TiVo wireless & WEP problems (and solutions)

So, you have TiVo and you have a wireless home network. Congratulations, you have a terrific entertainment system that will keep you out of the sunlight for many hours. I salute you.

It goes without saying that you've enabled security (WEP) on your wireless network to keep the neighbor kid from looking at naked pictures by glomming onto your DSL connection. However, you're having trouble getting TiVo to synch up with your newly secure wireless network. You aren't alone.

I recently purchased my second TiVo box - the one with the dual tuners that will save my marriage ("You're recording what while I'm trying to watch HGTV? Haven't you already seen all of the episodes of Firefly?"). I also have a new wireless router, as my last one was fried in a recent lightning storm.

(Fortunately, the new TiVo boxes no longer require a telephone line to start up, so no more Vonage problems.)

From the start, I could not get my new TiVo to synch up with the wireless router. When WEP was turned off, all was fine and dandy, but when WEP was turned on there was no joy in Mudville. Occasionally, I could see that the TiVo was registering on the router, but it never got an IP address. And if I kept fiddling with the TiVo setup, it eventually stopped being able to see any wireless networks. That's a disturbing sight - "no wireless networks detected".

Here's what worked for me. Feel free to try it out and don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions.

1. When the wireless networks disappear, the failsafe is to reboot the TiVo. Rebooting always brought back the full list of wireless networks. However, I sometimes got lucky by going out of the TiVo menus altogether (back to live TV) and then restarting the menu procedures. That takes less time than a lengthy reboot, and I sugest you try it first.



2. In my case, TiVo seemed to have problems with the "ASCII" version of a WEP key. You have a choice of a short ASCII (letters and numbers) key or a longer HEX (1-9 and A-E) key. The ASCII key never synced up. The HEX one did - eventually. I suggest using the HEX key.



3. Have a little patience. Although it doesn't seem to make sense technically, sometimes it just takes a few minutes for TiVo to sync up. Once you get the security key set up in TiVo and you've answered the other questions (yes I use DHCP, no I don't need a login for the client), wait a few minutes before doing more fiddling. On one occasion, it took my TiVo about 2 minutes to clear up all of the problems.



4. FYI, the 128-bit security key is indeed more secure than 64-bit key, but it makes your network slightly slower and really, how much super-sensitive information do you send around your home network? With the 64-bit security enabled, my network was fast enough to watch a program ("Kim Possible") in real time as it was transferring from one TiVo to another.

Good luck, and enjoy your couch potatoeing.

• TiVo

Netflix and Tivo - finally?

According to a Hacking Netflix post, Netflix may be nearly ready to roll out video on demand over the net. Could this be the Netflix/TiVo partnership finally coming to fruition?

Netflix and TiVo announced a partnership last year, although nothing's come of it yet. Perhaps it's finally starting to move along.

Netflix's CEO has stated publicly that downloadable movies is the direction he always intended to go. That's why the company isn't named "MailFlix".

There are three points to be made here:

1. For those who ask why anyone would ever need 100Mbps to their home, here's an application that can use nearly all of the bandwidth that you can reasonably throw at it. In Japan, where 100Mbps is common, video on demand (VoD) is very popular and is, in fact, the only video service offered in their fiber to the home (FTTH) deployments.
2. TiVo needs to get off of the ball and get rid of their requirement for an analog phone. The people with enough bandwidth to make this application viable are going to be the ones getting new high-speed services such as FTTH, and those people aren't going to have analog phones. (The phones in Verizon's Fios service look like analog, but they are converted to VoIP just outside of the house.)
3. I am going to need a larger hard drive on my TiVo. Anyone want to but me one of these?
   

Filed in: TiVo telecommunications creations