More Comcast TiVo Woes

[bren924]

(also posted on avsforum.com)

My fuse with TiVo from Comcast grows shorter by the hour.

Last weekend my DVR started exhibiting unusual behavior that I have not seen, nor read about - it would just completely freeze up - picture and sound would still come through, but the box itself would be 100% unresponsive. Only way I could get it back into a usable state was to unplug the box and plug it back in. Struggled with this for a few days, then it seemed to go away. Then last Wednesday I started having issues with recordings, or more precisely, I only had a few days worth of recordings listed, and anything past the weekend showed as no recordings scheduled. If I modified a season pass recording, all the scheduled recordings would re-populate in the to-do list.

Then Friday I started seeing some duplicate recordings scheduled (same show, same time, same channel, scheduled to record 2-3 times). One was marked as the season pass recording, while the dupes looked like they were manually added. I could delete some of the dupes, but others would not go away.

Saturday brought some very strange behavior - my duplicate recordings list multiplied, and I now had 4-6 recordings set for every single scheduled recording. Additionally, the box froze again, requiring a plug pull and reboot. This time when the box came back I had the issue of no recordings showing past Tuesday (would have been today). I tried to modify another season pass recording to see if I could trick it into working again, only this time I was greeted with a lovely blue screen and an error message saying the DVR was unable to complete the action due to an unknown issue, and if the error comes up again to contact Comcast.

On Sunday, the floodgates opened - at about 10:30pm, the DVR reset on its own while I was watching TV. At a certain point during the bootup process, it reset again, and it looked like I was caught in a reset loop. By this time I didn't want to deal with Comcast, so I unplugged the box and let it sit with no power overnight. The next morning I plugged it back in, and about 45 minutes later it seemed to come back to life. When I returned home from work, my multiple recording issue had swelled to 8-10 recordings for each scheduled recording, and pretty much everything else I did was met with the same blue screen error I received on Saturday. This time I got Comcast on the phone - after telling them my saga, they cut right to the chase - they sent a "master reset" command to my box, which was supposed to wipe everything out and resend the TiVo software. 45 minutes later the box came back on, but all of my duplicate recordings remained, and I was still constantly getting the blue screen error. After some additional consultation with Comcast (and the infamous, "We haven't seen this issue yet" line) I asked them to send a tech out - and in my world that has to happen this Saturday.

I don't know if the box is fried, or something messed up the software, but this is pushing me closer to dropping TiVo for now and going back to iGuide.

Anyone else seen anything like this, have any ideas? The prospect of yet another 2 hour tech visit from Comcast is giving me a headache.

[bren924]

(also posted on avsforum.com)

My fuse with TiVo from Comcast grows shorter by the hour.

Last weekend my DVR started exhibiting unusual behavior that I have not seen, nor read about - it would just completely freeze up - picture and sound would still come through, but the box itself would be 100% unresponsive. Only way I could get it back into a usable state was to unplug the box and plug it back in. Struggled with this for a few days, then it seemed to go away. Then last Wednesday I started having issues with recordings, or more precisely, I only had a few days worth of recordings listed, and anything past the weekend showed as no recordings scheduled. If I modified a season pass recording, all the scheduled recordings would re-populate in the to-do list.

Then Friday I started seeing some duplicate recordings scheduled (same show, same time, same channel, scheduled to record 2-3 times). One was marked as the season pass recording, while the dupes looked like they were manually added. I could delete some of the dupes, but others would not go away.

Saturday brought some very strange behavior - my duplicate recordings list multiplied, and I now had 4-6 recordings set for every single scheduled recording. Additionally, the box froze again, requiring a plug pull and reboot. This time when the box came back I had the issue of no recordings showing past Tuesday (would have been today). I tried to modify another season pass recording to see if I could trick it into working again, only this time I was greeted with a lovely blue screen and an error message saying the DVR was unable to complete the action due to an unknown issue, and if the error comes up again to contact Comcast.

On Sunday, the floodgates opened - at about 10:30pm, the DVR reset on its own while I was watching TV. At a certain point during the bootup process, it reset again, and it looked like I was caught in a reset loop. By this time I didn't want to deal with Comcast, so I unplugged the box and let it sit with no power overnight. The next morning I plugged it back in, and about 45 minutes later it seemed to come back to life. When I returned home from work, my multiple recording issue had swelled to 8-10 recordings for each scheduled recording, and pretty much everything else I did was met with the same blue screen error I received on Saturday. This time I got Comcast on the phone - after telling them my saga, they cut right to the chase - they sent a "master reset" command to my box, which was supposed to wipe everything out and resend the TiVo software. 45 minutes later the box came back on, but all of my duplicate recordings remained, and I was still constantly getting the blue screen error. After some additional consultation with Comcast (and the infamous, "We haven't seen this issue yet" line) I asked them to send a tech out - and in my world that has to happen this Saturday.

I don't know if the box is fried, or something messed up the software, but this is pushing me closer to dropping TiVo for now and going back to iGuide.

Anyone else seen anything like this, have any ideas? The prospect of yet another 2 hour tech visit from Comcast is giving me a headache.



A follow-up, had a tech visit this morning, immediately swapped the box (for a "brand new" DCH3416 reason for quotes in a moment...).

After swapping the boxes and calling into ATS to "flip the box", tech powered it up, and lo and behold it fired right up into the TiVo interface - we were both amazed, figuring we were in for a 30-45 minute wait. After messing around with a few things it looked like I was back online, so the tech left, still amazed at how fast the software "downloaded". Well, as I was starting the process of setting up my season passes (for the 4th time since switching to TiVo) I found out why the box came up so fast - it ALREADY HAD TiVo INSTALLED FROM A PRIOR USER!!

There were recorded programs, and 25 season passes setup. I could not believe they would drop in a box in this condition. I sat on hold with customer service longer than I cared to, then hung up and just went through and deleted everything. Is this common practice? I would think at the very least if they are going to recycle boxes they could wipe them clean first. I still plan on calling them to complain about this, but wanted to know if anyone else had dealt with this before.

As for my service, well, it works, kind of - still have some issues with recordings and the like not setting up properly, but I am going to give it a few days to see if it evens out, and if not, I'm cancelling TiVo and going back to the iGuide.

Comcast needs to rethink this offering, cause right now it is nothing to write home about.