TiVo HD - All Video Vanishes

[hddude55]

Your problem is not the problem that started this Thread..I would get an exchange for your TiVo.

I see in this post most are referring to the background going black, but still having menus.. is this a different problem then the one I am having black screen period and unresponsive to remote? my amber light on the front of the THD lights up when it is in the black screen mode, so the tivo is receiving the remote signals, but no video, or no sound out the optical port either... I needed to reboot a few times to get it working...

I'm having what sounds like the same problem, but unlike you I believe the remote probably is working, but who knows since I can't see anything on the TV screen to direct the remote commands. But this problem first happened on a brand-new -- not a refurb -- replacement S3 received last week. I got another new one yesterday to replace the replacement received last week and the same thing is happening, so that tells me it's not the TiVo hardware. (Unplugging the TiVo once always "cures" my problem for the moment.) Maybe its TiVo 9.2 software, HDMI issues, my TV -- but not the Tivo. One difference between you and me: I usually have sound although one time the sound disappeared, too.

If you and I don't belong in this thread as I was told by another poster, maybe someone can direct us to a more appropriate thread or we can start a new one -- but I have a hunch something happened in 9.2 to cause all of these issues, whether or not they are directly related. I had the much-discussed audio and video drops on my "old" S3 purchased a year ago -- and that's why I got it replaced last week -- but never these black screen issues until last week's "new" Series3 arrived. For a glorified VCR, these HD Tivos amazingly seem to have more problems than NASA's Space Shuttle program -- but at least our lives aren't in danger, just our sanity.

[pauljb55]

sooo my 72 hours didn't last long. I got home and I was back in black. Somone mentioned that it could have something to do with playing with the settings...I had revised my channel list the night before...food for thought

[flightrisk]

Just for some more data, here are some recent situations which casued the black screen for me:


Intentionally tuning to a channel I don't receive during TTG transfer.
Forcing a daily call when Tivo erroneously believed I had no guide data, after an HD upgrade.
Playing an incompletely transferred TTCB video.


I agree, too, that this stopped happening after initial setup until I started using TTG/TTCB.

[fadden0]

I haven't tried TTCB (for the acronym-deprived, that's TiVo-To-Come-Back, i.e. a PC -> TiVo transfer) since the early days of my Series 2. Half the time the downloaded video wouldn't play, even if it had just been sent up from the TiVo to the PC. Some of the time the Series 2 would lock up. I tried a DVD transfer, but if you used a free encoder the video wouldn't play back without jerking around (needed to use the non-free version of TMPGEnc.)

Has this improved? It's been a while since I tried it.

At any rate, I haven't had any problems with the TiVo HD since the first day (one week ago). I just now queued up some MRV (Multi-Room Viewing) transfers and carefully stepped away from the device. I'll see if messing with it after the transfers complete causes it to "go funny" -- not going to touch it while it runs.

[ZXTT95]

With all due respect to your efforts to prevent thread hijacking, the "issue" doesn't seem that narrow at least according to some posters like AZrob who seems to be a frequent contributor to this and a "competing thread" that he suggested should be merged with this one. He wrote in the competing thread, "... there are variations: you can have black screen on some channels but not all, you can have black screen on all channels but not the menu backgrounds, or you can have black screen on all channels and all menu backgrounds. I have experienced all 3 variations in just 2 weeks." If my experiences should be discussed in a different thread I'll be happy to do so, but I think I'm going to have to be convinced by others here that I'm in the wrong place.

I'm not trying to chase you away - rather, warn you that you can't take much from the conclusions people are drawing here because almost everyone that I've noticed is reporting issues that appear to boil down to the MPEG decoder getting into a bad state. Your problem sounds worse. It could be software, but you should probably do your own troubleshooting by trying to eliminate as many of the usual suspects - things like bad power, a bad coax signal, IR interference, etc., which can affect these kinds of devices.

[fadden0]

Wow. I queued up 4 movies for transfer from my Series 2 DT to my TiVo HD. Walked away for a few hours. When I came back, the movies had transferred, and all the video was greyed out. I rebooted and verified that they all transferred successfully.

Pretty unequivocal. FWIW I'm using wired ethernet (100Mbps on Cat-5e).

[Christian Dad]

Greetings All,

I recently stepped up to TiVo HD and life is grand. After a week of normal operation on regular (analog) cable, the Cox Communications cable dude comes and puts in a multi-stream CableCard, so now I get HD. Life is spectacular... well, with the exception that there still (really) isn't a whole lot of HD programming out there.

Here's the problem

After two or three days of wonderful operation, the input signal freezes. I can hit the TiVo button and menu operation is as expected, but both playback and live TV freeze on the first frame of video, and the audio plays for about 1 second before it too goes silent. Like I said, menu operation is OK. Pressing the 'guide' button brings up an operational guide over a frozen picture.

A simple reset fixed the problem.

Has anyone else had this happen? How does one go about making the devs aware of this incident? Is this indicative of something I'm doing wrong?

Thanks.

[fadden0]

Christian Dad: everybody else has had this happen -- that's why this thread exists. :-) Read back through the thread to see what we know so far.

[Mars Rocket]

That sounds like a different problem. I never saw a single frame of video when I had this problem, and I don't recall anybody else mentioning anything like that either. The "1 second of sound" sounds like a new problem as well.

[bonnie_raitt]

First post to this thread. Went to watch the Seahawks football game tonight and saw it hadn't been recorded. It said I didn't have a signal. I checked the live TV and found nothing but a black screen. I tries several channels and did find one or two that worked. I then looked at the To Do List and found that I had missed recordings for the past 2 or 3 days for the same reason. I then came here and read this thread. I rebooted my S3 and now all channels show up. FWIW, I also have a Tivo HD that worked fine the entire time.

As I recall, I did nothing special during the last few days except watch recorded shows until today.

As they say every cloud has a silver lining. The seahawks lost 13-10 but at least I didn't have ti watch! Thanks for that anyway!

[harmony.lake]

I started experiencing this problem after going to 9.x as well. I am currently at 9.2A and the problem seems to be getting worse. S3 is always on, when I turn on my Panasonic Plasma, I get the black screen, etc. as many others do. For me, unplugging/re-plugging the HDMI cable from the S3 seems to clear it up most times (worse case, I have to reboot the S3).

I have not missed any recordings in my situation. HDMI is between S3 and TV only. S3 appears to record everything just fine... HDMI handshake problem between S3 and TV is what I experience.

In any event, talked to TIVO support today and this particular tech said that she has had many,many calls on this, as has most of the reps. Development team is working it, no targeted resolution date yet. :(

[DaveDFW]

I just wanted to pile on and say that I have experienced this several times over the last month I've had my Tivo HD, which is currently on 9.2a.

Same as everyone else is experiencing--the menus work, though there are no background animations, and I cannot watch live TV or recorded shows, though it appears that shows can still be recorded successfully.

It happened to me last when I had gone into the closed-captioning area, turned on captions, then hit Live TV to exit. Poof, black screen.

This matches another post I read in this thread, saying that "Live TV" pressed when you are several levels deep in the menu structure can create this error.

My HD is connected to the TV via HDMI.

TTYL
David

[fadden0]

Mars Rocket: I and others have seen still frames when experiencing this problem, and the "1 second of sound" is probably the small "blips" of sound many people hear every couple of seconds as something leaks through. At almost looks normal on the TiVo menus, because you get the normal background; it just doesn't animate. Rather more obvious when you try to play video or watch live TV.

[jimerb]

Well I just read through this entire thread hoping to see some posts from knowlegable tivo employees.

I can't believe this thread is 9 pages of problems and nothing has been done to fix this.

By the way, I see conflicting information about this being a "black screen" issue or a "gray screen" issue. My screen goes GRAY not black.

I don't see a thread specifically for both.

Does anyone have this nailed down? Or are we all in the dark on that too? I don't think I missed this but did anyone fix this?

Thanks.

[DaveDFW]

By the way, I see conflicting information about this being a "black screen" issue or a "gray screen" issue. My screen goes GRAY not black.

I don't see a thread specifically for both.

Does anyone have this nailed down? Or are we all in the dark on that too? I don't think I missed this but did anyone fix this?

You'll see gray or black depending on how you have the letterbox color set.

settings -> video -> letterbox color

I too am amazed that this issue has been known since at least September with no resolution yet.

TTYL
David

[lordbah]

I guess I won't take that TiVoHD offer, not until they show some sign that they will fix this issue.

[AZrob]

Well I just read through this entire thread hoping to see some posts from knowlegable tivo employees.

I can't believe this thread is 9 pages of problems and nothing has been done to fix this.

By the way, I see conflicting information about this being a "black screen" issue or a "gray screen" issue. My screen goes GRAY not black.

I don't see a thread specifically for both.

Does anyone have this nailed down? Or are we all in the dark on that too? I don't think I missed this but did anyone fix this?

Thanks.

Actually, none other than TivoPony posted on December 5th in post #203 in this thread, stating that Tivo was aware of the issue, had replicated it and was working on a solution. He also referred to this as a "boundary case" meaning it was one of those software bugs that is caused by more than one factor (hence, the lack of a clear set of causal events, as seen on this very thread) and was thus not a trivial issue to nail down.

So, no fix yet, but Tivo is clearly aware of it and working toward a fix.

Rob from AZ

[TomRaz]

My tivo hd only seemed to have this issue during the initial setup period. I have not seen this issue in over a month.

I am confident Tivo will find a solution

[HazelW]

My tivo hd only seemed to have this issue during the initial setup period. I have not seen this issue in over a month.

I am confident Tivo will find a solution

Same here. It only happened--and it hapened a lot--while trying to activate cablecards. been fine for a month on both units.

[AZrob]

Had an interesting variation on the symptoms which I'd like to report. Twice I've seen the normally red Now Playing menu background revert to a dark blue color. In addition, the Tivo character at the upper left hand corner of the screen is frozen...he doesn't move. So then I knew we were in for trouble...and since I know of no way to reverse this process, I decided to force it to the next level, which I did by going to Live. Bingo, all Live screens were black and then when I went back to Now Playing, the background had reverted to the now-familiar black hole mode.

Just before this I had attempted to transfer files from two different PC's. As has been said before, transfers seem to aggravate the issue......

So now we have 3 possible "incorrect" colors for Now Playing's background: black or gray or dark blue.......(!).

Rob

[ddonohue]

I just laboriously read all 270 posts in this thread hoping for the silver bullet to fix this problem on my just-out-of-the-box THD. No luck.

I can consistently and reliably cause the video to tank on demand by simply queuing up a few transfers from my S2. Naturally, that was the first thing I wanted to do as soon as it was set up, so I had the problem right from the get-go. A restart fixes it, then I queue up a few more and bang, out she goes. I don't have to hit Live TV, it will be out when tivo times out and attempts to return to live TV on its own. The transfers are successful, I just can't use the THD while they're transferring.

I'm surprised something so obviously wrong and catastrophically bad got through Tivo Q&A. Also, in the 5 days I've owned my HD, in addition to this problem numerous times, I've had it restart twice for no apparent reason (scanning channel lineup both times) and hang hard simply by deleting a program in NP. Just "Confirm Delete?", Yes, and a complete lockup requiring a power-down. Very poor software quality compared to my 4 other Tivos.

BTW, I'm on 9.1a I think, no cablecards, no HD programming, output fixed at 480i via s-video.

[fatboy15226]

Just another me too post.

Brand new THD. Using component and only analog channels (waiting for cable company).

Happens at least once a day.

Had problems out of box on 8.x and also updated 9.x with 480p fixed, Native and Hybrid.

[johnf@home]

I can consistently and reliably cause the video to tank on demand by simply queuing up a few transfers from my S2.

I've encountered exactly this as well, although not consistently.

The times I have encountered it I had short-circuited out of the "browse remote TiVo" process by hitting the TiVo button to go directly to TiVo Central. So far I have not managed to reproduce the problem if I back out of the menus step by step until I get to the local "Now Playing" list. This may be just a coincidence, but for now I'm taking those few extra steps.

[BanditWS6]

Add me to the list. My three-day-old TiVo HD is doing this too. I've seen the problem three or four times now -- including the first time I booted it up. The overlays still work, but everything else is gray (letterbox color). Can't change channels. Can't watch saved video.

Here's a weird tidbit. If I start playing a saved video, after a few seconds of gray screen, the timeline bar at the bottom of the screen will appear -- and according to the time indexes on either side, it looks like it's representing the time of day! For instance, I experienced the failure at 11:09 p.m. tonight. On the left side of the timeline was "10:30" and on the right side was "11:30," with the "playback head" pointing right at where 11:09 would be.

I believe one time I definitely saw this problem occur as a result of hitting "Live TV" while several levels deep in the menus.

As always, a reboot cures the problem right away. (Well, if waiting for that five-minute boot-up can be called "right away".)

I'm on software version 9.2a, which I got on the first day of setup. But the first time the problem occurred, it was on the original out-of-the-box software which I think was version 8-something. Currently running at Fixed 1080i. The TiVo is plugged into an APC UPS, one of the low-end models. I believe someone else in the thread mentioned that since they took their TiVo off their UPS they haven't had this problem again, but that could be a coincidence.

Combined with the CableCard problems I'm having, so far this hasn't been a great experience.

[dhoward]

Add me into this mix also. Is the general consensus that the hardware is ok and that problem is inherent in the software? My HD Tivo is a week old and i have seen the problem twice. Each time when I exit Tivo Central. Has anyone returned their unit for this problem? My cable card installation is scheduled for 1/3/08 so right now I am using analog only with component cables. No HDMI.

[AZrob]

Add me into this mix also. Is the general consensus that the hardware is ok and that problem is inherent in the software? My HD Tivo is a week old and i have seen the problem twice. Each time when I exit Tivo Central. Has anyone returned their unit for this problem? My cable card installation is scheduled for 1/3/08 so right now I am using analog only with component cables. No HDMI.

It appears that some have returned their Tivo's but that does not appear to have consistently solved the problem, if at all. Tivo is aware of the issue and is working toward a fix -- see TivoPony's post earlier in this thread. That implies to me that this problem will be solved via software. I would encourage you to hang in there.

Rob

[ingleberg]

Same problem on my 4 day old Tivo HD. Has happened at least 5 times. Just happened again when I tried watching a recorded show during a transfer from a Series 2 box.

Using HDMI and a Comcast M-Card with software v9.2a

[hidden772]

I installed a couple of Tivo HDs w/ Comcast M-Cards last week. Since then, the issue has happened twice on one Tivo HD, and once on the other. It's a gray screen and rebooting the tivo is the only way to recover. The THDs are updated to current software. Hope they fix it soon.

[tnwahoo]

I've been experiencing this problem since fall, and over the Christmas break, seems like I've had to reboot pretty much daily if not more often. Not sure if I'm 'tripping' it somehow as we were home so much (and thus watching more tv) - but it is INCREDIBLY annoying and I wish TPTB at Tivo would get this fixed!!!

The reboot is the only fix that seems to work. Any others? (I'll troll through the 10+ pages again too....)

[hidden772]

The reboot is the only fix that seems to work. Any others? (I'll troll through the 10+ pages again too....)

I just finished reading the 10+ pages and can tell you there isn't any other "fix" so to speak. Once it happens, rebooting is the only way to get it back. :down:

[scroos]

I have been paying close attention to this thread, due to having these very same issues about once every 48 hours since 9.2 and activating TTG.

I thought I would chime in with something I've found, although I am not sure if it is coincidental:

Last week, I split the cable to my THD to add a TV downstairs for holiday visitors. This splitter has -3Db attenuation for each branch. My current signal for each cable card now hovers around 24Db with a steady 96 signal strength.

Since I've done this, I have not experienced the aforementioned lockups.

Again, this could be entirely coincidental, but I thought I'd share.....cuz I'm fuzzy like that.

OO

[aindik]

I have been paying close attention to this thread, due to having these very same issues about once every 48 hours since 9.2 and activating TTG.

I thought I would chime in with something I've found, although I am not sure if it is coincidental:

Last week, I split the cable to my THD to add a TV downstairs for holiday visitors. This splitter has -3Db attenuation for each branch. My current signal for each cable card now hovers around 24Db with a steady 96 signal strength.

Since I've done this, I have not experienced the aforementioned lockups.

Again, this could be entirely coincidental, but I thought I'd share.....cuz I'm fuzzy like that.

OO

I've had this problem too, but not as often as you have. My signal is split three ways: to a VCR, to an S2 TiVo, to the TiVoHD. I don't think, after that, it could possibly be too strong for something that chokes on a strong signal. The analog signal to the VCR and the S2 TiVo is pretty poor, actually, if video quality is any indication. (TiVoHD looks great because Alternative Digital Simulcast gives me all the channels in digital. It looked like crap until the CableCARD showed up).

