Tivo Unhappiness

Whats up with Comcast?

I will write something, but right now... I am over 24 hours in and I am rip shit!

told tivo they better start thinking up ways to convince me that I want to continue to be their customer

Sure we'll talk about it on vent - but is it looking like the shiny new Tevo is the issue now?

Sorry to hear that. I just bought the new Premiere. I love Tivo, but I'm not too sure I care for the new interface.

Good Luck!

yep.... still on going. Atomm, we had to dump the new menus within a few days. I am not impressed the the premier.

How do you change to the old menus? I was seriously considering trading it for an XL Series 3 at this point.

Should you decide to leave it on the new interface, here is a trick I found on the Tivo forums.

In the mean time, when it locks up, hit thumbs down, then thumbs up, play play play. This will reload the HD GUI on the page ,and fix the issue.

FYI, there is a thread 10 pages long on people locking up.

Atomm, we bought a Premier XL the day they came out. We waited for it to be delivered. It came and was nice but we had locking issues, the 'new menus' were nothing more than ads and it lagged the box so much I wqas looking to return the thing. Also we found alot of the stuff that we transferred from our old box didn't work properly. We switched to the old SD menus and foudn it snappy. After a month of using it we found we locked up one every day or two.

We called tivo and they RMA'd the Premier. We asked them what would be involved in switching our cable card from the old premier to the new one. They told us it would be no problem, we would physically move the card and then call comcast and give them a few numbers. We called Comcast and asked them what would be involved in switching the cable card, they confirmed, it would be easy, move the card and call them with a few numbers.


Comcast:
Friday the new Premier comes. We hook it up, update it...etc. We move the cable card and it doesn't work. We call comcast to tell them the few numbers, they are clueless. We go from one technician to the next, all clueless. While my wife is talking to comcast I call tivo and ask them speciifically what needs to be done so I can relay that to comcast. they tell me it's 4 specific sets of numbers. I tell comcast, still clueless. I ask the comcast girl, "she has worked hard on this and I appreciate this, but maybe it's time to be elevated to a manager or tier II support person. She agrees and asks me to hold. At this poitn I tell my wife I need to go kill some kolbalds, and can she take over. My wife agrees and continues to wait for the tier II or manager. Finally a guy gets on the line, and he asks for our tivo account #, we don't see why a manager at Comcast wants our account info, so we resist. Eventually we discover that the comcast woman forwarded us to Tivo. The tivo guy hearing my wife's frustration agrees to stay on the line and conference in with comcast so he can tell the tech specifically what to do, he and my wife spend over and hour working with comcast, and still they are no where. About midnight, my wife has a tech with a clue. he assures her to fix this he needs to submit a ticket to another department with the numbers from our tivo. He says the issue will be resolved over nigth and he will call back first thing Sat morn to ensure it worked. The next morning I am awakened by the phone with an automated message from comcast saying it should be working.... it is not. I hit '2' to signify it isn't and I am forwarded to a tech who is clueless. Finally I get someone and he says, make it easy on yourself, have a technician come out, I can send one today and I will comp it. The tech comes out, calls the same # as me, gets a person with a clue and the cable card is fixed within 10 minutes of his arrival. About 9 hours on the phone for all this

Tivo:
Now our Tivo is hooked up and working with the cable. Since this is an RMA we have a couple months to return the old tivo. We are cautioned the Premier being RMA'd is now deactivated and if we hook it up to the web, it will wreak havok. I install a switch between the two Premiers, they can see each other, but can't see any recordings on the other box. We call tivo, they blame our network. They tell me I have to use a crossover cable, I try to explain that is the same as my switch as far as the tivos are concerned, he won't trust me, so I hook one it... still same thing. They decided the old tivo needs web access, we explain they had deactivated it. He activates it in the place of our 2nd tivo (a series 2). Still no dice. My wife asks for a manager or tier II tech, they resist. She asks again, and they say after a couple more troubleshooting things, they have us turn on and off all sorts of settings that are in no way related. He suggests we hook up wireless instead of the Gigabit ethernet. We ask for tier II again, he resists. I call customer retention on the other line and ream them out. I demand they put their best support guy on the line with me. I explain the issue to him, he assures me it is easy to fix. He notes, "transfers are disabled", and that is the problem, I go down to my wife to tell her this guy has it figured out, she explains, her tech just did that to re-enable them and fix the problem. My tech says that is a stupid thing to do because it can take 24 hours for that setting to reenable, I explain it was his tech who did it, not us. I suggest he go help the tech who is working with my wife. He finds the guy working with my wife and suggests two or three things and leaves. Guy talking to my wife is clueless, each thing he suggests is more assinine than the last. Finally after nearly 10 hours on the line with Tivo, they give up and say they will have tier III look at it on Monday. (Nearly 10 hours)

Tivo Customer retention:
Wife calls them after all this, explains the story, explains "We are pissed to have paid so much for the Premier XL to get A BETA DEVICE!!". Tells him we have gone from being the biggest tivo fans in the world to considering returning our new tivo and cancelling. He offers her 2 mo free subscription, she tells him it wasn't worth the time to explain it all to him. (1 hour)

Today I do a Google search on the issue, and find a forum with about half a dozen people with the same problem, they say to wait and eventually it will catch up. The issue is that the name of the device doesn't populate right (something we have been pointing out to TIVO the whole time we were on support with them, and they kept assuring us wasn't an issue.) This afternoon, there it is, the name of the device populated correctly. Now, transfers will work. Only trouble is, all the recordings I have been saving can't be transferred, they are copyrighted.

The Pacific
True Blood
Dr Who
and several others.

Only took 48 real hours, 20 hours on the phone.... Bitches!

Holy Crap! That sucks big time.

I was on my new Premiere today and noticed the transfer prohibited. That pisses me off to no end. Me, a legimate customer can not move a show between Tivo's, yet if I want to go to PirateBay, I can get an HD version of the show with no copyright flags and no commercials. I know it's not Tivo's fault, but this no transfer flag has me pissed to no end. Seriously thinking about filling a complaint with the FCC.

Remember, the cable companies tried to cut out Tivo and the FCC stepped in with the Cable Card solution. After they reluctantly agree, the cable companies switch the technology and screw the Cable Card users over. Again, the cable companies are trying to make it easier to use their crappy DVR than to buy your own.

Not trying to discount anything you've said. I would be pissed too.

Right now the biggest problem I have is when changing channels, I loose the video feed for a few seconds, but not the audio feed. It's freaking annoying as hell. Also, when I change to the Tivo menu's, it goes all fuzzy before pulling the menu's up. The weird thing is this didn't happen at my previous home. I'm hoping it's a side effect of the power amp I have on my cable. Going to bypass it and see if things improve.

BTW, how is the THX? I seriously considered getting it, but in the end I was already spending money I didn't need to spend on the Premiere, so I went with the cheaper model. Also, I buy the lifetime. I hate monthly billing.