My fiancee and I are thinking of getting TiVo. Unfortunately, I’ve heard that a phone line is needed to hook it up. We both use cell phones, and don’t have a land line. Will our cable modem work in the stead of the phone line?
Do you have a wireless network installed?
Tivos are 80211.b compatible - that’s how mine does the daily update “call”. Just plug one of the approved wireless B adapters in the back and then go through the setup screens.
However, the stupid thing does need to make the initial call over a phone line. And it needs to be a real phone line - I tried it over VoIP (Vonage on a DSL line) and it didn’t work. I ended up taking the thing over to a friend’s place for the initial setup.
So you need access to a phone line for the initial setup and a wireless network after that.
Well, boo on that then.
With a wired Ethernet network and a Series 2 TiVo, you can get it to place the initial call by setting your dialing prefix to “,#401”. Note the initial comma. That will make the initial connection through the network. I’m not sure if it will work with wireless, but it definitely works with my wired connection.
Here is TiVo’s page documenting the “,#401” feature. Note that they do not officially support it for the initial setup phase – but if you’re lucky it will work.
Thanks for the tip! My cable modem sits on top of the TV stand, so I can just wire it in through that. Hopefully, I can do this for initial setup.
Hopefully, my fiance says “OK” to getting the dang thing in the first place! 
If your cable-modem provides an address via DHCP then it should work fine. If not, it may not work.
I had success with the 401 hack and a Linksys wireless router.
My wife recently set up her new TiVo in her apartment, where she has no landline but she does have wireless broadband. She tried the hack as described, but couldn’t get it to work. She wound up stringing a hundred feet of phone cord (or however much it was) out the window and down into her lower neighbor’s apartment so she could use his phone jack for the initial call.
So it’s quite possible this will be a pain in the ass for you, but don’t let it dissuade you from going ahead with it. TiVo is the greatest thing to happen to television since, well, ever. You’ll wonder how you ever got along without it.
Just be prepared to deal with some hassles on this one setup point.
The latest Tivos (series 2) have a USB port, and will indeed work with your broadband connection, provided you get a compatible USB network interface, and have a router, use MS Internet Connection Sharing, or some other form of DHCP server on your network.
Go to the “Tivo Underground” at www.tivocommunity.com, and either search or ask there.
I bought one of the first Tivos that ever came out, and I upgraded it with a “turbonet” NIC from www.9thtee.com but that’s quite a bit more involved.
I replied earlier, but I’ll say it again: I had to take my Tivo to a friend’s house for the initial call.
I tried every hack out there - the #406, using a wired ethernet adapter, etc. Nothing worked.
But once I got past the initial call, everything was great. Even with a week’s worth of hassles getting it set up the Tivo is worth it. Really, it is.
I have a 40 hour Series 2 TiVo (recently upgraded to 140 hours), and I was able to complete the entire guided setup over broadband with that ,#401 trick and a Linksys USB Ethernet adapter.
Hooking TiVo up to a network is better than using a phone line for a few reasons: it checks TiVo Central Online for remotely scheduled recordings once an hour, instead of once a day; you can use the Music & Photos section to listen to MP3s from your home computer; and if you have multiple TiVos, you can watch programs from one on another over the network.
Does your cable company offer a DVR? I ask because they offer teh following benefits over Tivo:
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Low cost: my Time Warner DVR is $6.95/month and I can always swap it out at the cable office if it breaks.
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Dual Tuners: You can record one thing and watch another, or record two things at once and watch recorded content. The only Tivos that have 2 tuners are the DirectTV ones.
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No need for any connectivity: The cableco DVRs get all their programming information from the cable system itself, so there’s no need to hook it up to a phone line, wired or wireless network.
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Picture-in-Picture: my DVR offers PiP, which is handy during football season. Some people never use it, though.
Of course, Tivo has it’s defenders. It does have a nicer interface than the Time Warner box (which is actually made by Scientific Atlanta). Tivo has “learning features” that can automatically record stuff you might like, while the TWC DVR does not.
All in all, I’m very happy with my TWC DVR. The lack of a huge up-front cost and dual tuners sold me.
TiVo also has more advanced recording features - Wishlists and Season Passes. You can automatically record The Simpsons no matter what time they move it to, or anything with Jon Stewart, or any horror movie, or anything with “they might be giants” anywhere in the title or description, etc.
