series 1 wont go through guided setup

849 Views 9 Replies 4 Participants Last post by unitron, Oct 31, 2011

tm501

Discussion Starter · Oct 31, 2011

I have a phillips series 1 with lifetime. We have had uverse for quite a few years now and the last few days Tivo wouldn't complete a daily call. It would say call interrupted whihc is ridiculous because I was the only one home. I decided to sit down today and go through guided setup. What a HUGE mistake! I've been at it for almost 12 hours now. I go through al the test calls just fine, then on the program call screen it goes to download then after awhile download failed call interripted. I've tried setting th eprevix differently with the pause enter096pause pause and it still doesn't help. Could there be a malfuntion inside the box? Att his point I would just like to watch TV. I don't want to get rid of Tivo but I can't get it to work.

Any suggestions? please!

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lpwcomp

· #2 · Oct 31, 2011

The local access # might have been disabled. You should check to see if there is an alternate # or call TiVo support.

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lillevig

· #3 · Oct 31, 2011

Series 1 Tivos have a history of mothership connection issues (I think there is an entire thread on this). I can attest to this personally - everything from failed connections to problems processing the download data. If you do have a valid local number then just keep forcing the call to see if it eventually works.

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lpwcomp

· #4 · Oct 31, 2011

Yes, it could be a bad internal modem. In which case, you could either use an external modem or install one of these and connect it to your network.

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lillevig

· #5 · Oct 31, 2011

lpwcomp said:
Yes, it could be a bad internal modem. In which case, you could either use an external modem or install one of these and connect it to your network.

Or get brave (and cheap) by trying the serial PPP method. It took me a while to get PPP working the first time but it did the job on a Series 1. I was also able to get it working with a serial to USB adapter for my laptop.

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unitron

· #6 · Oct 31, 2011

If you search posts from about a year ago, and post from about a year before that, you'll see that November-December connection issues, especially for Series 1s, is becoming an annual occurrence.

I think Tivo has trouble paying its phone bill near the end of the year, but that's just a guess.

Another likely possibility is the infamously fragile Series 1 internal modems, that can suffer partial or complete damage from spikes on the line that most other equipment would never even notice.

Before you do anything else, take the phone cord that goes to your TiVo and tie a knot in both ends.

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lillevig

· #7 · Oct 31, 2011

unitron said:
Before you do anything else, take the phone cord that goes to your TiVo and tie a knot in both ends.

Haven't heard that one before. Is that the poor man's EMI filter?

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unitron

· #8 · Oct 31, 2011

lillevig said:
Haven't heard that one before. Is that the poor man's EMI filter?

At the high frequency represented by the rise time of a spike, it's a lot of inductive reactance that isn't a lot of inductive reactance at voice frequencies.

Of course wrapping it around a ferrite core would be even better.

Which takes me slightly off-topic.

I bet a lot of the "parts" at Radio Shack have markup that includes the cost of having it sit on the shelf or in the drawer for months before being sold.

I wonder if they could make a big deal out of slashing those prices and move that stuff faster enough to make as much or more as they do now.

Of course in the case of some of their products, like the horrible excuse for heat shrink tubing they've had for about 40 years now, they should also replace the cheap crap they carry with better cheap crap at a better price to get it to move faster.

Okay, more than slightly off-topic.

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