Audio Cuts Out 2/3 Through Recording

[dylanr]

Intermittently, my Series 2 Tivo will drop audio for the last 20-30 minutes of a recording. By "drop" I mean that it's totally silent... no kazoo sound or hum or low volume. Silent.

The silence is part of the recording -- rewinding/replaying the recording produces same results. During this silence, the regular Tivo sound effects work fine.

I first noticed these problems a couple weeks ago... coincidentally (??) about the time there was a SW upgrade.

To troubleshoot the problem, I have:
- tested unit on both analog and digital cable signals
- triple-checked all the cables (duh)
- restarted the Tivo unit
- verified that no such problem happens when I'm just watching TV

I have two Tivos and the problem only happens for shows recorded by one of them. It makes no difference which unit I watch the show on... the audio issue is the same either way.

For whatever reason, this only seems to happen about 30-40 minutes into an hour long show. Whenever it happens, the audio is out for the rest of the recording. It happens on maybe one out of five recordings... but inevitably, the ones I'd actually like to see the end of. :)

I'm really hoping there's something else to try besides returning the box... I have lifetime service on this one and it's barely a year old.

Some facts (in case they help):
- SW: 7.2.2b
- no hacks or mods on this Tivo
- problem with digital/analog cable, with/without cable box
- have tried coax, S video, composite cables in and out

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[mspence]

I have very similar symptoms, starting a few weeks ago and (IIRC) around the time of a SW "upgrade". I've tried all of the troubleshooting steps you've tried, plus I got another cable box, which didn't help.

I have version 7.3.1 on a Series 2 that's about 18 months old, with no hacks or mods

I've never seen this happen while watching live TV, but it can apparently persist forever:

- If I've recorded two shows back to back and the last 10 minutes of the first one has dropped audio, then all of the second one is completly silent.

- If the channel hasn't been changed, live TV often has no audio either (although the signal is still coming through the Tivo). Powering the cable box off and back on fixes this. Haven't tried just changing channels. And like I said, I got another cable box with no change in symptoms.

Anyone have any answers or ideas?

[dylanr]

mspence -

I fiddled around a bit more with the problem and started a new thread (showthread.php?t=314938), hoping the extra information might help. So far, I've heard nothing very helpful, though we don't seem to be alone in having this problem.

The main discovery I've made is that my cutouts seem to be directly linked to the transitions from commercials to programming. So far, I have only lost (or regained) audio at the *exact* moment of those transitions.

I'm really bummed about this too, because I would love to upgrade to the new Series 3, but I can't really bring myself to sink $1K into buggy software that has no process for submitting bug reports.