For some strange reason, the problem I had with my TiVo where it would spontaneously reboot or lock up several times a day has gone away. One day it just stopped misbehaving, no idea why. It's worked perfectly for the last three months or so.

But, never one to leave well enough alone, I have gone to VOIP telephone service through Ooma. My previous telephone service was also VOIP, through Comcast. Comcast is my cable TV and Internet Service provider, but no longer my telephone provider.

Now my TiVo no longer is successful calling out for the programming updates. It apparently is not happy with Ooma.

Ooma technical support was less than helpful. This was obvious to me when the tech support guy didn't know what a TiVo was, and after I explained he told me that Ooma didn't have the bandwidth to support video. Sigh... He didn't seem to get the concept of updating the scheduling through the telephone.

TiVo technical support was more useful, but in the end not successful. Nothing we tried would allow the TiVo to make the connection, even though it had worked for several years over VOIP with Comcast.

The TiVo is a non-HD Series 2 unit without ethernet connectivity. It does have a USB port. I also have a genuine TiVo "Wireless G USB Network Adapter."

In addition to that, I have a Linksys WRT54G router that works both wired and wireless. Some time ago I attempted to use it to set up an in-house wireless network, but gave up and ran ethernet cable instead. Nonetheless, the wireless network shows up on SWMBO's laptop but she's never been able to log onto it, and TiVo also sees it as well. However, if I try and get TiVo to connect to it, it fails: "Network connection unsuccessful. (No DHCP server.) Press SELECT for more information.

OK, if in doubt, RTFM. I just dug out the documentation for the router, was able to reset the router to factory defaults, unplugged everything and ran the router and network setup from scratch, and the TiVo successfully updated through the wireless USB connection. This is the first update in over a week.

During all this screwing around trying to make the TiVo do its updates, the TiVo has spontaneously rebooted itself twice. If it is back to its old tricks of freezing/rebooting several times a day, I am going to call Comcast, cancel the cable, and give the fscking TiVo to Goodwill. Yes, I know I said in another thread that I would never go to Goodwill again, but I would get perverse satisfaction from giving them the TiVo that apparently works just fine but doesn't really.

tanstaafl.

Fortunately, it appears that if you want to replace that Tivo, you could get a used one on ebay for $35.

Of course, who knows whether or not that guy's selling it because he has the same problem

Sorry to hear about the complications. Ooma "support" is terrible. They have the strangest group of people answering their phones for them, and almost none of them are helpful (I've had one intelligent, friendly person answer my call there). Despite this, I hope you enjoy their service. I installed Ooma in my folks' place over a year ago, and going by the old phone bill, it's essentially had the equipment paid off and started getting free phone service a few months ago.

You should have told them you had a fax machine. Fax machine and modem communication are virtually identical.


There's also some code, IIRC, to throttle down the TiVo's connection speed, which makes it more stable over VoIP connections.

Not one with a lifetime Tivo subscription!

tanstaafl.