[pauljb55]

I was having problems before I left for the holidays and figured that my HDtivo would go black on my first day out of town. I installed a signal amplifier for the entire house before I left. When I got back...everything was working fine...2 weeks gone by...

[shelleye]

Just to keep Tivo software debuggers aware: I experienced the same problem today, after going through an extensive "channel list" edit, (deselecting unwanted channels) and then hitting live tv. After that all the video except menus went gray. I was able to do quite a bit more maintenance work (ie, checking network connections, connecting to service, etc.) but no images. Then rebooted, and everything is fine. I have it set to native resolution, HDMI. Brand new everything, and a recently transferred lifetime service, so I sure hope that it's software and not hardware related. :)

[David Platt]

Add me to the list. I just set up another S3 about a week ago, and added FiOS CableCARDs to the on Sunday. I was hit with the bug yesterday afternoon.

Software version: 9.2a
Video mode: Hybrid

[therlin]

I don't come to this site often but I was having the problem described in this thread so I thought I'd come to see if anyone is having the same issue. It seems I'm not alone.

I'm having to reboot my S3 TiVo when I come home from work every afternoon. It's getting pretty frustrating.

[lessd]

I don't come to this site often but I was having the problem described in this thread so I thought I'd come to see if anyone is having the same issue. It seems I'm not alone.

I'm having to reboot my S3 TiVo when I come home from work every afternoon. It's getting pretty frustrating.


If your not doing a soft re-boot try that, as it fixed 4 of my friends HD TiVos from this problem and also fixed mine.

[DaveDFW]

Is the Series3 less susceptible to this problem? I have two Series3's which have never done this, but my TivoHD has done it occasionally, although it hasn't happened for a couple of weeks now.

They're all at the same software version.

Thanks,
David

[SGR215]

I just had FiOS install cable cards today and while the installer was here the bug happened. Later on today it happened again after I pressed "live tv". Very nerve racking considering I came to Tivo to get rid of my buggy FiOS DVR. I sure hope the fix is coming soon.

Settings:
720P Fixed
HDMI
Occurred while in a menu and hitting LiveTV

[therlin]

If your not doing a soft re-boot try that, as it fixed 4 of my friends HD TiVos from this problem and also fixed mine.

What do you mean by "soft reboot"? I just go to the settings menu, select to restart the recorder. 3 thumbs down, enter and it restarts. This usually fixes my problem for a while, usually 24 hours or so.

I take it you are taking about something else?

[jrm01]

Hard reboot = pull the power cord
Soft reboot = use the menu as you described

[lew]

Same problem, solved with a reboot. Happened while repeating guide setup after cc installation. I'm using a HDMI cable, not sure if that matters.

[lessd]

What do you mean by "soft reboot"? I just go to the settings menu, select to restart the recorder. 3 thumbs down, enter and it restarts. This usually fixes my problem for a while, usually 24 hours or so.

I take it you are taking about something else?

You are doing the soft re-boot, I am disappointed you are still having this problem but for the grace of God there goes my and my friends HD units. I hope TiVo can find a fix this (with software), if it is hardware what a mess that would be.

[SGR215]

I will admit, both times it happened the menu's were being used constantly. The first time the installer just finished his install and I decided to check "Conditional Access" to make sure both cards were showing the right thing and then hit "LiveTV" and it happened. So I'm sure the Tivo was under a lot of stress already. The next time it happened I was surfing through menu's for about 15-20 minutes basically getting familiar with every feature and then hit "LiveTV" and it happened again. So again, I was putting the box under unusual stress. As long as this doesn't happen often while I'm using the box just like any other person would I'll be happy. It is a serious bug and needs to be fixed however.

[baronep]

Hi Folks,

I am having the same problem and I think it started when Cox replaced my single stream CC's with Multi Stream cards.

I seem to lose most of the channels and must reset to get them back. I have two Tivo HD's and must reset them daily.

Hey Tivo, maybe on your next update you can make a daily reset automatic. :)

[SGR215]

It happened again to me. Once again, it was while I was using the menus extensively. I have FiOS and was checking if I needed to add attenuators to my setup. This basically involves tuning to numerous channels and constantly entering the menu and going to diagnostics. After doing this for awhile the bug appeared. I had some time to kill while waiting for a recording to finish before rebooting so I decided to try numerous things to see if I could get it back to normal. I tried toggling just about every feature on the Tivo, adjusting aspect ratios, resolutions, etc. Like others have said nothing will fix it besides a reboot. It sure seems like it only happens for me when I'm putting extra strain on the Tivo.

[kmsarno]

Why bother with yet another "me-too" message? But here's mine: brand new Tivo HD arrived today 652-0001-8044-xxxx. I did replace the 160GB disk with a 750GB before powering it up for the first time. I have FIOS and an S3 w/2 CC's since basically the day the S3 came out, have hooked it up to various receivers with both HDMI and componenent with very few problems (it hangs once in a great while but all PC's hang). The HD, on the other hand, exhibited the Gray-Screen-Of-Death problem within a few minutes...no CC's yet, just analog cable channels going to a new Pioneer plasma via a high-end HDMI cable.

So what. This thread is the most amazing thing I have ever seen. Because this problem is so obviously widespread that a single post from TivoPony a month ago to say "we're working on it" simply is not good enough. There should be regular detailed status reports. I'm not going to send back hardware, even though my gut feel as an old computer operating systems guy is that we most likely have a hardware problem. Sending back hardware now is premature...the replacement will probably be bad too.

But this silence from Tivo after months and many software releases is sort of outrageous IMHO.

SAY SOMETHING TIVO.

[cmonroe]

I just laboriously read all 270 posts in this thread hoping for the silver bullet to fix this problem on my just-out-of-the-box THD. No luck.

I can consistently and reliably cause the video to tank on demand by simply queuing up a few transfers from my S2. Naturally, that was the first thing I wanted to do as soon as it was set up, so I had the problem right from the get-go. A restart fixes it, then I queue up a few more and bang, out she goes. I don't have to hit Live TV, it will be out when tivo times out and attempts to return to live TV on its own. The transfers are successful, I just can't use the THD while they're transferring.

I'm surprised something so obviously wrong and catastrophically bad got through Tivo Q&A. Also, in the 5 days I've owned my HD, in addition to this problem numerous times, I've had it restart twice for no apparent reason (scanning channel lineup both times) and hang hard simply by deleting a program in NP. Just "Confirm Delete?", Yes, and a complete lockup requiring a power-down. Very poor software quality compared to my 4 other Tivos.

BTW, I'm on 9.1a I think, no cablecards, no HD programming, output fixed at 480i via s-video.

Before I left for the holidays I'd suspected my TTG transfers were causing the problem as well. About once every 48 hours I'd loose random channels and only a reboot would fix the problem. I just logged into my TiVo and checked, its received all of the recordings it should have in the last 2 weeks (including network HD which is usually what I loose first). During this time my main PC has been off which means no TTG transfers have occurred.

If the problem starts up when I return home this week and begin my regular transfers that should be fairly conclusive in my case.

[Darthnice]

I bought a TiVo HD on Sunday (I hadn't seen this thread then). It started doing it almost immediately. Called TiVo, rep told me to return unit to retailer (aside: rep asked if all channels were black-and-white, I said, "NO! ALL CHANNELS ARE COMPLETELY BLACK not BLACK AND WHITE"). Got a 2nd unit which hasn't exhibited the problem (yet).

[That70sGAdawg]

I took my UPS power back up out of the equation and - More lock ups.
It's not the cable cards, it's not the UPS, it's not using the DVR expander, it's not using MVR- or Tivo to go - It's the damn new firmware. Fix it Tivo!!!!!!

This has become as unreliable as a Cable Co, or Satellite DVR...:mad:

[Kit_C]

I've started experiencing this on my S3, which has a 500GB drive, is set at 720P fixed, is conencted by HDMI, and has 2x SA S-Cards installed.

The first time I noticed it was yesterday. It may be a coincidence, but yesterday was the first time I've scheduled a recording online (BCS championship) in about 8 months.

Symptoms are as described, and are almost identical to the channel blackouts that were fixed in the last S3 software update. Soft re-boot fixed it for now.

Kit
San Diego, CA

[rockymountaind]

I took my UPS power back up out of the equation and - More lock ups.
It's not the cable cards, it's not the UPS, it's not using the DVR expander, it's not using MVR- or Tivo to go - It's the damn new firmware. Fix it Tivo!!!!!!

This has become as unreliable as a Cable Co, or Satellite DVR...:mad:

Quite a few firmwares in fact (back to 8.1.x I believe).

Ironically, I've only had to reboot my cable co. dvr once since this problem was first reported back in September :eek:

[rockymountaind]

I've started expereinceing this on my S3, which has a 500GB drive, is set at 720P fixed, is conencted by HDMI, and has 2x SA S-Cards installed.

The first time I noticed it was yesterday. It may be a coincidence, but yesterday was the first time I've scheduled a recording online (BCS championship) in about 8 months.

Symptoms are as described, and are almost identical to the channel blackouts that were fixed in the last S3 software update. Soft re-boot fixed it for now.

Kit
San Diego, CA


Functioning menus with black (or grey) background?

[Kit_C]

Functioning menus with black (or grey) background?

Functioning menus, black background.

[AZrob]

I've started expereinceing this on my S3, which has a 500GB drive, is set at 720P fixed, is conencted by HDMI, and has 2x SA S-Cards installed.

The first time I noticed it was yesterday. It may be a coincidence, but yesterday was the first time I've scheduled a recording online (BCS championship) in about 8 months.

Symptoms are as described, and are almost identical to the channel blackouts that were fixed in the last S3 software update. Soft re-boot fixed it for now.

Kit
San Diego, CA

Kit, do the symptoms include the black/gray-out of the menu backgrounds, or are you just seeing the loss of some/all channels?

Rob

[rockymountaind]

Functioning menus, black background.

Well that's not good. HD and S3 :(

[Kit_C]

Kit, do the symptoms include the black/gray-out of the menu backgrounds, or are you just seeing the loss of some/all channels?

Rob

My recordings tuned on the affected cable card are blank, and the menu is coming up against a black background. I should have taken better notes, but I believe Cablecard 2 was stuck at "initializing" in the CC menu, and my system information showed Cable Card 2 as "Not operating" or "Not operating properly". As I said previously, its an awful lot like the problem many of us had before 9.2j rolled out.

Kit
San Diego, CA

[rockymountaind]

So I get a new THD - 8.1.7c out of the box - component - native - no cable cards.

Finish guided setup, go a couple of levels into the search menu and hit "live tv" button to see what happens - bam!

So nothing's changed. It's been around since at least 8.1.7c and has nothing to do with cable cards.

[lrntowrench]

Still happening to me on two THDs. It doesn't happen that often, but what happens is that the screen goes grey (which I have my borders set to) and I still have my menus. No video whatsoever - either live or playback of previously recorded content. No audio. Only a reboot fixes it (which takes about 10 minutes).

Talked to Tivo 2 nights ago. They are aware of the issue. However, they admit that while it "seems to be network related" they have no root cause or solution that they can share. I have a new case number since they closed my earlier case even though they did not resolve it (thanks, Tivo).

In my case each time this has happened I've been using some sort of network based activity. MRV or online content. It has never happened when I was not using Ethernet network features.

[Darthnice]

In my case each time this has happened I've been using some sort of network based activity.

In the box that I returned, it happened twice: both times immediately following forcing a call to TiVo via the network.

[rockymountaind]

...they admit that while it "seems to be network related"...

I don't even have network features (such as MRV & TTG) available to me on 8.1.7c, nor do I have any network connectivity right now.

Could be that there's multiple ways to cause the problem.

[jimerb]

For what it's worth, Tivo escallated my case to level 3. The supervisor told me that they are aware of this issue and that level 3 would contact me shortly.

That was about 3 days ago.

I recommend making sure you have a case open with Tivo and point out to them that there are many people with the same problem on the forums.

Make sure they push the case to resolution.

Apparently they are not very responsive on the forums.

[lrntowrench]

For what it's worth, Tivo escallated my case to level 3. The supervisor told me that they are aware of this issue and that level 3 would contact me shortly.

That was about 3 days ago.

I recommend making sure you have a case open with Tivo and point out to them that there are many people with the same problem on the forums.

Make sure they push the case to resolution.

Apparently they are not very responsive on the forums.

I've demanded a follow-up, however they are very unresponsive about this. I really like Tivo service, however their software development seems to be suffering from a quality perspective. I wonder if their dev teams have been hit hard by revenue challenges.

[KamPutty]

Hi all,

Hey, my S3 is freaking out and I was wondering if this is the same issue as this thread...
After many months on no issues, just the other day my TiVo started freaking out.

Symptoms

#1. Becomes very sluggish. When accessing menu's etc., it gets reaaaalllly slow
#2. When watching a recorded show, the keys become unresponsive; I cannot pause, stop, etc it
#3. A few times, the box has rebooted itself when it gets in this "mode"
#4. It looks like some programs did not get recorded
#5. The background graphics/movie on the menus starts getting very bumping frame wise; meaning that the movie is not smooth...very...delayed...updates...stagger...stagger...

I have not checked (not at home right now) if there was a software upgrade this week

~Kam (^8*

[Phantom Gremlin]

I just "experienced" the problem with one of my Tivo HDs, software 9.2a, stock drive, 2 cablecards. I think it's network related.

First of all, I think it's easy to confirm this particular problem because of the background. Doing

settings -> video -> letterbox color

changes the entire screen (except for overlaid menus) to black or grey. There is no "letterbox", the whole screen is "letterboxed" or "sideboxed".

The reason I think it's network related is I'm currently manually connecting an ethernet cable every few days. I just did that and then did "connect to the TiVo service now". When I flipped back to this box a few minutes later I had the grey screen.

TiVo programmers and management are too incompetent to get this problem fixed after so many months. But they had no problem pushing crap to my box while this was happening. This act of connecting to their network just happened to get two ads pushed to my TiVo Central screen:

Watch the Latest Harry Potter movie
Experience Australia Yourself!

I'd like to do something with my TiVo HD and a part of Tom Roger's anatomy that would let him "experience" what I think of the current sad state of this product.

BTW if you're naive/patient enough to think you can get thru TiVo's outsourced tech support to report this (I'm not willing to struggle with script monkeys) I suggest you use a digicam and take pictures of

Account & System Information -> Diagnostics (8 screens)

that info might actually be useful to someone with a technical clue. I did that, FWIW.

If TiVo were on the ball they would be emailing people with problems and asking for info like this. But they would much rather ignore this forum full of people who are willing to help them and who are much more technically savvy than the average TiVo owner. But no, some big shot at TiVo decided against something practical like that. So the problem festers!

[rockymountaind]

Hi all,

Hey, my S3 is freaking out and I was wondering if this is the same issue as this thread...
After many months on no issues, just the other day my TiVo started freaking out.

Symptoms

#1. Becomes very sluggish. When accessing menu's etc., it gets reaaaalllly slow
#2. When watching a recorded show, the keys become unresponsive; I cannot pause, stop, etc it
#3. A few times, the box has rebooted itself when it gets in this "mode"
#4. It looks like some programs did not get recorded
#5. The background graphics/movie on the menus starts getting very bumping frame wise; meaning that the movie is not smooth...very...delayed...updates...stagger...stagger...

I have not checked (not at home right now) if there was a software upgrade this week

~Kam (^8*

Doesn't sound like the same issue. We're discussing a problem where all (moving) videos ceases. Still get menus (with no background), but no live or recorded TV.

[BMoreE]

Hi all,

Hey, my S3 is freaking out and I was wondering if this is the same issue as this thread...
<REMOVED>
~Kam (^8*

Kam, this sounds suspiciously like a hard-drive's death-throes. At least that's what happened to me on an old S1 DirecTivo. I popped in a new drive, problem solved. Definitely not this problem - call Tivo support to make sure.

E

[BanditWS6]

In the box that I returned, it happened twice: both times immediately following forcing a call to TiVo via the network.Interesting; now that I think about it, in the three or four times I've experienced this problem, it was always within a few hours of connecting to the TiVo service.

[rockymountaind]

I don't even have network features (such as MRV & TTG) available to me on 8.1.7c, nor do I have any network connectivity right now.

Could be that there's multiple ways to cause the problem.

Upgraded to 9.2a (I think that's it). Comcast tech popped in an M-card, and as soon as pairing completed, I went to test channels and got nothing but black :(

Rebooted and all's been well since, but dang. 2 times in 2 days.

