The other week, I was watching Entourage, and at a certain point in the show, my TiVo froze up. The entire show was recorded, but at a particular point in the recording, the whole thing froze and the only way to get around it was to unplug the TiVo and plug it back in. Trying to watch the episode again caused a freeze at the exact same point in the show.

Tonight, my TiVo reset itself while I was watching My Name is Earl. Good news -- it was during the end credits. Bad news -- it caused me to miss a four or five minute chunk of 30 Rock. I haven't checked the recording yet, but I'm hoping it's mostly commercial. I didn't go back to check if it was that particular point on the recording that was causing this.

Then I go to watch the Office and the same damned thing happens when I get to the scene where Andy confronts his girlfriend. As with MNIE, the TiVo resets. This time, when I try to watch a second time, I get the same reset at the exact same place. I try to fast forward through that scene and I get another reset a little later on in the episode.

So:

1) WTF?

2) Has anyone ever experienced this before? Anyone know what the cause is? If I call TiVo customer service, are they going to be able to help me?

3) WTF?

In case it matters, I've got a TiVo Series 3 that I just bought in January.

Sounds like your Hard Drive is starting to fail. I went though that in March, where it was freezing up and restarting occasionally. I deleted all my shows off of it, and things worked well for a while, but eventually the problems came back.

Your TiVo should still be under warranty, so they should be able to help you.

I agree on the hard drive issue, I had the exact same problem on my HD DirecTiVo about 2 years ago. Time to call in on that warranty.

Screw the warranty. Take this opportunity to install a huge aftermarket drive.

^ I tried to do that myself once and hated how loud the noise was on the new drive. Apparently, I didn't get the right brand or type.

If you've read any of my TiVo disaster stories, what you describe is pretty much exactly what happened before everything went to hell. Your hard drive is failing where the recordings are being stored. Sooner or later it will fail where the TiVo software is stored. Once that happens, you're probably screwed (unless there's something significantly different about the Series 3 architecture). As suggested, I'd take this opportunity to upgrade the drive, and if you have the means, start offloading any recordings you want to save. If you think your drive might be overheating, you can try to slow this process by increasing airflow to your TiVo. In my case, after the repeated drive failures I had, I ultimately removed my drive from the case and built my own external cooling system.

Good luck.

das

Frightening - that happened to me the other night. Heroes started pixellating and locking up, but the show that taped on the other tuner at the same time was fine. HD DirecTivo for me too, but since that will be going away eventually I may need to get going on my HTPC replacement sooner than I thought.

Crap. Because it's a Series 3, I can't transfer stuff off of it yet. Coupled with the fact that I've got 15 days left in my warranty period, it looks like some stuff is never going to be watched.

Bye bye, Raines and Riches. I meant to check you out, but never got around to it.

I've also got 11 episodes of post-hiaitus Lost to go through (or not, as the case may be), so I guess my question is -- has the quality of the show gone back up, or is it still as plodding and masturbatory as the "Jack and Kate and Sawyer have been captured by the Others" episodes from the fall?

Are you sure about that?

You should be able to transfer the encrypted files to another drive that you install in the Tivo that housed the original drive. This is part of the backup/restore system when you prepare the new drive. It will take awhile to copy but I think it should work.

Have you found something that claims you cannot transfer content directly from drive to drive when replacing a drive in a Series 3? This is not the same as Tivo-to-go, which is being held hostage by CableLabs.

On the other hand if you lifetimed the Series 3 you may want to just send it back and avoid any hassles if you screw up the new drive install.

Yeah -- I'm talking about getting it serviced through Tivo and using Tivo-to-go to transfer the programs to my computer or another Tivo. I don't really want to after-market my Tivo, particularly since it's under warranty.

So funny this thread popped up, my Series 2 Tivo hard drive started failing yesterday with no warning.

You bought it in January and there's only 15 days left in the warranty period? Seems pretty short?

They have a 90-day no-strings warranty and a 1-year warranty where you have to pay $50 to get your Tivo fixed.