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Natalie & I bought a Tivo last weekend, having grown tired of hearing people rave about how Tivo has changed their life. Well, it's pretty damn cool. One of the major hurdles during setup was our lack of a phone line, which is required for performing the initial Guided Setup and subsequent television programming updates if you lack a broadband connection.

What? Broadband? Tivo? Being a geek and technology junkie, I had to at least try connecting the Tivo to our wireless LAN. I bought the D-Link DWL-G122 USB wireless adapter, which connects to the Tivo through the built-in USB 2.0 hub. I also had to download (~50 minutes over the phone line) the Tivo 7.1b early-access system software in order to use the wireless adapter. That aside, it was a painless process.

My only complaint is that the Tivo software does not support WPA encryption for the wireless connection. I modified our access point to use WEP 128-bit encryption instead, which was a major concession since WEP is significantly less secure than WPA.

So, now I can "push" recording requests to our Tivo through the Tivo website and download television programming updates rapidly over the broadband connection. No phone required. I'm loving it!