I've just moved my standard-def DirecTivo to the Kid's room. (The reason I don't need it in the livingroom any more will be covered in another thread shortly.)

Elsewhere on the BBS, I kept remembering how people said "Well, I've never had my unit hooked up to the phone line and it's been just fine thank you. The only thing you lose is being able to do payperview."

So I figured, I don't want the kid doing payperview anyhow, so I don't need to run a phone wire into her room. It was tough enough doing the pair of RG6 cables, I'd prefer not to climb under the house again.

But two things make me suspicious about leaving it this way.

1. The Tivo whines at me (messages appear in the mailbox) if it can't make its daily call.

2. I asked about it during a phone call to DirecTV and they said "The PVR service absolutely requires the phone line." This is in direct contradiction to what I remember reading here on the BBS. I was just talking to a sales flunkie, so I don't put a huge amount of weight on his words, but it's giving me a slight nagging doubt.

So can anyone settle this for sure? My kid needs full PVR functionality, and a definitive answer to this will decide whether I get all scratched and dirty from crawling under the house again.

My DirecTiVo's on day 156 without a phone line (and I know this because it actually tells me the number of days since the last call in its daily nag). The TiVo works totally fine with full functionality, but I do get that nag screen every day. I believe you don't actually get it on a daily basis until after 30 days, but I'm well past that so have learned to just live with it.

You *should* lose PVR functionality on the DirecTiVo after a predetermined amount of time if it cannot make its connection with the mothership. You will still be able to play back previously recorded content, but you will not be able to schedule new recordings or perform searches. Guaranteed. I saw this with my TiVo (series 1 DSR6000) while doing some testing.

BUT, you can get around this with a "nophone" hack which will not otherwise affect your service nor subscription.

Bruno

Darn, two replies directly contradicting each other!

You know what they say: A man with one watch knows what time it is, a man with two watches is never sure.

I dunno if it makes any difference, but the box in question is a Series 2...

You know what they say: A man with one watch knows what time it is, a man with two watches is never sure.

<philosophical moment>

And a man with no watch knows that the time is Now.

</philosophical moment>

Was it me you remember from ages back? I said that series 1 Tivos are ok with no daily call (its just nags about having no information) and you can set to record manually by time and channel. Series 2 Tivos lose all functions as far as I am aware.

Can the series 2 direct tivo units update via a USB ethernet adaptor like the stand alone series 2 ?

My understanding is that the S2 TIVO can be updated via Ethernet by way of USB to Ethernet adapters. Also I was told by a DirecTV person that if no phone line is available that the DirecTivo will update via the Sat steam you just can't get pay per view. I got that info by telling the person that I no longer had a hard line at home and unless they had an adapter to connect it to a Cell phone ET wouldn't be able to phone home.

Here are some points to keep things clear (I hope).

DirecTiVo gets all updates via its satelite connection. The phone connection is merely to collect data on your watching behavior and to order Pay-Per-View. You can order Pay-Per-View manually with a voice call instead, BUT, the TiVo will keep a counter of how many days it's been since its last service call. Once too many days have passed, it will disable the TiVo service.* TiVo service is the ability to use the program database to schedule and record. *this may be different with newer versions of the TiVo system software - you may only get a nag without having service suspended. In all cases, the TiVo can be fooled into thinking it has made a successful call by way of a hack - there are multiple different ways to accomplish this. Been there and done that (both cases) with my Philips DSR6000 series1 DirecTiVo running software versions 2.5.x and 3.1.x

USB ports on Series2 Stand-Alone units work out of the box. On DirecTivo they are NOT enabled by the system software installed on the units. I believe they can be enabled via hacks.

With Ethernet enabled on a Stand-Alone TiVo (any) you can use a special call prefix (I believe it's #401) to make the TiVo do its daily call over Ethernet. This downloads guide data which would otherwise come over the phone. I can't recall if this works on a DirecTiVo in place of the service call.

Another difference between Stand-Alone and "DirecTV with TiVo" is that series2 Stand-Alone TiVo boxes come with HMO (Home Media Option - aka streaming content from PC) enabled as part of the monthly subscription. This is NOT available on DirecTiVo units even with the most current software updates. DirecTiVo units (at least standard-def ones) are all dual-tuner. There are no dual-tuner Stand-Alone boxes (which sucks big time).

