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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).
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.
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
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.