One year and nine days ago (this will be important later – I think it’s called foreshadowing), TiVo changed my life. We got it and it truly is the greatest invention since Al Gore invented err took the initiative in creating the Internet. TiVo is amazing in that the Uncle family has entertainment on its schedule and not the schedule of network television.
Yesterday, TiVo died. The receiver croaked. It was a sad day. We’re having services for it Tuesday (when the new one shows up). We can still watch the stuff it recorded but it won’t receive a satellite signal. TiVo came with a one year warranty. It’s a pity it didn’t die eight days sooner. Now, I am out $50 for a new receiver. The good thing is that we upgraded from 40 hours of recording time to 80 hours.
Even though the repair guy said that in all the time he’d been doing this that only one other TiVo croaked, I wonder if this crash after warranty is a conspiracy.
Same thing happened with both mine and the Mrs. cellular (yes, I know they’re not really cellular anymore) phones. We had contracts for two years on our old phones. Within literally days of the contract expiring, our cell phones would no longer hold a charge for more than a day and the automobile chargers would hardly work at all (the outlet charger would keep the phone going for a day). Also, we lost reception at our house. As good little consumers, we went out and bought new phones (now we have fancy new camera phones with tons of bells and whistles), a new service plan with a different company, and ported our numbers (which was easy to do, I highly recommend it).
And one more example is that the same thing happened with our coffee pot. We had a fancy coffee pot that cost about $150 and had all sorts of electronic timers and brew settings. It did it all. It was a popular name brand and I really liked it. It died shortly after the warranty.
I’m starting to wonder if electronics are programmed to self-destruct shortly after their warranty’s give out.