[skiajl6297]

This has to be related to the interplay of networking and live tv. After reading this entire thread about everyone experiencing what I just experienced last night, I am frustrated. Got Best Buy gift cards for xmas and finally decided to get back into TiVo ownership with the lessened initial cost. I was using Comcast HDDVR box with all of its maladies, remote queueing, poor guide data, etc. I am one week into owning the new unmodded TiVoHD box, and I experienced this black/grey screen of death. After watching a taped standard def show, I went into the menus and was playing around extensively. I forced a network call, (I have the wireless tivo network adapter) had recently transferred a TiVoCast program (for the first time) and was playing in the settings menu with video output. I had initially set it at native, changed to 1080i fixed, changed it back to hybrid (which wasnt supported by my TV - 2005 Samsung DLP) and went back to hybrid. I pressed live tv from that menu and bam, black screen of death. Reset it and everything worked after that. We'll see if things work when I get home tonight. It does sound like simply playing around in the menus, particularly the settings menu somehow triggers it, along with obviously pressing the live tv button. Also someone earlier mentioned that using the left arrow out of the deeper menus seems to eliminate this problem. SO I am going to leave my video settings, when I do go deep into menus I will back out with left arrow to get to live tv, and will anxiously await further instruction from TiVo.

I was an early adopter of S1 and S2 boxes, but ditched them when I got HD in 2005. Comcast HD DVR worked, but I missed my TiVo. Now that I am back in the TiVo game I REALLY want it to work, but this is a pretty big flaw. As someone mentioned earlier, while Comcasts DVR is annoying as all he||, at least it didn't regularly require a 5 minute start up. Even if hard resetting the Comcast box eliminated the guide data for 20 minutes, I could see a picture in 15 seconds. 5 minutes in the middle of a program isn't cool, and frankly I expect more from TiVo based on my past experiences with other boxes, and my admitted TiVo love. I want you to be awesome TiVo! PLEASE fix this or at least give us more hope than one TiVoPony post.

[bweeston]

I've had the same problems either occurring after a lot of menu manipulations or TTG transfers or online scheduling or networking to Tivo.

If everyone who hasn't would call and opened a trouble ticket with Tivo with their symptoms, perhaps it would get more attention than just waiting to see if TivoPony responds or has an update.;)

[locash]

Add me to this crappy list, 3 day old TiVo HD, direct from Tivo themselves, fixed 1080i, component output, no cable cards (only cable via coax, and ota antenna) grey screen of death, have all menu options, just cant watch anything at all (without a reboot of course), software version 9.2a-01-2-652

This is rediculous, I own two Tivo S2 units that never did this, how did I just get tricked into paying for lifetime service and an "upgrade" to a unit that is unreliable?

FIX THIS, TIVO!

[fluffie]

Doesn't sound like the same issue. We're discussing a problem where all (moving) videos ceases. Still get menus (with no background), but no live or recorded TV.

this happened to me last night after i started transferring a show back from my pc. soft reboot fixed it.

[jtodd929]

I've had this too:

Brand new box w/ no modifications.

software: 8.1.7c originally (now 9.2a)
Native thru Compoenent with Toslink
first occurred shortly after completing Guided Setup
No CableCards in use
phone connection for updates; no internet connection
no eSata or any other additions
get analog cable with QAM HD
am NOT connected to an UPS

[tatsle]

I just installed a new TivoHD and have this problem too. I was going to exchange the box, but it sounds like this won't solve the problem. Probably just return it and buy it again later when they get this fixed.

I hope Tivo is making this fix a priority. Lots of people obviously are having this problem.

[dhoward]

I would hold on to it. It does not happen that often to be a major problem. It is irritating but not fatal. However, I do wish TIVO would jump into the thread again with some assurances that a fix is coming.

[BanditWS6]

I agree, don't bother returning your new TiVo HD because the problem doesn't happen that often to disrupt day-to-day operation (at least not in any cases I have seen). It also doesn't appear to be hardware related, so there's no guarantee a new unit would fix anything.

I asked myself the same question, especially since I was about to pull the trigger and activate a Product Lifetime membership on the box. Ended up going ahead with that.

I experienced the issue several times during initial setup, but now that my CableCARDs are up and running, since my last Guided Setup I haven't had this problem again. In my case, rerunning Guided Setup or doing a forced connection to the TiVo service, followed by hitting "Live TV" while deep into the menu tree, triggered the problem. Keeping my fingers crossed.

[CrispyCritter]

I just installed a new TivoHD and have this problem too. I was going to exchange the box, but it sounds like this won't solve the problem. Probably just return it and buy it again later when they get this fixed.

I hope Tivo is making this fix a priority. Lots of people obviously are having this problem.As others said, I wouldn't be overly concerned with the one time occurrence during setup. It happened to me, and the TiVo has been flawless ever since - no reoccurrences and no crashing or reboots.

Yes, it needs to be fixed, but the occurrences during setup (or new operating system) are pretty clearly a software bug. If it happens after that, then a hardware problem may be involved, and I would worry much more.

[TheOrkinMan]

There are clearly multiple problems occurring. In my case, the issue seems to be related to the M-card - when a program had been recording during the 'blackout', the recording history says it didn't record due to a problem with not being authorized for the channel. Additionally, when I reboot, it shows the "acquiring signal" screen for a minute or so after the reboot completes before I have access again.

My theory is that there is some kind of license given out to the cable cards that has an expiration date on it. In my case, it appears to be about 3-5 weeks long (installed on 11/17 and it's happened twice now, once on 12/13 and once on 1/9). I'm going to start rebooting once a week (Saturday morning) and see if that prevents the problem from coming back.

[CrispyCritter]

My theory is that there is some kind of license given out to the cable cards that has an expiration date on it. In my case, it appears to be about 3-5 weeks long (installed on 11/17 and it's happened twice now, once on 12/13 and once on 1/9). I'm going to start rebooting once a week (Saturday morning) and see if that prevents the problem from coming back.Check this post (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5847271#post5847271). It tells how to see the SubExpireTime (at least on SA M-cards). Your theory sounds quite possible!

[esb1981]

I have had this exact problem happen twice in the month since I got the Tivo HD. Menus appear, but no background video, live tv is grey screen, can't change channels, etc. The first time it happened was right after I had switched the video output settings 2-3 times in a couple minutes since I was comparing picture quality on the different formats. The second time it happened right after I had been going back and forth between the menu and live tv a bunch of times (was checking the diagnostics screen for signal strength on various channels). Both times, software reboot solved the problem.

[HVYCHVY]

I'm stuck in the same @#$%@ boat. :( Mine done it this morning. Rebooted twice screen flickered, then black. Unplugged the machine for 20 minutes, went through setup again, menu but no live tv. My have to call Tivo about getting a new machine. $600 is too expensive to not have stuff work less than a week old. Hardware settingis 9.2a updated 1/12 @ 0230 thru wireless thingy.

[BanditWS6]

I'm stuck in the same @#$%@ boat. :( Mine done it this morning. Rebooted twice screen flickered, then black. Unplugged the machine for 20 minutes, went through setup again, menu but no live tv. My have to call Tivo about getting a new machine. $600 is too expensive to not have stuff work less than a week old. Hardware settingis 9.2a updated 1/12 @ 0230 thru wireless thingy.So the reboots didn't fix it? Sounds like you might have a separate (more serious!) problem.

Although you have no live TV, do your menus have backgrounds (the animated hollywood lights, etc.) or is the menu background just black too?

[HVYCHVY]

Yeah, I get menu area ie: now playing list, messages + settings. It's been unplugged for about 4.5 hours.....we'll see if it works now. I did change the resolution from 1080i to native after watching about hours worth of recorded shows. After I rebooted, it went to the menu screen, hten when I hit live tv, it flickered like it was wanting to show it, saw a brief second of live TV, then blackness. :(

I'll undo my DVD component video and hook it to the S3, maybe it will work.

UPDATE: Wow, it had something to do with my resolution setting. I changed it back to 1080i and valia I gots a picture again. I have a Samsung 5265f, so it shoud have been able to support all the various resolutions.

[ado]

This is really weird because when I first got the box it happened very frequently, at least once a day, but now after more than a month it rarely happens. It did happen again the other night when i was trying to watch a show and when coming to tivo central, everything went black and I had to wait 5 minutes. A little frustrating, but I have come to love my tivo so it doesn't bother me that much. At first it was very annoying and I wanted to return it, but i'm glad i didn't. I'm not sure resolution changing triggers it because a variety of actions cause the black screen. I just hope that tivo is actually trying to fix it.

[pauljb55]

I was just told to sell my unit by a CSR! I was dealing with the black screen early in December...got back from the holidays and all was well. Started having problems again on thursday...unit will go black in 5 min! Called support...first guy was obiviously reading a script and kept mentioning the cable box. I had to remind him that I don't have one...finally got bumped to another level of support and was told...1, call the cable company and have them retrigger the cards...informed him that I had done that...2, demand new cards...Told rep that everytime they come out they hit me for $40..I asked if they could send me a new box so that if I did have the cable company out I could resolve it with an extra box as a back up...I was told no. So I said to confirm that if I spent $40 to have them come out and that did not fix the issue, I would have to prove that I had new card tried and failed...only then would I get a new box to pay another $40 to have them come out and try again....so I was out $80 on a box that I paid $300 for and then bought lifetime...I asked if I could just send the box back and get a refund since I had been a customer for 5 plus years and signed up at least 5 other people...I was told I should sell it on ebay and get my money back that way...

[TheOrkinMan]

Check this post (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5847271#post5847271). It tells how to see the SubExpireTime (at least on SA M-cards). Your theory sounds quite possible!

I will check that as soon as I get home today and see what it says. The periodic nature of it seemed suspicious. Will report back.

[puffy66]

I have the same problem. Every now and then I get a gray screen, the menu's work as mentioned above but no video. Takes a restart. Come on Tivo, time to fix this one.

[TheOrkinMan]

I will check that as soon as I get home today and see what it says. The periodic nature of it seemed suspicious. Will report back.

Interesting. I don't have that entry anywhere in my cablecard screens.

[Lampei]

Just got my TiVoHD set up tonight. Downloaded the 9.2 software and about 5 minutes after boot, it went to a black background (and no video playback, live or recorded). I do not have cable cards in yet (they're coming Saturday), but it still seems strange/annoying that everything was working correctly at the 8.1 software, install the 9.1a and BAM, nothing works correctly :( I'll be rebooting soon to see if that fixes the problem.

[jtodd929]

Just got my TiVoHD set up tonight. Downloaded the 9.2 software and about 5 minutes after boot, it went to a black background (and no video playback, live or recorded). I do not have cable cards in yet (they're coming Saturday), but it still seems strange/annoying that everything was working correctly at the 8.1 software, install the 9.1a and BAM, nothing works correctly :( I'll be rebooting soon to see if that fixes the problem.

it does it with 8.1 software too. It also does it with and without cablecards.

[Lampei]

Ah, I figured it was just because it upgrade to 9.1 Why's this been going on for such a long time? Does the issue seem difficult for TiVo to fix?

[macmedic]

Happening to me also on a virgin HD box with Lifetime however when mine goes black nothing records - totally unacceptable.

Bought it at Costco so I may end up returning it and fighting with Tivo to get the lifetime sub $ back or transfered to a new box.

I wish that they would give us an expected date for a fix so I'd know how long it would be...

[britdiver]

I have been watching this thread and hoping for good news. Anyway I now have something new to add that I hadn't seen in any of the other posts. It may have been there but I didn't see it. I have just come off the phone with Tivo support and of course got nowhere other than adding my case to the pile.

This is my situation. I have had an older series 2 (non dual tuner) for several years. No real problems. It's on a wireless adapter. At Christmas I came home from a week away and it was locked up. A frozen image and only pulling the power worked. I didn't think much of it at the time. It has very very occasionally done that before over the years. At Christmas I also got a new Tivo HD unit. That is now set up as well and is on the Tivo wireless adapter. The new HD unit has no cable cards and is only due to get them tomorrow morning. So the new unit has just been sitting there, updated and running. I haven't set up one thing on it in terms of recordings etc. I have obviously played some with the settings when I originally set it up. It was set up around Jan 7. Since that date I have periodically "checking" Tivo on it's Tivo input as we are still using the cable company's dvr until tomorrow. Of course I have been discovering the "gray screen problem" myself. Although sometimes its a frozen image rather than a gray screen. I think my HD unit as always kept running and all the menus are available and even a reset from the menus corrects the problem until the next time. I know what your thinking.... whats new here - we all have this problem. Now the interesting bit. My old series 2 unit has also started locking up. I think once since the Christmas lockup but for sure yesterday and again sometime today. A frozen screen. No menu access. Pull power is the only option. This can not be a coincidence. My old unit worked fine for years and now it locks up as well. In fact when I came home and saw the old unit was locked, I went in the other room and checked the new HD box and sure enough it was locked too. Of course I don't know for sure that they locked up at exactly the same time. Now given that the old unit "sees" the HD unit on the Now Playing List and vice versa on the HD unit, I'm really thinking this must be a networking software issue.

This is completely unacceptable. Tivo must fix this.

Anyway, has anyone else had a similar problem with different boxes on the same network doing this? You tech savy guys out there, does this help shed any light on the potential problem?

Tivo HELP US!!!!

[vectorzulu]

I am seeing an issue that sounds very familiar.

Here is my scenario:

Tivo HD M-Card (9.2)

- I am watching Live TV and Tivo is recording a program on the other tuner.
- Video switches to a gray screen, the program info (what you get when you hit the info button) displays but it says something like "To Be Determined" or "Not Available"
- While this happens the show my Tivo was recording stops and removes the partial recording.

Does this sound like the issue everyone else is seeing?

[strafe]

Another statistic.

New TiVo HD with 8.1 software, no cablecards installed yet. I have been repeatedly connecting to the TiVo Service to get the 9.2 software (took about 5 tries) and this has happened to me 3 times. The menus are there but the background is black and no programming. I've heard some people say gray, I changed my letterboxing to black so that may be the difference. Soft reset fixed it every time. Finally got the 9.2 software and it happened again.

[sathead]

Add me to the BSOD (Black Screen of Death) list.
New out of the box TiVoHD w/9.2 software. I was seeing some stuttering on TNT-HD while recording the movie "Stealth". I went into my cable card diagnostics to check my signal level (which turned out to be 93 BTW), when I went back to "live TV" I got the black screen w/only menu's. Only way to get live or recorded video back was via reboot, but I couldn't reboot till the recording was finished 2hrs later. So, I had a nice black screen for 2 hrs.

This is the 3rd or 4th time I've seen the BSOD since I got the TiVoHD Jan 7th 2008. As A matter of fact it happened on initial guided setup without the cable cards installed. It also happened the morning the cable guy came to install the cable cards too. We had to sit there and make awkward polite conversation for 10 minutes while the TiVoHD rebooted.

Between this issue and failed transfers with content recorded from encrypted channels (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=374790)... I'm starting to think TiVoHD & cable cards are beta status and not ready for prime time.

Hello TiVo.... anybody listening out there ????:(

[tdbear]

Just had my 2nd experience with the Black Screen of Death on my new S2HD... I have a S3HD for over a year without any issues with it, and the S2HD less than a month.

I noticed that it begins to act up on some shows with it going black when I hit play, but then it will come back with I return to the Tivo screeen or sometimes when I FF. But when the real crash occurs, the background (which I assume is the real video) is black and we just have the overlays. Then when I select a pre-recorded program, it acts like there is nothing there... play displays a progrss bar but it has no green and I get the warning gong. When I go to live TV, still black and when I try to change channels by pushing "22" I get 2 warning gongs and when I hit enter I hear the normal blip but nothing happens. It's some sort of strange codec crash... hopefully they can reproduce it in the lab since so many of us are hitting it.

The problem with these sorts of SW issues is that they just can't do anything until they isolate and fix it. My S1 had a problem for years where its IR would get "stuck" and I had to reboot. I "solved" the problem by removing the IR and just letting it use the internal tuner. Hopefully this will get fixed quicker :-)

I'm not sure if I would have purchased it if I read this forum first... the lifetime was tempting, but crashes make me nervous that it is a hardware design flaw. Let's just hope it is a SW problem.

[djextort]

I just hooked up my TiVo HD S3 this evening and have been telling it to connect to download all the latest software. The last update finished and said pending restart. So naturally I restarted the TiVo, and the menu said "installing update, this may take a few minutes". I turn away and next thing I know the screen is black, and the TiVo will not respond to any remote commands. The only light on the front of the box is the green LED.

Anyone have any suggestions? I don't want to just pull the plug on it.....could the update still be installing? I figured if it was it would remain on the splash screen.

