Post by dkennedy on Mar 21, 2006 5:34:20 GMT -5
TiVo Has Been Cutting Out More Than Just the Commercials Lately
March 20, 2006
By Eric A. Taub, New York Times
The first episode in the new season of "The Sopranos" ended in a classic cliffhanger moment, with Tony on the floor after being shot by his uncle Junior. But some viewers who recorded the show on their TiVo digital video recorders to watch later might not know how close Tony came to being whacked.
Because of a software glitch in some machines, TiVo customers have been discovering over the last few months that some of the shows they had set to record were cut off before the programs ended.
"I lost the last 15 minutes of 'Lost,' as well as 'C.S.I.,' " said Monica Sharma, a marketing solutions manager in Piscataway, N.J. "Regrettably, the big things happened at the end."
The first notice of the problem came in November, when a few befuddled TiVo users posted complaints on TiVo's Web site. Customers also wrote about the glitch more recently at tivocommunity.com, an independent site for TiVo aficionados. A TiVo employee who monitors the sites posted a response there saying the company was on the case.
One of the main selling features of digital video recorders is their ability to record programs without the viewer having to enter start and stop times. It was unclear why certain shows were cut short on the malfunctioning TiVo's. The company's engineers isolated the problem to Series 2 machines (TiVo units integrated into DirecTV receivers were not affected).
The engineers first suggested a temporary fix that is the high-tech equivalent of hitting the side of a TV: pull the plug on the machine and then power it back up. It seemed that the abrupt cuts happened only on machines that had been in use for a long time and had never been rebooted.
TiVo says it has since created an upgrade to its operating system — which is being downloaded automatically to all Series 2 TiVo boxes — and that it should solve the problem permanently.
Fortunately for TiVo, even people like Loretta Mears, a Manhattan chiropractor who never got to see the final minutes of recent episodes of "Boston Legal" and "Lost," do not seem to hold it against the machine.
"I absolutely love TiVo," Ms. Mears said. "It's made it possible for me to watch black-and-white movies that are on at 3 a.m."
March 20, 2006
By Eric A. Taub, New York Times
The first episode in the new season of "The Sopranos" ended in a classic cliffhanger moment, with Tony on the floor after being shot by his uncle Junior. But some viewers who recorded the show on their TiVo digital video recorders to watch later might not know how close Tony came to being whacked.
Because of a software glitch in some machines, TiVo customers have been discovering over the last few months that some of the shows they had set to record were cut off before the programs ended.
"I lost the last 15 minutes of 'Lost,' as well as 'C.S.I.,' " said Monica Sharma, a marketing solutions manager in Piscataway, N.J. "Regrettably, the big things happened at the end."
The first notice of the problem came in November, when a few befuddled TiVo users posted complaints on TiVo's Web site. Customers also wrote about the glitch more recently at tivocommunity.com, an independent site for TiVo aficionados. A TiVo employee who monitors the sites posted a response there saying the company was on the case.
One of the main selling features of digital video recorders is their ability to record programs without the viewer having to enter start and stop times. It was unclear why certain shows were cut short on the malfunctioning TiVo's. The company's engineers isolated the problem to Series 2 machines (TiVo units integrated into DirecTV receivers were not affected).
The engineers first suggested a temporary fix that is the high-tech equivalent of hitting the side of a TV: pull the plug on the machine and then power it back up. It seemed that the abrupt cuts happened only on machines that had been in use for a long time and had never been rebooted.
TiVo says it has since created an upgrade to its operating system — which is being downloaded automatically to all Series 2 TiVo boxes — and that it should solve the problem permanently.
Fortunately for TiVo, even people like Loretta Mears, a Manhattan chiropractor who never got to see the final minutes of recent episodes of "Boston Legal" and "Lost," do not seem to hold it against the machine.
"I absolutely love TiVo," Ms. Mears said. "It's made it possible for me to watch black-and-white movies that are on at 3 a.m."
