Time Warner Cable Tuning Adapter (ALL LOCATIONS) / Bugs & Issues

[lrhorer]

I've not had any reboot issues AFAIK, but I do from time to time suffer other problems. In some cases, the TA just seems to lose USB connectivity. The front panel LED starts its 8 blink loop, the diags are unavailable, and the SDV channels won't tune. Rebooting the TA usually solves the issue, although upon occasion I have to call for a hit from the headend. The other, more common issue is the channel map gets totally corrupted somehow, and then I cannot tune any encrypted channel. The front panel LED remains steady, and the diags are available, but nothing will tune except the local channels. Rebooting the TiVo gets me back the linear encrypted channels, and then I have to reboot the TA, disconnect the USB cable, and re-connect the TA to get the SDV channels. This has happened from time to time on all three of my TiVos. Two are S3 units and one is a THD.

[digs0]

digs0,

Which TWC system are you in (i.e., your location)?

How often does your TA go "wonky" ?

What wonky behavior to you see other than losing a channel during a recording?


Hey dlfl,

I'm a San Diego TWC customer. I haven't been super thrilled with the TWC experience, but not so much because of poor TiVo support.

The TA is erratic--sometimes it behaves for maybe a week or 10 days without showing any signs of trouble, but then it'll blank out channels several times the next week. I haven't had many other symptoms with it, other than the SDV interruptions. What's most frustrating is that often, the unit will actually tune a channel for a split second before telling me that it's not available. Also, there seem to be 2 different kinds of dropped channels -- at times, I'll get the TiVo message bubble that the channel is not available (even though I do subscribe to it), but at other times the screen will just be completely black with no information at all.

Ah, I forgot--I do also get the spontaneous reboots. "A Tuning Adapter is connected" -- thanks, I thought it already was.

[dlfl]

No, no, NO! That's the whole point of SDV. With a properly designed CATV plant, the number of available channels is effectively infinite...........
I'm not seeing that. Reference the explanation of SDV given here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5294772#post5294772).
In the diagram 500-2000 outlets are served by each node via coax cable with roughly 1 GHz bandwidth. How many channels (HD and SD mixed, whatever) can go down the 1 GHz bandwidth? I think the answer is less than 500, correct?

Thus if 500 outlets each request a different channel, the SDV system would not be able to serve them all. Apparently it works based on the assumption that this situation will never occur, i.e., many of the homes will be requesting identical channels. With 2,000 outlets the effect is magnified.

I must be missing something. I don't see the capability for an "effectively infinite" number of channels here.

EDIT: Per my understanding the "effectively infinite" channels can be achieved if the # of outlets on the node is no greater than the number of SDV frequencies. If an effectively infinite number of HD channels are to be supported, this condition becomes that the # of outlets must be no greater than the number of HD-capable SDV frequencies.

Or do all SDV frequencies have HD bandwidths?

[Thess]

Can anyone confirm successfully using the TA signup page from the Raleigh/TWC area recently?

My cablecard has been online for > 24 hrs and I'm still getting:

Attention

Order Not Accepted
No Upgraded Equipment Required
No Upgraded Equipment Required

I am definitely using the correct information associated with the account when I try to start the process.

I've been using the link at the bottom of this page:

http://www.timewarnercable.com/Carolinas/learn/cable/sdv/default.html

If anyone knows of any alternate means of obtaining one in this area, that would be cool too.

[Grumock]

Can anyone confirm successfully using the TA signup page from the Raleigh/TWC area recently?

My cablecard has been online for > 24 hrs and I'm still getting:

Attention

Order Not Accepted
No Upgraded Equipment Required
No Upgraded Equipment Required

I am definitely using the correct information associated with the account when I try to start the process.

I've been using the link at the bottom of this page:

http://www.timewarnercable.com/Carolinas/learn/cable/sdv/default.html

If anyone knows of any alternate means of obtaining one in this area, that would be cool too.

that is the right page.

