FrankenTiVo

Arghhhhhhhhhh! Never in a million years would we have guessed that there would be a problem with getting our DirecTV TiVo to dial out for programming updates over our new Vonage VoIP connection.

According to Vonage: "Many Vonage customers have successfully set up DirecTV and TiVo series2 connections through the Vonage Phone Adapter." Really? Ha!

We want to meet these Vonage customers because a Google search for "tivo vonage problem" returns 96,300 hits that reveal that many TiVo Version 1 owners had no problems with connecting over Vonage until a few months ago, while most Version 2 owners seem to have had no success at all.

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Arghhhhhhhhhh! Never in a million years would we have guessed that there would be a problem with getting our DirecTV TiVo to dial out for programming updates over our new Vonage VoIP connection.

According to Vonage: "Many Vonage customers have successfully set up DirecTV and TiVo series2 connections through the Vonage Phone Adapter." Really? Ha!

We want to meet these Vonage customers because a Google search for "tivo vonage problem" returns 96,300 hits that reveal that many TiVo Version 1 owners had no problems with connecting over Vonage until a few months ago, while most Version 2 owners seem to have had no success at all.

The problem seems to be that the Vonage VoIP service won't handle data calls at high bit rates. There are a few online comments that point an accusatory finger at Vonage's network, claiming the problem lies there.

One person claims to have talked to the software engineering manager for the Cisco Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA), who said Vonage's gateways need to be configured for "modem pass-through" but for some reason aren't. It might be that Vonage can't do so. A common theory is that Vonage doesn't have full control of all the gateways it uses. Whatever the problem, it is a real pain.

How about using TiVo's built-in networking to get the updates instead? No problem unless you have a DirecTV TiVo. Sigh. Guess what we have?

For reasons that aren't at all clear, DirecTV modified its version of the TiVo platform and removed features, making it less flexible than the original. Could there have been a concern with supportability or was it just DirecTV trying to differentiate its product? Whatever it is it is a completely loony decision. Just look on-line and see how many people are complaining.

If you apply the Iceberg Theory that only 10% of any problem is visible above the surface, that means there are a lot of people out there thinking the DirecTV guys are not too tightly wrapped. If there are any DirecTV people listening, please get in touch, we'd like to find out why your version of TiVo is stunted.

Anyway, you can apparently make DirecTV TiVo regain its full power and majesty. All you need is some software, hardware and a burning desire to boldly go where few TiVo users other than the technically deranged have gone before.

Although we haven't tried it yet, the fix starts with downloading an ISO image of the PTVnet Software from PTVupgrade for $20 and creating a CD. You then connect a second ATA drive to your PC, boot from the PTVnet CD, install the software for your brand of TiVo hardware, and take that drive and install it in your TiVo. Alternatively you can buy a preloaded drive from PTVupgrade.

Then you restart your TiVo, go through the standard set-up procedure, and you will have a DirecTV TiVo with increased hard-drive capacity (up to two 400G-byte drives - roughly 350 hours of video), the USB ports enabled, and a whole load of new features that can be networked (you'll need a DHCP server on your network and one of the supported USB Ethernet adapters).