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TiVo and DirecTV in a Cellular-Only Household?
Balthisar
asks: "Like so many others, my wife and I have recently made the move to pure mobile telephone use, and have disconnected the landline permanently. Today, I turned on the TiVo and received a stern warning that only three days of the program guide remained! I screwed up. Anyone have a good emergency way of refreshing the program guide while I wait for my TiVo networking card to come in? An additional concern is DirecTV: I never use Pay Per View, but it's not connected, either. Any horror stories about not having your DirecTV connected to a phone line? If you don't have any advice, at least take this as a cautionary tale to make a good checklist before taking the leap of eliminating your terrestrial line!" This topic was handled in a previous article over 2 years ago. What suggestions do you have for others, that find themselves in this position?
DirecTV does not require a phone line, unless you use pay-per-view options. It gets the program guide updates over the air. If your phone has an accessory to provide dial tone, you'd be able to use that to allow it to phone home. However, you'll probably have to tell them about the phone number, as they don't seem to like units reporting in from the phone number that's not associated with the account.
As you've figured out, TiVo gets its updates over the phone line. If you have an integrated TiVo/DirectTV receiver, I'm not sure what happens in that case. I've got the original, and it can only do it over the phone line (not including network mods).
It's not a problem. You'll get a warning every time you press your tivo button that says something like "It's been 175 days since you've dialed up" but unless you want to do pay-per-view it simply doesn't matter. At least it hasn't mattered to me. The Direct Tivo sends programming data to you machine via the satellite.
Heil Sig! -Rob
I have a tivo and am cellular only. I took it to a friend's house, left it overnight to update, and brought it home. I have hooked up a usb->ethernet adapter, and run it through a router to my broadband connection. The latest tivo software (downloaded while it was hooked up overnight at my friends) supports usb ethernet natively.
It works perfectly, with the only hassle being that initial setup.
And phone line or not, you can always buy your Pay-Per-View shows by going to the DirecTV website.
I had mine disconnected for a while and I slowly lost programing I paid for. I ended up having to call tech support, they said that it needed to be connected to verify the card was still in use.
Devise, Repair, Solve, Build
http://www.tivocommunity.com
Enjoy!
I presume you have a Series 1 DirecTiVo, otherwise the network card you bought won't work. If your DirecTiVo is a brand new one, it is Series 2 and will not accept the network card you listed.
As others have said, there's no need to have a DirecTiVo connected to the phone line except in one specific case: software upgrades. Software upgrades are always sent over the dialup modem, not over the satellite. There is a software release for DirecTiVos going out right now that fixes a significant bug (the TiVo always reports that there's only a day or two of guide data, even though there's far more). The bug is only cosmetic though and doesn't cause any functionality loss, according to most users. If your TiVo software is version 3.1.0b or less (Series 1) or 3.1.1b or less (Series 2) you'll need this new version. The version number is on the System Information screen.
In your case, I'd wait a few weeks until the software is completely rolled out to all users. Then take your TiVo over to a friends and force it to dial in right then (there's a selection in the TiVo phone setup to do this). This call will take about an hour and download the new software.
Others have mentioned tivocommunity.com, excellent resource for stuff like this.