Amazon Unbox won't download

[cwoody222]

I've ordered plenty of Amazon Unbox stuff to my Series3 without issue before. Today, I have a movie I rented that just won't download. I ordered it around Noon and left for the day. Came back hours later and it hadn't started yet.

But my Wireless Adapter and my Router were blinking like crazy like something was going on with my network.

I rebooted the TiVo, no good. It shows it's connected to my network just fine.

I unplugged the TiVo, Wireless Adapter and rebooted my modem. Still no good.

I am able to transfer a MPEG from my Mac back to my TiVo. I even ordered a 2nd Amazon movie. That one is also mysteriously refusing to download.

I emailed Amazon about it. But, until I hear back - any advice?

[MickeS]

Can the TiVo connect to the TiVo server and get the guide data?

[magnus]

Are you running out of space on your drive? I've heard that can cause the issue.

[cwoody222]

Can the TiVo connect to the TiVo server and get the guide data?

Yep, one of the first things I checked. No problem there.

Are you running out of space on your drive? I've heard that can cause the issue.

Nope. I have 13 HD hours and 5 SD hours. Plenty of space.


As of this morning both my router light and Wireless Adapter light are still blinking showing activity. But no Amazon shows appeared yet.

[Hawk1]

I'm having the same problem, but with TivoCasts (I haven't used Amazon Unbox recently). No TivoCasts have downloaded since early Friday, although there are new Season Pass episodes available and I have manually selected many episodes and music videos over the last few days. The TiVo network adapter is continually blinking non-stop, but the To Do List history has nothing new in it.

[steve614]

There's another thread around here somewhere about people having problems with a DLTV Tivocast.

If you happen to have a season pass for DLTV, cancel it, reboot your Tivo, and see if that solves the problem.

[dylanemcgregor]

I've found in the past that if an Unbox download doesn't start within a certain amount of time that for some reason, that it won't start again on its own later. So if there was a lot of traffic on your network for some other reason, the download might have tried to start, failed, and then not tried to start up again later.

I've had this problem a couple of times, and generally using Amazon's "call me" feature and asking to talk to the Unbox support team has gotten the transfer started again right away. It hasn't happened to me in a few months, but I believe the last time they told me I could even go to the Media Library section and start the transfer again yourself.

[djfiggy]

I'm having the same problem, but with TivoCasts (I haven't used Amazon Unbox recently). No TivoCasts have downloaded since early Friday, although there are new Season Pass episodes available and I have manually selected many episodes and music videos over the last few days. The TiVo network adapter is continually blinking non-stop, but the To Do List history has nothing new in it.

Mine is doing the same thing! The blue light has stayed constantly ON since Friday! Yet nothing is/has downloaded. Yes, I have plenty of space and can connect to tivo to get updates just fine. I have rebooted 3 times now, and after it gets done re-booting, sure enough, the blue light comes back on and my wireless network adapter is blinking like crazy. This has never happend before, very strange.

Any ideas??

[MickeS]

I've found in the past that if an Unbox download doesn't start within a certain amount of time that for some reason, that it won't start again on its own later. So if there was a lot of traffic on your network for some other reason, the download might have tried to start, failed, and then not tried to start up again later.

I've had this problem a couple of times, and generally using Amazon's "call me" feature and asking to talk to the Unbox support team has gotten the transfer started again right away. It hasn't happened to me in a few months, but I believe the last time they told me I could even go to the Media Library section and start the transfer again yourself.

I assumed the OP had already done that, but now I see there is no explicit mention of it. I agree with you that he should manually restarting the transfer.

[cwoody222]

I've found in the past that if an Unbox download doesn't start within a certain amount of time that for some reason, that it won't start again on its own later. So if there was a lot of traffic on your network for some other reason, the download might have tried to start, failed, and then not tried to start up again later.

I've had this problem a couple of times, and generally using Amazon's "call me" feature and asking to talk to the Unbox support team has gotten the transfer started again right away. It hasn't happened to me in a few months, but I believe the last time they told me I could even go to the Media Library section and start the transfer again yourself.

Amazon.com just shows that it's already been downloaded. I don't get the option to download again.

I didn't try "call me" but I emailed Amazon yesterday. Still no response.

Kinda BS if you ask me......

[cwoody222]

Magically both attempts (BSG for free and "Waitress" that I paid for - yesterday) are there now.

'Bout time.

If anyone from TiVo is listening... it'll make me think about trusting this service again in the future. 48 hours and endless minutes of me f*cking around with my network is not a good experience....

[Hawk1]

If you happen to have a season pass for DLTV, cancel it, reboot your Tivo, and see if that solves the problem.

That appears to have fixed it, thank you! Just rebooting didn't help, but after I cancelled the DL.TV season pass and then rebooted, all the other TiVoCasts downloaded and there was a note in the To Do history about the episode not being able to download.

Just for fun, I selected to download the latest DL.TV episode and the problem happened all over again until I rebooted. Something is messed up with that episode.

[cwoody222]

I had a DL.tv season pass before. Have had for months. I didn't edit it / delete it at all.

My Amazon Unbox download just suddenly downloaded.

Afterwards, I had no DL.tv download waiting for me. I did, however, have 4 New York Times downloads, and - as always, since they're rarely the only ones I care about (Pogue), I deleted them outright without viewing them.


