Tivo Supports WPA Encryption for WiFi
Last year when Natalie & I bought our Tivo DVR, we didn't have a phone line to our apartment and figured that we'd use our cable Internet connection to download new program listings and such. The Tivo Series 2 devices don't have a network adapter built-in, but they do have two USB 2.0 ports that can be used to connect supported wired- and wireless-network adapters. We had bought a really nice D-Link wireless adapter that was officially supported by Tivo, could use WPA and WEP wireless encryption, and could connect to 802.11B and 802.11G networks.
The adapter worked great, except that the Tivo Series 2 devices had no support for WPA, which was the wireless encryption method we had been using at the time. So, we downgraded our encryption to WEP until purchasing a wired Netgear USB Ethernet adapter that has worked equally well and permits us to use WPA on our wireless network.
Over the last 3-4 months, our Tivo has been responding...very...slowly...to menu selections. I had been hoping that Tivo would soon come out with a system software upgrade that would improve the performance. So, I was really surprised to find out that the upgrade they sent last week (8.1-01-2-540) included not only performance enhancements, but also support for WPA encryption on wireless networks! We haven't been able to test it out since we're perfectly happy with our current wired-Ethernet adapter, but we might revert to the old D-Link wireless adapter if we get another Tivo and move our current unit to a different part of the apartment.
I think this is really great news for Tivo-owners who don't want to downgrade the security of their wireless networks just for the sake of a home appliance. WPA is more computationally expensive than WEP, so the processing power needs to be available on the hardware in order for WPA to be a drop-in solution.