My beloved Sony SVR-2000 TiVo is dead. Well, not quite dead, but for all practical purposes, it’s dead. The early Series 1 TiVos have a notorious problem, the modem circuit dies and then it can’t phone home for program schedules. Without program schedules, it can’t record the programs you want. Everything works except the modem, so it can still record and play back, it just doesn’t know what to record or when to record it. So without a modem, a TiVo is totally useless.
Fortunately, there is a solution. Some TiVo hackers sell a circuit board you can add into the box, it gives you an ethernet port so you can get the program schedules directly over the internet. I’ve resisted making any upgrades to my TiVo since it was working fine, but I guess now I don’t have any choice. I was hoping to make this machine last until the new HDTV TiVos shipped in a year or so, maybe I can do the repair and stretch it out a little longer. I really do not want to buy a new TiVo right now.
My TiVo only has 3 days of programming schedules left, so on Monday, I’ll have to get on the phone, order the ethernet upgrade, and have it shipped overnight so I can get it installed before the schedules run out. What could possibly go wrong with that plan?