Slashdot Mirror
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?
I dunno about DirectTV, or Tivo, but I have DishNetwork and it doesn't mind not being able to dial out. I leave a phone line hooked up to it so that we have the CallerID-on-TV feature, but since I don't use PPV and am the suspicious type, I've effectively disabled its dial-out capability by setting the "dial this number for an outside line" to a "4". Six months, no probs.
As for Tivo's guide, maybe I'm missing something but is it that big a deal? I've never used a Tivo but I'd guess that the guide you get from your satellite TV receiver ought to have most of the same functions. Granted, it won't guess at shows you might like to watch, but then again that 'feature' leads only to bad standup comedy jokes which reference Will and Grace, in my experience...
Perfectly Normal Industries
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).
Take your Tivo to somebody else's house and hook it up to their phone line, then force it to make a call. It will download like 2 weeks worth of data.
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.
I don't know about Tivo, but I once worked for a national store that sold DirecTV units. We were told by the DirecTV people that they often detected pirated units by them calling from an unauthorized number, or not calling at all. Now obviously they also knew which machines had hacked (or stolen) cards somehow and they would somehow disable those machines (sounded like some sort of bad BIOS flash from what the DirecTV representatives said). They asked us to be sure to tell the customers that the units NEEDED to be plugged in.
I was skeptical of their ability to do this, but we did have a person try to return a dead unit shortly thereafter and we knew he had been trying to purchase units from us so he could steal the cards and then return them when our electronics associates were at lunch or off.
But that was several years ago already... Still, if it was me, I'd give them a call just to be sure.
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
I presume that you have a Series 1 TiVo given the 9thtee card. So do I, but since I don't need anything more than daily updates, I use a serial cable to hook mine up to my Linux box (Windows boxes work too). Not bad for $5.
Responding to your post, in no particular order...
/. readers.
Ask Slashdot is a section for people to pose their questions to the Slashdot community. Slashdot is made up of, in large part, a tech-savy and geek-indentifying community. I'd be willing to bet that a higher percentage of Slashdot readers have TiVo and/or ReplayTV than the general population. So this seemingly narrow question that, on the surface, would not be helpful to anyone is probably of interest to a large number of
Likewise, those lucky enough to play with tech-related toys are likely to have more money to throw around. Again, compare Slashdot's readers to the general population, and I'll be you'll find a higher income among the Slashdot population. So while saying that the poster owns a TiVo and ReplayTV may cause envy in some Slashdotters eyes (mine included), it probably isn't enough to cause any fits of jealousy over this damnable soul who is clearly of a higher social and econimic standing than the rest of us slobs.
Finally, I very much doubt that the manual has instructions for not using a phone line. My guess is it simply says that TiVo requires a phone line. But that would seem to not be the case. And Ask Slashdot could be considered "checking a website..." The poster is asking for Slashdot's collective knowledge on the subject. Consulting Google is the only valid point you bring up. Plugging in tivo and "no phone line" brings up MOSTLY ads, but a couple of valid-looking links.
But Ask Slashdot isn't meant to only to give the origonal poster an answer (hopefully) to their question, but to provoke discussion and inform others. So someone with a unique experience might post here, and only here. Their knowledge may be absent from every single webpage out there, and a Google search could be useless. Or maybe I was thinking about getting a TiVo, but know I don't have a phoneline for it to work with. After reading this thread, I might learn that I definitely can or cannot buy a TiVo and expect it to work.
Or, as someone who doesn't have and doesn't plan on getting a TiVo, I may just be curious about the problems of living without a land-line. A friend of mine recently killed her phone line, and I'm curious how others have dealt with possibel problems. Dealing with TiVo and ReplayTV is only a small subset of the larger problem of living without a land-line. So I'm interested in what people have to say, not only about TiVo and ReplayTV specifically, but about living without a land-line in general.
