My TiVo died: playback stuttering, menus slow, etc. Apparently this is common for TiVos of a certain age (mine is three years). The drives fail.

Thanks to Weaknees I was able to repair it in about half an hour, replacing the drive with a newer (4x bigger) one. I could have done it myself with the info in TiVo Hacks, but the extra $40 Weaknees charged me is worth the half day of aggravation saved.

The experience has bummed me out a bit about TiVo:

• Why did my TiVo fail after only three years?
• The setup process takes eight hours!
• I’ve lost all my TiVo state. Given how much data they track about their users, why couldn’t they have stored my season passes server-side?
• The CPU is too slow. My TV should never tell me “please wait”.
• My lifetime service isn’t migratable, so I won’t upgrade.

I really should build a small form factor PC and install MythTV, an MP3 player, a DVD player, and a bunch of game emulators. I like the way the TiVo is a simple appliance that just works, but I’ve hit the edges of that.