TiVo should store settings online
My TiVo’s hard drive died last weekend. I’d owned it less than a year. This is quite common, of course, as a TiVo is just a computer, and computers’ hard drives fail. I bought a cheap, bare drive from Newegg, burned an image with InstantCake, and spent too much money at the hardware store on a Torx set to install the new drive. (Why do computer components use Torx screws?!) However, the biggest pain in the entire process was going through the guided setup again: setting my lineup, setting up the control of the cable box, etc. And I lost all my Season Pass settings.
But it got me to wondering: Why doesn’t TiVo store the box’s settings online? My TiVo is networked and “calls home” every 15 minutes or so. TiVo.com stores the device ID of my box. Why couldn’t the TiVo pass back my season passes and lineup info? I’m not even asking for web management of Season Passes and the To Do List; I’d just like to have the main box info backed up remotely. Seems easy enough.