Complete lock-up [Text View]

sharding

09-27-2006, 10:43 PM

So, I just had a complete lockup that seemed similar to the crash I had over the weekend. I was watching a recorded show (digital, but not HD). I was fast forwarding through commercials. At one point, the picture froze, and the TiVo started taking 20-30 seconds to respond to remote commands. It started playing one very corrupted looking frame every minute or so, sometimes with a few seconds of sound, sometimes without. And then it locked up completely. It wouldn't respond to the remote, and none of the buttons on the front of the box would do anything. The remote signal light didn't even light up. I had to pull the power plug to reboot it (I'm not sure if it would have rebooted on its own eventually; I only gave it about 30 seconds after it locked up).

It definitely seems to be something about the program we were watching. After I rebooted, I played that program again and fast forwarded to the same spot, and the same thing happened (except this time I was able to exit out to the TiVo menu before it completely locked up).

It's so unacceptable for a corrupted program to completely lock the box up. I could possible excuse it if it happened once every few years, but it's happened twice in a couple of weeks, and I've seen enough other people report similar problems that I think it's clear it's happening a lot more than it should.

sharding

09-29-2006, 12:53 AM

Ok, this same basic problem just happened again. This time we were watching Survivor (recorded, while we were watching The Office live), and right as they were showing the votes, the picture froze, then it showed a frame of corrupted/pixellated picture, then the box rebooted itself.

This is totally unacceptable for an $800 DVR. Other than this, I've been really happy with the Series 3, but this is what I consider a showstopper bug. Random crashes and reboots were one of the biggest reasons I wanted to get rid of the Comcast DVR, and if they TiVo can't do better, it's not worth the price premium to me (in fact, in some ways this is worse, because I can never watch the end of the corrupted recording -- it crashes the box every time. At least the Comcast DVR was totally random, so I could go back and try again). There are a lot of things the Series 3 does way better than the Comcast DVR, but if it can't be stable, it's just not going to work. I've had TiVos for seven years, and I can't remember a single crash before I got the Series 3. Now I've had at least five in the last two weeks.

I'll call TiVo customer service tomorrow when they're open. But seriously, if I can't get this fixed within the next week or two (before the return period is up), or at least an extremely reliable sense that it will be fixed very soon, I think this thing is going to have to go back. It makes me very sad to say that, but I just can't justify spending $800 on a DVR that keeps crashing and ruining my favorite shows :-(

DCIFRTHS

09-29-2006, 01:25 AM

Not sure if this is possible for you to do, but can you exchange the box for a new one? Maybe you got a bad box.

Another thought, and I'm guessing you don't have this information: Does the "crashing" happen on shows that have been recorded, or are being viewed, on one particular tuner? If so, it's possible that you have a funky CableCARD (or a bad S3).

Keep us posted.

sharding

09-29-2006, 01:34 AM

Not sure if this is possible for you to do, but can you exchange the box for a new one? Maybe you got a bad box.

Yeah, I may try that. I've been a little hesitant to go that route for a few reasons. First (most obvious), none of the local stores actually have S3s in stock to exchange for, so I'll have to wait for more stock. Second, I've seen at least a few other people mention "poison" recordings that crash the TiVo in similar ways, so I've been disinclined to think that this is a hardware problem with this specific box (though I'm sure if everyone were seeing this happen as much as I am, there would be a lot more complaints around here). Finally, it really sucks to lose all of your recordings and settings when you get a new box, so I don't want to do it unless I have some degree of confidence that it'll actually fix it. But obviously I would much rather have a box that actually works than keep my stuff on one that doesn't.

Another thought, and I'm guessing you don't have this information: Does the "crashing" happen on shows that have been recorded, or are being viewed, on one particular tuner?

Hmm. That's an interesting angle. I don't know that right now (I don't think it shows that information in the info screen). But I can try to keep better track from now on (assuming I'm present when the problem show is being recorded). The difficult thing is that such a small percentage of recordings do this, so it may be very hard to catch one in the act. And it would be pretty labor intensive to manually log which tuner every recording happens on, just in case it later causes a problem.

I don't really know enough about CableCards to understand how they would play a role in this. Do the CableCards actually do the decryption, or do they just provide keys to hardware in the TiVo that does it? Do CableCards do anything that has the potential to cause momentary glitches in the mpeg stream (as opposed to preventing you from tuning the channel at all)?

