Our TiVo Kicked The Bucket, Bought The Farm, and Crossed Over Today;(

This morning I turned on our television set to find that Pastor Creflo Dollar's image was frozen onto our screen.

I thought that the pause button had been activated on the TiVo remote control, but the image remained until I unplugged the product.

Upon its rebooting, everything worked fine until 3 to 5 minutes later when the video started pixelating (breaking up into the pixels) and the playback and sound were extremely jerky.

I went online to see that the problem was not an isolated one. Since our box was made by Phillips, I was referred to give them a call.

I then rediscovered that Phillips charges almost $20 bucks just to talk to someone in technical support and will apply the fee to a repurchase price if the problem is not solved.

But when my wife returned, the decision to disconnect the product altogether was made since the problem continued.

So I had to make another telephone call to TiVo to cancel the service and learned that they have special pricing for replacement units (Series 2 boxes at that) that are either new or refurbished in 40, 80, and 140 hour boxes.

The caveat is that you cannot cancel your service in order to obtain the pricing for the replacement boxes. So we are going to decide how much we going to pay for a replacement.

The programming on the broken box may be possibly retrieved at a later date, but right now other issues have a greater priority.

The strangest thing is that the 140-hour refurbished box was bought in the summer of 2003, the internal modem died 6 months later in late December or January, and we found the replacement modem in early spring. So the cost involved has to get lower and the benefits must increase rather than having to replace something every 6 months.

One huge plus about the Series 2 boxes is that they can be connected to the internet in order to download the latest programming guides as well as use the TiVoToGo feature which will allow viewing of recorded shows on a wide variety of hardware including a computer connected to broadband and other devices.

We were laggards in holding on to the 1st generation TiVo boxes and will look forward to enjoying the comforts of being the last of the early adopters with the 2nd generation boxes.

Already our daughter Rachel has asked for the tv to be frozen (paused) as she and her sister Hailey put it. So hopefully we will not face the hard withdrawal pains as we did when the internal modem died and get the replacement box soon.

If it isn't one thing, it's another for sure.

Now I must get the replacement modem ready for sale on eBay;)

Peace!!!