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Series 1 not downloading data

149K views 778 replies 167 participants last post by  rose33090 
#1 ·
I came home after being out of town and it seems that the last time my TiVo downloaded program data was on Oct 31st. The error shown was Failed - Call Interrupted. I checked the usual suspects - phone line good, no call waiting, tried manual call, tried calling with different phone number, etc. No go.

Then I did a few other things. Unplugged TiVo and phone line. Tried above again. No go.

Then I did what I regret most - tried going through Guided Setup. Have been stuck on the second call of Guided setup ever since.

Called TiVo support. Tech said that TiVo is attempting to download software updates. Apparently my Series 1 is still at software version 3, should be at 9. Why would it be so far behind? If it's been making daily calls shouldn't it have been updating this whole time?

Tech suggested I keep trying the second setup call because download will start where it left off. I'm on my seventh or eighth download attempt.

Has anyone encountered this before? Are there any other Series 1 owners out there that fell this far behind on software versions?

Thanks,
Alicia
 
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#202 ·
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Also of note, these segments are small (only 1420 bytes) each and the time between ACKs slows from 6s,12s,24s,48s,96s,120s,120s,120s... It starts at 6 seconds, then doubles until it tops out at 120 seconds between ACKs - very odd.
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I have done a lot of network packet sniffing, but very little (actually none) with Serial PPP stuff, so it maybe just my inexperience with the Serial kind, but it does seem like those ACKS are incredibly slow. Hard to imagine anything working with ACKS that slow.

But when I setup my mothers Tivo with an external modem some many years ago, I am pretty sure I set the BAUD rate down at 9600 (or maybe lower, can't remember). I don't remember if it didn't work at higher rates or I just got instructions to use the slower rate, but for sure it was 9600 or below.
 
#203 ·
I have done a lot of network packet sniffing, but very little (actually none) with Serial PPP stuff, so it maybe just my inexperience with the Serial kind, but it does seem like those ACKS are incredibly slow. Hard to imagine anything working with ACKS that slow.

But when I setup my mothers Tivo with an external modem some many years ago, I am pretty sure I set the BAUD rate down at 9600 (or maybe lower, can't remember). I don't remember if it didn't work at higher rates or I just got instructions to use the slower rate, but for sure it was 9600 or below.
I'm just running wireshark against my ethernet interface (en0) filtering it on the tivo IP (chosen from my pppd command) and it shows up just like regular network traffic. It starts by sending some http requests, then ntp (setting the clock), followed by the data download.

I missed the first few data segments before. The first ACK comes in 0.085s, the next in 3s, then 6, etc. By the time it get to 120 it's at the equivalent of 12bps. Clearly something very wrong.

Unfortunately the 300s timeout on the ppp connection wasn't enough. At one point it fails when it take 177s to respond with a FIN, ACK. I'm not really sure what it's doing at that point, but it took almost 50 minutes to get to that point and the download operation (getting started to load dial in numbers) is only suppose to take 1-2 minutes.

Really unfortunately, I was trying to rerun guided setup to hook up a DTV box as a satellite connection so now I'm stuck with a useless tivo until I can complete the guided setup.
 
#204 ·
I'm just running wireshark against my ethernet interface (en0) filtering it on the tivo IP (chosen from my pppd command) and it shows up just like regular network traffic. It starts by sending some http requests, then ntp (setting the clock), followed by the data download.

I missed the first few data segments before. The first ACK comes in 0.085s, the next in 3s, then 6, etc. By the time it get to 120 it's at the equivalent of 12bps. Clearly something very wrong..
Whats wrong with 12bps?:)

Unfortunately the 300s timeout on the ppp connection wasn't enough. At one point it fails when it take 177s to respond with a FIN, ACK. I'm not really sure what it's doing at that point, but it took almost 50 minutes to get to that point and the download operation (getting started to load dial in numbers) is only suppose to take 1-2 minutes.

Really unfortunately, I was trying to rerun guided setup to hook up a DTV box as a satellite connection so now I'm stuck with a useless tivo until I can complete the guided setup.
I hear you there. After my mom's Tivo stopped being able to connect to Tivo Inc, I came here and saw all the problems people were having I made sure I was in a 3-way call with my mom and Tivo support mainly to make sure they didn't try get her to do Guided setup or otherwise her downgraded Tivo to VCR would become a boat anchor. I was actually somewhat hopeful of Tivo support because they didn't have her go thru a whole host of scripted fixes like I always get with my Verizon DSL.