Phew. Personally, I think the future looks somewhat bleak for TiVo. Regardless of how much I like their product, I don't believe they have what it takes to stay alive in a market that's only getting mroe competetive and where (some of) the other players are adapting and moving (much) faster along with industry trends.

Bruno

Let me add a little more information. My box is a Series 1 Philips DSR6000. It's not hacked beyond adding more space. It's running 3.1.0b-02-1-001. And it's now on day 157 of not being connected to the phone line.

And it has always been thus, ever since moving into this house of the awkwardly placed phone jacks. I'll either drag a cord to the TiVo, or drag TiVo to a jack every six months or so, just for fun, but it's never lost recording functionality.

Of course, my TiVo's physically located in the good ole U S of A, so it's got that going for it, I guess.

What players ? The only thing out there is Replay and that doesn't do what I want (no offence replay users) and windows media center + bunch of other media center apps that also don't do what I want.

Digeo's Moxi, NDS's PVR, Echostar PVRs, Scientific Atlanta PVRs, Motorola PVRs, Microsoft Media Centers and Media Extenders to name a few. Scientific Atlanta boxes are not the prettiest things to look at and have more than their share of poorly designed UI/logic, but they dont care as long as their customers are happy. And their customers are not you nor I. They're the cable-co's. Cable-Co's move like lemmings. They tend to all go with the same or similar solutions as one another. MS isn't going to sit around packing XP Media Center into only high-priced PCs. You'll start to see a lot more products featuring their OS at lower price points and supporting Open Cable as well as other initiatives. The Satelite industry is practically closed to competition, with Dish Network using only boxes of its parent, Echostar Communications (asian boxes). DirecTV is likely (pretty much a done deal) to start offering NDS boxes instead of TiVo in the near future (News Corp has a stake in both, so it makes sense - it's also been announced). Their contract with TiVo (responsible for the vast majority of TiVo units shipped each quarter and currently in use) ends in 2007. I'm just amazed that no one else has provided an interface closer to TiVo's instead of the junk I see out there (SA, Motorola and Echostar). Moxi is nice but not widely adopted yet. The NDS solution also looks pretty nice.

TiVo needs to move in a big way in the stand-alone market. Unfortunately I don't believe the stand-alone market is going to offer tremendous room for growth when Open Cable is around the corner and HDTV set to push harder than it ever has. You never know though. maybe they'll be ready for Open-Cable before everyone else. Maybe they can convince cable-co's to go with their solution. But doubtful. See, TiVo is a software company. Cable-Co's want a piece of hardware with some software on it and don't want to pass another monthly bill on to their customers. If anyone is going to make another $5-15 per month for PVR "service" it will be them, not TiVo. And with the box makers already set making their own lackluster software that just needs to be "good enough" - well, you get the picture. At least with Open Cable you'd be able to use a retail TiVo in place of your cable-co's supplied box. This may be able to stimulate some sales. But that means selling to the consumer, which in this industry, is not anywhere as lucrative as selling to the content provider.

I didnt write Replay above because they're not even on the map right now. I also just saw Tom's post above. Knowing the TiVo name is good, but not necessarily good enough. The bottom line in my opinion is that TiVo doesn't have to invest radically in engineering to win the struggle to stay alive, but rather in marketing and business strategy. Their current revenue model is not sound for future growth.

Bruno

That's true I forgot about the cable boxes with DVR built in.

This seems to indicate that DirecTivos don't need a phone line after the initial setup. Hm.

It's established you can run without a phone line, at least temporarily, if not indefinitely. And verifiably permanently with a very easy hack.

Now, have you called DTV to hook up service to both your boxes yet? This now jumps right back to the thread I started. I'd like to know if this is gonna be cool. Their current (written 2001) licencing agreement states that to get the special $5 per receiver deal you have to have all units connected to a phone line. Otherwise you pay full price for each. DirecTV sales person on the phone said you can have multiple without a phone line though (that's in contradiction with the printed terms I read online, but obviously we didn't bring this up)

Bruno

Yeah, I found another thread where someone from DirecTV tech support debunked the "full price for both receivers" thing. He said that's flatly not true.

I'm still considering doing the phone line work anyway because it's easier than doing the nag-removal hack and easier than removing the daily nags by hand.

Yeah. This is from the guy that edited the resources in a DLL so that he wouldn't have to stop the device first!