One bad tuner on TiVo HD?

[hrun0815]

I hooked up my new TiVo HD a couple of days ago and I have been problems with one of my tuners. On one tuner all channels come in crystal clear without a problem. On the second tuner I experience severe pixelation problems on every channel I have tried and sometimes I just get a grey screen. When I restart my TiVo both tuners are tuned to the same channel and I get a perfect picture on the first tuner but poor or no picture on the second.

As for the system information: I have a multi-stream cable card installed. The coax-cable runs directly into the TiVo HD without any splitter or amplifier.

As an example, here is the diagnostics info shortly after rebooting my box:

Tuner 0:
tuned: Success
Channel: 4
Frequency: 741000KHz
Connection Type: RF2
Signal Source: Cable
Channel Bits:30746
Signal Strength: 87
Signal Lock: Yes
Program Lock: Yes
Search Complete: Yes
SNR: 35 dB
RS Uncorrected: ~100.000
RS Corrected: ~10.000.000
RC state: available
Tune State: in progress

Tuner 1:
tuned: Success
Channel: 4
Frequency: 741000KHz
Connection Type: RF2
Signal Source: Cable
Channel Bits:30746
Signal Strength: 93
Signal Lock: Yes
Program Lock: Yes
Search Complete: Yes
SNR: 35 dB
RS Uncorrected: 0
RS Corrected: 0
RC state: available
Tune State: in progress

Does this information allow me to conclude that one of my tuners is busted and I that I need a replacement unit or are other there other potential causes of fixes for this specific problem? I have the impression that my problem is different from a lot of other reported pixelation problems since it appears to be directly tied to a single tuner and occurs on all channels. The only potential indication that it's not the tuner would be that the signal strength on tuner 0 is lower than on tuner 1, but I don't understand how that would be due to the signal coming from the cable (since the cable is the same for both tuners).

Thanks for any help.

[hrun0815]

So I have a little more information. I tried my TiVo without the cable card using just the basic cable (not OTA/antenna) that I can receive without decoding. With those my TiVo works fine on both tuners. But, when I check the diagnostics of the tuners, I get a lot of N/A for most of the benchmarks.

So, I would guess that without the cable card and without the need for decoding the signal gets routed differently within the TiVo box. So it is still a toss-up on whether TiVo or the cable card/cable signal is to blame.

[hrun0815]

So I just got off the phone with TiVo tech support. It kinda went like I expected. They blamed the cable card and I'm supposed to get RCN to come out and replace the cable card. Nothing much else to do than to follow their advice.

One thing was strange though: I gave the guy at tech support the information that the RS values were rising on Tuner 0 but not on Tuner 1. He said he had no idea what these values were for or what the rise in RS values indicated. He suggested to mention this to the RCN tech support.

So I'm a little confused. Shouldn't the TiVo guy know what the RS values mean? Does it make sense to get to a higher level RCN tech support and let them know about the rising RS values?

Thanks for you help.

[fergie8]

I hooked up my new TiVo HD a couple of days ago and I have been problems with one of my tuners. On one tuner all channels come in crystal clear without a problem. On the second tuner I experience severe pixelation problems on every channel I have tried and sometimes I just get a grey screen
...
Does this information allow me to conclude that one of my tuners is busted and I that I need a replacement unit or are other there other potential causes of fixes for this specific problem? I have the impression that my problem is different from a lot of other reported pixelation problems since it appears to be directly tied to a single tuner and occurs on all channels.
...


Your problem is not unique. I had the same problem, see TiVo HD Pixelation with 9.2a (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=374204) for details.

net114 has also reported the same problem, see his post in Tivo HD Pixelation Troubleshooting (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5792013) and my followup (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5792223) and net114's followup to my followup (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5796942).

I think if you search around the forums you may find other mentions of problems with one of the two tuners in the TiVo HD.

Later you say ...
So I just got off the phone with TiVo tech support. It kinda went like I expected. They blamed the cable card and I'm supposed to get RCN to come out and replace the cable card. Nothing much else to do than to follow their advice.

One thing was strange though: I gave the guy at tech support the information that the RS values were rising on Tuner 0 but not on Tuner 1. He said he had no idea what these values were for or what the rise in RS values indicated. He suggested to mention this to the RCN tech support.

So I'm a little confused. Shouldn't the TiVo guy know what the RS values mean? Does it make sense to get to a higher level RCN tech support and let them know about the rising RS values?

Thanks for you help.

My advice, fwiw, would be to forget about contacting RCN and go back to TiVo and lobby heavily to get your TiVo HD replaced. Try to get beyond the first level of TiVo (non-)support and get to someone who (supposedly) has TiVo HD / Series 3 knowledge. Mention that you've read of other people with the exact same problem. Give them lots of details. Be persistent.

Good luck.

--
Michael

[hrun0815]

So today I had a visit from my cable guy to test the CableCards. In the past few days the performance of tuner 0 went from bad (pixelation) to worse (grey screen). We popped in a new CableCard, initialized it, re-ran the guided set up and had exactly the same problem.

So, it seems that tuner 0 on my TiVo HD is just busted. I called TiVo support and within 30 minutes a had a replacement on its way.

Hopefully, I will be able to re-initialize my CableCard over the phone without having to have the cable guy come back out again once my new TiVo is here.

[hrun0815]

All's well that ends well, I guess.

I hooked up my replacement TV and both tuners work just fine. I didn't have any problems with the new setup. I just plugged it in, popped in the CableCard from the broken TiVo and everything works like a charm. I even ended up putting my signal splitter back in so I can also record on my VCR and watch cable directly through the TV. The signal is still fine and so far the RS values on both tuners are holding steady.

Thanks for all your help.

PS: Seems like fergie8 was spot on. :)