DCIFRTHS

09-29-2006, 03:05 AM

Yeah, I may try that. I've been a little hesitant to go that route for a few reasons. First (most obvious), none of the local stores actually have S3s in stock to exchange for, so I'll have to wait for more stock. Second, I've seen at least a few other people mention "poison" recordings that crash the TiVo in similar ways, so I've been disinclined to think that this is a hardware problem with this specific box (though I'm sure if everyone were seeing this happen as much as I am, there would be a lot more complaints around here). Finally, it really sucks to lose all of your recordings and settings when you get a new box, so I don't want to do it unless I have some degree of confidence that it'll actually fix it. But obviously I would much rather have a box that actually works than keep my stuff on one that doesn't.

I understand :(

Hmm. That's an interesting angle. I don't know that right now (I don't think it shows that information in the info screen). But I can try to keep better track from now on (assuming I'm present when the problem show is being recorded). The difficult thing is that such a small percentage of recordings do this, so it may be very hard to catch one in the act. And it would be pretty labor intensive to manually log which tuner every recording happens on, just in case it later causes a problem.

What show(s) caused the crash? If you prefer, you can PM me. I have the show, I would like to see if I can reproduce the issue. If not, I can record it. Who is your cable provider, and what brand of CableCARD do they use?

I don't really know enough about CableCards to understand how they would play a role in this. Do the CableCards actually do the decryption, or do they just provide keys to hardware in the TiVo that does it? Do CableCards do anything that has the potential to cause momentary glitches in the mpeg stream (as opposed to preventing you from tuning the channel at all)?

From what I understand, and I am certainly open to correction from more a more knowledgeable source :p ...

CableCARDs share a key pair with the head-end and use this key pair to decrypt the content. The CableCARD then re-encrypts it using a key pair it shares with the host device, in this case, the S3. If you are using a digital output, the signal is unencypted by the host, and then gets encrypted again using HDCP so that your display device can decrypt and display it. If the content is stored on the host device, it is stored in an encrypted form. Yep. That's three :eek: rounds of encryption for a DVR...

09-29-2006, 03:24 AM

It definitely seems to be something about the program we were watching. After I rebooted, I played that program again and fast forwarded to the same spot, and the same thing happened (except this time I was able to exit out to the TiVo menu before it completely locked up).

This sounds like a bad hard drive.

DCIFRTHS

09-29-2006, 03:37 AM

This sounds like a bad hard drive.

Or it could be a bad drive ;) :D

sharding

09-29-2006, 11:08 AM

Yeah, bad hard drive is starting to seem more and more likely. Especially since the failures appear to be happening more frequently as time goes on. It happened again during the Tonight Show last night. I got one 49 minute recording and one 2 minute recording. Near the end of the 49 minute recording, it has another of those lockup/reboot glitches. My wife mentioned the interesting point that in the three recorded shows we have that do this, it happens at about the 45 minute point. But that may just be a conincidence.

What show(s) caused the crash? If you prefer, you can PM me. I have the show, I would like to see if I can reproduce the issue. If not, I can record it. Who is your cable provider, and what brand of CableCARD do they use?

I've had it on Million Dollar Listing (Bravo), Survivor and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. But I don't think it's really anything specific with those shows. If I record a later airing of the same episode, it seems fine.

I'm on Comcast with Motorola Cable Cards.

sharding

09-29-2006, 11:38 AM

Ok, I just talked to TiVo CS. They said that they have reports of defective cable cards causing the box to reboot, so they suggest replacing the cable cards. That's pretty easy to do here (they'll let us pick them up/drop them off in person, and activate them ourselves over the phone), so I'll go ahead and do it today. I really wish I knew which one was causing the problem though. I'm afraid that by swapping both out, I'm likely to get one (or even two) more defective ones.

Also, it doesn't quite add up to me that it would be the cable cards if the problem has been getting more and more frequent. I'd think that the frequency would be pretty much the same from the time I installed the defective card(s). But maybe I'm just having bad luck.

I wonder if the cable company would let me have two more cards without returning the first two, so I can systematically swap them in and out for a week or so...

ETA: If it is caused by the cable cards, does that mean that after I replace them, playing back the "bad" recordings should no longer reboot the box? Or are those permanently corrupted such that even with a good cable card, they will never play back properly? If the former, I guess that would be a quick way to test to see if the new cards are any better...

snathanb

09-29-2006, 12:13 PM

danator

09-29-2006, 12:15 PM

Tell me about it. My box froze for the very first time, the minute the cable guy walked in. Good thing cable guy know nothing about anything. :) it reboot by itself after 5 minutes. He was busy checking out my setup and missed it. If he would have known something, he could have walked out ...then noted "Customer DVR malfunction" LOL, how embarrassing!!!

sharding

09-29-2006, 12:40 PM

sharding:

If you have good OTA access, you might try running without cable cards for a couple of days, just to see if you have any problems. If there are still problems, then you know you need to exchange the box.

