One Then Two Tuners Out; Instability of Captions

[TishTash]

Two quick things: I woke up to find one of my HDs had one tuner working fine (sorta) and the other tuner not. As it turned out, only one station was tunable, and the "working" tuner was tuned to that station; the other stations were not tunable by either tuner. A restart fixed that (and by some small miracle no recordings were affected), but why the heck was only one channel working?

Also: Any idea why closed captioning is so unstable? You turn it on, and any time you change programs or channels, the captioning turns off; you have to turn it off and re-on to make it appear again. That and the high rate of dropping of words, sometimes sentences, esp. with digital captioning (I've resorted to analog only); is this due to bandwidth/signal strength? Both the instability and dropping are a bit better than they used to be but still annoying.

P.S. I just realized: It's "UN-stable" but "IN-stability." For you lingua-philics: English vagary?

[tiassa]

Question 1: I've seen that happen a couple of times with my THD as well, I think something wonky happens with the cable feed so the Tivo just gets stuck. It might just be on the "output" side as I've never lost a recording either. I just put it in the "Tivo isn't perfect, but it's a darn sight better than the alternative" catagory, and reboot it.

[TishTash]

I think my inputs were affected, b/c the buffers weren't recording (except on the one channel that worked). But otherwise, I agree with you.

Here's something else that happens, esp. with the XL (never with the plain HD): Restarting, either soft restart or pulling the plug and replugging, sometimes results in a blank screen after the second power-up screen. This particular time, after the first soft restart resulted in the blank screen, three repluggings resulted in:

a) another blank screen (granted I replugged right away instead of waiting at least 15-30 seconds),

b) the TiVo Central menu, but stuck on "Acquiring Channel Information" screen, eventually freezing, and

c) everything working fine.

It's like I'm afraid to restart these days, at least on the XL. (Heaven forbid a system update or a power outtage.)

[KeithB]

Definitely buy a small UPS (uninterruptable power supply) for the TiVo. It uses significantly lower wattage than most desktop computers, so a very small 'personal' UPS would be perfect.

[TishTash]

Definitely buy a small UPS (uninterruptable power supply) for the TiVo. It uses significantly lower wattage than most desktop computers, so a very small 'personal' UPS would be perfect.

My minor qualm with small UPSes are that most inexpensive ones last half-an-hour or so--great for power spikes and troughs, even minor power breaks, but how about extended power outtages, which usually last an hour or more? I know you can't have a long-term UPS without paying for the extra capacity, so I suppose a little protection covers the majority of hits.