Update-Update: GRRRR!!! When I got home the next day, the network apps were gone again. This time support says it’s a known issue, on their end, and to check back in a couple of days to see if they’ve made progress.
Update: So, turns out I owe nameless support lady an apology of sorts. She was wrong on the details, but right on the concept. Seems the software version I needed was “9.3a-01″ not “9.3a-001″, and I can certainly understand confusion as to which direction is the newer build, with names like that. Between this morning when I left for work, and noon, when I got home for lunch, things had started working normally.
Of all the brilliant ideas that have been ruined by apathetic implementors, Tivo will go down in history as one of the rare products that managed to succeed in the face of internal sabotage. My first Tivo was wonderful. It was amazingly stable, and when I wanted to add my own HD, it was fascinating in it’s resilliance. My series 2 Tivo has gotten better, but still hasn’t approached the stability of the original Tivo. My series 3/hd is driving me crazy. First there’s the conflicting instructions for installing the cablecard, though mostly that’s comcast’s fault. Still, it would have been nice if Tivo warned you that using cablecard means you can’t disable channels you don’t want, as the cablecard bootup process rebuilds the channel list every time. Then there’s the bizarre missing “Photos, Music, Products & More” menu option. No matter that my Tivo is on the most current software level, no matter that I get a line with the stupid ADvertisement for rhapsody, there is no way to actually get to the feature. The media access key isn’t a setup option. Support is worse than useless on this problem. When I first called in, I got put on hold, then hung up on. While waiting for the support guy to call back, I get a phone call from a satisfaction survey group about my new purchase. The lady who called makes a couple of inane statements, like how even though I tell her my software level is 9.3a-001, that I need to wait for the “001″ update before things will work. I checked around on the net, and EVERY tivo HD setup experience I’ve seen, networking applications were there out of the box, no update required. And of course, miss-anti-satisfaction closes the tech support case as resolved, so now I have to wait till I can find several hours to sit at home, trying pointless reboots, to reopen the case and start all over again.