Phew! *wipes sweat from brow*
April 30th, 2008
We were in a panic, the TiVo had no power. I say had because it now does thanks to my technical know-how. That, and my ability to find solutions on the official TiVo support site. Anyway, here’s the story.
This evening, my Mom and I sit down to dinner, pea soup and corn bread, and go about our routine, press the TiVo button and select the show we want to watch. Tonight would have been one of two, American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. I would have chosen Dancing with the Stars to see Cristián de la Fuente’s accident during his dance. From what I understand it’s rather dramatic. However, to our horror, the TiVo was off, no lights, no repsonse.
Everything we did, unplug it and replug it back in, choose a different outlet, give it a love tap nothing would revive our best friend. I would say anyone or anything that delivers an unending supply of television to our home would be considered a best friend. I digress. We went on with our evening, both concerned over the fate of the shows stuck inside our comatose friend. How would we get them out? We have whole seasons of shows that we haven’t seen yet, Lost, Eli Stone and the continuations Brothers and Sisters and other great shows.
I was hoping it was a power supply problem, that would be relatively easy to fix and that would mean our shows were still on the hard drive. If it was a hard drive failure, then we would have lost everything and we would have to wait until either reruns were shown or they came out on DVD. Both options were unsatisfactory.
The more we thought about it the more we stopped trusting out trusted friend. This piece of electronics could go at anytime leaving us with nothing to watch. As the evening was winding down to end I decided that I would go and check out the TiVo website and hope to find some solutions. After a little bit of digging I came across a support article titled “My DVR does not power on.” Perfect that is exactly what was happening here. I was then lead to another support article, “How do I restart or powercycle the DVR?” That did the trick.
For now, we have power to TiVo, but before we know which shows recorded last night, or if we have anything on the TiVo at all, a large service update needs to be installed. Installing the update could take up to an hour, or longer. I guess I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see if our little buddy is still in working order. It does however make me look at my TiVo with trepidation.
Tags: TiVo