Thoughts?

[sathead]

I just hooked up my TiVo HD S3 this evening and have been telling it to connect to download all the latest software. The last update finished and said pending restart. So naturally I restarted the TiVo, and the menu said "installing update, this may take a few minutes". I turn away and next thing I know the screen is black, and the TiVo will not respond to any remote commands. The only light on the front of the box is the green LED.

Anyone have any suggestions? I don't want to just pull the plug on it.....could the update still be installing? I figured if it was it would remain on the splash screen.

Thoughts?
Nothing should take more than 1-2 hours to complete once the new software has finished uploading to your hard drive. If it's unresponsive for more than 2 hrs, as a last resort... pull the plug.

[britdiver]

Well I now have further evidence that at least my problems (with both a new HD box and my old S2 box) are being caused by a networking software bug. For the last day or 2 I have not had a problem with either. But also neither box has been seeing the other on the Now Playing list. Even after several restarts on my HD box due to cablecard installation (thats not working properly yet either, but thats another story) either was showing the other. However, sometime over night my old S2 box lockup. Frozen image this morning when I turned it on. Pulling power the only solution. My HD box was OK. BUT then after the S2 rebooted, I checked both Now Playing lists and surprise surprise they now are showing each other. I just can't believe that's a coincidence. I will be calling Tivo again shortly to update my case with this new occurrence.

[John Wilson]

I too have been a victim of the Black Screen of Death as it has been named in this thread. It does seem to occur whenever the network activity has been active or even accessing the menu. These are features of the TiVo HD, not hacks, and as such we should not be subjected to hardware hangs that require soft reboots. I fell into the Lifetime transfer trap with optimistic expectations that the performance would match that of my Series 3, with which I have had virtually no problems.

Come on , TiVo. Get this resolved now. This is supposed to be your platform of the future and yet we "early" adaptors are still being used as your Beta testers!:(

I just called this in to TiVo and the CS person stated that a new S/W version 9.3 is "in the works" but who knows if this issue with the BSOD is included in the revision:rolleyes:

[bobrt6676]

I too have had the BSOD after using a network function(pics and music). New TivoHD purchased after Christmas. A Restart was the only solution to getting video back.

[britdiver]

I hope everyone that is having these issues is calling Tivo? The more people that do the sooner they will escalate the work and the sooner they will release a fix.

[tlc]

I have an HD that's worked fine using cablecards for several months.

I just got a second HD from costco with the intent of transferring lifetime from an old S1. This HD will not have cablecards (just basic cable) and will be hooked to an SD set (for now). Anyway, I've seen a gray-screen-video-freeze on the first day, shortly after the software update to 9.2a.

It has no service plan yet and it appears that it will work for 6 more days without one.

I haven't read this whole thread yet. Should I be returning this now, before I transfer lifetime? Should I delay my transfer and see if it happens again in the next 6 days?

Thanks,
tlc

[CrispyCritter]

I have an HD that's worked fine using cablecards for several months.

I just got a second HD from costco with the intent of transferring lifetime from an old S1. This HD will not have cablecards (just basic cable) and will be hooked to an SD set (for now). Anyway, I've seen a gray-screen-video-freeze on the first day, shortly after the software update to 9.2a.

It has no service plan yet and it appears that it will work for 6 more days without one.

I haven't read this whole thread yet. Should I be returning this now, before I transfer lifetime? Should I delay my transfer and see if it happens again in the next 6 days?IMO, it's fairly clear that there's a software problem causing the video freeze or no menu background when the OS is updated. It does not mean it will occur again or that you have a hardware problem.

On the other hand, it's fairly clear it can also be caused by a hardware problem, and in this case it will re-occur and should be replaced. So there's no guaranteed answer for you.

My personal history on this - lack of menu backgrounds happened on my new TiVo HD when I got it in October or so, and hasn't happened since. I've had no problems with the TiVoHD.

Note there's no real problem with transferring lifetime if you need to exchange a unit through TiVo because of a hardware problem. They'll transfer the lifetime from the bad unit to the replacement unit for you automatically (or at least they did it automatically for me on my S3).

[NaperTiVo]

I have 3 THDs, they all had this same issue. Purchased them in mid-Oct to take advantage of the S1 to THD lifetime transfer. Each of them had the loss of video between 4 and 7 times. As they all finally received the most recent software and were rebooted they settled down. I have not had the issue since and had actually forgotten about the issue. I just happened to be tracking this post and saw that people are still experiencing this issue. Are these all newer THDs and S3s? Is it happening on any that are more than a month old?

And my setup...
1 THD using HDMI w/ cable cards
1 THD using component w/ cable cards
1 TDH using component w/o cable cards (too cheap to pay for another installation of cable cards)

All have been rock solid since the first two weeks.

[ZXTT95]

I've had it happen on two TiVo HDs connected to the same TV. The first went back and replacement has the same problem. The first one was replaced before cable cards were installed and second one probably failed once or twice before the CCs, and does the same after. At least once a week it has to be rebooted to get video playback to work again. It doesn't happen when we're transferring shows, so it's not obviously related to network activity. I have another TiVo HD connected to a different TV that has never done this, although it has had a couple of other issues. Both are connected using HDMI.

I don't want to swap the TiVos to see what the problem follows because the one that works is the one that is used the most, and has a DVR extender connected. Finally, last Saturday I added a 10db attenuator to problematic TiVo to see if that would affect things. Still too early to know.

So, for me I can say the following are not likely to be causes:

HDMI (not per se, although perhaps the TV it's connected to is the problem - I haven't tried component, although I could but that would leave not enough inputs for other things).
CableCARDs.
Comcast vs Verizon (failed with both).
Networking (doesn't obviously fail when transferring shows, although can't rule out it doesn't fail when updating guide data).
Hardware (two units both failed).

[eibwenovit]

just wanted to add that I've having the same issue.
Tivo HD, operating for about a month. Only antenna reception (thought this might be an interesting control as compared to everyone else's set up), 720p television.

Main menu first starts up with a different color, blue instead of red. I thought this was a neat update, but then when I chose to play my recordings, I got the grey screen. same with Live TV. At this point, going back to the home menu also produces the grey screen (except for the highlighted option, which remain that nifty blue color).

Switching Standby on and off doesn't work.
Unplugging the computer for 30 secs, and plugging back in, works.

Honorable mention: on a separate, occasion unrelated to this grey out issue, recorded program played back with audio lagging the video. dialogue out of synch. Fast fwding for a couple of minutes resolved the issue.

Annoying stuff!

[velo116]

Well, crap. Add me to the list, too. Considering so many different set-ups and the seemingly random nature. I was on the main tivo menu while i was looking up something on the computer and the screen went gray. I thought it was a screen saver, but when I pushed a button the menu came up, but no background and no live nor recorded TV.

It did this also while accessing a menu function a couple days ago.

The only seemingly common theme among all these posts is perhaps the use of the wireless adapter or perhaps high speed?

Is anyone using phone lines and encountering the same problem? Or even eithernet?

[velo116]

I've had this too:

Brand new box w/ no modifications.

software: 8.1.7c originally (now 9.2a)
Native thru Compoenent with Toslink
first occurred shortly after completing Guided Setup
No CableCards in use
phone connection for updates; no internet connection
no eSata or any other additions
get analog cable with QAM HD
am NOT connected to an UPS

crap, there goes my theory

[velo116]

One thing I did notice after restarting the machine, I had inputted the command for the 30 second commercial skip button and this was now back to normal after the restart

Would this happen with any restart? Was anyone else who's had this problem also programmed the commercial skip button?

[carmenloves2]

Me too! just bought a THD yesterday, and it happened when I was playing with the video modes. i switched to hybrid mode, the video was gone. switching back to 720p didn't help. had to reboot to fix it.

I'm glad im not alone.

[strafe]

An update - I posted that I had repeated 'blackouts' when I was originally setting up my new TiVo HD and I was repeatedly connecting to the TiVo service to try and get the 9.2 update. The problem has not occurred since (~2 weeks).

[lqaddict]

Tivo HD software 9.2a, component, wired network, resolution is set to 720p Fixed, CC's just installed.
Going to CC's configuration and trying to go back to Live TV - no video, but TC menus are functional without the background.
Reboot fixed it...

[Phantom Gremlin]

The only seemingly common theme among all these posts is perhaps the use of the wireless adapter or perhaps high speed?

Is anyone using phone lines and encountering the same problem? Or even eithernet?
It's not the wireless adapter. I've encountered the gray screen as a result of wired ethernet activity.

[lqaddict]

It's not the wireless adapter. I've encountered the gray screen as a result of wired ethernet activity.

The same is here, I am using ethernet cable from Tivo directly to my router.

[Lampei]

Seems like there's a lot of 720P fixed users getting the error.

[xtracrispy]

Seems like there's a lot of 720P fixed users getting the error.

I have the same problem as everyone else. My TV is 1080i only, and I use 1080i Fixed mode. It has only happened to me when I have been in the menus except one time it happened right in the middle of when I was repeating the guided set up. It asked me to verify that Channel 10 was CSN. Channel 10 was just gray and the rest of the guided set up completed with a gray background. No CableCard for me yet either.

[julied]

I just set up my new TiVo HD (ordered from Amazon) and have had the "black screen" problem (well, it originally was gray, but then I changed the letterbox color to black). Comcast is coming on Tuesday to set up HD, so it is connected to my old 13 inch Sony with analog cable. I didn't change the resolution from whatever it started with (420, does that sound right? It's 4-something).

I keep trying to transfer all the shows from my old TiVo (via wireless adapter) so that I can give the old TiVo to my parents (there's no easy way to do this, is there?), and the black screen problem keeps happening. It's really annoying because it takes FOREVER to navigate through the Now Playing list from the other TiVo to tell it to transfer a bunch of recordings and then I end up having to restart time and time again, and it forgets all the recordings it should have qued up to transfer. After the restart, the black screen is gone and things work (but it forgets the shows to transfer from the other TiVo). But, then when I go into the TiVo menu, it usually (not always) seems to get the black screen. I've seemed to cause the black screen both by setting up shows to transfer and by setting up season passes.

This is really annoying and I don't like having a BRAND NEW right out of the box TiVo with problems. Should I try to return it (it is from Amazon)?

[SGR215]

To those who experienced this after purchasing a new Tivo here's my .02 cents. Take it for what its worth:

Don't worry too much about it. While it seems pretty major when it happens, it happens far less after you've had your Tivo for a week or so. It happens after you've done a lot of things involving the menu. It rarely happens, if at all, to me now. The only times it appears to happen to me, which seems to follow a similar pattern with everyone else, is when you're using the menu for an usually long period of time. (Usually when you're doing multiple things too such as changing settings, creating wishlists, looking at the todo list, etc all in one go)

The reason this is so common with new TivoHD's is because most of us spend an usually long amount of time working with the menu's and exploring all of the features after we hook up our TivoHD and/or get cable cards. After the "curiosity" factor has diminished, and normal use has begun, you'll rarely see this bug. Although it does need to be fixed, I wouldn't get to nervous about it after it happens to you.

[hastypete]

I've been using Tivo for 4 months now. I had this problem initially a few times. Then it went away. Now today, it's happened twice. And yes, I was using the menus extensivly. Doing some cleanup. Trying to order a program on Unbox. But I can't pinpoint the point at which the video went blank. It really is an annoying error. The other thing I was doing was checking the antenna signal since ABC decided to go "no signal" for some strange reason. I'm wondering if using the signal check is responsible for my problems today?

[cpages2]

Having the same problem for about 2 months now.

TivoHD, Native, HDMI, Brighthouse Cable Cards.

I notice that it seems like a gamble when I want to watch something recording HDTV. Sometimes I hit play and its just a black screen that wont let me FF or RW, othertimes it has recorded the show.

I find if I goto LiveTV sometimes my HD channles suffer the same fate. All my SD chanels work fine though.

This has been my fix. I goto the settings for my cable cards then under test chanels I goto first a SD show, then I switch to HD and it seems to bring all my channels back online.

It doest bother me to much until I go to watch TV shows and every one of them are black :(

I have had BrightHouse out here multiple times and no help. Im hoping Tivo releases a fix.

- Mike

[renatele]

The other thing I was doing was checking the antenna signal since ABC decided to go "no signal" for some strange reason. I'm wondering if using the signal check is responsible for my problems today?

This exact thing has happened to my TivoHD just now. We were watching state of the union address on ABC (SD), terrible pixelation. Went into the signal check, the tuner 1 was showing lots of errors (the one tuned to ABC), with SNR values jumping all over the place (25 to 38 or so). Tuner 0 was ok. Watched the display for a minute or two, then hit the tivo button, and the background got black. Live TV output is also gone.

My Tivo is new, have it for less than 2 weeks. No upgrades done at all. 9.2a software. Output set to 1080i hybrid. Using wired ethernet to the router.

[Supermurph]

To those who experienced this after purchasing a new Tivo here's my .02 cents. Take it for what its worth:

Don't worry too much about it. While it seems pretty major when it happens, it happens far less after you've had your Tivo for a week or so.

Actually . . . . I've had this issue and an issue where the voice channel of the sound drops out for several months. It happens often and sporadically. I'd guess it's rare I make it two days without having to reset and now the reset often does not fix it. So far, I've been patiently waiting for a fix of some kind, but am now trying to escalate this with Cox. I also will soon try with Tivo. I have a feeling that I will be fed up within the next month and will either switch back to Cox's crappy DVR or will go to Dish Network. I shouldn't have to think about my TV this much.

[britdiver]

Here's my latest news. My most recent "gray screen of death" happened to occur while it was recording. I had my normal menu access even though I had gray screens for all live tv. So I waited until the recording had finished and then did my normal reset from the menus. Then I was surprised to find that the recording had completed successfully! So it couldn't show live tv but managed to record ok. Odd!

I have just called Tivo to "update my case" and after the usual "it's the cable cards" or "you should replace the unit", I managed to convince the girl that I know this is a software issue and there are a lot of us having this problem. Finally she did at least admit it's "a known problem" and "is being worked on". Of course no idea when the fix would be ready. So at least that gave me a little glimmer of hope that a fix is coming. Maybe.

The fact that the next morning it was locked again and when I pressed the tivo central button it restarted itself was a little more disturbing and of course that was the one she was focusing on try to get my to switch the unit. Hopefully that was a one off event.

[rob.williams]

Another data point. It happened to me today. I just got CableCards installed today, so this is the first day I've used it. I was setting up "Channels I Receive" when the TiVO HD started to record American Idol in HD. When I exited the menu, I had the grey screen, and only the guide worked. Couldn't change channels, and rebooted to fix the problem.

The 10 minutes of AI that was recorded during this time was able to play back properly after I rebooted.

[Phantom Gremlin]

So I waited until the recording had finished and then did my normal reset from the menus. Then I was surprised to find that the recording had completed successfully! So it couldn't show live tv but managed to record ok. Odd!

That's not "odd", it's quite consistent with other reports. When I had my "gray screen of death" I had 2 programs being recorded. They both completed just fine.

[Moebius]

I had this happen on my unit just out of the box yesterday, but to be honest, I believe it was half my fault anyway.

Fresh out of the box TiVoHD
No cable card
No antenna connection
Connection to cable
Component output with optical audio
Composite output to dvdr

Had just finished a connection and was exploring a bit while the update was loading, trying to see if I could get any of the open hd channels (don't ask why).

Obviously, most were no signal, and somewhere along the way I think I ended up trying an invalid, like 5-0 or some such animal. Then I switched scaling mode while I was looking through the menus and end up with the menu, but no background. Live TV is blank, bonks when I hit Info, guide comes up, but pressing select on a channel doesn't act like it tries to tune it. Pretty much nothing. I manually entered 59, switched tuners and did the same thing, but still nothing. Noticed under now playing the TiVo welcome vidoes were there. Tried to play one, same result, nothing. Checked and the same was happening with both the component and composite outputs.

Finally decided to just reboot (from menu). Came back up (after a seriously nail-biting wait) and seemed fine. Both tuners were tuned to channel 59, menus had background, videos played. I checked and of course the last call to the mothership was now listed as failed, so I forced connection again, made myself not mess around until it finished loading and rebooting. So far, no troubles since.

[Angelus2007]

I have had this problem 4 times since I got my new TiVoHD. All 4 times I was deep in the menus and using them for a while. I know for a fact the last 2 times which were right after each other this evening, I was at the cable card menu (can't get my second cable card to work with Comcast but that is another issue) and hit Live TV, if I back out or hit the TiVo button before Live TV didn't have a problem. The first time I was looking at the downloadable programs(CNET, Onion, ect). The second time playing with the cable card menu. I am not sure if I hit Live TV from those menus.

