Tivo

Tivo & PVR Trouble

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Sunday and Monday I spent time working on my Tivo. I have (had) a 40 hour original Phillips Tivo that I had hacked to a 160 hours. Well as I said earlier it died. My online searching said that the problem I was having could be the hard drive or the unit itself. I went out and downloaded InstantCake from PTVUpgrade. I originally had PTVUpgrade do the hacking for my Tivo so I figured I would check them out. IntantCake allowed me to prepare a new hard drive for the Tivo in hopes that the original drive was dead.

After spending most of monday trying to get 3 old computers to get drives working in the exact way InstantCake wanted I was finally able to get instantcake to build a drive. I don’t really blame instantcake for my woes there. They had strict requirements that I just had trouble getting to work with some old PIII 700’s. Once the drive was built I plugged it in to the old Tivo. No dice. The same problem happened again. It looked like my old Tivo finally died. We had a little more than 3 years together. I am upset that our relationship is over early, but I will get by.

I went to Best Buy near my apartment and picked up a new Tivo Series 2 80 hour DVR. I got it home and Jayson brought over a USB nic card that he had (I bribed him with Pizzeria Uno). The Tivo for some reason keep rebooting itself. The online community didn’t say very much about this problem other than it is very bad and I should bring back the unit. So after only 3 hours with it, my Series 2 Tivo went back and I got another shinny new one. This time the setup was a snap and I have been happy (or kind of happy, I did have to blow $299 before rebate on tech I already had but it broke)

At the same time on Monday I decided that the ATI All In Wonder video capture system was not doing it for me. I did some research on a product that looked like a good Digital Video Recorder (DVR) for the PC. Beyond TV from Snapstream got my interest. the problem was the demo sucked on my ATI card since the ATI card did software MPEG-2 encoding. If I knew that I would never have bought the card. The software itself looked awesome. So I took the plunge and bought a bundle of Beyond TV 3.5 and a Hauppauge USB2 video capture device. I got it yesterday and it rocks so far. I am now just programing it up, but it looks like most of the Tivo functionality on my PC. and I have full access to the MPEG-2 files it creates. The bundle even came with its own remote that actually works. It is nice.

These new hardware investments are now funded by the sale of all that old gear I got rid of over the past 2 months. Easy come, easy go I guess. I am at least using this gear. I am addicted to video capture recently, what can I say.

Home Reorg

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I took the day off today (Monday). Unlike normal people I didn’t relax or do anything special. I slept in. Then I proceded to attempt to fix my Tivo. After hours of agrivating over it, and messing up my apartment in the processes I gave up.

I was able to move my desktop computer from one half of my computer table to the other. Now it is closer to the TV wall unit so I can run cable to it. Most of the day was busy working on my Tivo. See post on Tivo & PVR Trouble.

Tivo May Be Dead

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I have plenty to write about today, but the only thing on my mind right this second is that my Tivo may be dead. I came home and it was crashed. So I rebooted it. it is after all linux, so I was like a reboot will make it all better. Well 30 minutes later, it is still sitting at the please wait while I startup screen. that is not good. This thing always comes back in like 5 minutes. I don’t know what to do. It is like a good friend is sick. Is life worth living if Tivo doesn’t work? Yeah, probably. But it will suck that much more:(

I just turned it off, and I will let it sit idle for a while before I try to bring it back up. Honestly I think it is toast. I have an original 40 hour unit that I have hacked to 160 hours with a network card. No way I can get “support” on it. The unit was also purchased in September of 2001. So it has got some years on it. The thing is I have thought about upgrading and realized I had no reason to. This 3 year old device still does everything I want it to. Now only if it worked…

More news as it develops…

UPDATE: Well a 2 hours have passed and the Tivo is still not coming back online. According to the message boards I have read, the drive is bad, or the unit is totally fried. Not sure what I am going to do. I can try a different hard drive that I can prepare with a $20 piece of software from the people I originally upgraded my unit from, PTVUpgrade. Or I can upgrade to a new Tivo, or a different device. Either way I am out of commission for a few days. For now I am getting my shows on my ATI capture card. it is not perfect, but I have tv…

Wireless, Wireless, World

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I was busy Tuesday. At work I had issues with our Wifi setup. Gus has complained about it for years, but I never find anything wrong with it. On monday I did notice that it was just not working at all. I took my old 802.11b wifi point from home into work to troubleshoot. The point I had at home is the same type we use at the office. Back in the day it was top of the line. Now, not so much. Turns out both points at work are bad. The Wifi cards are fried. We are running off of my old point for now. I want it back so I can ebay it, but I will keep it at work until we can purchase new ones.

