Coolest Tivo in Town

Thursday July 26, 2007 // Share on Facebook

I almost died the other day when I had a blue-screen on my Tivo. Now, this isn’t just a Tivo. It’s a DirecTivo. Back in the day, DirecTV and Tivo worked together, and made these kick-ass DVRs. Then, DirecTV got greedy and ended the relationship with Tivo, and made these crappy DVRs themselves. I have one of the crappy ones (in my office), which forgets the timezone and reboots on its own whenever it feels like it. I also have 2 of the DirecTivo’s: one in the livingroom, one in the bedroom.

So when the one in the livingroom died the other day, I was heartbroken. Time for electrical surgery.

I cut the warning label and went in… blew out the dust, put it back together and it overheated again. So I figured the fan was bad. It’s a basic 60mm fan, but has a funky connection on it that plugs into the motherboard. Since CompUSA is closed, I headed to US iTek, but they didn’t carry it, either. They had a basic case fan, with a typical power connection. Luckily, I remembered that while in the Tivo, the hard drive has one of those power lines, so I bought the new fan and stuck it in - this thing is powerful, yet quiet. A nice $9 upgrade.

Then Office Depot had laptop cooling pads on sale for $20 this week, powered by USB. So I have one of those under the Tivo, sucking off the hot air and blowing it back in the room. Not what I want during the summer, but the hot air will be a welcome addition come winter.

So with the new fan and cooling pad, overheating shouldn’t be a problem again, and my DirecTivo should live longer… at least long enough for DirecTV to start working with Tivo again (I hope!)

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 26th, 2007 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  1. Eileen said...

    I am so with you on the Directv- Tivo thing. We have two of them! If they ever break I will go insane! We couldn’t believe it when we heard Directv was not offering the Tivo anymore. Insane!

    August 1st, 2007

  2. Eric said...

    Sounds like they may be working together again:

    DIRECTV to Introduce Additional TiVo Features

    Launching in early 2008, the new software download will provide these customers with DVR enhancements offered with the TiVo service, including a Recently Deleted Folder and Overlap Protection(TM), as well as DIRECTV’s Remote Booking feature.

    The ongoing support is good, but I’d really like to be able to get a NEW DirecTivo unit, and not a crappy DirecTV DVR.

    August 1st, 2007

  3. Use your DVRs USB Ports to Power Other Devices - Nagel Family Website said...

    [...] the living room, I have a notebook cooling pad under the Tivo, again plugged into the USB port in the back. If they’re there, put them to use! addthis_url [...]

    April 4th, 2008

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