Unrelated... will someone pls tell the Times that ppl who care about tech news don't necessarily care about bridal news?!

[MickeS]

Unrelated... will someone pls tell the Times that ppl who care about tech news don't necessarily care about bridal news?!

Someone did. :) Go in to edit the subscriptions and you'll see that they are now divided into different ones. The reason you get all is that they signed old NY Times podcast subscribers up for all of them. You just need to unsubscribe to the ones you don't want.

[scandia101]

Magically both attempts (BSG for free and "Waitress" that I paid for - yesterday) are there now.

'Bout time.

If anyone from TiVo is listening... it'll make me think about trusting this service again in the future. 48 hours and endless minutes of me f*cking around with my network is not a good experience....


An actual phone call to Amazon in the beginning probably would have saved you a lot of hassle. I've had Unbox problems 4 times. Each time I called or had them call me and the problem was discovered and explained to me. 3 times the problem was resolved at the time of the phone call. The 4th time, their system thought I was trying to download from Barcelona, Spain and it took a month to get the problem resolved. But I did know what the problem was and I did know that messing with the Tivo and the network wasn't necessary.

[cwoody222]

Here's what Amazon emailed back to me. Gee, thanks. Passing the buck.


I have reviewed your order and verified that we encountered no errors processing your order. This video was immediately inserted into the download queue of your TiVo DVR named "Series3", upon order completion. Our records indicate that your DVR did not actually initiate the download of this rental until 26 hours later. This would indicate either a network or internet connection issue, or that your DVR is configured to check for programming updates only during scheduled times.

I would recommend contacting TiVo for further troubleshooting regarding this issue. You can visit the TiVo Support pages at this webpage:

http://www.tivo.com/support

[cwoody222]

Someone did. :) Go in to edit the subscriptions and you'll see that they are now divided into different ones. The reason you get all is that they signed old NY Times podcast subscribers up for all of them. You just need to unsubscribe to the ones you don't want.

I had no idea; thanks! :up::up::up:

[TiVoStephen]

cwoody222, sorry to hear about the problems downloading. Can you e-mail me (estephen@tivo.com) your TiVo Service Number and the name of the episode of BSG you ordered in addition to The Waitress? Your experience does not sound normal, and I'd like to find out what happened if we can.

Best regards,
Stephen

[TiVoStephen]

As for DL.TV -- I can't find that separate thread yet, but I did see over the weekend that the host for DL.TV (outside of TiVo's control) was having issues, and about half of customers weren't able to download. The situation seems much better now, so if you manually select the latest DL.TV episode for download it should work. We've reached out to the Ziff Davis folks and I will let you know what they find. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Best regards,
Stephen

[TiVoStephen]

One thing to try in the meantime, go in to the View Recording History screen under the To Do list (quickest way there is TiVo button, 2, and select View Recording History). Scroll around to see if you find listings for the downloads. Are there any indicators there of what might have gone wrong?

[Hawk1]

In my case with the DL.TV episode, nothing would appear in the recording history until after I cancelled the season pass and rebooted. After that, the listing said it couldn't download because the DVR was unplugged or restarted.

No knock on TiVo, but this type of situation makes me wary when I hear ISP's may want to start charging based on usage (bits downloaded) like other utilities. Who knows how much data is being sent through their connection when a background transaction gets stuck (my network adapter activity light was flashing all weekend). And then will come PC viruses that waste users' bandwidth just for fun.

[dylanemcgregor]

Amazon.com just shows that it's already been downloaded. I don't get the option to download again.

I didn't try "call me" but I emailed Amazon yesterday. Still no response.

It's not on the main tab of Your Media Library, you have to go to the "downloads" tab. Not very intuitive I'll admit, since they list all of your downloads in the media library section I never even noticed that there was another tab for downloads until it was pointed out to me. Sorry that I forgot to mention this in my previous post.

Also, if you haven't used the "call me" feature of Amazon yet, I'd definitely recommend it. Makes you wish all support could be even half this easy. With anything Unbox related just ask to be connected directly to the Unbox support.

[steve614]

As for DL.TV -- I can't find that separate thread yet...

Best regards,
Stephen

Here ya go.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=393229&highlight=dltv

ETA Possibly another related thread.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=393200

[smartprofit]

I have 2 tivos series 3 HD. one can download amazon movies. the other one in the living room never downloads. no blue light. i check my amazon account and it says it's over there and i have to delete it from my tivo before i can download again. but there is nothing in the tivo. what should i do?

[segaily]

Have you checked your deleted folder to see if the show is in that?

[scandia101]

I have 2 tivos series 3 HD. one can download amazon movies. the other one in the living room never downloads. no blue light. i check my amazon account and it says it's over there and i have to delete it from my tivo before i can download again. but there is nothing in the tivo. what should i do?

Call amazon and have them "remove" it.

[Daniel Skeen]

We have a Series 2 and a Premier XL, both with lots of disk space.

The series 2 downloads Amazon movies in a hour or so. The Premier take overnight or longer. Same GB wired network, same router, same 20Mb connection. Seems odd to me.

To be fair I can move movies on and off the Premier to a computer or NAS much faster than with the Series 2.

Anyone else have this problem? Any fixes TiVo?