Tivo Sucks !!

ukaussi · 09-07-2006, 01:15 PM

Tivo refuses to do anything about my Tivo software being corrupted by latest download because it is not their responsibility as it is a Toshiba box.

what a bunch of asshats

I have had TIVO's for years and this is the way I am treated.

Goodbye to you all and good luck as I have cancelled all the accounts

bpurcell · 09-07-2006, 01:16 PM

Ok, goodbye.

DTSDude · 09-07-2006, 01:20 PM

Why not learn how to reload it yourself?

Riverdome · 09-07-2006, 01:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ukaussi

Tivo refuses to do anything about my Tivo software being corrupted by latest download because it is not their responsibility as it is a Toshiba box.

what a bunch of asshats

I have had TIVO's for years and this is the way I am treated.

Goodbye to you all and good luck as I have cancelled all the accounts

What's so wrong with calling Toshiba for support for a Toshiba box? I would love to complain to the light bulb company that produces the bulb for my 61 inch TV but JVC made my TV.

aridon · 09-07-2006, 01:23 PM

Did you call Toshiba, search for a solution yourself or just come here to bitch like a little girl?

Its a fairly easy problem to fix and if you want you could take this time to upgrade your recording hours as well.

Instead you just post here all EMO instead of looking for answers.

ping · 09-07-2006, 01:31 PM

He also posted at the end of a four-page thread of people having hardware problems with the SD-400. This is Toshiba's problem.

bkdtv · 09-07-2006, 05:01 PM

Lots of the Toshiba SD-400 units are dying. My Tivo Series2 is much older than the Toshiba and hasn't had a single problem, but the Toshiba's hard drive is on the verge of death.

Stanley Rohner · 09-07-2006, 05:49 PM

The latest download didn't corrupt your software.

The hard drive crapped out.

What a crybaby.

ZeoTiVo · 09-07-2006, 06:35 PM

My kids use the SD H400 and it is working like a champ still 12 months later. I have it on monthly and after the next round of TiVo boxes into our house expect it to go back to TiVo basic and enjoy a long life as a manual recorder adn DVD player

I have the hard drive image backed up already so I do not have to cry if the hard drive goes

DLL66 · 09-07-2006, 06:41 PM

C-YA

samo · 09-07-2006, 06:56 PM

TiVo software upgrades are known to kill some small number of units. It happened with every upgrade starting with 1.1. TiVo always claims that upgrade had nothing to do with the problem and fault is with the hardware.
So, even if unit was manufactured by TiVo you would have to pay for refurbished unit (unless it was under 90 days warranty). Of course you can try to fix your unit yourself by replacing the hard drive, but I can understand your frustration. Why should you pay and/or spend time fixing something that was working perfectly fine before the software upgrade? When TiVo just started, they would replace damaged units for free (but would never admit that problem was caused by upgrade), but they stoped doing that years ago. They could offer you something just to keep you as a customer, but TiVo CS has never been known as consumer friendly (except for about a year after TiVo was introduced in retail).

TiVotion · 09-07-2006, 07:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ukaussi

Tivo refuses to do anything about my Tivo software being corrupted by latest download because it is not their responsibility as it is a Toshiba box.

what a bunch of asshats

I have had TIVO's for years and this is the way I am treated.

Goodbye to you all and good luck as I have cancelled all the accounts

No offense, but what are you looking for? Sympathy? You won't gain it around these parts by starting a trollish, inflammatory thread.

If you're looking for help, there are plenty of folks here willing to provide it.

This whole idea of people coming here and creating topics like "TiVo Sucks!" with "I'm cancelling all my accounts" in the body of the message is really ridiculous.

Think about it:

If you want help, ask for it. People are anxious to help.

