So a week and a half ago, I come back from going to the gym on Sunday and try to watch the episode of Meet the Press that my TiVo was supposed to record. Instead, when I turn on the TV I just see the screen frozen on what looks to be an episode of the Power Puff girls. I try changing the channel with the remote but nothing works. Getting desperate, I unplug the TiVo and plug it back in.
After plugging it back in, everything seems to be working fine (well, except that it didn’t record Meet the Press … it had been stuck on Cartoon Network since sometime after it recorded an Episode of Big O). I was going about my day as usual when my roommate comes up to me and says, “Your speakers are making a buzzing noise.”
The speakers are just a year old and are well taken care of so I didn’t really believe him. I assumed that he had messed something up and that his Xbox was probably causing problems or vibrating or something. Still, when I went to go investigate I could definitely hear the buzzing. Then as I slowly unplugged components I was left with only one device … the TiVo.
I could hear it buzzing and it stopped when I unplugged it so I thought maybe the fan is just rubbing against a cable. So I stick the eraser end of a pencil into the fan vent stop it from rotating. The buzzing continues though. The next step was to take the TiVo into my room and try plugging it into a different circuit (a solution that some people on the TiVo support bulletin boards suggested). Unfortunately that didn’t work.
Still curious as to what exactly was making the buzzing noise, I popped the cover off the TiVo and took a look. It was pretty obvious that the noise was coming from the hard drive (which was only a 40GB drive … I should totally replace that, or add a second hard drive or something). The weird thing was that if I turned the TiVo on its side, the buzzing stopped.
Anyway, I quickly called up TiVo support and explained the issue to them. They said it was most likely a hardware problem and that I needed to RMA it. Unfortunately for me, even though it was under warranty, they weren’t willing to pay shipping to get it back to them (and since it was a gift, I didn’t have the receipt to just take it back to the store).
So I FedEx Grounded the TiVo back to them and got an email on Thursday saying that they’d received it and that my new replacement TiVo would be sent out in 2 business days. Now I’m just trying to kill time until I get it (at which time I’ll have to go through the whole initial setup thing again … ouch).
Anyway, cross your fingers and hope that the new TiVo will be arriving in the not too distant future.
February 2nd, 2006 at 8:41 pm
The suspense is killin me. KILLIN ME!
February 2nd, 2006 at 10:19 pm
The lack of TiVo is killing me. I’m going to miss the Office again tonight.
February 2nd, 2006 at 10:58 pm
Oh suck it all! Me too for the third week in a row! Damn it all to heckfi. I completely missed BSG last week, too.
February 3rd, 2006 at 2:54 am
Battlestar Galactica was nothing too great. I’m actually starting to get a little bored of it now.
February 3rd, 2006 at 4:12 am
Woah. I caught the last minute of it and I want to see the rest. I am worried that they will doom and gloom themselves too much.
February 3rd, 2006 at 8:10 pm
Ya’ll are sounding like those AA’s I mocked and then got trolled on.
February 3rd, 2006 at 8:27 pm
You mocked alacoholics anonymous?
February 6th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
So what is the word on Son of TiVo?
February 7th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Any word of Son of TiVo?
February 7th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
Goddam blogger.
February 8th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Has the omnipotent tivo monster returned? Status please! Maybe that’s what the silence means?
February 9th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Exteriminate all rational thought.
Videodrome has inserted a TiVo into my abdomen.