Maybe not all by my lonesome. But about two weeks ago, I called the TiVo support line, fed up with a months-long problem where every single TiVo show we recorded was being flagged for timed deletion: one week was the longest we could keep anything, and any show we began to watch was deleted within 24 hours.

According to a message on the TiVo machine, the restriction was because the show’s copyright holder had insisted on it. But that was supposed to be the rare exception, not the irritatingly ubiquitous rule.

I found multiple references to the issue on discussion boards and blogs, with people blaming everything from low cable signal quality to a shadowy conspiracy. Mostly, though, the consensus was that it was a bug, and what could you do?

Well, there was one thing I could do: I phoned tech support. And after only a few minutes, a very nice woman picked up, expressed surprise at my problem, asked me to hold for a few minutes, and then came back on the phone.

“We’ve had several other reports of this problem,” she said (I’m paraphrasing from memory, by the way; we don’t go for that James Frey stuff here on this blog). “Let me see… you know what? I’ve just escalated this to our senior support team. They’ll get to work on it, and you should receive a service update sometime in the next week to 10 days. After that, you shouldn’t have a problem. But in case you do, call back with this case number.”

I didn’t have to. A few days ago, our TiVo restarted thanks to a service update. And by god, the problem’s gone.

Hi-ho Silver!