Unfortunately, I have extremely poor OTA access. Also, upwards of 75% of what we watch is available on cable only, so not only would that be a huge disruption to our viewing, but we couldn't really duplicate our usage patterns well enough to eliminate that as a variable.

MickeS

09-29-2006, 12:46 PM

That's exactly what happened to me on my Series 2. That was a bad hard drive, has worked fine since replacing it.

Of course, a brand new Series 3 shouldn't have a bad HD... but who knows.

sharding

09-29-2006, 12:58 PM

Of course, a brand new Series 3 shouldn't have a bad HD... but who knows.

Eh, I've seen bad hard drives right off the shelf before (not in a TiVo, but I don't have a very large sample to work with there). It wouldn't shock me. But I'd be a lot happier if it were the cable cards, since those are much less of a hassle to replace.

sharding

09-29-2006, 01:34 PM

Ok, this is an interesting development. I just intentionally had it recording two things at a time, to see if I could figure out which tuner or cable card is having the problem. About 6 minutes in, problems started (watching live). But it isn't totally isolated to one tuner. Both are having some problems. Here's a rough outline of what has happened:

* Recording Inside the Actors Studio (Bravo, channel 66, digital SD) on Tuner 0. Watching and recording The Price is Right on (CBS, channel 107, digital HD) on Tuner 1.
* The picture (Price is Right/Tuner 1) freezes, and then does the "pixellation" thing, but the TiVo isn't completely frozen
* I switch tuners to tuner 0, and the program seems ok
* I switch tuners back to tuner 1, and then that program is ok too
* I rewind (still on tuner 1) over the problem spot, and it definitely has problems again (only shows a few frames, etc.)
* I switch tuners back to tuner 0, and now all I see is black, and there's no sound. Sometimes rewinding will recover the picture, but if I try to go back to live, the picture either freezes or goes black again.

This isn't identical to the problems I started this thread with, because there's no reboot. But otherwise the symptoms are very similar, so I think it's the same root cause.

It also seems that rewinding and replaying the glitchy piece from Tuner 1 actually messes up the recording of the live buffer for Tuner 0. I changed the channel on Tuner 0, and it was playing smoothly. Then I went to Tuner 1 and replayed the bad part again. I switched back to tuner 0 and it looked ok, but if I rewound, the buffer was bad too.

I'm going to try just pulling the second cable card and running in single tuner mode to see if that helps at all. If it is related to one of the cards or tuners (as opposed to a bad HD, for example), it seems like the problem started on the second card and tuner this time.

Just for fun, here's a picture of what the picture looked like (it was changing a bit every few seconds, sometimes pausing for 20-30 seconds):

http://dogcow.org/tmp/20060929-IMG_1846tc.jpg

jfh3

09-29-2006, 04:43 PM

Ok, this is an interesting development.

http://dogcow.org/tmp/20060929-IMG_1846tc.jpg

That's some pretty bad microblocking - what signal strength are you getting when that happens?

May want to have your cable company check out the signal level coming in through the cable.

sharding

09-29-2006, 05:13 PM

That's some pretty bad microblocking - what signal strength are you getting when that happens?

I get signal strengths between 94 and 100 on all channels I've checked. When that specific problem happens, the TiVo is so unresponsive that I can't bring up the signal meter, so I'm not sure what it was reading right that second. I've never had any signal strength problems to this outlet before (including with the Comcast/Motorola 3412 DVR), and I've never been able to find a channel for which the TiVo shows a low signal strength.

It is possible that something is causing the signal to temporarily drop. But would that cause the other symptoms I'm seeing (lockups and spontaneous reboots)?

jfh3

09-29-2006, 05:18 PM

I get signal strengths between 94 and 100 on all channels I've checked. When that specific problem happens, the TiVo is so unresponsive that I can't bring up the signal meter, so I'm not sure what it was reading right that second. I've never had any signal strength problems to this outlet before (including with the Comcast/Motorola 3412 DVR), and I've never been able to find a channel for which the TiVo shows a low signal strength.

It is possible that something is causing the signal to temporarily drop. But would that cause the other symptoms I'm seeing (lockups and spontaneous reboots)?

I wasn't talking about the signal meter on the Tivo, but measuring what the cable is feeding (e.g. disconnect the cable from the S3 and measure the level).

sharding

09-29-2006, 05:44 PM

I wasn't talking about the signal meter on the Tivo, but measuring what the cable is feeding (e.g. disconnect the cable from the S3 and measure the level).