If you don't, then your post serves no purpose, because no one will care that you're cancelling your accounts.

gonzotek · 09-07-2006, 07:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by samo

TiVo software upgrades are known to kill some small number of units. It happened with every upgrade starting with 1.1. TiVo always claims that upgrade had nothing to do with the problem and fault is with the hardware.
So, even if unit was manufactured by TiVo you would have to pay for refurbished unit (unless it was under 90 days warranty). Of course you can try to fix your unit yourself by replacing the hard drive, but I can understand your frustration. Why should you pay and/or spend time fixing something that was working perfectly fine before the software upgrade? When TiVo just started, they would replace damaged units for free (but would never admit that problem was caused by upgrade), but they stoped doing that years ago. They could offer you something just to keep you as a customer, but TiVo CS has never been known as consumer friendly (except for about a year after TiVo was introduced in retail).

Under the current Ts&Cs, if you are currently in a 1-year or greater commitment period with TiVo for service, for a TiVo-branded DVR(e.g. not the Toshiba), the parts portion of the warranty is extended to the length of your agreement.

http://tivo.com/5.11.6.asp

That obviously doesn't help the OP any, but considering the various other negative points the commitment requirement has, at least new subscribers get a little bit of insurance for their money. They still have to pay for labor, of course.

sommerfeld · 09-07-2006, 08:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by samo

TiVo software upgrades are known to kill some small number of units. It happened with every upgrade starting with 1.1. TiVo always claims that upgrade had nothing to do with the problem and fault is with the hardware.

They may even be right, in a twisted sort of way.

Someone told me recently that disk drive manufacturers quote unrecoverable bit error rates of one in 10^14.

If one of these errors hits your video or audio, you probably won't notice. but if it hits the upgrade image, the box is probably toast.

assuming a software image of 10^8 bits, where corruption of any one bit turns the tivo into a brick (not strictly true but good enough for estimation purposes), that would mean that merely from disk errors you'd expect one upgrade in 10^6 to go kablooey.

now, there are extreme measures they could do to harden the upgrade against this kind of thing but given that other failure modes probably kill far more boxes it might not be worth it to them in terms of spending engineering time to improve reliability.

tivoupgrade · 09-07-2006, 08:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by samo

TiVo software upgrades are known to kill some small number of units. It happened with every upgrade starting with 1.1. TiVo always claims that upgrade had nothing to do with the problem and fault is with the hardware.

There is a difference between a small number of units dying after an upgrade takes place and the upgrade actually killing the unit.

Its important to make that distinction because the statement you've just made is that it implies (or could be inferred) that the death is a function of the software, when its not - its the hardware.

There is just as good a chance that a unit not receiving a software upgrade will die at the same time as a unit that does receive a software upgrade because a defective hard drive is a defective hard drive; its just a question of when the defect causes the failure.

Vroomfondel · 09-07-2006, 09:20 PM

Deleted comment - not worth responding to such an infantile post.

DTSDude · 09-07-2006, 09:56 PM

And as a side note , this is why I only by products from the the original producer. Like how I can't buy an ATI card not made by ATI.

greg_burns · 09-07-2006, 10:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DTSDude

And as a side note , this is why I only by products from the the original producer. Like how I can't buy an ATI card not made by ATI.

Guess now you'll buy them from AMD instead.

aadam101 · 09-08-2006, 07:29 AM

Do you call Microsoft when your computer breaks?

ukaussi · 09-08-2006, 11:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aadam101

Do you call Microsoft when your computer breaks?

If it is the software, YES

ukaussi · 09-08-2006, 11:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vroomfondel

Deleted comment - not worth responding to such an infantile post.

Well ya just did so guess your snide comment is more infantile

ZeoTiVo · 09-08-2006, 11:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ukaussi

Well ya just did so guess your snide comment is more infantile

I guess if that makes you feel better ......................

ukaussi · 09-08-2006, 11:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TiVotion

No offense, but what are you looking for? Sympathy? You won't gain it around these parts by starting a trollish, inflammatory thread.

If you're looking for help, there are plenty of folks here willing to provide it.

This whole idea of people coming here and creating topics like "TiVo Sucks!" with "I'm cancelling all my accounts" in the body of the message is really ridiculous.

Think about it:

If you want help, ask for it. People are anxious to help.

If you don't, then your post serves no purpose, because no one will care that you're cancelling your accounts.

The whole idea is to ensure a broad specrum of views gets posted in the forums.

