My TiVo died: playback stuttering,
menus slow, etc. Apparently this is common for TiVos of
a certain age (mine is three years). The drives fail.
Thanks to Weaknees I was able to
repair it in about half an hour, replacing the drive with a newer (4x bigger) one.
I could have done it myself with the info in
TiVo Hacks, but the extra $40 Weaknees
charged me is worth the half day of aggravation saved.
The experience has bummed me out a bit about TiVo:
- Why did my TiVo fail after only three years?
- The setup process takes eight hours!
- I've lost all my TiVo state. Given how much data they track about
their users, why
couldn't they have stored my season passes server-side?
- The CPU is too slow. My TV should never tell me "please wait".
- My lifetime service isn't migratable, so I won't upgrade.
I really should build a small form factor PC and install
MythTV, an MP3 player, a DVD
player, and a bunch of game emulators. I like the way the TiVo
is a simple appliance that just works, but I've hit the edges of that.