Are those likely to differ significantly? I haven't done that, but it's probably pretty much my last resort. It's a massive pain to get a tech out here (much more trouble than swapping out the cable cards or even swapping the TiVo box), and nothing I've seen so far has suggested that this is a signal level issue (including the fact that that every device that has ever been plugged into that outlet has always indicated an excellent signal level, and the tech said the signal level was great back when we first had our cable turned on a couple of years ago).

Like I said, I don't really have a hard time believing that there may be intermittent signal problems (though they would have to have coincidentally started right when I got the TiVo), but I do have a bit of a hard time believing that such problems would cause the TiVo to crash. If they do, that's a big deal, and something I'm not really willing to accept in an $800 DVR, even if I'm able to temporarily work around it by improving the signal level. If they don't, then I have some other kind of problem, and going through the trouble of getting Comcast out here isn't going to fix it...

Edited to add:

Sorry if that came off as rude, jfh3. I'm not annoyed with you. I do appreciate the help. I'm just really frustrated with this problem. Almost all of the troubleshooting steps are quite time consuming and painful (getting a tech out, exchanging cablecards and getting them reactivated, finding another TiVo to exchange for and then losing all of our recordings). And I don't feel like I have enough of a handle on the problem to feel confident that any of those things will fix it. I have an engineering background, and I'm used to troubleshooting things. But I'm also used to having a lot more knowledge of (and visibility into) the systems I'm trying to troubleshoot. I like to understand the problem before throwing potential solutions at it. Right now I feel like I'm flying blind, which really bothers me...

jfh3

09-29-2006, 06:28 PM

Are those likely to differ significantly?

I honestly don't know.

I'm waiting for a cable tech to call, who had previously told me that my signal levels were a bit high and to let him know if there were any problems.

Unfortunately, I had forgot to ask him what they were, but he did say that they've seen a number of problems from time to time with the Motorola boxes and cable card hosts having pixilization and loss of picture when the levels were too high. He said this could be annoying, because it appeared intermmittent.

Since I'm now having similar problems with occasional blocking like you see and partial recordings, I'm having him come back to look at the cable signal level.

I agree with you - these aren't easy problems to trouble shoot. Look where the problem could be:

- Original broadcast signal
- Remodulated signal (e.g. the cable signal)
- The cable feed
- CableCARD hardware
- CableCARD microcode
- Tivo software
- Tivo hardware

I just happen to think that the knee-jerk reaction of saying it must be the Series 3 is wrong, which is why I'm trying to run down the other possibilities with the problems I'm seeing. (I've only seen one unexpected reboot and I think that was during a channel change, though don't remember).

And I didn't take your post as rude, though I can understand your frustration.

sharding

09-29-2006, 06:35 PM

Unfortunately, I had forgot to ask him what they were, but he did say that they've seen a number of problems from time to time with the Motorola boxes and cable card hosts having pixilization and loss of picture when the levels were too high. He said this could be annoying, because it appeared intermmittent.

Hmm. Very interesting (see what I mean about not having a handle on the problem? Too many variables!!!). I could easily reduce the signal level the TiVo is getting by tossing another splitter in the line, but of course then that could introduce all kinds of other problems.

sharding

09-29-2006, 07:29 PM

Ok, more news. Since about 11am, I've been operating with only one cable card. I've been recording continuously. Just now, I was recording on both tuners (HBOHD on the tuner with the cable card still inserted and NBC-HD on the other tuner). It just had another breakup, and it seemed to originate on the tuner without a cable card (if it's tuner-specific at all), though it messed up the recordings being done on both tuners at the same time. So I guess all I've really learned so far is that it isn't being specifically caused by the cable card that was in the second slot.

I guess now I'll try attenuating the signal a bit, just for the heck of it, since I have what I need to do that right here, and none of the other remedies are going to be possible tonight...

talmania

09-29-2006, 07:45 PM

I've never had any signal strength problems to this outlet before (including with the Comcast/Motorola 3412 DVR),

FWIW, I had Comcast/Motorola 6412 DVR on a 3 way splitter and never had any picture problems (just big problems with the various units) but I ended up having to remove the splitter in order to get the Tivo and cablecards to activate.

09-29-2006, 09:59 PM

My bet is still on the hard drive.

snathanb

09-30-2006, 10:08 AM

I guess now I'll try attenuating the signal a bit, just for the heck of it, since I have what I need to do that right here, and none of the other remedies are going to be possible tonight...

sharding... for what it's worth... that picture you posted looks just like what I used to get on one of my OTA HD stations in the evenings... the signal level was far too strong for my OTA HD STB to handle. I simply put a splitter in to attenuate the signal and it completely fixed the problem.

porges

09-30-2006, 10:13 AM

Ok, more news. Since about 11am, I've been operating with only one cable card. I've been recording continuously. Just now, I was recording on both tuners (HBOHD on the tuner with the cable card still inserted and NBC-HD on the other tuner).