I talked to 2 different people from TiVo this evening and one person told me version 9.2b should fix it, the next guy said 9.2b doesn't exist and I have the most recent version 9.2a Does anyone know if 9.2b exists and it that may fix the problem?

I am not too concerned, I have only had it 2 weeks and I have using the menus a lot with my cable card problems, and like a previous poster said, it seems to happen to new owners since you spend alot more times in the menu. I know with my Series 2, after the first week I never went anywhere except now playing and to do list 95% of the time.

[britdiver]

I did finally get a customer service rep to admit it was a known issue and they are "working on it". Now how close they are to a new software release, she wouldn't say. I'm sure she doesn't know.

[kmsarno]

It seems to me that there is one common element since so many things have been ruled out (HDMI vs. component, ethernet vs. phone, cable card vs. none, wired vs. wireless, various video modes set as default in the menus, etc.).

It is simply internal resolution switching. Somehow the TiVO HD can lose track of the resolution of the digital source bit-stream it's supposed to be processing...it just gets "lost", maybe in software, maybe in hardware (i.e. a bit gets stuck in some hardware register holding a number that indicates resolution) when the box has to switch from one resolution to another. For example, it happens a lot when people press the "Live TV" button, which causes the box to have to switch out of Tivo's internal 720p background video into some other resolution, even if just for a moment.

Once the problem kicks in, the menus and graphics work but no video source does, including TiVo's own internal background video loops. I think this shows that the internal graphics generation subsystem can sync up with the required output rez just fine, but the INPUT signal source, wherever it's coming from, can no longer be "found", decoded, and merged with internally generated graphics such as menus and channel banners. The incoming gets lost regardless of its source.

A reboot causes either (or both) the defective software module and the DAC chip to be reset and sync up properly with the video signal source again.

This might also explain why recordings that are in progress when the problem starts seem to complete normally but cannot be viewed until after a reboot--the tuner doing the recording is not disturbed by the problem because nothing changes for that tuner. But recordings that are initiated after the problem has already kicked in are more likely to record gray or black and NOT be visible after a reboot. In this case, the box is trying to start recording an input source it can't sync up with.

This guess is based on the reports on this thread and my own experience with the problem (I can basically get it to happen at will). Maybe it's a wrong observation. In any case, what I can't figure out is why it's taking TiVo so long to find it--let alone officially acknowledge it--after 300-400 people have reported it on this thread alone over a period of months.

[Lenonn]

I has this problem again last night - again, after I initiated a transfer of a couple of programs from another room. I'm pretty sure I used the left "arrow" on the control to back-out all the way instead of hitting the TiVo button, though.

This is a major problem right now - I can't reliably start a transfer then go to watch something at the same time (or so it seems).

[dianebrat]

It is simply internal resolution switching. Somehow the TiVO HD can lose track of the resolution of the digital source bit-stream it's supposed to be processing...it just gets "lost", maybe in software, maybe in hardware (i.e. a bit gets stuck in some hardware register holding a number that indicates resolution) when the box has to switch from one resolution to another. For example, it happens a lot when people press the "Live TV" button, which causes the box to have to switch out of Tivo's internal 720p background video into some other resolution, even if just for a moment.


Great idea, but in my case, my TivoHD is analog only, no digital to have any changes in resolution.

just adding to the data pool...

[ZXTT95]

I was having this repeatedly on one of my TiVo HDs. It would happen at least once a week. After using attenuator(s) to get the SNR from around 37 down to 31-33, depending on channels, it's gone three weeks (I think) without the problem. Not long enough to be satisfied this is working, but my hopes are up.

[tluxon]

I bought a couple TiVoHD's ($250 deal at Vann's.com) to give them a try in comparison to our Comcast Motorola DC*-3416's. One of them has been in service for just over a week while the other is still in the box. We just experienced this "black screen of death" last night. A restart resolved the issue. I have the TiVoHD outputting 1080i Hybrid through Component, and our source is OTA-HD and digital cable (M-stream CC).

Interesting behavior was that any use of the transport functions resulted in a "bonk", except for playing MP3's off of a TiVo Desktop'ed PC. At the time I wondered if anything could've been broken when I closed TiVo Desktop without stopping the TiVo Desktop Server (in the host PC's system tray). Now that I've found this thread it doesn't look the problem can be so well contained.

[TiVoPony]

An update for you all - I'd last reported that our engineers had been able to replicate the problem here. They've since developed a fix, and it's tested well in beta. It's planned for our next software update for the TiVo HD platform (not far off, weeks not months).

As usual, we are planning to have a priority list up when this release is ready to go out, I'll let you all know when it's ready. Thanks again for the detailed reports here, they're invaluable in tracking this sort of issue down (and a second thank you to those who joined the beta to test the fix).

Cheers,
Pony

[lew]

I hope this solves the problem. I reported the problem, a few weeks ago, and was told the problem was limited to users with SA cable cards. They seemed surprised when I said I have 2 Motorola cards.

[bizzy]

An update for you all - I'd last reported that our engineers had been able to replicate the problem here. They've since developed a fix, and it's tested well in beta. It's planned for our next software update for the TiVo HD platform (not far off, weeks not months).


Thanks for the update on this issue. I was hoping to also see an update on the Series 3 reboot thread: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=378311

Has there been any progress in determining what the problem is?

[Lorcane]

I'm glad to hear a fix is coming. I just got my TiVo HD a few weeks ago. I'm still having cable card issues, but Time Warner is sending me an M-Card this time. I noticed the problem when I was trying to troubleshoot my Motorola S-Cards. When I backed out of the cable cards menu I'd loose all video, but keep the menu overlay.

[britdiver]

Great news TivoPony. I assume you actually work for Tivo to get this inside info? At least somebody at Tivo knows they need to tell us something is happening. I bet a lot of first time users have gotten a bad taste in their mouths from their first try with a Tivo and probably will never be back. And no news from Tivo after months doesn't help.

Can't wait for the fix. Thanks again.

[CharlesH]

Great news TivoPony. I assume you actually work for Tivo to get this inside info?Note the "TiVo Product Marketing" in TiVoPony's signature. I think it is fair to say that he is both an insider at TiVo, as well as being authorized to disclose this sort of info to the public. :D

[britdiver]

Yeah. I noticed that after I posted the reply. So that's great news. Not just a rumor heard third hand but straight from Tivo product marketing. Excellent.:)

[koensayr]

I know how engineering teams go. You never know when you are going to be done with a project, as new unforseen problems come up. But it would be great if TivoPony would mention an expected release date for this update. I'd also be curious to see a list of other things that will be fixed in this update.

-Josh

[britdiver]

TivoPony.

Can you also confirm that there is no hardware issues here? It appears some people are still being told by customer service to return and exchange their boxes. So is there a hardware issue or is this a stalling tactic until the software fix comes out? I just don't want to find out in a month or so I also need to switch to a new box.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

[britdiver]

Yet more confirmation of what others have been saying. My HD box hadn't had the gray screen of death in a couple of weeks at least and last night I started playing with some settings for closed captioning. And today I turned on the tv and all channels (or at least the ones I checked) are all gray (but it was recording a show fine). So confirmation that playing in the menus and changing settings seems to induce the lockup more often. I doubt Tivo will do it, but I wish they would tell us once the patch has been released, what the problem was. Just out of curiosity I would love to know what the bug is.

[opus472]

Just had something similar happen. First the Tivo Central screen changed from red to blue. Then it went to black (could still read it, white text on black background). Tried to play recorded programs, got black screen. Restarted the box, appears to have solved the problem.

[Moebius]

So far, I was only able to reproduce the problem on the first day I got my cablecard installed, and that was staying in menus for a long time while the tuner was tuned to a channel with no signal. I've played around in menus for extended times since, but the tuner had a valid signal playing when I did, so it's hard to judge for sure.

[asualumni03]

We have been having this problem since we installed the Tivo two months ago. A reboot always resolved the issue. However, last night, the gray screen appeared on channels 23 and up (basically we are getting all local and local HD, but not any others). We have rebooted five times and completed the guided setup twice with no resolution.

I just spoke with four different reps at Tivo - all four calls were disconnected by the reps. They basically said it is a CableCard problem. Does anyone have any advice on how to resolve this? After reading this forum, it doesn't seem it will be worth my time to have Cox come back out and replace the card. Or is it?

[kupe]

Well, got the dreaded "gray screen" today. Happened while scrolling through Amazon Unbox movies under "Download TV and Movies". This is our second-ever occurrence of gray-screen. The first was two weeks ago and it was the first day we had our Tivo HD (first day occurrences seem to have come up alot in this thread.) Running 9.2a on Tivo HD.

Kupe

[hijammer]

I just bought 2 new Tivo HD and i have had several instances of the gray screen in the few days I have had them. I was wondering when this software up date is coming b/c i may just return them if it not coming soon.

[kenrippy]

i've had the grey screens also with a new tivoHD. (9.2a software) it's happened about 5 times in the first week of use. a restart fixes it, but i sure hope this new fix from tivo will take care of it for good.

on a side note, TW cable can't get any M-cards to work so far in this box. someone is coming by tomorrow with a variety of "pre-tested" cards (some S-cards too) to see if they can get any of them to work. this is very frustrating, since time warner doesn't seem to care much whether or not they get it working for me. (huntington beach, ca)

[hijammer]

I did find out that even thou I had a gray screen my Tivo continued recording and the recording came out fine.

[Grungir]

After the first few days of random rebooting and grey screens, the issue seems to have fixed itself a bit. I have only had one random reboot after I got an update.

One problem i still have:
In TC, it still plays live TV instead of showing the normal TC background. After reading a few threads, I may go back and switch the res from Native to Hybrid. Anyone else know what the issue is? It is pretty hard to read the text without the right background :)

[rockymountaind]

After the first few days of random rebooting and grey screens, the issue seems to have fixed itself a bit. I have only had one random reboot after I got an update.

Same here. Twice in the first week or two, but not since then.


One problem i still have:
In TC, it still plays live TV instead of showing the normal TC background. After reading a few threads, I may go back and switch the res from Native to Hybrid. Anyone else know what the issue is? It is pretty hard to read the text without the right background :)

Never seen this, but I think some owners might like such a feature :)

[RoundBoy]

im going to chime in... TivoHD with the latest software... I only get this problem when i change the output resolution in the options menu repeatedly to test output quality.

Only has happened twice, but a reboot fixes. Glad to see a fix is ready.. hopefully this new update also fixes the dual tuner scheduler bug as well.

[h00ligan]

I'm running 9.2a on mine as well.. i have had one grey screen in the last week or so - on one of my boxes.. that said.. it seems to coincide for me with channel lineup changes - and plenty of those are coming this month.. so we will see..

Regardless there are several bugs that need to be worked out, hopefully the gray screen is banished. When was 9.2a pushed? I don't think it was directly responsible for less gray screening for me but I am not sure.

[Eccles]

I just had this happen to me again. At the time, I was transferring programs from my S2 in the background, and was working on my Season Pass list. I went away for a few minutes, and when I returned the THD was displaying a black screen instead of Live TV.

[h00ligan]

I jinxed myself, i had to reboot one last night due to the gsod

[BEZMan]

Yeah, I get menu area ie: now playing list, messages + settings. It's been unplugged for about 4.5 hours.....we'll see if it works now. I did change the resolution from 1080i to native after watching about hours worth of recorded shows. After I rebooted, it went to the menu screen, hten when I hit live tv, it flickered like it was wanting to show it, saw a brief second of live TV, then blackness. :(

I'll undo my DVD component video and hook it to the S3, maybe it will work.

UPDATE: Wow, it had something to do with my resolution setting. I changed it back to 1080i and valia I gots a picture again. I have a Samsung 5265f, so it shoud have been able to support all the various resolutions.

I had a 4065f, and unfortunately it did NOT support 480i. I am assuming the same holds for your 5265f. To make it work, I had to use Hybrid, NOT Native. It may be what caused your problem in this case.

[vulture99]

New TiVo HD owner - I bought a refurb unit from the recent woot.com deal. Setup went fine but later I encountered the gray screen issue. If I hit the TiVo button it brings up the main menu, but no background image. This also occurred when watching live TV. I have not tried recording yet so I don't know if recording is affected.

This happened both with the 8.1 software and after the box updated to 9.2a. The reboot after the service update restored the normal background image, but this morning when I turned on the TV it had the gray screen again. Hit TiVo button, got menu with no background image. Rebooted, back to normal for now.

My THD was built in Dec 2007. I have it set to Hybrid 720p because I use an HDTV with max 720p resolution. I am only recording OTA signals (no cable cards).

So...after reading through the thread I understand we are awaiting a magical software update from TiVo? But we don't know when it will arrive or whether it will fix this issue??

[taomaster99]

Also received the TIVO HD from Woot.com and so far have gotten the black screen once - here is the setup:
component cables, 720 fixed, non-modded, comcast cable (with m-card, Motorola).

The one time it happened I had just transferred some shows over from my old Series 2 Tivo and went back to the main TIVO screen and hit the live tv button when it went black screen. I was leaving for work so I just shut the tv off, hoping it would clear up after I got home, but it didn't. I rebooted and it came back, the shows by the way transferred over ok (other then one being cut short but that is for a different thread), I was able to play them with no problems. That was a few days ago and since then I changed the resolution to 720p hybrid and haven't had any problems, even after tranferring files. We'll see how long that holds true though. Nice to see there is a fix, probably, coming along though.

[daverdfw]

mine hasnt done it today, here is my sw version 9.2a-01-2-652 anyone else have the same of diff version?

[dhoward]

I have had the grey screen problem like everyone else here. However, it is now manifesting itself in a new way now. I upgraded to the latest version of Tivo Desktop. Now when I initiate a pc to Tivo transfer about 4 minutes in my screen goes grey and I have to restart Tivo to get out of it. Anyone else with this problem and where is the promised fix?

[substance12]

I have had the grey screen problem like everyone else here. However, it is now manifesting itself in a new way now. I upgraded to the latest version of Tivo Desktop. Now when I initiate a pc to Tivo transfer about 4 minutes in my screen goes grey and I have to restart Tivo to get out of it. Anyone else with this problem and where is the promised fix?

I used pytivo and initiated a transfer of a movie while 2 shows were being recorded and I attempted to watch a show at the same time... I believe that was what caused my grey screen. Simply doing too much. Were you by any chance doing something similar?

[dhoward]

No, nothing. I had tried twice and for some reason each time it stopped the transfer after about 4-6 minutes and then erased it. On the 3rd time I decided to stay on the now playing screen to watch the copy progress and this time everything went grey. I had to restart the Tivo as usual to clear the problem. Now that I have done a restart I am trying it again.

[inahaz]

I'll join the club here. I just bought and installed 2 THD's. (Cable company is coming next week to hook up cable and install M-cards). So, coax isn't even connected to these boxes yet. I have networked them and have been downloading music videos from the broadband connection. At the same time I was transferring video from my home PC and playing around with other features. I quickly had one with the GSOD. I've had to reboot 3 times tonight. I haven't noticed it yet on my second box, but maybe that is because I haven't used it much yet.

Until I saw this thread, I was under the impression (as others have mentioned) that I was doing too much at once and it just crashed. Hopefully an update will clear this up.

It takes A LOOOOOOONG time to reboot these things... I may rethink my decison to cancel my DirecTV if this continues. I'll give it a week, then return them to the store and cancel the service if it doesn't clear up. (I'm not very patient when I'm paying good money for this stuff.)

[kenrippy]

I'll join the club here. I just bought and installed 2 THD's. (Cable company is coming next week to hook up cable and install M-cards). So, coax isn't even connected to these boxes yet. I have networked them and have been downloading music videos from the broadband connection. At the same time I was transferring video from my home PC and playing around with other features. I quickly had one with the GSOD. I've had to reboot 3 times tonight. I haven't noticed it yet on my second box, but maybe that is because I haven't used it much yet.

Until I saw this thread, I was under the impression (as others have mentioned) that I was doing too much at once and it just crashed. Hopefully an update will clear this up.

It takes A LOOOOOOONG time to reboot these things... I may rethink my decison to cancel my DirecTV if this continues. I'll give it a week, then return them to the store and cancel the service if it doesn't clear up. (I'm not very patient when I'm paying good money for this stuff.)
hang in there, it will stop after a couple days. same thing happened to my new tivoHD. it's been about a month now and no more GSOD's or forced reboots.

[Devx]

I'll join the club here. I just bought and installed 2 THD's. (Cable company is coming next week to hook up cable and install M-cards). So, coax isn't even connected to these boxes yet. I have networked them and have been downloading music videos from the broadband connection. At the same time I was transferring video from my home PC and playing around with other features. I quickly had one with the GSOD. I've had to reboot 3 times tonight. I haven't noticed it yet on my second box, but maybe that is because I haven't used it much yet.