At home I had wifi issues of my own. I wanted a new 802.11g point at my house for a while. Ever since I got my VPN firewall I have been without high speed wireless. So since work got my old B point (that I should have sold long ago) I finally went to Best Buy and got a new Linksys 802.11G point. I set that up in no time. My problems started when I tried to configure the Wireless Bridge (802.11b if you were wondering) I had lying around. After hours of messing with it, I finally got it to work correctly. Right now it is plugged into my VOIP phone so I could put the phone in my bedroom without pulling any cables. it is neat. My eventual goal is to plug the bridge into my Tivo so I don’t have a cable running from my router to my TV wall unit.

I like the bridge so much I may get another one and keep the phone where it is. I have all the components to go totally wireless. I have a 802.11g card for my desktop. The only down side of wireless is if I want to transfer large files, which I do sometimes. For now everything works!!!

Lazy Saturday

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I am lazy. I admit that all the time. I blame genetics, dam that lazy dad of mine! Of course my mom is always busy and active, so wouldn’t that cancel the genetics of my lazy dad out? Ok, I am getting off topic. I am lazy, get over it. I am especially lazy on the weekends. I like to sleep in. Do nothing, catch up on my TV watching (thank you Tivo). Today is no different. I got a hair cut. The guy I am using chopped off way too much hair. I love it. I need to find the goop he uses to keep it down when he combs it for me. I am messing around now with the blog. Some people have hobbies I have blog writing. It beats doing nothing! Actually I like writing so I do enjoy this blog thing.

I am now procrastinating the work I have to do. I need to do some power points and update some documents for work. I also need to do some shopping for clothing, but since I find that one of the most boring things in the universe I am not going to do it right now. Part of me is nagging me to put up on eBay some of the old gear that I want to sell (get out of my closet). The rumor is the new Treo is being announced tomorrow so I should build up my bank account to pay for the upgrade that I know I will go and get. I also need to do some house cleaning again, but I don’t like that either so I will procrastinate about that also.

More VOIP Updates

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Several things finally came together on my VOIP odyssey this weekend. For one I solved a problem I have been having for some time. I also got off my ass and plugged in my new Linksys VPN Router. I started to setup static VPN tunnels to work. For one thing I proved I can setup a static IPSEC tunnel to a Pix with a cheap ($150 or cheaper) router. At first I still could not connect to one of our offices. I had the same problem with the Pix 501 I had. Or at first I thought it was the same problem. With the 501 I couldn’t connect to that office either. I was beginning to think it was not me but the Pix at that office. Turns out when I had my Pix 501 I had 1 issue. With the new Linksys VPN router the problem was a new one. Turns out the fail-over Pix we have at the office uses the IP address of 10.1.1.1. That is all nice and good, but that was what I used for my router at home. That didn’t work well. I had to give my router a new address and recreate the VPN tunnel. Everything started working then.

Now I have 2 tunnels (if and when I want them) to work. I don’t need VPN software. This is a good test since now I do not need VPN software on a computer in order to establish a VPN connection. What that means is I can plug in a VOIP phone and connect to my office’s call manager. I did just that. Now I have a 7940 phone connecting into our CCM (cisco call manager) system sitting on my desk at home. This is different to what I was trying to do with the 7940 and my BroadVoice connection. Now I can log into the phone at home and get my extension from work. I can prove that we can do this with remote agents if we choose to do so. We probably won’t but it is a nice technological feat to say we can. We want to go with the cheaper soft-phone option for remote agents, but having the ability to put a phone in someone’s house is nice to know you can. Have I mentioned that I have a cool job, or that VOIP is awesome???

In addition to the work phone I now have setup. I finally got my VOIP ATA adapter from the lovely folks at Broadvoice on Monday. I plugged it in after calling them and changing my account back to use that adapter. In minutes the adapter registered and I was off and running. I plugged in my new cordless phone and I had phone service. Did I mention it is only $10 a month? Now I was an early adopter of not having a home phone. I still use my cell as my main phone, but it is nice to not have to worry about the battery dying on a long call. Truth be told I want the VOIP service for the simultaneous ring option that I have. I am able to have calls ring on my home phone, my cell, blackberry, and work phone at the same time. I have a few kinks I am working out but otherwise that has been very cool.

