TiVo Troubles

What do you do when you want to watch a show, but you won't be home to watch it?  Press record on the VCR of course!  Well, at least that's what I have always done :-)  The problem came if I wasn't going to be home all day before my favorite show (i.e. Chuck), then I had no way of recording it.  My fall back was to watch the show online later in the week.

Anyway, I was told I was living in the dark ages by recording on my VCR.  Plus, my trusty old VHS tape was getting tired of being recorded on over and over and over again and was starting to give me fits.  So I finally broke down and got a TiVo.  I ordered a refurbished one from the TiVo website and got it for half the price I could buy it for at the store (hooray!).  It was delivered last weekend, and I tried to set it up after I got home from McCall.  It shouldn't be that difficult, right?  At first I tried to set up the TiVo through the VCR.  That didn't work so well.  So then I tried connecting the TiVo directly to my AV receiver.  I thought I had done everything right, but it still wasn't working.  Thanks to my friend Jared, I realized I just needed to push one button on the receiver to change a setting and, voila, it worked!  The next problem came with connecting to the internet.  I had purchased a wireless USB network adapter, but the TiVo just would not connect.  Come to find out, the software on my TiVo wasn't capable of connecting to a network with WPA security.  After I changed the security to WEP, it partially connected, but couldn't finish the connection by assigning an IP address.  I was so stinkin' frustrated!

I love Google.  I found out the steps that I could take to update the software on my TiVo to allow a WPA security connection.  This morning I decided to take a risk and temporarily turn off all security to my wireless network.  The TiVo connected perfectly.  Then (thanks to a forum online) I manually connected to the TiVo service two more times and restarted my entire system.  This upgraded my software version, and I was able to turn my WPA security back on and update my TiVo network settings.

So, to make a long story short, I FINALLY (after an entire week!!!) have my TiVo up and running!  I downgraded from Standard to Basic cable to balance out the cost of my TiVo service, but I'm thrilled.  I played around this morning and set up a pass to record all of the Olympics.  Hooray!