After 3 trips to Circuit City and 3 different USB wireless 802.11b adapters, I have managed to get the Tivo talking on the home network and doing its daily call over the internet rather than dial up.  Seems that the Tivo boxes are VERY picky about which wireless adapters they use.  For those of you attempting the same with a 80hr Series 2 Tivo box:

• Regardless what you do, you must setup the box and dial-in several times before you can put it on the network (unless you use a wired ethernet adapter) as the Tivo boxes ship with version 3.X of their system software which doesn't support wireless adapters.  The only way to get to 4.X of the system software is via dial-up.
• If you buy the linksys USB 802.11b adapter, it must be Version 2.6 - a bit of a trick since all the new ones ship with Version 2.8.  And trust me, it matters.  It doesn't work with Version 2.8.  The best bet is to get this from the Tivo store if you want to go Linksys.
• The Belkin adapter that's listed on the Tivo site as a possible option DID NOT work with mine.
• Finally, the MS 802.11b adapter (MN-501) did the trick.  If you don't want to go the Linksys route, I'd start with this one.
• The trick to setting this up - (1) power off the tivo by unplugging it.  (2) plug in the USB wireless adapter.  (3) plug the Tivo back in - at this point, you should be able to configure everything through the interface

Now, I wonder - was losing a day of my life worth this added convienence?  Only time will tell...

So after using the Dish Network PVR device and subscribing to their service while also getting perfectly good cable service included with my internet access, I decided to dump Dish and just use Comcast to get the TV piped into the home. Which brought to bear one issue - how do I live without a digital video recorder!?

So, I purchased the 80hr Tivo device - the so-called "Appliance" DVR and brought it home. 24 hours later, I can't get it to dial in and download things properly and it won't recognize the wireless network at home to use it for its daily call as opposed to the phone line. One software version upgrade later (a 2hr phone call!) and a rerun of the guided setup has yielded no positive results.

So much for the concept of a smart "appliance" device - regardless of what it's running on at the core. My refrigerator worked just fine when I brought it home and plugged it in. ;-) Will technology ever become so simple that it "just works"? My experience lately says we're still have a while before that happens.

Although I can't say I agree with everything that's said here, some of his points are good ones.  We should be distributing pieces of commentary like this internally so that people understand what the world thinks.  I find so many times that Microsoft people live “in a bubble” - a dose of reality now and then wouldn't hurt.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20031023.html