About a month ago, Rhapsody updated their music streaming service technology in such a way (certs) that respective changes were required from home audio vessels. From Rhapsody’s forum representative:
we contacted all our device partners several months before this necessary change to our service, providing them all the info necessary to make a successful change. The vast majority of these partners made the change on time and successfully tested their devices (as did Rhapsody) and signed-off.
Thus far, TiVo is not one of “the vast majority” and remains non-compliant – resulting in the error message you see above. Rhapsody indicates support will be restored to TiVo Premiere hardware in the near future, which may have been corroborated by TiVo. But, unfortunately, Rhapsody’s rep indicates Series 2 and TiVo HD/S3 units are out of luck:
As far as the series 2 and 3 devices, Tivo has chosen not to update the firmware for those devices, meaning Rhapsody will no longer be accessible on them. This was a call that Tivo made, not us, and yeah, it sucks. Some manufacturers have run into speed bumps getting their updates out, and some devices have been end-of-life’d by the manufacturers. We didn’t know that the Tivo 2 and 3 series would be dropped for support until Tivo responded saying so.
So there you have it. However, given the relatively little forum chatter, I’d say there aren’t very many Rhapsody customers streaming music via TiVo anyhow and we know the Premiere is TiVo’s actively developed platform. Although this isn’t the first time apps have vanished… Yahoo retired their API, FrameChannel folded, CBS didn’t renew their Fantasy Football dealio, Disney movies and Jaman are no more, etc. Which sort of suggests folks stick with the cableco DVR and pick up a fee-free $60 Roku for continued app availability, development, and variety – if that’s a priority.
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"Which sort of suggests folks stick with the cableco DVR and pick up a fee-free $60 Roku for continued app availability, development, and variety – if that’s a priority."
Or upgrade to a Premiere. Or keep your pre-Premiere TiVo as a DVR and pick up a Roku or some other input 2 device.
I personally prefer my TiVo pre-Premiere DVR to a cableco DVR.
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However, if the firmware upgrade TiVo needs to make to the pre-Premiere units is reasonably trivial, and TiVo is not implementing sheerly to drive upgrades, I'd lose a whole lotta love for the TiVo brand.
It's worth noting that the stuff TiVo hasn't implemented for older units up until the Rhapsody decision has been utterly reasonable. You can't stream from older hardware because the hardware can't support it. You can't run Hulu Plus on older hardware because they're not writing new apps for that software platform. Even the iOS remote app implements everything for older hardware that the older hardware will support.
So not implementing the minor Rhapsody change for older units if implementing would be reasonably trivial would be a first, and a disturbing first for all potential customers of the TiVo brand. It would mean they don't maintain services for older hardware even when they can. ("Reasonable trivial" comes down to a cost/benefit tradeoff. It depends on how many man-hours it would cost divided by how many pre-Premiere units are using Rhapsody. I could well imagine the denominator being small enough that the result produced is that it's not reasonably trivial, but I don't know the numbers involved...)
I'm sure the number of Rhapsody TiVo streamers are insignificant... but this is representative of TiVo's "One Box" development strategy - an incomplete HDUI after more than a year in release, with few app additions or updates (Netlifx, anyone?). They've got to provide significantly more than the cablecos to grow, or even retain, their base. And they're not getting it done. Perhaps they're resigned to working for Sir Richard Branson and collecting patent/licensing fees.
Now gone from my Denon 4810-CI receiver as well, after a firmware update; not that I'll miss it. Never used it there or on my Tivo.