My TiVo has gone wireless

TiVo has the capability to be hooked up to a wireless network - and even though I have one, I just hadn't gotten around to doing it. Mostly because I'm a procrastinator, and it is usually some form of "pain" that drives me to do things. Our TiVo upstairs was hooked up to a phone line, and that seemed just fine. However, the girls said they'd get me a 2nd one for my birthday, but would let me pick it out. Again... procrastinator. But now I *need* it, since the new fall season is starting and there are just too many shows on at the same time, that I want to see. Why stress over it? Just go get the 2nd box and set it up.

And since the 2nd box is downstairs, and I don't want to run a phone line through the family room and across the kitchen to the phone jack; I *NEED* a wireless connection. :)

So I got it set up - well partially. I got the 2nd box all configured and setup. While I was doing that, I also configured the upstairs box to connect to my home network. Took some playing around, but it got connected. The signal seems to vary in strength quite a bit - so we'll see how successful it is. For just talking to TiVo, I don't think it needs to be all that good. But for beaming TV shows between the boxes, it probably needs to be pretty strong.

Once I got the downstairs box setup, I tried connection another network adaptor, but it just doesn't seem to be working. So I'll play with that a bit more today.

And - while I was doing all of this, I tried connecting my serial cables from the TiVo to the Cable box. I had tried before but it didn't work... LUser error? I'm not sure. Because this time I tried it on the downstairs box and it replied with something along the lines of "Yup, that worked." Woo hoo! So I went up-stairs and tried that again, and it worked too! This is great news for me, as I've been missing a few shows because the IR controls didn't work exactly right and the channel didn't get changed. I've missed two episoides of Firefly because of this. Sniff. But now all is good. No such problems with one computer talking directly to another, without the stupid IR in the way. :)

So - a few more kinks (like is the adaptor downstairs no good, is the software too old on the new box - it ships old and then gets upgraded, or what?) - But I'll probably try and get them ironed out today. If not, well I'm out of town Wed - Sat, so will have to mess with it when I get back. But I'm "this" close to having it all hooked up. Technology is a cool thing.

In theory I can even download the shows from my boxes to my laptop and watch them there. Pretty sweet. :) - Might come in handing during long meetings at work. ;) (Not really - since I run most those meetings - but I'm sure other people would appreciate it. :) )