Hopefully TivoJerry has the engineering on its way fixing this problem.
 
#205 ·
my 112 with Turbonet (over FIOS) seems to be connecting all the time but I really haven't paid that much attention to it.

My 312 is still on the internal modem (Verizon POTS line) and has been having this problem for months, actually long before most of you started seeing it on Dec 2 or thereabouts. I don't keep it connected all the time and run a phone line to it about once a week. Around December, the "Service Unavailable" problem started getting a lot worse (10% success rate) and I discovered that changing dial-in numbers seemed to help, along with always doing the forced call after midnight.

Today was especially disconcerting because I couldn't even get a test call to go thru for several hours. Seems like Tivo's backend systems are either massively overloaded or someone installed untested or poorly-tested code.
 
#207 ·
Many S1 users have no phone line connected to the TiVo and instead use an internet connection

I agree with this. It shouldn't take 2+ months to fix the issue :(
My S1 is telephone based.

It hasn't received Guide data since January 3rd and has since run out of program data. Test dials work 40:60 with 40 being a connection. I can't get my S1 to connect to try another phone number. Right now I took the suggestion of turning off the "Phone In Use" option, it is currently "downloading" data at the moment but we'll see if it completes or not.
 
#208 ·
I called Tivo today to report my Sony series 1 wasn't connecting, but it looks like it finally completed a call yesterday (the 20th). I was getting concerned because my lifetime was on the series one and my series 2 and series 3 are on MSD. In case you are unaware, if your lifetime unit does not connect at least once every 90 days, Tivo will drop your MSD rate.

EDIT: OK this is odd. Tivo says I completed a call yesterday, but my Tivo still says connection failed. So I still can't connect. Test call consistently fails even.
 
#209 ·
My (phone-based) Philips S1 just started doing this yesterday (1/21); I'm getting a "TiVo service unavailable" error message. Restarting and changing dial-in numbers doesn't fix the problem. The last time I tried to switch to a different number, when it was dialing in for the list of numbers, it got stuck there. This is really frustrating.

Then, suddenly, today, my Humax S2 is unable to dial in, either. What's going on? It seems like it has to be something on TiVo's end if neither of my units is able to connect and download program info!
 
#210 ·
My (phone-based) Philips S1 just started doing this yesterday (1/21); I'm getting a "TiVo service unavailable" error message. Restarting and changing dial-in numbers doesn't fix the problem. The last time I tried to switch to a different number, when it was dialing in for the list of numbers, it got stuck there. This is really frustrating.

Then, suddenly, today, my Humax S2 is unable to dial in, either. What's going on? It seems like it has to be something on TiVo's end if neither of my units is able to connect and download program info!
Silly question, but does your phone line work right now at all? What happens if you call the numbers listed on each of your units? Do you get through, is there a busy tone, does it just continue ringing, or does the line pick up with a handshake [modelm] tone?
 
#213 ·
For the third consecutive month I find myself out of program guide data. Daily calls and forced daily calls all result once again with Service Interrupted or Call Interrupted errors, sometimes after 15 minutes of Downloading Data. Nice to know TiVo still can't figure out and fix the problem. Or perhaps they truly don't care about S1's . . . .
 
#214 ·
For anyone with a turbonet card in an S1, engineering wants help getting a network fingerprint.

Using a Linux router or sniffer, wireshark (windows,linux) or tcpdump (linux), capture whole throughput to test failed calls and send me a PM so I can give you an email address to send the files to.
 
#215 ·
This morning I had a message on my Phillips Series 1 asking me to have the box make a call since the guide hasn't been updated for 10 days. I was surprised about that.

I did find early in the week that my phone line was unplugged from the wall, but fixed that and proceeded assuming there was no need to check anything else. It was today's message that alerted me to a problem.

I proceeded to do a daily call and noticed that everything went smooth, but after many minutes it got interrupted during the data download. I then went to make a test call but that got hung in the Connecting phase. I then proceeded to change the dial up number, which requires a call to Tivo to download the numbers, and that also failed in the Connecting phase.