Like there aren't enough mysteries here, but...I thought we've been told that if there's only one CableCard in the S3, it reverts to single-tuner.

reh523

09-30-2006, 01:00 PM

It's so unacceptable for a corrupted program to completely lock the box up. I could possible excuse it if it happened once every few years, but it's happened twice in a couple of weeks, and I've seen enough other people report similar problems that I think it's clear it's happening a lot more than it should.

Uhhh ever use a windows PC?

sharding

09-30-2006, 01:03 PM

Like there aren't enough mysteries here, but...I thought we've been told that if there's only one CableCard in the S3, it reverts to single-tuner.

Yeah, this was a little discovery for me too. But I'm pretty sure it would revert to single tuner if I had actually repeated guided setup, as it exhorted me to do. I didn't repeat guided setup (because I knew I was going to be putting the cable card back in), so it didn't adjust itself to only having one card and tuner.

But this isn't really a desirable long-term configuration. It doesn't take into account which tuner has the cable card (and which channels need it) for scheduling recordings. So you can end up trying to record a show on an encrypted channel without a cable card. I was able to manually trick it into using the right tuners for my testing, but you definitely wouldn't want to do that as a matter of routine.

wannaHD

10-01-2006, 02:48 PM

sharding

10-01-2006, 05:12 PM

Any luck with this test you were going to do?

Didn't help.

I was going to try to just swap out the TiVo today, but I can't find any more locally. At this point, I'm less interested in figuring out what's causing it than I am in just making it work again. It's getting really hard to watch TV.

The more I think about it, the less inclined I am to believe it's faulty cable cards and the more I am inclined to think that it's the TiVo. I didn't have any problems at all for the first week or so that I had it. Then it started gradually (one crash then several days of stability), and has been getting progressively worse every day (now several crashes a day). That just doesn't feel like something that is likely to be caused by defective cable cards or a bad signal level (though of course, anything is possible).

chipvideo

10-01-2006, 06:54 PM

Didn't help.

I was going to try to just swap out the TiVo today, but I can't find any more locally. At this point, I'm less interested in figuring out what's causing it than I am in just making it work again. It's getting really hard to watch TV.

The more I think about it, the less inclined I am to believe it's faulty cable cards and the more I am inclined to think that it's the TiVo. I didn't have any problems at all for the first week or so that I had it. Then it started gradually (one crash then several days of stability), and has been getting progressively worse every day (now several crashes a day). That just doesn't feel like something that is likely to be caused by defective cable cards or a bad signal level (though of course, anything is possible).

Don't feel bad. I have two of these. Both have issues on my hdtv locals on the same system your on. I get interfernce and bad flashes and crackling noise every minute or so on channels 104,105,107. Those are the only locals I watch. The other HD channels like HBO,SHO,MAX,TNT,ESPN have zero problems. Just the damn local ones in HD. I wonder if there is something in the signal comcast is sending out that is corrupting this.

I also know that with my moto box's I would get reboots constantly. I wonder if these tuners in the tivo are too sensitive. I mean that with the moto box's I never got this interefercnce on the channels. It would just reset each night when I went to bed. I have all my stuff on surge and battery backup.

sharding

10-01-2006, 07:21 PM

Don't feel bad. I have two of these. Both have issues on my hdtv locals on the same system your on. I get interfernce and bad flashes and crackling noise every minute or so on channels 104,105,107. Those are the only locals I watch. The other HD channels like HBO,SHO,MAX,TNT,ESPN have zero problems. Just the damn local ones in HD. I wonder if there is something in the signal comcast is sending out that is corrupting this.

Mine has crashed on more than just the HD locals. It has crashed on Bravo several times and also Starz HD (though it's possible one of the HD locals was on the other tuner at the time, I guess). On yours, does it crash again if you replay the recording (assuming you were recording when it crashed)?

chipvideo

10-01-2006, 07:37 PM

Mine has crashed on more than just the HD locals. It has crashed on Bravo several times and also Starz HD (though it's possible one of the HD locals was on the other tuner at the time, I guess). On yours, does it crash again if you replay the recording (assuming you were recording when it crashed)?

Usually when I get a black screen if I am recording it shows incomplete recording. I assume that the tuner is being hit with some sort of interfernce or bug or something so it completely cuts out.

