S3 Question

[Abneo]

Hi all,

I just hooked up my new series 3 last night. The cable cards are being installed next week. Everything went smoothly during the set up but I do have a couple of questions I am hoping someone can answers.

1. I turned off the option of having Tivo auto record it's suggestions however I I notice that the Tivo suggetions folder is still in now playing. Is there a way to get this removed from there?

2. When ever we change channels or screens on the Tivo. Our screen flickers and displays a blue screen for a few seconds before tuning in the channel. It did this when I was choosing the video output of native also, though the Tivo warned me that it would do it then when I was choosing what output. However I am just wondering if it's normal with the series 3 to always do this when it's changing screens or channels.

Any help on these questions would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you,

Abneo

[hiker]

1. Delete all programs in the folder and it should go away.

2. Normal for most TVs. This is caused by your TV adjusting to a different resolution. It takes it a second or two for the TV to determine the resolution to sync with. It's not the S3 causing it.

[hiker]

1) The folder is there to stay

...
I don't have that folder. Normally an empty folder is deleted.

[Bierboy]

I don't have that folder. Normally an empty folder is deleted.
It is...mine disappeared after I disabled recording suggestions and deleted the shows.

[SCSIRAID]

I don't have that folder. Normally an empty folder is deleted.

Yup... I believe you. I deleted my post after you answered the questions.

[ah30k]

2. When ever we change channels or screens on the Tivo. Our screen flickers and displays a blue screen for a few seconds before tuning in the channel. It did this when I was choosing the video output of native also, though the Tivo warned me that it would do it then when I was choosing what output. However I am just wondering if it's normal with the series 3 to always do this when it's changing screens or channels.Are you using 'native resolution'? This setting tells the TiVo to pass through whatever resolution the source is recorded in. When the resolution changes from one channel to the next you will get a momentary blanking. If you want, set your TiVO to output a constant 1080i or 720p and the blanking should go away.

[jfh3]

However, if you have a reasonably high end TV, keep Native. I wouldn't use fixed mode unless I had no choice or I knew that the scaler in the Tivo was better than the one in the TV.

[Welshdog]

On my brand new just put into service not yet lifetimed S3 hooked up to analog cable only I get a gray screen every time I change channels. It lasts for 2 to 5 seconds. The channel info banner is there and displays properly, it is just the video underneath that goes gray and takes forever to come back to picture. I turned off suggestions, video is set to 480i fixed, screen aspect 4:3 fixed. It just did an update, software is 8.0.1c

Is this normal?

[SCSIRAID]

On my brand new just put into service not yet lifetimed S3 hooked up to analog cable only I get a gray screen every time I change channels. It lasts for 2 to 5 seconds. The channel info banner is there and displays properly, it is just the video underneath that goes gray and takes forever to come back to picture. I turned off suggestions, video is set to 480i fixed, screen aspect 4:3 fixed. It just did an update, software is 8.0.1c

Is this normal?

Did you check signal strength??

[Welshdog]

Did you check signal strength??

Signal strength only works on digital channels according to my Tivo - I'm all analog. The PQ is excellent and none of the three other Tivos are having any signal strength issues. I swapped some cables anyway and no change.

This isn't a big deal since we rarely surf, but it makes me wonder if the system is working properly.

[Bierboy]

Signal strength only works on digital channels according to my Tivo - I'm all analog...I don't believe that's true. I've been able to check signal strength on analog and digital both (OTA and cable).

[Welshdog]

I don't believe that's true. I've been able to check signal strength on analog and digital both (OTA and cable).

Settings>Channels>Signal Strength - Cable> "Signal strength is unavailable because your cable channel lineup has no digital channels"

Am I in the wrong area?

[CrispyCritter]

Settings>Channels>Signal Strength - Cable> "Signal strength is unavailable because your cable channel lineup has no digital channels"

Am I in the wrong area?No. I think when Bierboy looks at things more closely, he'll find out things may have changed for him. Eg, the channels he thought were analog are now being digitally simulcast for him.

TiVo doesn't have any way to measure strength for analog channels.

[As an aside, it's been reported here, and never refuted so I tend to believe it, that the TiVo doesn't actually have any way of measuring signal strength for digital channels either. But what it can do is measure signal corruption for digital channels: the amount of error correcting it has to do on the incoming signal to recover the original digital signal. In some circumstances the two are quite different; TiVo's value should not replace the true signal strength measurements that a good cable technician can make.]

[Bierboy]

Yes, I stand corrected. Digitals are the only ones that get "measured". I just don't spend much time in that menu. When I was in there and saw the meter, I never even noticed it was just measuring digitals and skipping analog channels. Humble apologies.

[JosB]

On my brand new just put into service not yet lifetimed S3 hooked up to analog cable only I get a gray screen every time I change channels. It lasts for 2 to 5 seconds. The channel info banner is there and displays properly, it is just the video underneath that goes gray and takes forever to come back to picture. I turned off suggestions, video is set to 480i fixed, screen aspect 4:3 fixed. It just did an update, software is 8.0.1c

Is this normal?

Same problem here. It makes the S3 look slow compared to our S2. Hopefully a software fix is possible.

Jos

[Mike Malter]

I experience the same delay and grey screen too. Changed my viewing habits from channel surfing to guide surfing and everything moves much faster.

[garyR2]

I have the same grey screen/delay problem when changing channels. It is horrible. I'm using RCN in Chicago and have two cable cards. Is this a known Tivo issue?

[mattack]

[As an aside, it's been reported here, and never refuted so I tend to believe it, that the TiVo doesn't actually have any way of measuring signal strength for digital channels either. But what it can do is measure signal corruption for digital channels: the amount of error correcting it has to do on the incoming signal to recover the original digital signal. In some circumstances the two are quite different; TiVo's value should not replace the true signal strength measurements that a good cable technician can make.]

Is this the same thing that DirecTV boxes (even non-Directivos) do to measure signal "strength"?

[GoHokies!]

Same problem here. It makes the S3 look slow compared to our S2. Hopefully a software fix is possible.

Jos

I don't know what this "changing channels" thing is you speak of. I pick a show from the NPL and watch it. When it's done, I pick another one.

OK, more seriously I do know what you're talking about, but I've not noticed the problem be that bad on the rare occasion when I am flipping around. I suppose if you were channel surfing then it would get to be a pain really fast.