ghken
06-08-2007, 01:33 PM
I have a 40 hour Series 2 with lifetime service that is about 2 years old. Has always worked great using the Tivo's tuner with basic cable as the video source. I recently bought a Samsung ATSC STB for pulling in local digital and was thinking of using that instead of basic cable for the Tivo. Don't have a HDTV so the output is set to 480i on the Samsung box, which works fine feeding the TV directly.
Found a post on this forum showing how to setup your Tivo to use one of these ATSC STB's. Basically treat it as a Samsung satellite box with locals, and after guided setup is finished remove the satellite channels so only the locals are left in the channel list. I hooked up the composite video and audio feeds from the Samsung to the Tivo and started guided setup. Got to the point where Tivo asks if you can see any video and I couldn't see anything - black screen behind the menu overlay. Tried changing channels on the Samsung and nothing. Just to verify there was a video signal coming from the Samsung box, I pulled the composite video feed out of the Tivo input and plugged it directly into the TV. It worked fine.
I confirmed in the Tivo system settings that the video input was set to composite, not S-video. I also noted that when the composite video cable was unplugged from the Tivo video input or the Samsung box was powered off, that Tivo immediately put up a screen saying that it has lost the satellite signal. Powering up the Samsung and plugging the video cable back into the Tivo and that message goes away. So Tivo is recognizing the presence or absence of a video signal on the video input. But still only displays a black screen.
Since my Samsung STB experiment was a failure, I thought I'd set things back the way they were using the cable RF input. Of course that meant going through guided setup again, which I did. But to my horror, when I got to the same point in guided setup asking whether I could see the cable channel displayed, I got the black screen again. Again, I confirmed that cable was working by bypassing Tivo and going directly from wall to TV - it was fine.
Any ideas? In the middle of all this I did restart the Tivo box once and it didn't help. Can the MPEG encoder go bad? All other functionality seems to be fine - playback from Now Playing list, transfering shows from my other Tivo, etc. It's only the processing of the incoming video signal (either via direct video input or internal tuner) that seems to have gone south.
Appreciate any ideas you might be able to share.
Ken
Found a post on this forum showing how to setup your Tivo to use one of these ATSC STB's. Basically treat it as a Samsung satellite box with locals, and after guided setup is finished remove the satellite channels so only the locals are left in the channel list. I hooked up the composite video and audio feeds from the Samsung to the Tivo and started guided setup. Got to the point where Tivo asks if you can see any video and I couldn't see anything - black screen behind the menu overlay. Tried changing channels on the Samsung and nothing. Just to verify there was a video signal coming from the Samsung box, I pulled the composite video feed out of the Tivo input and plugged it directly into the TV. It worked fine.
I confirmed in the Tivo system settings that the video input was set to composite, not S-video. I also noted that when the composite video cable was unplugged from the Tivo video input or the Samsung box was powered off, that Tivo immediately put up a screen saying that it has lost the satellite signal. Powering up the Samsung and plugging the video cable back into the Tivo and that message goes away. So Tivo is recognizing the presence or absence of a video signal on the video input. But still only displays a black screen.
Since my Samsung STB experiment was a failure, I thought I'd set things back the way they were using the cable RF input. Of course that meant going through guided setup again, which I did. But to my horror, when I got to the same point in guided setup asking whether I could see the cable channel displayed, I got the black screen again. Again, I confirmed that cable was working by bypassing Tivo and going directly from wall to TV - it was fine.
Any ideas? In the middle of all this I did restart the Tivo box once and it didn't help. Can the MPEG encoder go bad? All other functionality seems to be fine - playback from Now Playing list, transfering shows from my other Tivo, etc. It's only the processing of the incoming video signal (either via direct video input or internal tuner) that seems to have gone south.
Appreciate any ideas you might be able to share.
Ken