Steve Garfield got the newsletter from Comcast that his distant, thirsty wait for the Comcast TiVo was by, so he immediately called ‘em up (after the online system gives you no way to order it), only to be told by the rep “I didn’t know it was coming out so soon. Let me check whether it’s available.” Since it’s Comcast, you know the story doesn’t end there, despite what should be a totally painless transition.

After two more days of getting bounced around by reps, the exec office in Massachusetts rings him up and arranges an install appointment—the very first in the Boston area, he’s told. Not just one, but two installers AND a supervisor. They are serious cable company. Anyways, they had to hunt down and pull an old signal filter, since it was

diluting the signal, preventing Steve’s DVR from downloading the fresh new TiVo software. But thirty minutes later, it was done.

So what’s it like once it’s setup? Well, it isn’t an HD TiVo, so the interface doesn’t fill up the whole screen, it just kinda floats in the center of a widescreen HDTV. But everything else works (except for “Groups,”) and particularly cool is that all of the old TV shows stay on the box, even after the upgrade. Okay, the update itself is pretty painless, but you still need a day off of work, and hopefully Comcast will get better at that with some practice. [Off on a Tangent via TiVo Blog]

Orginal post by Matt Buchanan