Today, suddenly and without warning, our brand spankin’ new Tivo Series 3 HD box died.
When we turned it on this morning, the live television picture was frozen. Resetting the Tivo didn’t help; the start-up sequence never got past the “Powering up” screen.
We left the unit unplugged for an hour or two, then reconnected the power cable, hoping this might reset the unit. It didn’t. Finally, as a last resort, we called Tivo Customer Support.
I spoke to Jed, who did nothing more than ask me unplug the unit and plug it back in before agreeing to send me a new one. For the record, Tivo offers two options when replacing a defective unit
1) You buy a new unit with your credit card, and Tivo ships it by two-day air. Once it arrives, you send Tivo the old unit; when they receive it, they refund 100% of the purchase price of the new unit.
2) You send in the old unit. When Tivo receives it, they ship you a new one.
There was no explanation of what went wrong or why — but we’ve noticed on the Tivo.com support site a page explaining what to do with your cable cards when your “replacement Tivo Series 3” arrives. While there are no articles about Series 3 defects or issues, the fact that the article makes a reference to replacement units suggests a number of them have been sent out.
Since our Tivo now doubles as our HD-TV decoder, this malfunction is especially annoying, as now we’re stuck watching grainy low-def television until the new unit comes.
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