unicornpegasus
01-08-2007, 05:30 PM
Around Dec 20th, or so, one of our DirecTivo's (we have 5) started to periodically reboot itself while we were watching it. This was occurring with more and more frequency. Then on Jan. 1 all of our boxes started doing this and they all lost their "To Do Lists" causing us to miss many shows. Every time they reboot/power off they lose their “To Do Lists.” This is extremely inconvenient and infuriating. After calling Tech support several times to no avail, I researched the problem and found myself on many forums like this one.
I see that the consensus seems to be that it's a software error concerning the Tivo's "indexing" of the programming guide. Most likely caused by Directv's efforts to fix their own DVR's (non-Tivo's) many glitches, such as not recording what they are supposed to. D*'s customer service rep set up a service call to check our cabling for tomorrow morning, but said if it’s not that the only things they can recommend is that we reformat all of the hard drives or switch to D*'s proprietary DVR's. We do NOT want either.
Firstly, we have quite a bit of shows recorded on our boxes, and they had worked perfectly up until now. We love the TIVOs! Secondly, the Directv DVR’s are inferior to Tivo's. Of the many detractors, they do not possess dual tuner buffers. They are not reliable and do not record everything they are supposed to, a problem suddenly appearing on the Tivos as well. (That's not suspiscous at all!) The interfaces are not as intuitive or eye pleasing (I have used the D* standard HD box at my parents', so I’ve experience the menu interfaces.) And most importantly, we signed up for a contract several years ago with the knowledge that we would receive TIVO's. We own TIVO’s we want to have TIVO’s in the future.
What are they doing to rectify these problems? Not a damned thing as far as I can tell.
Also, these problems and oversights have caused us to hold off on getting an HD DVR and the HD programming package. We would have liked to upgrade to HD, but with all of these drawbacks and glitches present on the D* equipment we’ve had to decided to postpone our upgrade until they either go back to TIVO’s, which I‘d safely bet is preferred by all of their customers, or drastically improve their own equipment. Both seem to be a pipe dream.
We've tried all of the rebooting methods RBR, Unplug, Restart through the menus. Eventually with a restart (that we initiate, not a random one) and a forced call in the indexing will eventually start to rebuild our to do lists, but that can take several days, in the meantime we lose shows if we don't know that it rebooted itself and can't stay ontop of doing manual show recordings for our programs.
Have I overlooked any options? Do I have any other recourse but to conintue to call and email D* until they fix it?
Thank you for your time.
I see that the consensus seems to be that it's a software error concerning the Tivo's "indexing" of the programming guide. Most likely caused by Directv's efforts to fix their own DVR's (non-Tivo's) many glitches, such as not recording what they are supposed to. D*'s customer service rep set up a service call to check our cabling for tomorrow morning, but said if it’s not that the only things they can recommend is that we reformat all of the hard drives or switch to D*'s proprietary DVR's. We do NOT want either.
Firstly, we have quite a bit of shows recorded on our boxes, and they had worked perfectly up until now. We love the TIVOs! Secondly, the Directv DVR’s are inferior to Tivo's. Of the many detractors, they do not possess dual tuner buffers. They are not reliable and do not record everything they are supposed to, a problem suddenly appearing on the Tivos as well. (That's not suspiscous at all!) The interfaces are not as intuitive or eye pleasing (I have used the D* standard HD box at my parents', so I’ve experience the menu interfaces.) And most importantly, we signed up for a contract several years ago with the knowledge that we would receive TIVO's. We own TIVO’s we want to have TIVO’s in the future.
What are they doing to rectify these problems? Not a damned thing as far as I can tell.
Also, these problems and oversights have caused us to hold off on getting an HD DVR and the HD programming package. We would have liked to upgrade to HD, but with all of these drawbacks and glitches present on the D* equipment we’ve had to decided to postpone our upgrade until they either go back to TIVO’s, which I‘d safely bet is preferred by all of their customers, or drastically improve their own equipment. Both seem to be a pipe dream.
We've tried all of the rebooting methods RBR, Unplug, Restart through the menus. Eventually with a restart (that we initiate, not a random one) and a forced call in the indexing will eventually start to rebuild our to do lists, but that can take several days, in the meantime we lose shows if we don't know that it rebooted itself and can't stay ontop of doing manual show recordings for our programs.
Have I overlooked any options? Do I have any other recourse but to conintue to call and email D* until they fix it?
Thank you for your time.