Samsung DirecTiVo w/ new HD, signal cutting out

[Giggleloop]

OK, here's what's up with me.

I have a Samsung DirecTiVo SIR-S4120R. A few months ago I had a few freeze/lockup issues, and some spontaneous reboots. Within the last few weeks I started having issues with severe pixellation and signal loss on both live TV and shows I've recorded.

My brother has previously repaired his standalone TiVo with a new HD and Instant Cake, so I decided to do the same. I bought a 320g Western Digital HD from NewEgg, got my Instant Cake, and swapped hard drives, thinking that would solve my issues.

It didn't. I'm tearing my hair out here. I had the TiVo hooked into the back of my Sony bigscreen TV with S-video and red-white audio. I fiddled with the S-Video cord and the picture seemed to get worse when I did that, so I went and got a new S-video cord & swapped it out. It's worse than ever, my TV is literally unwatchable, it cuts out so much.

The thing that frustrates me the most is that the TiVo is recording the programs screwed up that way, no matter how the output to the TV is hooked up. Which makes me think that it might be the cables coming into the house from the satellite dish. I don't even know anymore.

Has anyone else had these problems & found a solution? I'm at my wit's end. :mad:

[shibby191]

That model is so old it wouldn't surprise me that the tuners are going out, power supply going bad or just about anything hardware wise. I highly doubt it's your cables unless you really do have a bad one with a leak or something. Certainly check that but my guess is you're in for a new receiver. You can probably get another DirecTivo on eBay. Latest model I believe was the Hughes HDVR2 (not HD despite having HD in the name) and even that one is 4+ years old. Since you have an HDTV you might want to try to get an HR10-250 since that was the last (and only) HD DirecTivo and you'd benefit from a larger hard drive and if you get locals OTA with an antenna you can actually get HD OTA. But it won't get HD from DirecTV other then the 7 left in MPEG2 and those are going away in a couple months.

This is all assuming you don't want one of the DirecTV DVRs for free.

[FentonMcD]

There have been several post recently after pixelization. The problems could be organized into three areas:

1) The S-Video connector causes noise problems on Satellite 2.
2) The Power Converter has severe noise problems because several of the large capacitors are degrading.
3) Dish alignment, degraded cables, bad LNB, bad switch

Here's some links:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=413129
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=395614
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=408258

Recently I've had the same problem on my Samsung but only on satellite 2. I've replaced the hard drive and power converter without solving the problem. After much debugging and cable pulling what I've found was that I had a ground loop problem in my TV/Receiver/Satellite/Sub-woofer/PC setup. If I disconnected the RCA cables from the Audio Reciever (and removing the ground loop), the problem went away.

So, I would suggest a minimal system setup -- only the cables that you need to send audio/video to the TV. Also, you could purchase a new power converter from Weakness.

[halfempty]

I have an old Philips DSR708 DTivo that tuner 2 died on. If you are attached to your old unit, or simply don't want one of D*'s newer non-Tivo units like me, you could send the unit out to get a full refurb at CCS Corporation (http://www.ccscorporation.net/). The price is a little steep at $100, but they have a very good reputation.

[golfnut1982]

This is my first post. I just had to tell you what I know. I had the same thing problem. You can stop pulling your hair out because it is your power supply. At least it was for me. I hope this helps.