So you just paid $800 for your brand new TiVo ($1,000 if you ), waited patiently as the morons from the cable company tried to get their heads around installing in a non-TV device, and finally sat down on your couch to begin recording and commercial skipping all that great HD programming -- just to find out that your damn remote doesn't work! As many home theater aficionados know (first-hand, unfortunately), plasma TVs emit a significant amount of EMI and RFI signals from their surfaces that can confuse nearby IR sensors and render them useless, especially if your home theater gear juts out in front of the display.

Well this problem has been happening in spades to new Series3 owners, as the box's IR receiver seems especially sensitive to other frequencies, so much so that they often need to press a button 10 to 15 times for a command to actually register. TiVo seems to be aware of the issue, but has not yet offered a solution, which is why the good folks who frequent the TiVo Community forum have put their heads together and come up with several effective workarounds. The most ghetto of these fixes involves attaching a tiny opaque "hood" around the box's sensor window, so that plasma interference can't go through but line-of-sight remote commands are still received.

Since you probably don't want an ugly piece of cardboard hanging off of your beautiful $800 device, forum user "lightspeed" has come up with a slightly more difficult but much more aesthetically pleasing alternative: after carefully disassembling your Series3, you simply need to attach 6 to 8 small squares of GLAD Press 'n Seal to the inside of the IR window on the front face plate, which will serve to shield the sensor from the bad signals but let the good ones get through. Good job, intrepid TiVo devotees, but what we wanna know is: out of all the folks who beta tested this product, was there not even one of them who used it with a plasma and could have caught this problem much sooner? TiVo: makes a great product, but needs a little help in the and quality assurance departments.

- Problem
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Posted Sep 19th 2006 7:01AM by
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So if you're a consumer electronics manufacturer in the midst of a highly-publicized product release, you'd think that the last group of customers you'd want to alienate would be the die-hard fanatics who participate in your forums everyday and were among the very first to place orders for said product, right? Well judging by the tone of the comments on the TiVo Community boards, that's exactly what the company has down to its so-called VIP subscribers -- you know, the ones who possess those coveted lifetime subscriptions and woke up extra-early to ensure that their new would arrive the next day. Except TiVo apparently wasn't ready to handle the deluge of orders that it received, and after two days of wondering what the heck was going on (calls to customer service were met by confusion and misinformation on the part of the phone reps), everyone finally received an email confirming the delays and promising shipment by Friday.

Luckily TiVo had the good sense to refund the shipping charges -- in some cases $50 worth -- to these early adopters, but much to the VIPs' displeasure, they learned that they'd be unable to cancel their pending orders if they wanted to go the retail route; and what's more, there was some confusion as to whether store-bought TiVos would even be eligible for the $200 . As of this writing it seems that only a handful of folks actually got their boxes on Friday, with everyone else scrambling to reschedule the CableCARD installation appointments they'd made with their . So while there's little argument that TiVo makes a fine product with a world-class interface, perhaps when it eventually comes out with the Series4, it'll do some better planning or leave distribution to the -- apparently, TiVo and e-commerce don't seem to go too well together lately.

[Via ]

Posted Sep 12th 2006 9:55AM by
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You didn't think we'd leave you without some accompanying videos, now do you?

Dave shot some sweet videos of unboxing the new , the new TiVo bootup sequence, and going through all the new high def video modes. Definitely a must see for TiVo fans whose staid boxes have changed very little in the past few years. Enjoy!

- unboxing
- startup sequence
- video mode options

The world's first THX-certified, dual CableCARD DVR has finally arrived in the form of TiVo's Series3. It doesn't come cheap with a ( ), but it's a fine cable company DVR replacement if your budget allows it.

What are you waiting for, click on for the full rundown and lots more pics!

Posted Sep 10th 2006 2:33AM by
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Posted Sep 7th 2006 6:43PM by
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Ever since TiVo realized that it was actually going to be and that lifetime subscriptions , those subscribers already locked into the $300 lifetime deal found themselves in a bit of a quandary -- how would they be able to upgrade to without becoming one of the plebes paying for service by the month?

Well current Series 1 and 2 owners looking to get their HD recording on need no longer worry about losing their lifetime subs, thanks to a just-announced offer by TiVo that will allow them to transfer that all-you-can-eat goodness to newly purchased Series 3 boxes -- with a few catches, of course. The TiVo Community forums are buzzing about a recently-recorded Teleworld-broadcast promotion, wherein lifetime subscribers who purchase their Series 3 devices prior to December 31st can transfer those subscriptions before January 31, 2007 for exactly $199; and what's more, this offer gives them a full year of free service on the box that they already own. Yeah, we know, you'd think that paying would be enough to get those subs switched over for free, but considering that a transfer was previously thought to be impossible at any price, in the long run this is still a great deal -- plus, now the rest of us know that by the end of the year at the latest.

See, everyone wins.

[Via ]

Looks like Popular Mechanics either jumped the gun or got the scoop, but either way it's displayed plain as day in their October issue that the price on the .

Um, that's it. Didn't sound like there was a launch date issued in this month's book, but big ups to reader Matt for sending it in!

You've been waiting for this moment for a long time now, so we're not gonna get all mushy and backlinky here, instead letting you feast your eyes on the first unboxing pics of the almost-mythical . Keep reading for a few key shots, then head over to our sister blog for the whole glorious ritual..

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