Series 3 Rebooting

[thanna]

I just picked up my series 3 from Best Buy. I won't have my cablecards until Wednesday so I'm running off the basic RF cable receivers for now.

One thing that has alarmed me is that my TiVo has now rebooted about 3-4 times at apparently random intervals. Is this normal for a Series 3 out of the box? Is it doing software updates or something?

I'm currently connected to my TV via HDMI @ 1080i and did my activiation via ethernet over my home network.

[sommerfeld]

One thing that has alarmed me is that my TiVo has now rebooted about 3-4 times at apparently random intervals. Is this normal for a Series 3 out of the box? Is it doing software updates or something?
One reboot in the middle of the night (2am or thereabouts) is expected since the boxes were built with 8.0.1 installed and 8.0.1a is the latest version.

Someone reported sporadic problems due to not pushing the power cord in all the way.

I and others have noticed reboots when tuning to specific over-the-air channels. (Boston's 56-2 is the one which kills the box for me).

There is speculation that this is due to one or more software bugs in the S3's handling of the full panoply of "PSIP" metadata (the descriptive information included in various digital TV signals) encountered in the wild.

There may be other bugs; if you can correlate any activity on the box with the reboots it might help nail down the problems.

And please call TiVo with specifics of the problem; it's best to assume that if you don't report the bugs to them they won't know about them.

[sharding]

Mine has rebooted a few times, but not nearly that often, and it's always (when I've been present for it) seemed to be directly related to some kind of glitch in the video stream. For example, I have a recorded program that will crash the TiVo every time I play a certain spot. I'd say right now it's happening to me once or twice a week. If it's happened to you three or four times in the same day, there may be something else wrong (e.g. a hardware problem).

[thanna]

So far, I've been unable to correlate it to any specific activity. Once it happened while watching one of the welcome videos. Another time, it was when I hit rewind. Every other time has just been completely at random while watching live TV.

I just made sure the power cable was plugged in securely. I also put the TiVo on the UPS that I normally reserve for my cable modem and router just to make sure it's getting clean, uninterrupted power.

I called TiVo support and they said that most likely the unit was defective and would need to be exhanged. Their only suggestion was to try plugging it directly into the wall instead of a power strip in case it wasn't getting enough juice. I figure the UPS will provide better power than what comes directly from the wall.

Man, I hope it doesn't reboot. This was the last unit my local Best Buy had and I guess they're backordered by about two weeks for direct orders from TiVo.

[thanna]

$@#%%^

Just happened again. This time, I hit the TiVo button to show the now playing list and it rebooted a split second after displaying the list.

I guess I need to call every Best Buy within a reasonable drive of my home and see if one has a replacement available.

[thanna]

Well, the bad news is, this TiVo is completely hosed. It started emitting a burning smell so I'm assuming it has a defective power supply. I returned it to Best Buy who is completely out of stock across the state of Ohio.

The good news is, I found an online retailer who had one unit left in stock. They were able to ship today so I should have it in my hands before the cable guy shows up on Wednesday to install my CableCards :).

[thanna]

I've received my replacement and everything seems to be working perfectly. I've had to reschedule my CableCard install for Thursday due to work conflicts. I'll post my CableCard install experience in the appropriate thread after it's done.