Creating Manual recordings w/o activation service

[gtshipp]

About 3 months ago a friend gave us a his Tivo Series 2 (80 hr) with the last months of activation service. When this expired, we just continued to use the unit as a TV recorder for the 3 shows our kids watch. Then one day the Time got off by 8 minutes and it was messing up our manual recordings. So I used a phone line to connect up to the Service center.

This worked great in the sense that the time got updated, but at the same time we lost the ability to create manual recordings. In calling technical support, the first technician said that I could reset the box or try removing the power for 2-5 min, and it should resolve the problem.

Unfortunately this didn’t work, so I got more aggressive and from the menu options, I wiped and cleaned everything. This only created more headaches in that I had to work my way though the setup guide process again.

Calling technical support again they looked up the account configuration status and they told me that my unit had be upgraded with a patch that actually blocks the unit from being able to create manual recordings without an active account (of which we do not have at this time).

I think the Tivo service is great; we just can’t justify the need for it with our small kids now. In the future that will be another thing. All I want to be able to do is to use my existing Tivo unit to create manual recordings. Can anyone out there help me get back to this point, or steer me in the right direction in being able to accomplish this.

Thx

[Rick Travis]

Maybe you could use Instantcake to roll back to prior to the last upgrade?:)

[Lou Jacob]

About 3 months ago a friend gave us a his Tivo Series 2 (80 hr) with the last months of activation service. When this expired, we just continued to use the unit as a TV recorder for the 3 shows our kids watch. Then one day the Time got off by 8 minutes and it was messing up our manual recordings. So I used a phone line to connect up to the Service center.

This worked great in the sense that the time got updated, but at the same time we lost the ability to create manual recordings. In calling technical support, the first technician said that I could reset the box or try removing the power for 2-5 min, and it should resolve the problem.

Unfortunately this didn’t work, so I got more aggressive and from the menu options, I wiped and cleaned everything. This only created more headaches in that I had to work my way though the setup guide process again.

Calling technical support again they looked up the account configuration status and they told me that my unit had be upgraded with a patch that actually blocks the unit from being able to create manual recordings without an active account (of which we do not have at this time).

I think the Tivo service is great; we just can’t justify the need for it with our small kids now. In the future that will be another thing. All I want to be able to do is to use my existing Tivo unit to create manual recordings. Can anyone out there help me get back to this point, or steer me in the right direction in being able to accomplish this.

Thx

The problem you've had is that your unit updated to the latest version of the TiVo operating system software when it dialed into their servers.

The newer versions of the software will not permit you to use the manual recording capability of the unit without an active account.

Our position is that if you are currently attempting to use a TiVo, it should be subscribed and paid for as we'd like to see TiVo eventually become a profitable business. These systems, especially systems as old as yours, were actually sold for less than their actual costs with the intentions that users would pay for the service, and the units cannot be supported without a cost to TiVo.

I understand that you don't value the TiVo service enough to actually pay for it, but unfortunately, that is what is required to use the TiVo in the way that you'd like.

Lou