Ever since our Series2 TiVo downloaded the operating system version that allows TiVoToGo transfer of recordings, Shannon and I have suffered through possibly the worst bug I’ve experienced in my PVR lifetime — every time we changed the channel, TiVo would put us through between five and ten seconds of jumpy, pixellated video and stuttering audio. It made it so that channel browsing was completely out of the question, and every single recording would start with the tail end of the buggy behavior (since they all started with the channel being changed to the one with the program to be recorded). The various online discussion boards have been going on and on about the bug, and most users were reporting back that when they called TiVo to report the problem, they were getting either a deaf ear or an outright denial. Recently, we told some of our friends that the whole thing was bad enough to make us not want to use the TiVo anymore, and look into getting a PVR from our cable company.

Imagine my surprise, then, when the affected box downloaded a service update last night, and the bug is totally gone! Having abandoned the discussion boards, it turns out that there was a thread two weeks ago mentioning that the upgrade was in the pipeline. I’m pretty happy about it, since it returns our living room TiVo to the Land Where It Can Be Used Without Wanting To Throw It Out The Window, and because it looks like TiVo was actually listening after all.