I posted in the heat of the moment and apologize if I offended anyone but TIVO did the same thing to me just over a year ago to my series 2 box. It got hosed after a software upgrade so as I had spare time I copied the image from my other series 2 to the "allegedly" broken hard drive and it worked fine after that. This proved it was a software problem and not a hard drive problem.

Then the other box got hosed and TIVO was persuaded after 3 months of discussions to exchange it.

I am in the minority but most people with the same issue are persuaded that it is a hardware issue and they just blindly agree and pony up the money.

My wife is having the BS from the manufacturer issue with her Range Rover in that it has been in the shop 40 days after only 8 months and the manufacturer just expects you to put up with it and dump the vehicle or trade it in at a huge loss. In this case Lemon Law is being persued as we are protected.

So, sorry, I won't bug you all again unless I get other news.

I may pull the drive and bring it into work to do a fixup on the file system manual using linux so we shall see.

tmorehen · 09-08-2006, 11:52 AM

Actually, the fact that the image from the other Tivo works points to a hard drive problem, not a software problem. Most hard drive failures are in the form of weak bits, which are created during a write operation. That's why most Tivo failures occur after a software upgrade. Re-writing the operating system to the drive often reinforces the weak bit, fixing the problem, at least until the next software update.

It's unlkely to be a software fault, as the image from the other Tivo should have the same software and the same fault. The two Tivo's should have had identical downloads - error checking virtually assures that.

BTW what was your failure mode. Did booting stop with one of the standard errors that indicate unauthorized changes to system files?

ping · 09-08-2006, 11:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ukaussi

It got hosed after a software upgrade so as I had spare time I copied the image from my other series 2 to the "allegedly" broken hard drive and it worked fine after that. This proved it was a software problem and not a hard drive problem.

That proves nothing of the sort. Software upgrades often reveal problems with the inactive partition. Copying an image to that drive may again leave the bad blocks in the inactive partition.

ukaussi · 09-08-2006, 11:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ping

That proves nothing of the sort. Software upgrades often reveal problems with the inactive partition. Copying an image to that drive may again leave the bad blocks in the inactive partition.

Well it does prove it because there have been a number of software upgrades since that time so the inactive partition at the time has been used since, most likely a few times and that TIVO is heavily used

ping · 09-08-2006, 12:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ukaussi

Well it does prove it because there have been a number of software upgrades since that time so the inactive partition at the time has been used since, most likely a few times and that TIVO is heavily used

That also proves nothing, because not every bit of the boot partition is crucial to operation, but once you have a bad one that is, well that's when it gets stuck on boot (like yours).

Sorry, but for it to have been a software problem, it would have had to kill all boxes (or all SD-400 boxes if it was a software bug that was confined to that hardware configuration).

ukaussi · 09-08-2006, 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tmorehen

Actually, the fact that the image from the other Tivo works points to a hard drive problem, not a software problem. Most hard drive failures are in the form of weak bits, which are created during a write operation. That's why most Tivo failures occur after a software upgrade. Re-writing the operating system to the drive often reinforces the weak bit, fixing the problem, at least until the next software update.

It's unlkely to be a software fault, as the image from the other Tivo should have the same software and the same fault. The two Tivo's should have had identical downloads - error checking virtually assures that.

BTW what was your failure mode. Did booting stop with one of the standard errors that indicate unauthorized changes to system files?

Sorry, I don't mean the actual software is bugged as everyone would be crashing etc. I mean the install program or procedure is poorly written so that when it installs it cannot deal with any issues

MickeS · 09-08-2006, 12:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ukaussi

Sorry, I don't mean the actual software is bugged as everyone would be crashing etc. I mean the install program or procedure is poorly written so that when it installs it cannot deal with any issues

It's been discussed here before, and I sort of agree with you. The only way to get around it would be to have the update program run a disck-check beforehand, and say to the user "sorry, the disk is bad, please replace it". Not sure if that's a better or worse alternative. I do know that the installation would take a lot longer.

JYoung · 09-08-2006, 01:37 PM

Unless you run a diagnostic utility, you don't know if the hard drive is bad or not.

My personal belief is that the failure rate has gone up due to the use of Maxtor drives by TiVo.