BTW I just out of the blue decided to put a 10db attenuator on the back of the tivo and my signal strength on both tuners is 97 still. Does this mean that I could have had too strong a signal. I thought I couldn't as I have my cable split at the box to feed my internet on one line and the other line is split once again to feed my two t.v.s

I don't have an amplifier in my line. I just find it strange that the locals were giving me trouble.
I will see what happens overnight with the attenuator attatched. If it solves it I guess I will install the attenuator before the split for my two t.v.s connected to the tivos.

sharding

10-01-2006, 08:16 PM

Usually when I get a black screen if I am recording it shows incomplete recording. I assume that the tuner is being hit with some sort of interfernce or bug or something so it completely cuts out.

Hmm. I think we might be seeing somewhat different problems. I haven't seen the black screen at all except on Friday when I basically induced it by repeatedly replaying back a corrupted portion of a recording. I've only seen incomplete recordings one other time (described below).

I'm starting to see some more patterns, though.

It seems that 99% of the time that I have a crash, I'm watching a recorded program. I think that if it hits one of these glitches and I just let it play through, the machine typically will not reboot. It may take a minute or two to get through the problem area, but it does usually recover. If I try to fast forward or rewind over the glitch, or sometimes if I try to go to the TiVo menu or live TV, it'll often crash.

I've only seen evidence of one spontaenous crash when I wasn't watching a recorded program. That happened during the Tonight Show on Thursday night. In that case, I have two partial recordings which each end with a glitch that will lockup or reboot the TiVo if I replay them.

I did see one other crash when I wasn't watching a recording (I was watching live TV), but in that case it hit a glitch and I tried to rewind back over it. From my recent experience, I think if I'd just let it play through and recover.

wannaHD

10-01-2006, 09:18 PM

Sharding and Chipvideo have Comcast...does everybody with this problem have Comcast? I wonder if, for example, any FIOS users have experienced this problem??

(I am looking to take delivery of my new S3 and new Sharp HDTV in a couple weeks and have been wondering whether to go with Comcast or FIOS?? I am anxiously following this thread because I had a Moto 6412 for a couple weeks before I could not take it anymore - so I ordered an S3. I am hoping the S3 is all it is cracked up to be.)

sharding

10-01-2006, 09:25 PM

Sharding and Chipvideo have Comcast...does everybody with this problem have Comcast? I wonder if, for example, any FIOS users have experienced this problem??

I'm not sure I've seen anyone here who is seeing exactly the same problem I am. Chipvideo's sounds the closest, but it still doesn't really sound like the same issue I'm seeing. A number of people have seen some crashes here and there, some people are seeing the partial recording and black screen problem (which I am not), and a few people have noted similar problems on previous TiVo units, but I haven't seen anything suggesting that others are seeing the type and frequency of crashes I am on a Series 3.

(If I'm wrong, please speak up! I'd really like to share notes with folks who have seen the same problem).

MickeS

10-02-2006, 12:29 AM

"At one point, the picture froze, and the TiVo started taking 20-30 seconds to respond to remote commands. It started playing one very corrupted looking frame every minute or so, sometimes with a few seconds of sound, sometimes without. And then it locked up completely. It wouldn't respond to the remote"

Why in the world would bad reception cause this? A bad harddrive on the other hand always causes this.

sharding

10-02-2006, 04:21 PM

Why in the world would bad reception cause this? A bad harddrive on the other hand always causes this.

It seems more like a hard drive type issue to me too, but I'm trying not to take anything for granted at this point. As I said before, I'm far more interested in solving the problem than in figuring out the exact cause.

I'm going to try swapping out the TiVo as soon as I can get my hands on a second one.

Just for the heck of it, I also scheduled a tech visit from Comcast to come check my signal levels (and maybe give me a new splitter while they're here). Comcast still bugs me, but I once again have to give our local Comcast folks credit. They gave me no problems and asked almost no questions when I asked to have someone come check our signal. They offered to give me an appointment first thing tomorrow morning, but I have meetings I can't miss, so I had to put it off until Thursday. I was really expecting to have to schedule a week or more out, so that was a pleasant surprise. Of coure, it remains to be seen whether they'll show up on time....

sharding

10-02-2006, 09:18 PM

Ok, I just brought home another Series 3. We'll see if this one does any better.

I notice this unit was made on September 13th, while the other one was made on August 24th. They're probably cranking them out as fast as they can :)

DCIFRTHS

10-03-2006, 01:16 AM

sharding

10-03-2006, 01:18 AM

Where did you find the S3 in stock?