Until I saw this thread, I was under the impression (as others have mentioned) that I was doing too much at once and it just crashed. Hopefully an update will clear this up.

It takes A LOOOOOOONG time to reboot these things... I may rethink my decison to cancel my DirecTV if this continues. I'll give it a week, then return them to the store and cancel the service if it doesn't clear up. (I'm not very patient when I'm paying good money for this stuff.)


I have 2 THD's too and no GSOD's on either box. Either before the cable card was installed or after. They've been solid other than seemingly random disappearing of the background and even that's rare. I've only seen it 3 times in 4 months between both boxes. IMO, GSOD's are a bit more serious. If one box has GSOD's and the other doesn't then I would exchange the box giving me the problem. If you think it might be the type of activity (ie. the transfers, etc.) you should test the other box to make sure it's an actual software issue and not failing hardware. I've transferred video from my PC and my S2, streamed music, and used the local weather features and haven't had any issues with crashes. Like you said, you paid good money for a new box. I'd hate for you to have to take advantage of the warranty and get a refurb'd box 2 months later and lose any shows on it when the problem presented itself much earlier. All their quirks aside, these boxes are pretty solid.

[chewy2314]

tivopony,
any more news? add me to the list of BSOD. happens when i mess with output resolution. been okay with hybrid 480p/1080i. running with analog cable and OTA HD.

[britdiver]

Yes. PLEASE. News.

I thought my GSOD were diminishing in number but two in three days. I had set it to record the repeat of a show it failed to record on Sunday again today, and once again the GSOD meant it failed to record it for a second time. NOT HAPPY. I'm running out of patience Tivo. Still no official word that they have even found this problem.

[tluxon]

tivopony,
any more news? add me to the list of BSOD. happens when i mess with output resolution. been okay with hybrid 480p/1080i. running with analog cable and OTA HD.That's when it's happened with mine as well. I don't really like the "Native" setting because of all the video snap, crackle, pops when going between channels of different resolution, but as long as I leave it there I haven't had any BSOD's.

[h00ligan]

man you guys here are being SOOOO nice about this.. i have another message for tivopony, one that will get censored so why don't i censor the post myself. I say this having had this issue about 40% of my powered on time and having had to reboot the tivos (2 of them) daily for the last 4 days,, so yah sorry but let's get to the point.

tell the TiVo staff, to stop adding &*(^ing useless ^&*%ing features and fix the *&^(ucking fact that in SIX MONTHS you guys have done NOTHING about this. I am SICK AND TIRED of missing s^&t because my tivo decides it can't see video anymore.

J(Sus get it together, at the very least credits should be ROLLING out at this point.. i am paying for a service that fails constantly.. between this and other issues, i can't say i'll be recommending TiVo to anyone, unlike when I had my series 1 directivo and couldn't brag enough about how great it was.

Reliability is apparently directly inversely proportional to 'added extras'. The reason people buy a tivo and don't build a media center (at least people like me) is a lack of desire to spend their evenings figuring out why the piece of crap in the livingroom fails to work properly... so they pay a premium..

apparently i lose on both sides.

ps i set to 720p fixed and don't res change and it STILL happens daily... to BOTH units.

We have been having this problem since we installed the Tivo two months ago. A reboot always resolved the issue. However, last night, the gray screen appeared on channels 23 and up (basically we are getting all local and local HD, but not any others). We have rebooted five times and completed the guided setup twice with no resolution.

I just spoke with four different reps at Tivo - all four calls were disconnected by the reps. They basically said it is a CableCard problem. Does anyone have any advice on how to resolve this? After reading this forum, it doesn't seem it will be worth my time to have Cox come back out and replace the card. Or is it?

BULL. I have had at this point SIX cable cards in my units and this is a consistant issue.. and IIRC it was two different brands - sci-at and motorola.

[h00ligan]

I just spoke with a TiVo supervisor, explained the situation - and basically they credited me for the service (or lack thereof) and told me i could cancel my contract (i bought the units at costco so they can still be returned).

She also said they have made 'progress' but when pressed mentioned there is still doubt as to the origin of the issue, and there is no specced time for a fix.

Effectively it would seem they really have no idea how to fix this.. as such I am now exploring other options.

Disappointing.

[Devx]

h00ligan, not to belittle the issue or derail your efforts in any way but you shouldn't be missing shows because of the no video issue. The whole point of the issue was that it was an inconvenience. A serious one, but still just an inconvenience. The Tivo can still see video but any user watching the Tivo cannot until it is restarted. The workaround is to let it continue recording shows in the background and come back later to restart it once it's done to make sure you don't miss anything. Should anyone have to do this? Of course not, but that workaround is available for the shows that are too important to miss even 5 mins.

[h00ligan]

That is not what happens for me.

The screen goes grey and any recordings register as 0:00 and ask for a delete as soon as they are played. Thing is, it keeps recording - but just shows up as a nothing show. So yes, I am missing shows, frequently.

[Dmyze]

Well I hope the fix comes out soon.

I have been having this issue for some time now. It happens fiarly often when I transfer data from my TS3 to my THD.

My theory is that there is some kind of 'buffer overflow' going on with the network card, when it gets too much data, it knocks out, or at least hijacks the Video Processor.

I wonder if it's realated to wired vs wireless.

When people post they should mention if they are using wired or wireless, on each of their Tivos.

My HD is on wired, TS3 is wireless

[chewy2314]

That is not what happens for me.

The screen goes grey and any recordings register as 0:00 and ask for a delete as soon as they are played. Thing is, it keeps recording - but just shows up as a nothing show. So yes, I am missing shows, frequently.

hmm. strange. when i get GSOD, if i tried playing a recorded show, it does what you said, but as soon as i reboot the TiVo, the same show plays fine.

[aindik]

hmm. strange. when i get GSOD, if i tried playing a recorded show, it does what you said, but as soon as i reboot the TiVo, the same show plays fine.

Me too. The PITA factor is that if this happens while a show (that you care about) is recording, you can't reboot the TiVo or you'll miss almost 10 minutes of the show while the TiVo reboots. So, until it stops recording, you can't watch anything.

[Mars Rocket]

I've had the black screen issue pop up twice in the past two weeks after no problems for several months. I don't remember what I was doing for the prior event, but this last time I was just messing around in the program guide and trying to tune to some channels that aren't in my lineup yet (but are due to be added).

The strange thing to me is how some people have the problem frequently and others only see it every few months.

[jebbbz]

hmm. strange. when i get GSOD, if i tried playing a recorded show, it does what you said, but as soon as i reboot the TiVo, the same show plays fine.

I think you and h00ligan are talking about different things.

There are two different problems that superficially present similar symptoms. You are experiencing loss of video playback, which is a problem with the Tivo (probably the MPEG2 decoder freezing, which I will assume to be the problem for now) while h00ligan appears to be suffering a cablecard authorization bug that prevents display of encrypted cable channels.

Thus, your recordings continue unaffected because mere recording does not involve the MPEG2 decoder. You cannot watch live TV because that does require a functioning decoder, as does playback of recorded shows as well as playback of the animated backgrounds Tivo displays behind menus (display of the menu text does not involve the MPEG2 decoder).

The problem h00oligan describes affects only reception and display of encrypted channels from the cable company, whether live or "recorded" after the problem arises. Previously recorded shows play back fine and analog cable and all OTA shows from an antenna play fine, and menus look normal. If h00ligan records a show after the cable card goes crazy the show will be black and zero length.

Rebooting always (to my knowledge) fixes your problem and usually fixes h00ligan's but eventually reboots stop working for the cable card problem h00ligan describes. Tivo can fix the MPEG2 decoder problem all by themselves but the cable card problem h00ligan encounters seems to require help from the cable card manufacturer. As far as I know, only Scientific Atlanta cable cards are affected.

(If h00ligan is in an area that uses Motorola equipment then ignore everything I have said about that problem.)

[chewy2314]

I think you and h00ligan are talking about different things.
[snip].. while h00ligan appears to be suffering a cablecard authorization bug that prevents display of encrypted cable channels. [snip]


ahh. i see. i'll find out if CC affect my box soon. CC due to be installed April 5th.

[britdiver]

This is amazing. Although I had this problem a lot when I first got the machine in Jan, it hadn't happened much in the last couple of months. BUT just as a couple of posters mentioned it has happened twice in the last few days. We have different machines, different cable cards, different cable companies, different parts of the country but we all got several GSOD in the past few days. Now thats amazing.

Also up until these last two occurrences it has always kept recording something if it was scheduled. However, these last two times it has NOT recorded what was scheduled. Now that is new for me. In fact the most recent occurrence I couldn't even get the menus up. Again new.

TivoPony we need news. People on these forums are tivo "fans" and are a lot more tolerant than most. Most people would have already returned the machine and gone in another direction. And I can't blame them. I too can not possibly recommend Tivo to anyone right now. I was actually considering getting a second machine but I will have to wait to see if Tivo fix this first.

Tivo will be out of business very soon if they continue to have these problems. RIP Tivo!

Added:

I strongly urge Tivo to make an official announcement about this issue. Remember there has not been one single official acknowledgement that there is even an issue. As far as we know Tivo may not even be looking for a fix as every customer service rep says something different and none seem confident of a fix coming soon.

[BMoreE]

I need to second that last post: sitting on the phone with tech support, I commented to my wife that there isn't a chance in hell that any normal (i.e. non-geek) person would put up with the crap we're going through to just make the basic functions of our DVR work. I was totally devoted to TiVo, but slowly I'm realizing that the FiOS DVR that I initially thought sucked (because it did) is improving to the point where the reasons for fighting to get TiVo working are fading.

Add in the fact that there are a few issues with seemingly non-existent resolution out there (I'm on two "it happens to me" lists) and I cannot imagine this company staying in business. When your product is basically competing against one that is free, you need to shine. And Tivo used to shine. But now, their problems are even losing us first-adopter zealots, to the point where they just survive on their brand name I guess.

Sucks for me as I fought to get life time service on this latest box. Keeping fingers crossed that they keep going long enough to make that investment pay off.

ANYWAY, to the point of the thread: hoping not to jinx myself, but my GSOD hasn't happened to me for at least 3 months. It only happened a few times during my initial setup and playing. I do not utilize the PC features very much, and don't download shows at all, so maybe I avoid the pitfalls. If you get them at first, give it a few weeks and hopefully you'll experience the same.

[Mobocracy]

Well I hope the fix comes out soon.

I have been having this issue for some time now. It happens fiarly often when I transfer data from my TS3 to my THD.

My theory is that there is some kind of 'buffer overflow' going on with the network card, when it gets too much data, it knocks out, or at least hijacks the Video Processor.

I've had it happen twice in the last 2 days. The first time was transferring shows from my S2 to HD. The second was switching from "Native" back to "720P Fixed".

Maybe mode changes and network utilization cause some kind of interrupt problem or something else that hangs the decoder.

[Greg_R]

I have a Tivo HD and a Series 3 HD. The Tivo HD has required 3 soft reboots so far in the past month to fix the blank recording / choppy video / no video issue (I guess I'm lucky?). The Series 3 HD has worked perfectly. Both units have 2 S-cards w. Verizon Fios. This is definitely a Tivo issue. Both units are connected to my router through a GigE wired switch network.

[aaronwt]

I've not had any problems with the TiVoHD I have on FIOS. All my TiVs ar on a gigabit network. I did have a GSOD, but that was when I downgraded from a 1TB drive to a 500GB and there was a bad sector on it. The TiVo did it's thing so it skips over the bad sector and it's been fine.

[dd_0]

I have a THD with 2 Comcast s-cards (they refuse to give me an m-card). Programming works fine, so it's not worth arguing. Software is 9.2a.

My TV supports all formats up to 1080p and I can get GSOD to happen/not happen simply by switching video output from native (GSOD) to 1080i fixed (no GSOD.) Naturally, I would prefer to have native, but if I can avoid GSOD by selecting 1080i, so be it, for the time being. If I get GSOD under other circumstances, that's a differnt matter!

Incidentally, there seem to be two types of GSOD - one low res and one high res, presumably depending on the input.

Add me to the list of people anxiously waiting for a fix, but I'm not holding my breath as there are way too many variables. TiVo and the cable companies will point fingers at each other while we paying consumers are consigned to ignorant CSR Hell.

[xboard07]

I have had the black screen occur when scrolling through my music on the Tivo, not just when in live TV mode or watching a recording.

[toy4two]

Add one more to this behavior. I've only had my TIVO HD 2 days, exact same thing happened day 1.

You can still go through all the menus etc, but if you try to play anything or watch live tv all you get is a black screen.

Color my not impressed with TIVO so far.

When the problem occured details: No cable cards, just analog cable and OTA and QAM. Output res set to 1080i Hybrid. Software version 8.1.7.

I feel your pain guys, when the Directv HR20 first came out it had lots of bugs like this, luckily they were all fixed through updates in the stream. I hope it gets better, but I'm not keeping this thing longer than 3 weeks because I want to return it.

[lessd]

Add one more to this behavior. I've only had my TIVO HD 2 days, exact same thing happened day 1.

You can still go through all the menus etc, but if you try to play anything or watch live tv all you get is a black screen.

Color my not impressed with TIVO so far.

When the problem occured details: No cable cards, just analog cable and OTA and QAM. Output res set to 1080i Hybrid. Software version 8.1.7.

I feel your pain guys, when the Directv HR20 first came out it had lots of bugs like this, luckily they were all fixed through updates in the stream. I hope it gets better, but I'm not keeping this thing longer than 3 weeks because I want to return it.


A soft re-boot will fix your problem until TiVo comes out with v9.3 for the Series 3 and TiVo-HD.

[MIghtyTitan]

Add me to the list of people experiencing this problem.

I have had my TiVo HD unit for less than 2 weeks and I have lost the picture and audio twice. When this happens, I can still see the TiVo Central and other TiVo menu displays except that the backgrounds are gray. When I switch to Live TV I get a gray screen and no sound.

Toggling through the different video output modes on the TiVo does not fix the problem.

I can reestablish the picture and audio by resetting my TiVo unit. When I reestablish the picture and audio I see that whatever was being recorded at the time of the problem was recorded OK.

I use an antenna for my HD source. I don't use cable.

I normally use the fixed 720P video output signal with my Sharp LCD HDTV.

In 7 days, TiVoPony's promised fix will have taken (2+) months; not weeks as hoped for.

[jebbbz]

Add one more to this behavior. I've only had my TIVO HD 2 days, exact same thing happened day 1.

You can still go through all the menus etc, but if you try to play anything or watch live tv all you get is a black screen.
...

When the problem occured details: No cable cards, just analog cable and OTA and QAM. Output res set to 1080i Hybrid. Software version 8.1.7.


My experience was that this problem only occured if I had spent a lot of time navigating the Tivo menu system as was the case when I first ran setup and again when I had cablecards installed. By any chance did your problem arise on your first day during or immediately after your setup?

[britdiver]

I just tried to send a private message to TivoPony to beg for news, and he has exceeded his quota and can't receive any more messages. Emailing him is also blocked.

TivoPony - news please I beg you!

[KRKeegan]

I have had this issue for quite some time. Although, for me it only occurs every 2 weeks or so. Mine is a wired TiVoHD. It happens a lot while browsing and downloading content so I agree it could be a buffer overflow.

[MIghtyTitan]

I received the following message from the TiVo Help Forums Team regarding my posting on their web site:

Initial release stages of 9.3 for the HD models is occurring right now.
In a couple weeks it should be ramped up.

[1080p_Junkie]

Add another to the mix.......Series3 HD, Latest SW, 1080i Hybrid Video Mode here. I've had the unit for a little over a week now. I have the same/similar problems to most of the folks in this thread, and I'm desperately awaiting a fix if ever one does arrive.

I only get the blank screen/no audio with certain HD channels, but I can NEVER get them to appear live. I can record on those channels....most of the time. Oh yeah, and there are other HD channels that seem to ALWAYS be available for live viewing.....perhaps I haven't given the unit enough time to screw those up, too. Standard resolution channels also seem fine......for now.....

I'm running dual Motorola M-cards in Single mode (I'm 90% sure....not sure how to confirm the single-mode part).

I have rebooted (hard and soft) several times to no avail.

I've even recorded a few episodes of Heroes on MojoHD and managed to get HD video, but NO audio .... what the hell??? :confused:

I have counted on the machine to record all the HD shows that I cannot view live, but as I mentioned before, that has backfired a few times (showing 0:00 for the recording...again, even after a reboot).