Some problems I have to work out. I am back to using my old 802.11b wireless point. My 802.11g point was built into my old router. Now that I have a VPN router I can’t use that router. I need to buy a stand alone “g” point. I also need to break out a 5 port switch and daisy chain it off of my router. With the Wifi point, both my personal and work phones, plus my desktop and laptop, plus a tivo I have ran out of network ports on my 4 port router. Thankfully I think I have enough components to build 2 computers and extra network gear in my closet. He I don’t throw out very much stuff.

Ok, time for bed…

DVR’s

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I am sitting at home (fighting a cold) today. What to do? Watch TV of course. I am cleaning out my Tivo of things I want to watch. After that I decided to play around with my Eye TV USB. it is a DVR for my Mac. It is a great little device, that I don’t use as often as I would like. It act’s just like a Tivo. It records the files right to my Powerbook’s hard drive, which is cool. It can export to MPEG-1 so I can burn a VCD. that is also cool. I would like to burn as a DVD using MPEG-2 files, but I don’t want to upgrade to the newer version (EyeTV-200) that will do that. EyeTV also does not require me to pay a monthly subscription fee. Why then don’t I use it all the time? It has one fatal flaw.

I have a digital cable box (2 actually). In order for me to get digital cable channels I need to plug the EyeTV into the Digital Cable box. When the EyeTV wants to record something it cannot change the Cable box’s channel. That means if I want to record something on the EyeTV I need to change the channel on the cable box for it. What good is that unless I am at the TV? Now if they made some sort of IR channel changer that Tivo has to resolve this problem then I would not need my Tivo. With the majority of the US population with cable or satellite, why not have this option? This is a great product, that I can’t use that much because of this limitation. I have no way around it for now. I am warming up to the DVR on a computer idea. I would rather do this on my Mac, then finding a PC solution. I don’t even know if the PC TV cards can change cable box channels? My old ATI All in Wonder Pro had the same issue.

For now I will stick with my Tivo. I love it, and have not found anything that works better. That said I keep going back to replayTV’s website to check out their warez every few months.

Another Sleepless Night?

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It is 11PM and I am not tired yet. I am not going to work so I don’t have to worry about getting up early. I just wish I can have normal sleeping habits again. Now I am just bored. I watched a bunch of stuff on my Tivo. I have checked my email. I even ordered Freshdirect for tomorrow.

This entry was written while listening to Are You Happy Now from the album Hotel Paper by Michelle Branch

T-Minus 2 Days, Plus Tivo Withdrawal

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My Tivo is packed for my move. Last night I wanted to finish as much as I could today so it is away now. I wont have it on until thursday the earliest. that is the longest I have gone without my tivo recording stuff form me since I got it in September 2001. I don’t want to imagine all the things it is not watching for me:)

It is another rainy day in NYC. It will be muggy in the office with poor AC. Today is filled with no less than 4 meetings for me. Spaced just far enough apart that I won’t get anything meaningful done between them:( I need to get stuff done today, since I want to leave early tomorrow to finish any loose ends up with my move.

Late last night I was able to install the Entourage palm connector for Office 2004 on my laptop. I got my Treo to sync up with my Powerbook. Now I can try to use the powerbook as my PIM instead of my Thinkpad. Not sure if outlook will go away completely, but I want to use Entourage a bit more to see if I like it. For now the syncing with my palm, pc laptop and two mac’s is actually working. No corrupt data yet. That will happen when I try to edit entries in more than one place at the same time.

After work today I need to get more box’s from staples. Then I have to bring over a bunch of stuff to my parents place. They want an air mattress. I have bedding for them. I have some of my dad’s tools. I also need to give my dad some loose change (about 5 pounds of it) to sift through. He likes to look through change for anything out of the ordinary.

I also have more stuff to throw out. I am trying to get rid of as much as possible that I don’t need.

It Just Works

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Whoever said that is correct. Mac’s just work. To make a long story short, I have an Eye TV that I have plugged into my iMac. I am moving, so I unplugged it. I packed my TV, DVD, VCR, Tivo and all other gear away. I still wanted to watch tv. I went to elgato’s website and downloaded the latest software for Eye TV and dropped it in the applications folder of my Powerbook and plugged in the EyeTV. I was watching TV in 3 minutes.

I never had that kind of luck with my ATI all in wonder capture card on my PC. The idea of setting the Eye TV up on my laptop is now when my cable company shows up at my new place I don’t need my tv to be unpacked. I just need the Eye TV and my powerbook and I can verify that cable works. Both items are small so they can go in my laptop bag.

I am very happy I didn’t have to spend hours figuring out how to get the dam thing to work. I don’t even want to watch tv now that I know I can when I want for the next few days.

Tivo withdrawal is another story, and another post…