Don’t try to convince him, Mr. 2001. Users of inferior DVRs will not understand the TiVolution until they get one for themselves. Why, I bet his DVR can’t even stream MP3s. 
I’ve had mixed results with using #401 for Guided Setup: worked fine one time, refused to connect another time. I had to do the run-a-phone-cord-to-the-neighbors thing. But, in TiVo’s defense, I may have disabled the DCHP server on my router some time before that second Guided Setup.
And another thing (if this doesn’t venture too far into IMHO territory): regular, Series II TiVos do not support HDTV (if I’ve been reading the TiVo Community forums correctly). If you’re really, really enjoying HDTV now, or plan on using it in the near future, you may be better off getting an HD-compatible DVR from your cable company.
But they’ll still have to pry my TiVo remote from my cold, dead hands.
“Season Pass”?? Yes, with the TWC DVR, you just press the “record” button (either during a show or in the program guide) and select “record this series” instead of "record this show"and it is done. If you want, you can then go to the “season pass” settings for the show by pressing two buttons and tweak the recording to: record that show on any channel and\or record that show at any time; or record only “new” instances of that show. This was\is helpful for a show like Friends that used to have both “new” episodes and re-runs. I don’t know about your market, but Friends comes on around 6 times a day on my cable lineup - since all I wanted to record (earlier this year) were new episodes, I was able to make this happen by pressing about 5 buttons on my remote.
“Wishlists”? Yeah, that’s be cool, but I prefer dual tuners. I’d much rather be able to record both ITV News and 30 Minute Meals (a favorite of my missus) at 6:30pm EST every weekday than have to choose between the two. You can record two program simultaneously with Tivo, can’t you?? Can’t you??
No, that’s what my DVD player is for. My DVD player can play any region DVD in any format (PAL\NTSC\SECAM), play streamed MP3s, MPEG1, MPEG2 files and WMV files. And it’s funny how you “Tivoheads” ignore the fact that Tivo’s business model sucks and is on its way out.
Sure, Slate and Engadget have both run articles this moth about how Tivo’s “subscription” model is failing against the cableco’s DVRs - after all, just this month, Comcast started rolling out their Motorola-based DVRs running Passport - but you guys will happily stick your heads in the sand and talk about how yours is better… just like the Betamax and Minidisc people did so many years ago.
Hey, if that’s your perogative, knock yourself out. Enjoy those “pop-up ads” that will appear in January 2005 when you fast-forward through a recording. Enjoy paying $400 for something I get for $6.95/month.
And one day, when you find yourself alone in the wilderness - just like the BeOS users of a couple of years ago - you’ll come crawling back to us with your tail between your legs.
Now that Time Warner, Comcast and Charter offer DVRs to their customers… Tivo’s days are numbered.
There already are ads all over the user interface on digital cable boxes. That’s why I don’t subscribe to digital cable. How well does your DVR work with analog cable, huh?
There are no ads in the UI of Time Warner Cable. Don’t blame me if your shitty cable company puts ads in its UI.
It doesn’t. Why the hell would I want plain analog cable anyway? Half the stuff I watch is in channels 150-250 anyway. The only Discovery\Learning channels worth a damn - Discovery Wings (soon to be Discovery Military), History International and the Science Channel - only come with digital cable. Fox Sports World, Fox Sports Atlantic, Trio, IFC , VH-1 Classic, M2, BBC America… these are the stations I watch on a full-time basis, and they’re digital only.
By the way, you can record or watch two programs simultaneously with your Tivo, can’t you??
It’s the only cable company that provides service where I live. I’m not the only one in this situation.
It’s quite a bit cheaper. The only digital channel I’m interested in is HBO, which is only available as part of a package that I don’t want to pay for… but YMMV, of course.
Nope. It hasn’t been a problem so far, and I still have a VCR in case I really need to record two things at once. Thanks to analog cable, I can record one show on TiVo, another on my VCR, and still watch a third show. I have 3 tuners… just not all in the same box.
If I were to upgrade my TV experience, I’d probably get satellite instead of digital cable (since I’m thoroughly underwhelmed by the Comcast digital cable experience), and DirecTiVo can record two shows simultaneously.