Fry's. They said they just got a bunch of them today. They didn't have any yesterday when I called.

sharding

10-03-2006, 03:36 PM

My new unit seems to have rebooted itself overnight, because I lost the 30-second skip setting. It shouldn't have been the software update, because I forced that to happen before I went to bed (I confirmed it was on 8.0.1a, and not pending restart). However, I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt this first time. I don't see any partial recordings, and I haven't seen any of the other symptoms I was seeing. It's possible I just forgot to turn the 30-second skip back on after the software update. Is there any place in the UI to see the TiVo's uptime? I couldn't find it.

jfh3

10-03-2006, 07:50 PM

Is there any place in the UI to see the TiVo's uptime? I couldn't find it.

No. Tivo has apparently had many discussions about including this, but concluded that it would generate more support questions than the value it might provide.

MitchW

10-03-2006, 08:00 PM

sharding

10-03-2006, 08:17 PM

Don't blame Tivo for this problem. I had the same problem with my SA 8300 HD from Charter.

It is certainly possible that it is a problem with the cables or signal, and as I posted above, I am having Comcast out to look at it later this week. However, it's worth mentioning that none of the Comcast HD DVRs I had ever had any problem resembling this. They had plenty of other problems, but nothing that seemed even remotely related to signal quality.

DCIFRTHS

10-03-2006, 10:36 PM

It is certainly possible that it is a problem with the cables or signal, and as I posted above, I am having Comcast out to look at it later this week. However, it's worth mentioning that none of the Comcast HD DVRs I had ever had any problem resembling this. They had plenty of other problems, but nothing that seemed even remotely related to signal quality.

I had an SA8300HD connected to the same cable where my S3 is now. When Cablevision came over to install the CableCARDS, it didn't work. He tried 3 different CCs, and then insisted my splitter was to blame. I didn't believe him because the SA8300HD was working fine on the same cable...

He swapped out my splitter with one from the cable company, and the CCs worked fine. My splitter was one of the more expensive RCA models. Apparently the CCs are more sensitive to signal levels than other equipment.

octomonkee

10-04-2006, 01:15 AM

Hello. I'm new to this thread. I'm having similar "pixelating" issues. Last week Tivo recorded local shows were fine and beautiful in HD. Tonight I recorded Dancing w/ the Stars in HD. When I started watching it there were lots of pixelation and freezing, then it would be fine for a second and then pixelate again with some stuttering of audio and video. Went like that through the whole show. No rebooting problems, just the pixelation. It really sucked because basically I missed the show. Now I'm worried about Lost tomorrow night.

Please note: my cablecard situation is not 100% complete. I've had many problems w/ bad cards. In fact, the 1 card that I currently have is bad (not allowing me channels above 100 except local HD channels). Charter Cable is coming out tomorrow morning to "fix" the cablecard situation (apparently, they have good cards now), so I'm hoping that maybe the pixelation problem will also go away (it certainly won't if the issue is not cablecard related).

sharding

10-04-2006, 02:24 AM

Grr. Now on the new one, I got my first partial recording that wasn't obviously caused by the corruption problem I described earlier. It just cleanly stops 31 minutes in. I know no one manually did this. My wife is out of town, and I was at work. We have no kids, maid, etc. The messed up show is Oprah, from the HD local (good thing my wife is out of town!). Sigh.

snathanb

10-04-2006, 09:20 AM

Sound like Tivo needs to definately add some code to handle temporary interruptions in the data stream without terminating recordings. And..... to keep from rebooting when receiving a corrupted data stream. Seems like all their testing was done on systems without unexpected errors.

octomonkee

10-04-2006, 09:49 AM

I've found that I'm only having the pixelation problem on two channels...CW network (formerly the WB), and ABC. Both HD channels come in pixelated. I can't even watch any part of those two HD channels since the pixelation is happening full-time, now.

jfh3

10-04-2006, 12:50 PM

sharding

10-04-2006, 02:08 PM

I haven't returned my first Series3 yet. I wish I had another two cable cards, so I could run them in parallel and see if they both had problems at the same time...

I guess I could just hook up the other one without cable cards and have it record HD locals and other unencrypted channels.

DCIFRTHS

10-04-2006, 06:30 PM

sharding

10-04-2006, 06:39 PM

I hope it turns out to be a low/bad signal, and is easily fixable.

Yes, I hope so too. I guess I'll find out tomorrow when the cable guy comes.

The thing about both of these problems (the lockups and the partial recordings) is that it makes it almost like we don't have TiVo. The greatest thing about TiVo is not having to stress about being around when the shows we want to watch are on. We know TiVo will have it waiting for us when we get home. But now, I have no trust that TiVo will actually record the show properly. So I'm back to my pre-1999 practice of making absolutely sure I'm home and sitting in front of the TV when my favorite shows are on. Totally lame.

moyekj

10-04-2006, 07:12 PM

sharding, do you have any OTA reception in your area? Would be good to take cablecard out of picture to see if the same problems happen. It appears to me that the vast majority of reported partial recordings, blackouts, etc. have been reported by people using cablecards. I don't have my cablecards yet and have been using OTA & analog cable recordings only without trouble so far.

