Well, not even on the same planet as some of the sad stuff that gets posted in the water cooler, but...

My TiVo appears to be dead. My 300 hr, dual 120 GB drive, lifetime subscription Series2. With 5 seasons of West Wing on it. Plus 2 Mythbusters I hadn't watched yet.

I was recabling today, and my wife noticed that none of the lights were on--I noticed that it was still plugged in and felt like it was working. So I power cycled it. Now, all 4 lights were on, and it was outputting exactly nothing to the TV.

The general online concensus is that this sort of thing is either:
a) Power supply. Replacement, $70, I get to keep all my programs. Yay!

b) Fried mobo. Replacement, $150, I get to keep nothing, and I get a refurb 60 hr TiVo. Rather a letdown.

I'm debating whether to get the PSU and try it, or just give up and get a refurb. I don't feel like I've got a lot of cash to drop at the moment, although it's probably not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

Advice? Comments?

Dang Ken, I wish I had some advice, don't own one of those units yet. Hope you figure it out man.

I hope you figure it out too Ken. I have witnessed first hand the grief a person goes through when something such as this happens.

My Wife had tons of her favorite CSI shows on our old cable-supplied unit when it screeched one last time!

She ended up watching the weddings of total strangers on the WE network for days.

Lots of grief.
Rich.

Why do you lose your programs if the mobo is fried ? I assume the hard disk contents are encrypted and the encryption key is tied to the motherboard somehow ?

Even so, unless the HDD is fried I would be mighty PO'ed if I couldn't access my content after a mobo replacement.

It's something like that. Basically, the thing is way, way out of warranty (which I voided anyway by upgrading it). Although... now that I think about it, it may not be, because people can get upgraded drives that already have the OS and whatnot on them. Hmm....

Dang, Ken, that is really sad news. I feel your pain. I hope your Tivo gets resuscitated ASAP!

If JohnK were here, he'd tell you God's just telling you it's time to upgrade. New TV and HD TiVo!

You seem to think I have $1K lying around... not so much.

The drive content is not tied to the motherboard. If the drives are *both* good, then they should work in another *same model* TiVo. However, the lifetime subscription is tied to your motherboard.

My first thought is that you probably have a drive issue. Although, I'm not sure in your case. In a dual drive setup, if one drive fails you are down. Most TiVo units I've seen fail have been hard drive issues, or the internal fan, and then the power supply (these are the moving parts). When you plug it in can you hear the fan/drives spinning up? If so then it is probably not the power supply.

If it is the drives, you have lost your recordings- but you can replace them with a new drive and download a software image at http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/index.php

You select your model of TiVo and then download the image (cost is $20 for the software). You then burn the downloaded iso image to a CD and boot a PC to the CDROM. Have your *new* TiVo hard drive connected as secondary master (/dev/hdc) and it will write the new image to the drive. There are more instructions provided on the site.

This may not be your issue, but I suspect there is a good chance it is. Maybe you don't want to buy a new 200 or 300 GB drive if you are not sure, but if you have a spare 40 or 80 GB drive around, you could test it and possibly get your TiVo running again at least.

My sincere condolences on your loss.

Well, the drives don't spin up when the cable is connected to the mobo, so I don't think it's those. They do spin up when not connected to the mobo, so I'm afraid that it is the mobo, in which case I'm out of luck--it's back to TiVo. However, I ordered a power supply on the off chance that I'll get lucky--the site I got it from seems to think that this problem with this particular type of unit is usually a motherboard. We shall see... in the meantime, I'm going to have to look at TV Guide or something--haven't a clue when all of my shows are on!

I feel your pain. My Series1 DirecTivo died a few months ago and it had months of programming on 120GB drive. Not a biggie since I still have my HD Tivo w/ 750GB. So what I decided was to just use an old 80GB USB HD and reformat it. I went to PTVUpgrade and bought an image for about $20. Burn the image to a CD. Put the new HD in a PC and boot from CD. Burn the Tivo image to the disk in about 15 min. Put the drive back in the Tivo and I'm good to go.

If it's the motherboard, there are places like CSS, PTVUpgrade or Weaknees that can possibly fix it for you. With the introduction of Series 3, there's going to be a lot of older Tivos available to buy/cannibalize.

Alternately, you could go the HTPC route. I'm a Mac guy now and I found a $90 analog USB tuner for my Mac Mini that has a really easy TV guide. Plug in cable tv or antenna and you've got a DVR. VERY easy and converts files to PSP and iPod format in one shot. The HDTV USB dongle was just intro'ed at $150.

Ken, God's just telling you it's time to upgrade.

If God would hand me $1000, I'd do it.

AAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!

Second package in a row, different shipping company. Misrouted.

My cables got sent to Pinole (not exactly Oakland). My TiVo PSU got sent to Fresno (again, not exactly Oakland).

I seem to be cursed.

It's dead, and I've just wasted $75 trying to fix it.

That sucks. Does that mean motherboard ?

As far as I know. Which means new/refurb TiVo.

<cue dancing around wildly and shouting a la Doc Brown>

Woo hoo !!

Don't you hate it when you notice it wasn't plugged in ?

(just kidding)

Oh, everything was plugged in, just apparently not plugged in right. I'm still a little (lot) wary of it, but at least it seems to be functional.