At this point I was not ruling out a problem with the modem itself.

Came back a few hours later, tried again to download the list of phone numbers after changing the area code, but no luck. Made a daily call and after many minutes apparently downloading came back with Service Unavailable or something close to that.

Then changed the area code again. Proceeded to make the call to download the list of numbers and that worked. So now I knew the modem was OK.

Then I changed the telephone number. Made the daily call and this time it worked. The download was time consuming but ended normally.

Could it be that something got fixed this afternoon in the Tivo servers as I was testing my box? I can't tell what got fixed, but all I know is that my Tivo box is in fine health and something outside the box was failing. Glad I didn't proceed to get a new box, as I almost did. Mine is 8 years old and still working.
 
#218 ·
When my Tivo (Philips Series 1) calls in, it just rings and rings and rings. When I tried dialing the number it was supposed to be calling Tivo Central answered right away. Now I am trying the Guided Setup, and still just rings, rings, and more rings.

And by the way, my Tivo now isn't recording any suggestions either.

Very unhappy... :(
 
#219 ·
During the "call", the S1 sits at "Connecting..." for 5 or so minutes. Ultimately, when it sits in this state for so long, it fails with "Service Unavailable".

This morning, this happened with five successive "force calls". The sixth time I forced the call, it downloaded and completed.

The other day, while it was stuck on "Connectiing..." and I knew it was going to fail, I picked up the phone and heard the TiVo modem trying to ping the service (heard that tell-tell modem "buzz" and bleep). Of course, that one failed with "Call Interrupted".

I'm with you, Racer. Extremely unhappy with this situation. Have been babysitting this machine since early December. (By the way, the Suggestion problem is a known issue that TiVo seems to be working on, with Beta software. See this thread: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=394935 )
 
#220 ·
For anyone with a turbonet card in an S1, engineering wants help getting a network fingerprint.

Using a Linux router or sniffer, wireshark (windows,linux) or tcpdump (linux), capture whole throughput to test failed calls and send me a PM so I can give you an email address to send the files to.
Would it be helpful to get a sniff of a working S1 using an ethernet adapter?
 
#222 ·
I've owned this Tivo for eight years without any problems until this. I'm sad.
I know just how you feel. My Sony S1 has been one of the most reliable CE products I have ever owned. The only work ever done on it was a HDD upgrade to a much larger drive and that of course was purely optional. IMHO it has a better picture than my 540 series 2 but that's subjective I guess.
 
#224 ·
I have a Philips PTV300 and a standard phone line.

I have been having the intermittent connection problems as other people have been describing. I would have to force the calls until one got through. I did not run out of guide data.

We just got a cable box so I had to rerun Guided Setup. Now I cannot get through the Setup. I have tried many many times. I would think even if it was only getting part of the data each time, it would have gotten it all by now.

I usually get through the Setup or test calls. On downloading the Program data I get the "Downloading Failed Call Interrupted" message most of the time. Sometimes I get the Service Unavailable message.

One of the tips Tivo gives is to try during non peak hours. I have done this too and it has not allowed me to complete the setup.

In case it matters, the cable box is a DTA that Comcast is giving out to WA residents.

The Tivo has also started having problems where it won't boot up. When I plug it in, nothing happens. This did not happen until I started trying to do the Guided Setup.

Until I saw this thread I thought maybe the modem was going bad.. but now it looks like many others also have this problem.

Again note.. I am on a standard phone line so this is not because of using VOIP.

BrendaG4
 
#225 ·
If someone can tell me out to get out of Guided Setup then I could try to use some of the ideas that have been posted such as deleting the logs. I assume the reason I can't telnet in now is because I can't get out of Guided Setup.

If someone wants me to run tests, I am willing to do so. I have hacked Tivos before.

As mentioned previously, I have a S1 on dialup. I did not mention before that it is lifetime.

BrendaG4
 
#226 ·
Why don't you try the trick where you look up your local dial in number on Tivo.com and then put the whole thing into the dialing prefix spot, i.e,. 1-415-555-1212. That forces it to dial the local known to be good number. Your phone will disregard the other digits it dials in this process. Might get you through guided setup at least.
 
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