Also of note one of my OTA channels (ABCHD) has pretty weak signal and I get occasional dropouts yet my S3 has been able to record through those glitches OK. So I'm wondering if signal glitches through the S3 cablecards are the source of problems? Would be good to determine for sure the problem is with cablecards and not something else.

Even without OTA you could just try connecting directly without cablecards and record analog cable and manually any unencrypted digital cable channels.

sharding

10-04-2006, 07:15 PM

Even without OTA you could just try connecting directly without cablecards and record analog and manually any unencrypted digital channels.

Yeah, that's what I'm planning to do. I don't have reasonable OTA reception at my house, but I can record the HD locals without the cable cards.

jfh3

10-04-2006, 08:10 PM

The thing about both of these problems (the lockups and the partial recordings) is that it makes it almost like we don't have TiVo. The greatest thing about TiVo is not having to stress about being around when the shows we want to watch are on. We know TiVo will have it waiting for us when we get home. But now, I have no trust that TiVo will actually record the show properly.

I agree. The first time I saw a partial recording on the Series 3, I was absolutely shocked. I hate that I have to have "backup" recordings set on other boxes, because I can't "trust" Tivo 100% until they figure out this partial recording problem.

Fortunately, I'm at the point where I'm almost 100% certain that this is a problem that can be fixed by software.

sharding

10-05-2006, 02:25 PM

Ok, the cable guy just left. Thankfully I got a Comcast in-house tech (not a contractor), and he was pretty good. He said the signal coming into the house is perfect, but he replaced the splitter and connectors outside anyway. Then he came in and checked the signal right as it comes into the TiVo. It was decent, but the SNR wasn't perfect, and it was showing some "pre-errors" on some channels. He made new cables to go from the wall to the splitter and from the splitter to the TiVo, and that dramatically improved the signal quality (he showed me the numbers before and after on his meter, so I know he wasn't just giving me a line). It remains to be seen if this will actually fix the problem, but I doubt it'll hurt.

He did say one thing which I really doubt is right. He claimed they've had 100% failure rate on installing cable cards in TiVo Series 3 (though he'd never done one himself), and he was amazed I got it working. I thought (but didn't say), "yeah, I installed it myself instead of having you guys do it -- maybe that's why it actually worked." When we were done, he asked me to show him the cable card setup stuff in the TiVo so he'd know how it looks if he has to work on one. Even though he was kind of negative about the install success, he was genuinely curious and did want to learn about it, so that's good.

DCIFRTHS

10-10-2006, 05:58 AM

How have things been running since the tech visit?

sharding

10-10-2006, 11:15 AM

The new TiVo hasn't crashed or locked up at all. Of course, the first one didn't have any problems for the first week either, so I'm not 100% confident. But I'm starting to feel better. I also haven't had any partial recordings since that one the first night. However, I'm still getting way more picture and sound breakups than I ever got on the Comcast DVR. Probably once or twice a day (of the time I'm watching), the picture will pixelize and the sound will stop for a second or two. I remember issues like that maybe once or twice a month on the Comcast DVR, and that was before the tech came out. It's not a huge problem because the TiVo is recovering successfully, but it's a little annoying. Definitely disruptive when you're watching a show and you miss a line or two of dialoge because of it.

sharding

10-11-2006, 10:46 PM

So, I returned the original Series3 to BestBuy today since my return window was nearing its end. It didn't seem to have any major issues after I took the cable cards out and moved it to the other room, but I also didn't really use it. I just let it continue recording its Season Passes and I made a few manual recordings from the HD channels. I didn't actually watch anything all the way through, so I don't think it really got much of a test.

The replacement unit has been working fine so far other than the issues I mentioned in the last post.

sammick

10-16-2006, 08:41 PM

I just had it happen to me for the first time last night--We have had our Series 3 for about a week with no problems--then last night we had pixelization watching a recording of The Wire from last week--

Then watching another recorded HD show we had a reboot--the reboot consistantly repeating itself at the same place in the show.

I did some research and apparently the reviewer from the Tivo Lovers site had the same thing happen to him when he reviewed on of the first Series 3 in Sept.

I think it has to do with video dropouts--Tivo thinks it's the hard drive--

I too have never had a problem with the crappo Comcast box--

So for better or worse I am taking Tivo's advice and having Tivo replace the unit--

My guess is that this is a software problem------but who knows----

Could be the card setting off the video dropouts and Tivo overreacting??