BBC1 & BBC2 missing program data

[psampson]

Had my Tivo since they were released. Never had this kind of problem in all the years I've owned it.

Had a disk swap about 2 years ago, 40Gb >> 120 Gb, after the original disks gave up the ghost. Then about a month ago, the Tivo started to reboot, or would lock up. (No GSOD though).

Swapped out the 120 Gb disk for a 40 Gb disk, from another Tivo. This Tivo hadn't been used for a while (long story) so the guide data was out by almost a year. Did a full system reset, i.e. delete all programs, season passes, etc and rerun the guided set up. All was good, until very recently.

When browsing the TV guide, BBC 1 & 2 have no program data, except an entry for South Today, which appears on BBC 1. I am a Freeview viewer, no RF channels selected, only channels marked with (cab). BBC 3/4 are OK and reporting their correct program data. All other channels look fine too.

I've forced a daily call, which did download data, but it makes no difference. Could this be an issue with the DB being corrupted during the weekly call? I'm suspecting that the PSU might be getting a bit flakey and that it may have rebooted during indexing, or whould that have ended up in a GSOD.

I've searched the forum, but didn't find anything helpful on this subject.

[ozsat]

You may need to re-run Guided Setup - if that doesn't work re-run it with a different postcode.

[Jimmy B]

I have recently run into exactly the same problems with my TiVo.
1) The lockups and stuttering started a couple of weeks ago (I was watching the Monaco Formula1 race). I also do not have GSOD.
2) I first noticed the BBC channel guide data missing 4 days ago (Sun 4 June). I too get only one program listed on BBC1 - West Today! Likewise, a forced daily call did not help.

I also tried searching this forum for help without success :(
I found one thread from Feb 06 mentioning the Guide Data problem - also related to BBC channels. But there was no conclusive result at the end that helped me.
There was a separate thread discussing the lockups and stuttering, again without a real conclusion. The main theory here was imminent HDD failure, but the originator of the thread disagreed as his HDD seemed okay in other tests. I too would think there is something else going on here as my HDD has only been running around 3 months (I replaced my 40Gb for a 160Gb Samsung Spinpoint).

I don't have the time right now to re-search for the threads I am refering to (sorry) but I'll try to post the links to them later in case they help.

The important point I think is that two separate TiVo's have shown the same problems at the same time (in different post code areas) - has a bad update been pushed onto our machines? Is anybody else seeing these problems lately?

[Jimmy B]

After reading the thread at...
p=4085182 [sorry, the url was rejected from my posting]
... I retried the dial up and this time it worked. I now have full schedule info for BBC :) . This time the update took much longer than previously to process the data, showing it was doing something usefull!

I still have the lock ups though... :(

Last night I tried the Guided Setup as recommended by ozsat (with a different postcode). I got through the whole procedure - again it took a long time to process the data. I got to the end where it says something like 'you can now use your TiVo but you can't use season passes and scheduling until more processing completes in 4-8 hours'. I left it do do this. When I checked this morning I found I had another lock up during this 4-8 period, I had to power cycle to start the 4-8 hour processing again.

I beleive the lock ups may be linked to the background 'recording' of the current channel to the HDD - ie. nothing is actively being recorded, but TiVo is always doing something! I turned off my Sky box to disable all inputs to TiVo (I have no Aerial channels enabled). My theory is that this will stop the background recording and hence allow the 4-8 hour Guided Setup processing to complete.

I'll let you know how it goes....

One question though.... After each lock-up I need to pull the power cable to get TiVo working again. During the start up I see the 'Wait a moment' and 'Just a few more seconds' screens. Rather than being the normal white text on black/white background, the screens have a green colour to them. Is this a GSOD?

Any help appreciated :)

[psampson]

Just a quickie to say that rerunning guided setup fixed my BBC1/2 missing guide data problems. Still monitoring for any lock ups and/or restarts.

[Graham V]

Last night I tried the Guided Setup as recommended by ozsat (with a different postcode). I got through the whole procedure - again it took a long time to process the data. I got to the end where it says something like 'you can now use your TiVo but you can't use season passes and scheduling until more processing completes in 4-8 hours'. I left it do do this. When I checked this morning I found I had another lock up during this 4-8 period, I had to power cycle to start the 4-8 hour processing again.

I beleive the lock ups may be linked to the background 'recording' of the current channel to the HDD - ie. nothing is actively being recorded, but TiVo is always doing something! I turned off my Sky box to disable all inputs to TiVo (I have no Aerial channels enabled). My theory is that this will stop the background recording and hence allow the 4-8 hour Guided Setup processing to complete.

One question though.... After each lock-up I need to pull the power cable to get TiVo working again. During the start up I see the 'Wait a moment' and 'Just a few more seconds' screens. Rather than being the normal white text on black/white background, the screens have a green colour to them. Is this a GSOD?

Any help appreciated :)

Hi Jimmy
I don't know if this is the programmed behaviour of Tivo boxes, or it is just mine, but if my Tivo gets no signal input from the aerial or scart connection, after a few hours it reboots.
Maybe if you can stop it trying to reboot regularly, it might be able to digest and process the downloaded data without been interrupted (as this does take very many hours) If this process is regularly interrupted, might it be causing the data to be corrupted, so crashing the system??

The Tivo HDD is always recording the current channel, I don't think it was designed to have a rest (good or bad design? you decide)

As for the GSOD, from memory it actually tells you things have gone badly wrong, and to leave it plugged in for 24 hours.

Hope you get your machine back to rude health soon
Graham

[mrtickle]

I don't know if this is the programmed behaviour of Tivo boxes, or it is just mine, but if my Tivo gets no signal input from the aerial or scart connection, after a few hours it reboots.


Don't worry it's not you - it is by design. I think it's 90 minutes of no signal before the reboot.

[psampson]

Having reported that my problems were sorted by re-running the guided setup, it appears as though something is going badly wrong with my Tivo, as I have had to re-run it 3 times, to correct missing data.

Last time it lost pretty much all the major channels, rather than just one or two. Does anyone know why this happens? My trust in the Tivo has taken a severe knock, to the point where I went out and purchased a DVR. You'll be glad to know that it was sent back within a couple of days as it was rubbish.

I think that I may have to do some more hacking, this time to the PSU. If switching to a new PSU doesn't do the trick, I'm out of ideas. Fingers crossed.

[ozsat]

It sounds like data corruption - maybe a faulty disk.

[psampson]

Corruption happened again at the weekend. I've pretty much nailed this down to the guide data delivery on Saturday. During the week it seems OK. I've swapped disks, but it doesn't seem to make any difference.

Last night I did another rerun of the guided set up and once again it was OK afterwards. I also swapped out the PSU, with one from another Tivo. So back to monitoring the data for the channels for another week.

One thing that does strike me as a little odd. When performing the powering up sequence, the Tivo reports that it is loading new software from Tivo. I don't recall seeing this before, but I am using a disk that has 2.55a. They needed 2.55a for the teletext bug.

Another observation, last night when I attempted to rerun the setup, it would not let me reboot, as it said a call was in progress. Going to the system information screen showed that the last call attempt was more than 9 hours ago. There was no amber light, and no apparent housekeeping on the status screen. Not had this before. Had to restart the Tivo, then do guided setup.

[wack61]

I'm getting problems with the daily call so most of my guide data is missing, it was working fine until I noticed it didn't record deadwood last week

I ran the test phone line and it seems to be dialing out OK but it's not connecting, it just tries then reports the line isn't being answered( or words to that effect)

I'll try guided setup again as suggested above, I have a 300gb HD to swap for the original 40gb but chickened out :rolleyes: