Comments on: Boston: Comcast’s TiVo boxes already having trouble?

By: Dharmesh Shah

Dharmesh Shah — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:23:10 +0000

I had my Motorola box “upgraded” (I use the term loosely) for TiVo. Like you, they couldn’t really upgrade the box — they had to replace it.

I got the green screen occasionally — and only a forced power-off would fix it (didn’t know how to restart the thing. Holding down the power switch for a few seconds didn’t work either).

The last time this happened (a few days ago), the Motorola box just refuses to start (cycles between the “888″ and a small blinking dot on the front LCD panel).

So, I’m now TiVo less and TV-less. Very frustrating. Sat on hold with Comcast for an hour and never through to a tech.

By: Aakar

Aakar — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:27:46 +0000

It is nice to able to look at the Tivo branded OS as opposed to the Comcast version. But as I stated above, I’ve been noticing issues with mine ever since I upgraded the Motorola boxes. One of the most annoying issues is that every now and then, when switching channels the Motorola box will automatically cause my screen to go green, I assume it’s having an issue switching from HD to non-HD or vice-versa. I haven’t found a solution for it except to restart the box and hope to only be forced to wait 5-10 minutes for the boot-up process as opposed to an hour or more.

All the waiting we did for Comcast to roll-out this upgrade seems to be for nothing. They haven’t solved issues relating to the install process or post-install process. I’d like to think that the issues I’ve seen are only hurting a small amount of the population, but knowing Comcast I highly doubt that, that is the case. I personally think they should have just given people having issues a new box with the software pre-installed. Obviously they would have to allow us the ability to some-how move our recorded programs from the old box to the new box, but it would have been less of a hassle I think.

By: yoshi

yoshi — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:09:14 +0000

I recently acquired a Tivo Series 3 box after abandoning DirecTv after 12 years. I received a phone call from the Comcast tech stating he wouldn’t come out to my house until my Tivo had downloaded all the updates (which it had by this time and it took several days to get all of them – much like installing Windows 2000 and going through Microsofts patch installations). And when he did came out to install the Cablecards into the tivo and spending several hours on the phone with “activation” – they wouldn’t work. According to him “they go bad” and we have to go back to the office to pick up “fresh” ones. He left me to ponder how what is essentially a PC Card can someone rot on a shelf – he went back to the office and picked up two “fresh” cards. He installed them and the Tivo went through another update process and everything worked within minutes.

It was an extraordinarily odd experience. But the Tivo has been working flawlessly since then.

By: Doug Aamoth

Doug Aamoth — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:45:31 +0000

Oh great. The tech that’s here now keeps saying how great my signal is and it’s still not working, despite being rebooted several times already. I’ll tell him that the “Welcome! Starting up…” message was on your box for a few hours. Thanks for the info. Maybe I’ll hold off upgrading the other box in the bedroom.

By: Aakar

Aakar — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:42:21 +0000

We had the Tivo update installed this past Saturday at our apartment. What a pain it was. We had 4 boxes that needed the software update, 3 of which went through the “Welcome Starting Up” snag that you are seeing. The technician said that our signal was quite low and was causing issues with the update. After he pulled out our wall-sockets in all the rooms and figured out the issue it took another few hours before the “Welcome Starting Up” screen proceeded to the Tivo screen. I’ll be honest, so far the pain wasn’t worth it. The box in my bedroom has needed to be restarted three times and the boot up process for the Tivo has taken anywhere between 10 minutes to an hour. The tech also had to ask his rep to push out the update three times to 2 of our boxes. And 1 of our box isn’t allowing us to purchase anything from On Demand.

Painful…. oh so painful.