Our trusty TiVo has been doing great - until recently. For the past month it has been unable to successfully "phone home" for programming updates. And as all of us TiVo afficionados know, TiVo without it's program guide is beyond crippled.
TiVo's phone call difficulties are the result of a very bad phone line - the Ski Boy manse is a mere 100 yards away from a very large radio tower. The tower's emissions play havoc with our phone lines. Last year we worked through that problem by plugging TiVo into a wireless modem jack. But, in the past month for some unknown reason, the noise and static have considerably worsened and not even the wireless modem jack can work through the schmutz.
So, rather than wailing in despair, I eagerly rubbed my techy hands together and looked upon the situation as a golden opportunity to hook TiVo into our home network via a wireless bridge. TiVo series 2 models are networked enabled - once you get TiVo talking to your home network, it can contact the mother ship via the internet. Much cleaner and faster than using the phone lines.
Anyhoo, this afternoon seemed like a perfect time to give this little project whirl. Below is my detailed log of the setup-configuration process. The entire endeavor took about an hour and a half and it works. Not bad at all for a home network project.
Note: An absolute indespensible item for an TiVo owner is the TiVo Hacks by Raffi Krikorian. It was extremely helpful as I worked my way through the configuration process.
Installation Log
Immediately, I discover that I'm already at risk because I’m using a Linksys WET11 bridge and a non TiVo approved USB-to-Ethernet adapter, the Belkin F5D505. TiVo recommends the Linksys USB Bridge – WUSB11. But according to TiVo Hacks, folks have successfully implemented TiVo's network capabilities with non-TiVo sanctioned gear.
The bridge needs to be configured with our home network's settings before it’s hooked up to TiVO. So, I unplugged my laptop's wireless PCMCIA card and plugged the bridge directly into my computer via ethernet cable.
Configuring is simple – just set the bridge name and SSID. NOTE: The SSID is SSID of the network to which the bridge will connect to – which in our case is, partnowmanse. The tricky part is the channel. I’m going to leave it at default of 6 but I may need to change it later when I install another Christmas wireless gift – the Creative Wireless Sound Blaster.
Because I have a wireless router, I selected "automatically obtain an IP address" option. My router’s DHCP server will automatically assign the bridge’s IP address.
So, now I’ve gone downstairs and plugged the configured bridge via the USB-to-Ethernet adapter into TiVO. However, TiVo does not detect a wireless connection. sigh....
Hmm...Is the bridge working? Well let’s hookup my computer to the bridge and find out...
Yes, the bridge is working just fine. The bummer is though, because the bridge is plugged in via the network cable, I have no way of ascertaining the signal strength of the bridge to gateway connection...
I then retried the TiVo network configuration dialog several times and each time TiVO stated that it could not detect a wireless connection. So just out of shear frustration and for grins, I selected “test network connection” and voila it worked!!!!
So, I immediately selected connect to TiVo service and everything dowloaded and processed just fine!
Good thing I got frustrated and tried test network connection just for grins...
1:58:37 PM 
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