Tivo update

Well, I woke up this morning and Tivo was still upset.

I actually modified my Tivo a long while ago, so I was convinced it wasn’t a problem with something I did.

This morning, I investigated some of the Tivo hacking sites and discovered that if you’ve done the Turbonet hack (i.e. switched your Tivo to ethernet) and you disconnect your Tivo for a long period of time, then there could be a problem with indexing of guide data… For example, you can’t search by title. (That precisely describes the symptoms I’m seeing).

The problem: Tivo will not index its raw guide data until it’s synchronized its internal clock with an external server. If it’s been a while since a daily call has completed, then this lack of synching is more obvious. Long story short: since Tivo is on my local network, it is also behind my firewall. It cannot make the call out to the clock server because the firewall is probably blocking that special port.

The solution: Apparently, If I redo the Guided Setup (which is the on-screen procedure you follow when you first install Tivo), then the clock gets accurately synched (in a different way than the daily call(?)) and indexing is forced to commence.

I went through the guided setup this morning and at the end, it told me it need 4-8 hours to complete indexing. This means that when I get home, Tivo should be back to health.

Hopefully.