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Losing all channels - Tivo Premiere

143K views 590 replies 133 participants last post by  CrispyCritter 
#1 ·
I have had my Tivo Premiere since 9-12-2011. I haven't had any problems with it until Friday, 9-30-2011. I was watching the Texas Rangers playoff game and it decided to restart on its on.

The next day the Tivo lost all the cable channels. I tried several of the channels and the unscrambled channels screen said it couldn't find a signal. The scrambled channels said channel not authorized. I restarted the Tivo from the Help menu item and the channels reappeared. The cablecard is a Motorola cablecard.

Last night Monday, 10-3-2011 we were watching some recorded shows and when we finished watching, all the cable channels had disappeared again. I tried to call Tivo, but it was after 7 pm PST. So I started a chat session. Before I called I restarted the Tivo and all channels came back. They guy had me look at some diagnostics and thought it might have been because of a signal dip. I called Tivo support this morning and the tech echoed the same thinking about a signal dip causing the restart on Friday and losing the channels on both occasions. I expressed that the software seemed to be less than robust if it couldn't recover from a signal dip. We agreed that I would monitor and not restart the next time the loss of channels happens during support hours. The tech also mentioned that a new version of the software was being pushed out toward the end of October.

Has anyone experienced these problems before?
 
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#54 ·
it will be hard to keep up with the uptime for the next few months with the stormy season coming to the area which nearly guarantees power failures at least once a week. i haven't had the channel loss problem for about 3 weeks now, but i've had a power failure at least once a week. if i thought a reboot every week would keep me running i'd happily do that, but alas, the problem is just too random or unexplained to respond to that proactive treatment.

one thing i've been trying (out of desperation comes magickal thinking), on the theory that there might be signal corruption on certain channels and knowing that for some reason a handful of channels give me the most problems, i've been keeping my tuners set on 4 of the lower or baseband channels whenever i can and they're idle. i have had virtually no problems in the last 3 weeks and usually i have an outage every 2-4 days, but then again, as i said, i've had at least one restart due to power failure per week. i'm still maintaining my log at:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=481894

/guy
 
#56 ·
We had a thunderstorm early this morning. When I got up all the channels were gone. I pulled the cable card and re-seated. This work for me this time. I will start logging the channels I live the tuners on. I just checked one tuner and it was on channel 306 TNT and that is what I had left it on last night. I was watching the Spurs-Thunder game.
 
#58 ·
Lost all channels at about 5:30 PM CDT. It was recording a Tivo suggestion on TLC channel 323. We were watching the evening news on NBC channel 250. It was displaying on the scrambled channels, "This channel is not authorized. Contact your cable provider for more information." I pulled the cablecard and reinserted. The channels came back. I decided to do a restart. Can't decide whether to call the cable company as Tivo support suggested.
 
#59 ·
it will be hard to keep up with the uptime for the next few months with the stormy season coming to the area which nearly guarantees power failures at least once a week. ...........
You don't have the TiVo connected to a UPS?
 
#60 ·
You don't have the TiVo connected to a UPS?
my ups just died last week and i haven't yet replaced it. i first wanted to run a watt-o-meter to find the current draw and so far it looks like about 85w although that's also the ext drive and i think my cable modem as well.

/guy
 
#63 ·
At 6:15 AM the Tivo wasn't receiving channels. Tivo was displaying,
"Problem with the signal on this cable channel. Trying again." It was trying to record
channel 267 a public broadcasting channel. It was pixelating bad on this
channel. The other tuner was on channel 50 Fox Sports. This was where it was displaying the message. I tried several other channels. It would either display the message with a black background or show blocky pixelation. I pulled the cablecard, waited a minute and reinserted the card. All the channels came back. Calling Longview Cable this morning about it.
 
#64 ·
The Longview Cable tech came by about 3 pm. He said that it was the signal causing my problem.
He put in a 2-way splitter on the the line coming into my structured media box. One line going
to the Tivo and on the other line he put a 3-way splitter going to my other TVs. The prior
setup had a 4-way split. Hopefully this will fix the problem.
 
#65 ·
This is kind of happening to me now as well...only my cable is perfectly fine and it just happens randomly, especially if I leave my TV on overnight. I don't know how to fix it, only that it usually takes a few days and then fixes it self. There are 3 other TVs in my house, none of which have this problem. I don't want to wait a few days this time, how do I fix it?!
 
#66 ·
This is kind of happening to me now as well...only my cable is perfectly fine and it just happens randomly, especially if I leave my TV on overnight. I don't know how to fix it, only that it usually takes a few days and then fixes it self. There are 3 other TVs in my house, none of which have this problem. I don't want to wait a few days this time, how do I fix it?!
To temporarily fix it I have pulled the cablecard waited about 30 seconds and reinserted the cablecard. This works most of the time. A few times I have had to restart the Tivo. I am hoping that putting in the 2-way and 3-way splitters to replace the 4-way splitter by the cable tech is the solution. This increased the signal going to my Tivo Premiere.
 
#70 ·
All of the channels were black and Tivo displayed, "Problem with the signal on this cable channel. Trying again." I thought this might happen. Longview Cable is doing a cable lineup change today and this has occurred before on the Tivo when the cable company has done a lineup change. I restarted the Tivo and could receive the channels again.
 
#71 ·
All the channels were gone this morning. Some just black screens. Others pixelating too bad to watch. I restarted the Tivo and everything was back. We had a thunderstorm this morning, don't know if that caused anything.

A few days ago the magnetron went out on our GE Profile microwave. We heard a loud pop and then ESPN HD and ESPN2 HD went out right after that. About 30 minutes later they both came back without doing anything.
 
#72 ·
Had a thunderstorm yesterday afternoon. Last night the Premiere lost all channels about 8:15 PM. I restarted, but this didn't fix the problem. I pulled the cable card and reinserted. I got the channels back. This morning about 6:15 AM all the cable channels were gone again. I restarted and the channels were back.
 
#75 ·
This just happened to me this morning. No signal message on all channels AND none of my RECORDED shows would play. Well, they would play, but no sound or picture, just the green progress bar showed. Even downloaded videos would not play. Did a restart from the menu and its all back to normal. I'm assuming the flash video player crashed?
 
#76 ·
Not able to receive any channels this morning. Looked at DVR Diagnostics for channel 266 and 349.

Channel: 266
Signal Strength: 83-87
SNR: 36 dB
RS Uncorrected: 464
RS Corrected: 135

Channel: 349
Signal Strength: 89-91
SNR: 37 dB
RS Uncorrected: 453
RS Corrected: 143

I will restart the Tivo. This is about 6 outages in the last 4 days. I don't know if Tivo Premiere is robust enough to work with Longview Cable's signal strength. It has gone long stretches with no outages, but then will have clusters of failures like this.
 
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