Connecting your TiVo Series 2 via Wi-Fi
Written by andy on August 25th, 2003 in Hardware.
Rigor posted over at The Mortuarty Portal, his adventure of hooking his Tivo up to his Wireless network. Take a look:
“I just moved into a new apartment (much nicer than the hellhole I used to be in) and started setting everything back up the way I wanted it. The only problem was with my TiVo Series 2.
In my new home, I decided to ditch the phone company, so no TiVo updates by phone. Rather than pay $40 a month for a phone I rarely used, and an additional $49 for 640/256 DSL, I decided to stick it to the man and go cable which would save me about $45/month. I could connect the TiVo via my home LAN, wired to my PC via ethernet cable, but that would entail having a butt-ugly wire running across my floor or figure out a way to get it running via WiFi. That’s when things got interesting.
The official TiVo web site isn’t exactly the font of all knowledge on how to do this, and after several attempts and trying several different USB WiFi adapters (TiVo uses Linux, and there’s no way to easily load new drivers to use just any adapter), I finally got it all working just fine.
Starting off, I decided to try a spare USB-WiFi adapter (provided by PCFixer) that I had laying around which was the Orinoco USB-W Silver. Nope. Not even a power light on that one when connected to my TiVo’s USB port. So I was going to have to go and buy one.
The first problem is finding out which USB WiFi adapter will work with your TiVo. I pulled up the TiVo site, which is not the easiest to search, thanks to no visible search box. So I used google and found this list of recommended adapters from the TiVo site, but they’re exactly that… Recommendations.
TiVo recommends the Linksys WUSB11 ver. 2.6 (which of course my local computer superstore didn’t have), so I tried an alternate on their list, which was the D-Link DWL-120 V.A.
No go. The TiVo didn’t even try to recognize it, but I did get an amber power light. So I went through the TiVo Messages and Setup, Settings, and Phone and Network Setup. I changed the Connection Type from Phone to Network, put in my details, then edited the network settings to get it to use WiFi. Then I tested the connection. It failed miserably.
I checked out the TiVo Forums and someone said try rebooting the TiVo (power off, then turn it back on). Still didn’t work, so back to the store for a return.
Scouring the shelves at the store, I found the next recommended adapter, the NetGear MA101 V.A. This time, the adapter lights lit up (amber, not the green one’s I was expecting), but unlike the previous 3Com wired ethernet adapter, I never saw the TiVo formally recognize the new hardware.
I checked out the system setup, and the TiVo apparently now sees the LAN and gets assigned a DHCP address. Cool, so maybe it’s working. So I try to connect after typing in my WEP info. Maybe I had the WEP encryption key cipher strength set too high (128 bit). I checked my WiFi-enabled laptop, and found that it was set to 40 bit, so I changed it. Now would it work? Nope. No go. What the heck.
At this point, I started to get frustrated, then sanity prevailed and I tried using my Sony Laptop to connect to the internet to see if it was a basic Wi-Fi connection problem with my LAN (rather than bug PCFixer, whom I usually bug all the time with my Wi-Fi problems).
Sure enough, ZoneAlarm basic (my firewall) was jacking with the Wi-Fi connectivity.
So I dropped the firewall for a sec and tested the connection once again. Sure enough, it came right up with no problems, but still with amber leds (which to me naturally means it’s having issues, but to the cheap-assed USB-WiFi makers it just means amber LEDs are cheaper than green ones).
In the end, I did manage to get it all up and running despite losing my patience a few times. Maybe the D-Link would have worked, but because of my firewall, it looked like it just wasn’t connecting. If TiVo had a better guide to connecting via Wi-Fi, I’d have gotten it up and running a lot faster. But thanks to the forums and other TiVo users experiences, it now works for me with no ugly wire across my floor.
If I had to do it all again, I’d have just ordered the adapter from TiVo and be done with it. But I guess I had to learn the hard way. But that’s all the fun in learning!”
The Mortuary Portal
