my home network.
Unbelievably, the TiVo had stolen the IP address from my VOIP adapter.
Looking through my router's logs, it clearly showed that the TiVo and the VOIP adapter had been assigned different IP addresses (remember, the TiVO had a static DHCP address assigned to it by the router). And yet there was the TiVo operating on the wrong address. Several minutes later, it hopped back to its correct IP address. However, this process kept repeating itself over and over. Luckily, the VOIP adapter was able to take a statically assigned IP address as well.
Yet another networked TiVo gripe is that it doesn't support WPA encryption unless you buy their specific TiVo Wireless G USB Network Adapter ($59.99 plus shipping). Excuse me? My router and the adapter I already bought for the TiVo already support WPA encryption. Why does your unit require a specific adapter to support WPA? Talk about gouging your customer base. I'm sure your engineers are smart enough to figure out how to make it work. Until then (IF it ever happens), I'm stuck using WEP encryption, which is about as effective as a deadbolt on a glass door.
So that's my experience with a networked TiVo. In summary,
- Wireless network support is flaky. Go wired if you can.
- If you can, don't use DHCP on your TiVo. It can't be trusted to behave.
- If your wireless isn't working, try rebooting the router. If that doesn't work, try rebooting the TiVo.
- No WPA encryption support unless you want to overpay for an adapter specifically designed to be used by a single device.