If it weren't for my reliable S2 DT Tivo that is set to record the same shows in standard resolution then I would've missed those episodes altogether!

I'm going to give this a couple more weeks before the unit gets returned, and I demand a full refund for my $400 lifetime membership.

VERY DISAPPOINTED PREVIOUSLY LOYAL CUSTOMER.

Series3 HD w/ ESATA 640GB Expansion in 1080i Hybrid Display Mode
Series2 DT No Mods

[ZXTT95]

1080p_Junkie,

The problem on discussed by most people on this thread does not involve most of the strangeness you describe. It looks like you have an S3, but I also think that this problem relates to TiVo HD only, but I'm not 100% sure of that. We see the TiVo lose the ability to play back all video, including menu backgrounds, which is always fixed by a soft reboot. The TiVo can record normally while the video can't play. This behavior is consistent, with some minor variations in how the video looks when it starts failing.

I point this out because you may want to consider cable card problems, hard drive problems or other hardware problems rather than waiting for a software fix.

[tmesser]

I point this out because you may want to consider cable card problems, hard drive problems or other hardware problems rather than waiting for a software fix.

Yeah, I agree. In particular, the "video but no audio" points to a pretty common CableCARD pairing problem.

There has definitely been a problem here, but it has not occurred on my THD since October.

[1080p_Junkie]

Ok, I'll look more into the CableCARD possible issues.....seems odd because both CC's 'subscribed' & 'verified' just fine.....

[britdiver]

Well my old S2 box was updated to software version 9.3 last night. I signed up for the priority list (only for S2 machines) and last night I got the update. Note, there was no message at all. It looked like a normal overnight connect but when I checked the software version, it had been updated. My TivoHD was not updated. Hopefully that will come soon.

So at least 9.3 is out. Whether it will fix our GSOD problem of course has yet to be seen.

[bizzy]

That's really strange. I thought Tivo didn't add units to the upgrade pool on fridays or weekends!

[dd_0]

Received 9.3 a couple of days ago, and haven't had a single GSOD since. Instead, I have experienced lockups three or four times where both recorded and live playback just locks up. Skip forward gets a second or two of play, then it locks up again. Soft reboot fixes the problem, so the data is being received/recorded - it's the playback that's the problem. I preferred the GSOD which at least I could control by staying in 1080i mode. The latest lockups have happened in both Native and 1080i modes. Any other similar reports?

[britdiver]

Received 9.3 a couple of days ago, and haven't had a single GSOD since. Instead, I have experienced lockups three or four times where both recorded and live playback just locks up. Skip forward gets a second or two of play, then it locks up again. Soft reboot fixes the problem, so the data is being received/recorded - it's the playback that's the problem. I preferred the GSOD which at least I could control by staying in 1080i mode. The latest lockups have happened in both Native and 1080i modes. Any other similar reports?

I don't have 9.3 yet on my TivoHD but for what it's worth I couldn't control the GSOD by staying in 1080i fixed as my machine as always been in that mode and I still got them.

[fadden0]

I've been in TiVo hell for the past 3 weeks or so. The only real relevance to the discussion here is that the 9.3 update appeared briefly on the box, and then disappeared.

The box in question has taken to rebooting spontaneously, and the "downgrade" happened somewhere around the time that the service was transferred to the (to-be-delivered) replacement box. Not sure if it was deliberate or just an artifact of the perpetual rebooting. All I can say is that it had 9.2, one time I looked and it had 9.3, and from then on it was back to 9.2.

Of course, the aforementioned replacement box arrived a week ago, and was doing quite well until this evening when it simply died. If I apply power I hear a feeble "click click click" and nothing further.

I suspect bad power supplies in both cases. Too late to call TiVo tonight.

FWIW, I did get the grey-screen problem after the M-card authorization on the new box, but the new box was also only updated to 9.2 when left to sit overnight.

I'm giving serious consideration to resurrecting the Series 2 DT, but the IR blaster misses channel changes far too often.

[ZXTT95]

Received 9.3 a couple of days ago, and haven't had a single GSOD since. Instead, I have experienced lockups three or four times where both recorded and live playback just locks up. Skip forward gets a second or two of play, then it locks up again. Soft reboot fixes the problem, so the data is being received/recorded - it's the playback that's the problem. I preferred the GSOD which at least I could control by staying in 1080i mode. The latest lockups have happened in both Native and 1080i modes. Any other similar reports?

Yes, I think so. We've had to reboot the THD three or four times since 9.3. The failures seem different than before, and more frequent too (need more time to be sure of the frequency). Now, when this happens, I can't play, but I can FF or Rewind successfully. I'm not sure if it looks normal, but it works. The menu background animation also was working last time it failed - before, it would freeze as well.

[fadden0]

Now, when this happens, I can't play, but I can FF or Rewind successfully. I'm not sure if it looks normal, but it works.

At one point I had it where it would FF/Rew, but if I hit play I would only hear audio. The video frame was frozen. Rebooting cleared it. I can't recall if this was during "9.3 day", but it's possible.

In other news, TiVo support is providing UPS return labels for the rebooting/dead boxes and next-day-shipping a new one out. They get big points from me for that.

[britdiver]

Version 9.3 just installed on my TivoHD. Now it's time to hold my breath and wait and see.......................:eek:

[dd_0]

I don't have 9.3 yet on my TivoHD but for what it's worth I couldn't control the GSOD by staying in 1080i fixed as my machine as always been in that mode and I still got them.

Sounds like staying in 1080i fixed isn't always the solution, then. However, I think I'll stay there for the time being, since it seems to work for me! If it stops working, I'll have to think again.

[dd_0]

Version 9.3 just installed on my TivoHD. Now it's time to hold my breath and wait and see.......................:eek:

Maybe I reported my problems too early - I haven't had any further lockups or GSODs in a week or so.

I did have some very unstable recording on the night of the last presidential debate, though. I was watching and recording the debate on ABCHD and every five or ten minutes, the video would freeze and I would lose audio for a few seconds. My Amplifier would report the Dolby signal being re-acquired (via HMDI), and things would continue properly. It got much worse in the program following the debate, which quickly became unwatchable. Maybe there was a weak cable signal that night, since it doesn't seem to have happened again. Anybody else have similar problems?

[Overdoze]

i just got off the phone with tech support at tivo

they seem to be very well aware of the situation, and will give you a months free service if you call and complain

i asked the lady about a fix and she told me that the engineers believe it is a hardware issue and not a software issue...
she wanted me to run some tests to see if the hardware issue was with the tivo HD unit or the cablecards. she said the tivo unit may need to be replaced

though recoding seems to work fine, its just playback thats freezing
so its probably not the cable card

i do not know if she was just blowing smoke up my seat though

i really hope its not hardware, i was lucky enough to get a good cable tech over to do the cards after 3 weeks of failure and missed appointments :eek:

im hooked up via HDMI

[britdiver]

Well it was a good run. But I have just had my first GSOD since 9.3. All menus ok. Still recording and the recording was working ok. All digital and HD channels ok. Just all the analog channels were gray. Restart of course fixed it. Oh well. I guess it was too good to be true that they had fixed it. But it least it doesn't seem as regular as before 9.3. I haven't seen many new posts here since 9.3 so did it fix most peoples problems?

[britdiver]

Well just got my second GSOD right in front of my eyes and it was at the exact second it started to record something. That recording (and channel) were OK but others went gray. Even the channel I was watching froze.

[Joe Siegler]

Well, today I had Time Warner (Dallas) come out, get my cable going with my TiVoHD, and all was well. From about 5PM till about 9:15PM. My wife and I were watching a recorded show, and I flipped over to live on ESPNHD, as Baseball Tonight was being delayed by the Red Sox game (wanted to see if the game had finished). I watched a little bit of the live buffer there, and it froze. Backing up worked, but when I got to that point again in the buffer, it was just stuck. A show from VH1 Classic was recording on the other tuner. It too froze up, but I didn't discover that until later.

A few remarks:

1) I've been running this TiVoHD fine for about a week and a half before today using rabbit ears. I was impatient to see the features, but did a complete "wipe out the TiVo and restart" before the TWC guy showed up today.

2) I do NOT have an HDTV, I haven't made that plunge yet, so I'm watching everything in 480i, going through Svideo to my TV (which is about 15 years old, but still works fine). I bought this box because I was switching to TWC, and wanted to future buy given I know I'll be going HD anyway. Plus I wanted a "real TiVo" again after years of being with DirecTV.

3) All of my Basic cable channels (under 100) work. All of my Digital Cable local channels work (350-458 on TWC Dallas). SOME channels inbetween work, but most of them don't. At first I thought maybe my account got whacked for some reason and I couldn't get my digital channels, but then I wouldn't see anything over 99, so I don't think it's that.

4) I was hitting the aspect button several times in quick succession while it was recording from ESPNHD as well as VH1 on the other tuner. I don't know if it was related, but I was checking out the differences between the modes on the baseball game. (Even on my 480i TV, the HD signals look a HECK of a lot better, so I wanted to use them).

5) Everyone keeps calling these GSOD. Is that because you guys haven't changed the color of the side/top bars from the default? My screens are all black, so I assume that's what is up with that.

6) I'm using the 9.3 software release, and have one M card in Slot 1 from TWC.

All worked fine for the first four hours after the TWC left.

From one of the other threads, here's some info about me:


TSN starts with 652
HDMI or component? Neither - Svideo
Aspect Correction - Panel, Aspect Ratio - 4:3 Classic, Output - 480i fixed. However, I've been changing this frequently, so I've hit all three of these a lot, both on live TV and on recorded stuff.
How soon after? Not relevant, I haven't gotten it back to get a second.
Menu or hard? My first few attempts to fix this with a reboot were through the menu. Didn't work. Tried unplugging for about a minute, restarted, still didn't fix it. Trying to unplug for longer - like 10 minutes. That really make a difference?
Ever been around when it happened? Yes, see story above.


So right now, I'm dead in the water (mostly), and I'm a bit pissed, actually. Right now I have essentially just the basic cable channels, and all I have is my locals on digital cable, nothing else. I'm not expert, but I would think if the cable card had a problem, I wouldn't have seen anything in the first 4 hrs, and now I wouldn't see my locals in the 300's. My first thought is that it's not the cable card. Next step in the "stab wildly in the dark" would be to try guided setup again.

From reading this thread, it was hoped that 9.3 would fix this - it apparently hasn't, or at least slowed it down, but it's still there. I'm wondering if my rapid fire use of the aspect button while recording HD in the buffer on two tuners would have anything to do with that.

I'm rather perturbed. And that's never a good thing at midnight, because I generally can't sleep until it's fixed.

[dwit]

Joe Siegler said:...5) Everyone keeps calling these GSOD. Is that because you guys haven't changed the color of the side/top bars from the default? My screens are all black, so I assume that's what is up with that....


Green Screen Of Death(GSOD) is something totally different. It manifests as exactly that, a green screen. It is truly a sign of a hard drive going bad, or at least a drive with errors enough to cause the Tivo operating system difficulty.

[Joe Siegler]

Well, today I had Time Warner (Dallas) come out, get my cable going with my TiVoHD, and all was well. From about 5PM till about 9:15PM. My wife and I were watching a recorded show, and I flipped over to live on ESPNHD, as Baseball Tonight was being delayed by the Red Sox game (wanted to see if the game had finished). I watched a little bit of the live buffer there, and it froze. Backing up worked, but when I got to that point again in the buffer, it was just stuck. A show from VH1 Classic was recording on the other tuner. It too froze up, but I didn't discover that until later.

A few remarks:

1) I've been running this TiVoHD fine for about a week and a half before today using rabbit ears. I was impatient to see the features, but did a complete "wipe out the TiVo and restart" before the TWC guy showed up today.

2) I do NOT have an HDTV, I haven't made that plunge yet, so I'm watching everything in 480i, going through Svideo to my TV (which is about 15 years old, but still works fine). I bought this box because I was switching to TWC, and wanted to future buy given I know I'll be going HD anyway. Plus I wanted a "real TiVo" again after years of being with DirecTV.

3) All of my Basic cable channels (under 100) work. All of my Digital Cable local channels work (350-458 on TWC Dallas). SOME channels inbetween work, but most of them don't. At first I thought maybe my account got whacked for some reason and I couldn't get my digital channels, but then I wouldn't see anything over 99, so I don't think it's that.

4) I was hitting the aspect button several times in quick succession while it was recording from ESPNHD as well as VH1 on the other tuner. I don't know if it was related, but I was checking out the differences between the modes on the baseball game. (Even on my 480i TV, the HD signals look a HECK of a lot better, so I wanted to use them).

5) Everyone keeps calling these GSOD. Is that because you guys haven't changed the color of the side/top bars from the default? My screens are all black, so I assume that's what is up with that.

6) I'm using the 9.3 software release, and have one M card in Slot 1 from TWC.

All worked fine for the first four hours after the TWC left.

From one of the other threads, here's some info about me:


TSN starts with 652
HDMI or component? Neither - Svideo
Aspect Correction - Panel, Aspect Ratio - 4:3 Classic, Output - 480i fixed. However, I've been changing this frequently, so I've hit all three of these a lot, both on live TV and on recorded stuff.
How soon after? Not relevant, I haven't gotten it back to get a second.
Menu or hard? My first few attempts to fix this with a reboot were through the menu. Didn't work. Tried unplugging for about a minute, restarted, still didn't fix it. Trying to unplug for longer - like 10 minutes. That really make a difference?
Ever been around when it happened? Yes, see story above.


So right now, I'm dead in the water (mostly), and I'm a bit pissed, actually. Right now I have essentially just the basic cable channels, and all I have is my locals on digital cable, nothing else. I'm not expert, but I would think if the cable card had a problem, I wouldn't have seen anything in the first 4 hrs, and now I wouldn't see my locals in the 300's. My first thought is that it's not the cable card. Next step in the "stab wildly in the dark" would be to try guided setup again.

From reading this thread, it was hoped that 9.3 would fix this - it apparently hasn't, or at least slowed it down, but it's still there. I'm wondering if my rapid fire use of the aspect button while recording HD in the buffer on two tuners would have anything to do with that.

I'm rather perturbed. And that's never a good thing at midnight, because I generally can't sleep until it's fixed.

Turns out this wasn't the Tivo's problem. Or the cable card's problem.

It was Time Warner. In desparation at 2AM, I called their customer service, and hit a section about outages. There was an automatic option I could pick on the phone about resetting my box. I chose it. About 10 seconds later, my channels came back on.

DAMMIT! Wish I would have thought of that a few hours ago. While it's good that my hardware doesn't seem to be at fault, it is not thrilling that I could just lose programming like that from Time Warner's end. :(

[BMoreE]

Green Screen Of Death(GSOD) is something totally different. It manifests as exactly that, a green screen. It is truly a sign of a hard drive going bad, or at least a drive with errors enough to cause the Tivo operating system difficulty.

My understanding that the GSOD in this thread is actually the GREY screen of death, which is NOT a hard drive going bad. It is a problem that people were having where all video would stop showing (even the animations that show up behind menus) until a reboot. All other functions continue to work, including recording shows (which could be watched successfully after reboot.)

Agreed, though, that this couldn't have been your problem (I was going to say it was probably the cable company!!!)

Forgot to mention that since I got the SW update a few months back, I've not had this problem. The thread has really died down, so I'm guessing they've mostly got it licked (although I'm sure there's a few unlucky folks out there.)

[moonscape]

Forgot to mention that since I got the SW update a few months back, I've not had this problem. The thread has really died down, so I'm guessing they've mostly got it licked (although I'm sure there's a few unlucky folks out there.)

i have a month-old S3 that did this the other day, and i was directed here from another thread because i wasn't sure if my problem was a known issue. er - looks like it is/was.

i use hdmi, native - unmodified unit.

[dsb411]

My 2 Hd Tivos freeze at least 2 times a week. Please fix this Tivo.

[opus472]

Yesterday I had my first spontaneous reboot, following a blue screen. Pretty annoying, particularly considering the length of time it takes Tivo to reboot.

Lately I've also noticed a couple other anomalies, wonder if this means the Tivo is headed for a breakdown -

Select Delete on a recorded program, the checkmark appears, but nothing happens. Have to select Delete again before it actually deletes.

Been getting more video freezes, both recorded and live. Can usually fix using skip back or switching channels.

[RoyK]

......
Select Delete on a recorded program, the checkmark appears, but nothing happens. Have to select Delete again before it actually deletes.

.....

That's been happening to me on my S2 boxes lately. Actually sometimes we select Delete and the checkmark appears briefly then goes away. Select delete a second time and the file deletes.