The "Your problems aren't important enough so we'll ignore them" argument has always seemed shallow to me. The fact of the matter is the editors (for whatever reason) decided to post this question to Ask Slashdot. Maybe they were currious themselves. Maybe it was just a slow news day. Maybe the specific goal was to piss someone like you off to the point of posting a knee-jerk, thoughtless response to prove some point about the nature of Slashdot. We'll probably never know.
But clearly a sarcastic comlaint is the right sollution...
-Trillian
He seems to be doing quite well at researching this. He is asking on a forum with lots of people who are knowledgable about all techy toys.
I am too dumb to know how my audio-visual equipment works and feel it is easier to write this to slashdot than to research anything. Please tell me what to do 'cause I can't be bothered to read the manual, check a website, or consult google. Oh, and I am also so damn rich (bling bling), I have both a TiVo and a ReplayTV. Please help me out, I am in such a bind.
One of the benfits of asking technical questions on Slashdot is that almost always there's someone there who can point you to an even better source of information such as Tivo Community.
http://www.tivocommunity.com
Enjoy!
It's pretty easy to set up your cell phone to have TiVo call through it. Just get an adaptor for your cell phone. I've seen adaptors that allow you to plug your cell phone into a laptop modem, and use it to dial up. Just plug the phone cord out from the TiVo and into the cell phone adaptor, then use that to make short calls to update your tv guide or whatever. Don't know if it would work for sure (never tried it myself), but it's worth a shot. My phone came with an adaptor that plugs into the mini jack I plug my earplug into, and has a standard phone jack on the other side. I'd imagine you could get such a device at radio shack or something.
If you can read this then I forgot to check "Post Anonymously"
I guess you haven't tried to get any credit (cards or otherwise) since you went cellular only. A friend just went through this problem. The "great" USA Patriot Act has made it illegal for companies issuing credit to do so for anyone who does not have a landline telephone number.
That said - I cannot find it explicitly in the act , after a quick review. (EPIC.org). But it may be that I missed it, or that the details are in some resulting regulation, or that that is the interpretation of the credit issuer.
My buddy was trying to buy furniture, and got turned down even tho he has an excellent credit record. After doing the digging the credit issuer told him that they could not issue because he gave them only a mobile phone number.
I'd love to hear about your experience should you apply for new credit.
True friends are hard to come by... I need more money. - Calvin
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.
(Putting on the dad cap) Doing nothing is always an option. This case sounds more like an issue of bad planning, rather than a technological one. You could buy a wired phone to cellular adapter (such as the Dock N Talk), but why spend all that money when your ethernet adapter is arriving soon? Why didn't you buy your ethernet adapter sooner or hang onto the landline until all of your communication needs were met?
As a TiVo owner myself, I can say with confidence that not having the service available for a day or two is not a make or break issue, but it could have been prevented by simple planning.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
If you only have 1 DirecTV receiver then it's true, you don't have to have it connected to a land-based telephone line. BUT, if you have multiple DirecTV receivers in your home, then you MUST connect them all to a telephone jack in your house or EACH of the receivers will be charged the full monthly subscription price. So, let's say you have 3 DirecTV receivers in your house and you've signed up for the $39.99 per month DirecTV package...if you don't connect any of the receivers to a telephone jack then the total monthly price would be, 3 receivers times $39.99 for a total of approx. $120 per month!!! If you connect all of your receivers to a phone jack then DirecTV only charges you $4.99 for the second and third receiver. I can tell you for a fact that this is what they do. DishNetwork on the other hand doesn't have this policy. DishNetwork does NOT require you to connect any of your receivers to a phone jack, and they will only charge $4.99 per month for each additional receiver. So, in summary, if you have only one receiver, you won't have any problem with either DishNetwork or DirecTV as far as not having them hooked up to a phone jack, but if you have more than one receiver in your house, then DirecTV pretty much forces you to connect all of them to a phone jack or you'll pay a huge monthly subscription price for each receiver. Hope this helps.
If you do that, how the heck is Tivo supposed to find out how many times you rewound during the superbowl half-time show?!