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TiVo Series3 + plasma TV = big problems
So you just paid $800 for your brand new Series3 TiVo ($1,000 if you transferred your lifetime subscription), waited patiently as the morons from the cable company tried to get their heads around installing CableCARDs in a non-TV device, and finally sat down on your couch to begin recording and commercial skipping all that great HD programming -- just to find out that your damn TiVo remote doesn't work! As many home theater aficionados know (first-hand, unfortunately), plasma TVs emit a significant amount of EMI and RFI signals from their surfaces that can confuse nearby IR sensors and render them useless, especially if your home theater gear juts out in front of the display. Well this problem has been happening in spades to new Series3 owners, as the box's IR receiver seems especially sensitive to other frequencies, so much so that they often need to press a button 10 to 15 times for a command to actually register. TiVo seems to be aware of the issue, but has not yet offered a solution, which is why the good folks who frequent the TiVo Community forum have put their heads together and come up with several effective workarounds. The most ghetto of these fixes involves attaching a tiny opaque "hood" around the box's sensor window, so that plasma interference can't go through but line-of-sight remote commands are still received. Since you probably don't want an ugly piece of cardboard hanging off of your beautiful $800 device, forum user "lightspeed" has come up with a slightly more difficult but much more aesthetically pleasing alternative: after carefully disassembling your Series3, you simply need to attach 6 to 8 small squares of GLAD Press 'n Seal to the inside of the IR window on the front face plate, which will serve to shield the sensor from the bad signals but let the good ones get through. Good job, intrepid TiVo devotees, but what we wanna know is: out of all the folks who beta tested this product, was there not even one of them who used it with a plasma and could have caught this problem much sooner? TiVo: makes a great product, but needs a little help in the e-commerce and quality assurance departments.Read- ProblemRead- FixRead- Fix pics
Cox Communications mulling partnership with TiVo?
It's been over a year since we launched the TiVo Deathwatch, and not only is the company still alive and kicking, a new survey being conducted by Cox Communications may indicate that TiVo is about to enter into a partnership with the nation's third largest cable company. Thomas Hawk reports that users on on the TiVo Community Forum are buzzing about a questionnaire that was sent to Cox Enterprises customers who currently subscribe to one or more of the company's other services, but get their TV via satellite. Among a slew of questions about DVRs in general and TiVo specifically, is one which reads in part, "If Cox were to offer digital cable service with a TiVo branded DVR for about the same price as you are currently paying for satellite service each month, how likely would you be to switch from satellite TV to Cox cable that featured this TiVo branded DVR service?" Take this for what you will, but these questions would seem to indicate that the two companies are, at the very least, involved in backroom talks of some sort, and possibly even in the planning stages of building co-branded equipment. Combined with TiVo's recent courtroom victory over EchoStar, their current partnership with Comcast, and a surprising renewal of their service contract with DirecTV, a deal with Cox may be just the ammo we need to put the Deathwatch down for good.