[ruinah]

I opened up my brand new tivo HD last night and went through guided setup. Once that was done I tried changing video modes and got this same black screen everyone else was talking about. I checked softwar revs and I was only in the 8.x range. I tried forcing 2 or 3 connects and still it sits at the same level. Any idea how long it takes before the 9.4 comes down to a new machine? I have a Toshiba 42" plasma tv which support 720P, 1080i and I tried all sorts of modes but none seem to work, they all get the black screen. The comcast DVR I had did 720P just fine and the TV loved it. Is there a way to tell Tivo you want the 9.4 software?

[TiVoJerry]

Brand new HD units will automatically download the latest SW after they've finished Guided Setup. The initial connection progression for the THD goes like this:
**First connection of Guided Setup
**Setup Connection of Guided Setup (gets a few days of PGD so you can start using it immediately)
**Regular connection (gets the rest of the PGD). This connection starts automatically shortly after GS finishes.
**Once the first regular connection finishes processing, the next one is scheduled shortly thereafter to see if new SW is available for download.

If you force the connections, you will save only a few minutes. Make sure you are forcing regular connections and not test connections.

[ruinah]

Thanks TivoJerry, I will try and force one more today when I get home. I think I may have only done 3 of them. I'd like it up to date before Comcast comes out Friday to do the cable card installation.

[thisisnotadrill]

this has been traced to a software issue, hasn't it?

because i need to open the box to marry an unverified eSATA drive but obviously don't want to void the warranty if this could be a hardware issue (as i have experienced it twice thus far in a week).

[wtherrell]

My Tivo HD with 11. something software still experiences the gray screen of death at least two or three times a week. I have home network with the HD box wired to the router. Two s2s on wireless. It has now been over a year since Tivo has known about this problem and my THD is so unreliable that I just can't stand it. The screens are still going gray. I am not actively doing anything on the THD when it happens. I occasionally check and download content on the THD from one of the S2's which lose contact with the THD regularly and I have to reset all the IP's and it works for one session then loses it. Unplugging THD Power and network cable for about a minute, then rebooting, then reconnecting network cable fixes the gray screen problem only temporarily. A day or two later it comes up again. NONE of my s2s ever do this. Sometimes cable box goes out and I record black screen on them but thats a cable issue. My THD is connected only to the lower unencryped channels. I have no cable cards. Resolution is set at 480 and always has been. And if this issue does not get fixed soon, I will just have to kiss my $300 lifetime money goodbye and put this damned THD on ebay. It's a great concept and I really want it to work but I can't stand this GSOD unreliability.

[RickNY]

Hmm.. I have not experienced this issue since the Fall update.. Sure you dont have a defective unit or a network issue?

[wtherrell]

Hmm.. I have not experienced this issue since the Fall update.. Sure you dont have a defective unit or a network issue?

Network seems fine except for the unit not showing up in the NPL of the other Tivos periodically. Refreshing the IPs brings it back but is a small PITA. But this does not show up at same time as GSOD. As to the defective unit. Well, I don't know. From the threads, it seemed that we were sure it was a software issue and that subsequent updates would take care of it. So I patiently did all the rebooting while waiting for the updates. Now that they are here and I am still having the problem, I am beginning to wonder. Tivo CS just says to reboot by power cycle and that's as far as it has gotten.
I guess if the updates cured everyone's problem but mine, I will have to start thinking about returning the unit for repair or swap. I just hate to go thru all that.
Next time it happens I will try to run the Diagnostics. Also I will try to leave the problem on and see if it still records OK while on gray screen. I had the notion it was an input problem but maybe just a video output problem. I could probably live with that if I have to.

[Saturn_V]

I'm getting periodic GSODs as well. (OTA + Analog cable, no cards installed, 720p output, wired ethernet connection) I haven't seen GSODs since Fall 2007- and they seem to have re-surfaced with the 11 update.

I also suspect that the THD is restarting *on its own* more often than usual. I'd wake up to both tuners set to the same channel instead of the Weather Channel and local news I set the nite before.

I tried diagnostics once- it just hung there for over two hours. I had the unplug/replug the power.

[myblubu]

My Tivo HD with 11. something software still experiences the gray screen of death at least two or three times a week. I have home network with the HD box wired to the router. Two s2s on wireless. It has now been over a year since Tivo has known about this problem and my THD is so unreliable that I just can't stand it. The screens are still going gray. I am not actively doing anything on the THD when it happens. I occasionally check and download content on the THD from one of the S2's which lose contact with the THD regularly and I have to reset all the IP's and it works for one session then loses it. Unplugging THD Power and network cable for about a minute, then rebooting, then reconnecting network cable fixes the gray screen problem only temporarily. A day or two later it comes up again. NONE of my s2s ever do this. Sometimes cable box goes out and I record black screen on them but thats a cable issue. My THD is connected only to the lower unencryped channels. I have no cable cards. Resolution is set at 480 and always has been. And if this issue does not get fixed soon, I will just have to kiss my $300 lifetime money goodbye and put this damned THD on ebay. It's a great concept and I really want it to work but I can't stand this GSOD unreliability.

I bought a used Tivo HD with Lifetime from someone in November and set it up and everything worked fine. Until about a week ago. Thats when I began having the problem with what everyone is calling the GSOD. I reset my TivoHD and everything is fine for a couple days and it happens again. I looked and my unit has software version 11.0-01-2-652. also it shows service Level: C: 020409. So does anyone know if my unit is still under warranty?

But what is the fix for the GSOD???

Update: Just got off the phone with Tivo tech support and they took a lot of information down. Said they are aware of the issue and are working on it. Told me that they would send out a fix to all the Tivo's when its solved and if I am still experiencing the issue in 2-3 weeks to call back.

[wtherrell]

Well, the power cycle used to fix everything for a few days. Latest time I tried when Tivo booted up I get a black screen. No, it's not just a black screen. There is no video output at all. Have not been able to watch in a couple of days now. Some scheduled recordings and suggestions have recorded and I can transfer via MRV and looks like everything recorded OK. Just no video output from Tivo HD. Using HDMI. Monitor says no signal detected. Man, if I had known Tivo HD was this squirrely I think I would not have bought it. Gray screen problem was bad enough, but this!!

[miketo]

Update: Just got off the phone with Tivo tech support and they took a lot of information down. Said they are aware of the issue and are working on it. Told me that they would send out a fix to all the Tivo's when its solved and if I am still experiencing the issue in 2-3 weeks to call back.

I've heard the same "we're aware of the issue" from a first-level CSR. My TiVo HD is running the same software version and has the same problem. For anyone reading this thread (TiVoJerry?), the only correlations I've been able to find are:

* Using the Pause button while playing back standard-definition content.
* A Lineup Modification e-mail arrives from TiVo.

Somewhere between 8 and 36 hours after these two events, the gray screen of death occurs. I'm betting the channel lineup modification shuffles some pointers around, which then get lost in the shuffle.

For what it's worth, if I can't get TiVo to fix this, my wife is going to (a) kill me, or (b) trade me in on a Windows Media Center computer that works fine at our neighbor's house.

[myblubu]

My Tivo HD hasn't frozen in a week or so - has Tivo Fixed the problem???

[wtherrell]

My Tivo HD hasn't frozen in a week or so - has Tivo Fixed the problem???

No, mine froze up just today. Then heavy pixellation and then the gray screen of death. I called Tivo and they said they are aware of the problem and are working on it. No hint of when it will be fixed.

[Dabreeze]

I recently Switched to Fios Tv. Using 2 S-Card cable cards with a Onkyo 805 A/V Reciever a Sony KDFE50A10 RPTV and the Series 3 HD Tivo $ 299 version. My other components are the Oppo 970 and the Panny BD-35 Dvd and Blueray players. I have everything setup via HDMI EXCEPT the Tivo Hd which I'm using Component and Digital Toslink. Originally, I had the Tivo hooked up via HDMI as well.

Everything programmed into a Harmony 88O universal remote. With the remote I'm having a handshake problem with the Sony Tv. The Onkyo, the Tv turn on with sound from the Tivo program that's on but no picture. If I turn off the Harmony and hit watch Tivo real quick again it all comes on fine with picture. I went into all the Harmony Activities and the setups all seem right. Device setups seem right as well.

Anybody have a idea why the TV doesn't show the picture right away. I was thinking it probably is in the delays somewhere. I also have everything networked to Fios Broadband with the Action-TecM142WR Via Ethernet with A Nimh splice. The Fios Tech said it worked better than running a long Ethernet cable run. It works well, I've been able to access Netflix and Amazon no problem.

It's been frustrating. I want to get everything working 1st time with the Harmony 880.

Help !!

[ghuido]

Hey All

Been reading throught this thread and trying to make sure I am experiecing hte same issue everyone is talking about.

Mostly what I get is that I am changing channels usually standard not HD and hit channel up/down and then everything Freezes.

The Picture Freezes and the TIVO Stops respondining to any Remote Commands. The Yellow Light that blinks on/off when you send a remote comand doesn't even come on.

Restarting the TIVO HD solves the problem but is this the same thing as the GSOD or is this something different. Just trying to do my research so I don't start a new thread on something everyone knows about.

Thanks. Any help is appreciated since my wife hate it when it happens.

[kirk1701]

I've heard the same "we're aware of the issue" from a first-level CSR. My TiVo HD is running the same software version and has the same problem. For anyone reading this thread (TiVoJerry?), the only correlations I've been able to find are:

* Using the Pause button while playing back standard-definition content.
* A Lineup Modification e-mail arrives from TiVo.

Somewhere between 8 and 36 hours after these two events, the gray screen of death occurs. I'm betting the channel lineup modification shuffles some pointers around, which then get lost in the shuffle.

For what it's worth, if I can't get TiVo to fix this, my wife is going to (a) kill me, or (b) trade me in on a Windows Media Center computer that works fine at our neighbor's house.

Makes sense especially with the change over to digital and most if not all cable co's are doing a lot of line up changes.

Plus the fact, my TivoHD is using only standard-definition always and anything I watch I usually just transfer HD content to it when I need to.

I thought I had this issue fixed a month ago here:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6964046#post6964046
But recently there was some line up changes and :rolleyes:
"ITS BAAAACKKKK" :eek:

By the way can someone test this and reply back.
I got mine working a couple a times before I thought it was fixed by going into the channel line up, selecting Channel strength and just let it find the strength of the channel, back out and all was fine for a day or so.

This time I did that I got a message saying "You have no digital channels" :confused:

So to get my channels back I had to delete my lineup, rescann and I'm fine now till the next lineup change I assume.

[TiVoJerry]

Hello all,

I am not up to speed with every post in this thread as it is quite long and was built upon an old thread. Although the symptom may seem similar, the cause is different.

We believe we have a fix in place for a majority of situations and just started releasing it to a set number of random HD units as of last night. This is our initial release period where we review all cases logged against the new SW. If you are connecting on a regular basis but have not received new SW, you are not in this initial phase (i.e. making more connections will not get you SW any faster). If all goes well during the review period, the rest of the units will receive the SW shortly thereafter.

I'm sorry for not finding this thread to post sooner, but rest assured that engineering had been working on the problem.

[kirk1701]

Hello all,

I am not up to speed with every post in this thread as it is quite long and was built upon an old thread. Although the symptom may seem similar, the cause is different.

We believe we have a fix in place for a majority of situations and just started releasing it to a set number of random HD units as of last night. This is our initial release period where we review all cases logged against the new SW. If you are connecting on a regular basis but have not received new SW, you are not in this initial phase (i.e. making more connections will not get you SW any faster). If all goes well during the review period, the rest of the units will receive the SW shortly thereafter.

I'm sorry for not finding this thread to post sooner, but rest assured that engineering had been working on the problem.

Thanks for the info Jerry :D

[miketo]

I'm sorry for not finding this thread to post sooner, but rest assured that engineering had been working on the problem.

Thank you, thank you for at least *listening* to those of us who are losing analog channel recordings every week. If and when you and the engineers determine the relationship between cause, symptoms, and fix, would you kindly post a mention of that here?

[DeWitt]

the only correlations I've been able to find are:

* Using the Pause button while playing back standard-definition content.
* A Lineup Modification e-mail arrives from TiVo.

Somewhere between 8 and 36 hours after these two events, the gray screen of death occurs. I'm betting the channel lineup modification shuffles some pointers around, which then get lost in the shuffle.


I think you have it right. Last night, unit froze up. When it restarted I saw I had a bunch of channel change messages!

I tried forcing a connection to see if I was in the group getting the early roll out, but no luck.

Interestingly after I forced a connection it took about 1 hour to get through loading data and then hung loading data 99% for 8 hours. I rebooted , but still no software update.

here is hoping the early roll out goes well and we get the patch asap!

[HD4me2]

It has been one year and 3 months since I purchased and returned a TIVO HD and canceled the subscription for the problems described in this thread.

Will keep checking periodically hoping for a fix. Still, no fix from TIVO after all this time does not instill me with confidence in the TIVO organization

[TiVoJerry]

It has been one year and 3 months since I purchased and returned a TIVO HD and canceled the subscription for the problems described in this thread.

Will keep checking periodically hoping for a fix. Still, no fix from TIVO after all this time does not instill me with confidence in the TIVO organization

The original problem that this thread was opened for was indeed resolved. While the reports of grey screens (or black, depends on what you have your letterbox color set at) are the same "symptom", the root cause is different. Looking back, I would've asked that this thread be closed long ago so that newcomers wouldn't reach the same assumption you have.

[HD4me2]

The original problem that this thread was opened for was indeed resolved. While the reports of grey screens (or black, depends on what you have your letterbox color set at) are the same "symptom", the root cause is different. Looking back, I would've asked that this thread be closed long ago so that newcomers wouldn't reach the same assumption you have.

Well, thank you.
Please note that I did start reading all posts from about 6 months ago but did not find any that clearly pointed to a resolution of the original problem. Perhaps it happened earlier.

Agree, this thread should be closed and perhaps replaced with on titled "TIVO software upgrade bugs"
That would account for the recent posts regarding the ver 11 bug.

[lessd]

I have a Series 3 (original ) with two cable cards and got the grey screen for the first time tonight (2-16-2009) (had the TiVo for over two years). A soft re-boot fix the problem and all channels came back. If I get one problem (with an easy solution) every two years i will be happy.
I don't know if this is the original problem in this thread as i did not read all 400+ posts.

[Rikkster]

How can one get this update on a priority. It's VERY frustrating having to restart your Tivo and missing programs. That's what I have the Tivo for in the first place.

[russ_]

I agree, it would be nice to hear what the status of the update is and if there's a way to get it sooner rather than later. I'm still having a number of issues and while falling back to SD fixes it most of the time, the Tivo is still fairly unstable and I'm tiring of SD (which I could've watched on my old Tivo and saved a lot of money).

TivoJerry, any update?

[bkdtv]

TiVo representatives are telling people over the phone that a fix is in testing now. They are suggesting that people who want to get the fix early sign up at TiVo Trials.

If you want to help TiVo test a fix, sign up at TiVo's Field Trials site (https://fieldtrials.tivo.com/signup/default.html?sid={78BC0272-0B2D-4BC7-818F-8D8AD0A8EDF9}). Be sure to use the same screen name that you use here, so TiVo knows that you are experiencing the problem.

Signing up is no guarantee that TiVo will pick you, but it increases your chances from none to potentially much greater than none if they recognize you as having a problem for which they are testing a fix.

I would encourage all that are experiencing this problem to sign up above. Once again, use the same screen name that you use here.

[kirk1701]

TiVo representatives are telling people over the phone that a fix is in testing now. They are suggesting that people who want to get the fix early sign up at TiVo Trials.

If you want to help TiVo test a fix, sign up at TiVo's Field Trials site (https://fieldtrials.tivo.com/signup/default.html?sid={78BC0272-0B2D-4BC7-818F-8D8AD0A8EDF9}). Be sure to use the same screen name that you use here, so TiVo knows that you are experiencing the problem.

Signing up is no guarantee that TiVo will pick you, but it increases your chances from none to potentially much greater than none if they recognize you as having a problem for which they are testing a fix.

I would encourage all that are experiencing this problem to sign up above. Once again, use the same screen name that you use here.

Thanks for the link, just e-mailed

[Phantom Gremlin]

It's VERY frustrating having to restart your Tivo and missing programs.
My boxes sometimes act flaky in various ways. So I don't wait for gray screens or other problems to occur. I pro-actively reboot my boxes from time to time when I don't have programs scheduled to record. This seems to help. But maybe it's all in my mind.

I think that a reboot about once a month couldn't hurt and probably helps. Of course this advice is useless to those who encounter problems much more frequently than I seem to.