TiVo Bolts have been around for almost four years, and some of their moving parts are beginning to fail.
The Bolt is a bit harder to open than previous TiVo models, so we’ve posted a video on YouTube showing you how to open a TiVo Bolt and swap out its hard drive and fan.
Naturally, we sell these replacement parts also:
In the Spring of 2019, TiVo ended support for dial-in connections. TiVos for cable or antenna must use broadband internet to connect to TiVo’s servers from now on for guide updates and OS upgrades. So if your TiVo had been dialing in and is now complaining that it can’t get guide data, this is why.
Here’s a list of the impacts on TiVos that were dialing in, per TiVo generation, starting with non-DirecTV units:
Series1 (Philips HDR and Sony SVR-2000 models): These already haven’t been able to dial in for a few years, so they really aren’t impacted by this change.
Series2 (TiVo, Sony, Humax, Pioneer, and Toshiba models, some with DVD capabilities): If you have one of these and were using a phone line, you now need to switch to broadband. You have two options:
Series3 TiVo HD (TiVo brand): Series3 units all have ethernet built-in as well as the ability to use a separate Wifi adapter. If you were using a phone line, you need to change to an ethernet cable, or this G Wifi Adapter.
Series4 Premiere (TiVo brand): Series4 units were the first TiVos that didn’t ship with internal modems. If you were using these to dial-in, you would have had to have a TiVo USB Phone Line Adaptor connected (and this didn’t work with the four tuner Premieres). Now you either need to plug an ethernet cable into your unit (all Series4 units have ethernet ports) or add a G Wifi Adapter.
Series5 Roamio and Series6 Bolt units were never able to dial in, so this change doesn’t affect them.
DIRECTV TiVos
Series1 and Series2 DirecTiVos, and the HD DirecTV HR10-250: If you have one of these units up and running, it should continue to work fine for now. It may give you a ‘nag screen’ telling you to connect to a phone line (don’t bother) but it should continue to get guide data off the satellite dish. But if you redo Guided Setup, change your hard drive, or try to set up a previously unactivated unit, you won’t be able to. In these situations, the unit needs to dial-in to DirecTV, and that’s no longer possible.
DirecTV units cannot use the broadband wired or wireless adapters mentioned above.
We’ve been getting many, many reports of loud fans in the base Roamio units – the ones that look like this:
As best we can tell, TiVo has used two or more suppliers for the fans in these units, and possibly more than one model from some of these suppliers.
In order to figure out the best replacement option, we contacted several suppliers and tested many fans, and we now how what we think is the best possible replacement. This same model seems to be what TiVo is using in the current Roamio OTA Vox units.
We sell this fan as a kit with three torx tools, which are all necessary for installation:
We also have a video on that page that walks you through the installation, step by step.
This is compatible with model numbers TCD846500, TCD846510 and TCD846000.
Please note that this will NOT work with the Roamio Plus and Pro. We have that fan kit here.
We’ve been getting a lot of inquiries about fans for the TiVo Roamio and the TiVo Roamio OTA DVRs – models that start with TCD846. The fans in these units are small and can get pretty loud over time.
Until now, we didn’t have a ready source of these, and we didn’t have instructions of replacing them. We now have both.
You can buy the fan here:
TiVo Roamio and Roamio OTA Fan and Tools
and you can watch a video on how to install it here:
WeaKnees TiVo Roamio Fan Swap Video
At the moment, we are only selling the fans with the Torx tools you need (three sizes: 8, 10, and 15).
The TiVo HD flashing green light problem has become much more prevalent. We’re seeing a lot of these units come through, and we are able to fix just about all of them at this point.
If you have a TiVo HD or TiVo HD XL (TCD652160 or TCD658000) and it gives no video out at all, and a green light flashes on the front, we should be able to fix it.
We have more information about this problem on our website:
TiVo HD with Flashing Green Light
So if you have one of these units with lifetime service, we can help get it running again!