Last week my family suffered a real tech catastrophe. Our TiVo crashed.

A cable guy from Time Warner paid us a visit to add some features to our Samsung interactive cable box and investigate why some of my pay channels were suddenly missing. In the process, the dual-tuner TiVo crashed after he pulled the plug instead of resetting it.

Appearing on my Sharp AQUOS screen was a scary, dayglo green message that stated a hardware failure had occurred (the first one in years with this unit), and that a self-fixing TiVo required up to 3 hours or maybe more to restore the system. And who knew what “restore the system” meant? Would all the recorded shows be erased? The TiVo tech support guy’s voice dropped three octaves when he said the self-repair job could takes as much as a day, because this hard drive was so big.

Oh my god, no TiVo? The TiVo manages not only our saved TV shows, but movies, our home videos, our digital music collection and our shared home photos across all the rooms in the house. And it delivers Internet radio stations and other entertainment content. Well, you can blow up my wife’s computer, disconnect her stereo, lose her Zune or San Disk Fuze and hide our granddaughter’s picture frame, but don’t fool with our TiVo. She was not a happy camper.

Fortunately, we are a multiple DVR family. I had VUDU’s newest model running in my den; an Xbox 360 (with the new Netflix download system) attached to my living room TV; a Slingbox (advanced version) attached to my laptop and an Apple TV next door at my friend’s all-Apple home. Just to be safe, I keep a Panasonic DVD and DVR recorder in a closet. So I thought I had enough DVR-video recording, movie-downloading, home networking gear to ride out this hopefully temporary, TiVo withdrawal. So while my wife called Time Warner to make sure a cable guy would return, I set out to wean the family off of TiVo for a few days.

The Alternatives
VUDU was already running and nearly finished with an 8 hour download of an advanced HDX version of “Iron Man.” I immediately (literally in 3 seconds) downloaded (for my wife) a romantic comedy in standard, but acceptable, resolution and then switched on the Xbox 360 to try and get a streaming Netflix documentary which was the only Netflix/Xbox offering worth watching.

VUDU has a terrific library, albeit still way less than what Netflix offers by mail. With its tiny remote and Wi-Fi capability, VUDU is one of the easiest video download systems to operate. In fact, more networking devices should use this type of wireless connection because it safe, secure and fast. TiVo’s download service through Amazon Unbox, (usually available if your TiVo is working) requires a few more steps.

The Xbox 360 may be easy for kids, but once again Microsoft poorly implemented a great idea. I found the 360s’ general online operation (when compared to PlayStation 3, or any multi-platform system), a step backwards in ease of use.

In using the Xbox 360, I could not migrate to the download section or get it running. I needed to call Microsoft Xbox support for the final set up and Microsoft customer support said it wasn’t supporting new customers at the time. What? I called several times and finally got through to a sympathetic second level support manager who said the recent upgrade of the Xbox had overloaded the person-power of its world wide support team. He suggested if I called back after midnight Eastern Standard Time I might get a domestic based customer support group to handle new customers.

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