Registered: Dec 2002
Location: Houston, TX
Posts: 37

TiVo dial-up to get info

I am looking into buying a TiVo (YAY) and was concerned with the time it takes, daily, to dial up to get the information. Does it actually take a long time? I have read where it takes up to 4 hours a day.

Thank you all,

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Possibly a TiVo owner in the near future

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: New York, NY USA
Posts: 275

no. most daily calls are just a few minutes (if even that long). there are rare times when it is longer, such as when new software is available, but the actual phone call is not that long, though the process of installing the new software may take a while.

furthermore, tivo now sends much more information via a middle-of-the-night tv show (usually on the discovery channel), so phone calls are even shorter.

also, you can avoid the phone calls altogether now (except for the first one) by making use of your broadband connection. search the forum for more info on this.

assuming you have a local dial-up number, the phone call will not be an issue for you, so don't worry about it.

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Registered: Dec 2000
Location: North Carolina
Posts: 159

The length of the call depends on a couple of factors: the number of channels in your lineup, how long it has been since the last successful call and whether or not you received the service download off of The Discovery Channel.

When I had dish network, my daily call times were around 7-8 minutes. With digital cable and the service download, my daily call averages about 45 seconds.

Of course, if you are downloading new software, that may take a bit longer (45 minutes or so), but that is only once or twice a year.

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: North Potomac, MD
Posts: 642

Generally 4-15 minutes depending on a whole host of possible factors. About twice a year that may go up to 45 minutes as it downloads a new software release. I'm giving expected worse cases; in most situations it should be better (like 8 minutes instead of the 45!). Only if you have a malfunctioning (very noisy) phone line would it be worse.

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Registered: Nov 2002
Location: ABQ/NM
Posts: 10

I finally broke down and bought a 60-hour Tivo from BB yesterday and proceeded to install it. Set it up for Directv and antenna, and went through the guided setup, everything went smoothly. I didn't feel like sorting through all the channels at the time, so I just selected them all. After about an hour or so of downloading info, I was able to use the rewind/pause/etc features with Live TV.

That was at around 2pm yesterday. It is now nearly 1pm the next day, and the Tivo still tells me that it is organizing data, and the DVR features don't work yet.

Is this normal, or is something wrong?

Thanks.

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Registered: Mar 2002
Location: Location: Location
Posts: 6869

quote:

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Originally posted by dishguys
That was at around 2pm yesterday. It is now nearly 1pm the next day, and the Tivo still tells me that it is organizing data, and the DVR features don't work yet.

Is this normal, or is something wrong?

Thanks.

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