[SCSIRAID]

Can anyone confirm successfully using the TA signup page from the Raleigh/TWC area recently?

My cablecard has been online for > 24 hrs and I'm still getting:

Attention

Order Not Accepted
No Upgraded Equipment Required
No Upgraded Equipment Required

I am definitely using the correct information associated with the account when I try to start the process.

I've been using the link at the bottom of this page:


http://www.timewarnercable.com/Carolinas/learn/cable/sdv/default.html

If anyone knows of any alternate means of obtaining one in this area, that would be cool too.

I used the webpage quite a while ago and it worked fine.

So you already have the cablecard? The fact that you already have it may not have propagated thru the system yet. You might try calling customer service and seeing if they can help.

[Thess]

I have the cablecard, it's been up and running / activated with TWC since yesterday morning. Can tune everything except the presumed SDV channels.

I know that calling is probably the next step but I am somewhat less than hopeful about getting a CSR who can even begin to tell me why the webform isn't working, or do anything about it. I've had countless bad TWC experiences, I know that's hardly anything new--but the dread of calling just gets a little worse with each one. As an example, a CSR--who sounded perfectly sure of herself--told me on Sunday I could go down to the local kiosk and pick up a cablecard and self-install. I had a feeling she was wrong so I tried asking the questions a couple of different ways (a cablecard? for a tivo? are you sure? they'll just hand it to me?), and finally I assumed she must know something I didn't, so I got into the car and drove down to the mall. I'm sure you already know what the TWC employees at the mall kiosk had to say.

Anyway! I'm trying to balance all that out with my natural impatience and the fact that yesterday was a nat'l holiday. :)

[Thess]

Day 2: Order Not Accepted. Two CSRs hung up on me, the third said someone would contact me within 48 hours. Heh.

Still interested to know if anyone else succeeds in getting a TA, or has succeeded recently.

Unfortunately there are far more SDV channels now than I had realized.

Updating for posterity's sake: I was never able to get the webform to work, but I was able to get a tech to bring a TA out. I don't think this is the way it is supposed to work, though, and I doubt you would be able to talk anyone into it with a normal 800-number call. I went into a local TWC office and the CSR there also would have been able to order the TA via mail had my appointment not already been in the system (very long story). So worst case scenario, going into an office may be the best bet for now if you can't get the web form to work.

[JC Fedorczyk]

Anyone having a problem with their switched channels today? Sci-fi HD, fx HD, discovery HD are all showing black. A call to tech support and they sent some signals but when that didn't work they are dispatching a truck. Massive waste of time on their end as there's nothing here that is wrong.

[George Cifranci]

Anyone having a problem with their switched channels today? Sci-fi HD, fx HD, discovery HD are all showing black. A call to tech support and they sent some signals but when that didn't work they are dispatching a truck. Massive waste of time on their end as there's nothing here that is wrong.

Have you tried to reboot your TiVo? There have been times when my SDV channels were black and they came back after a reboot.

[JC Fedorczyk]

Yup. Rebooting brought back the non-switched HD channels. Still missing the switched though.

[Stone1555]

Do you have a wireless usb adapter?

if so unhook it. Unhook the usb and power from the back of the t.a. power the t.a up. once the light goes solid after about 5 mins. reconnect the usb to the t.a / test channels. if all is well reconnect the wireless adapter.

i do that weekly. seems to be a bus issue or smthn

[MirclMax]

Hey dlfl,

I'm a San Diego TWC customer. I haven't been super thrilled with the TWC experience, but not so much because of poor TiVo support.

The TA is erratic--sometimes it behaves for maybe a week or 10 days without showing any signs of trouble, but then it'll blank out channels several times the next week. I haven't had many other symptoms with it, other than the SDV interruptions. What's most frustrating is that often, the unit will actually tune a channel for a split second before telling me that it's not available. Also, there seem to be 2 different kinds of dropped channels -- at times, I'll get the TiVo message bubble that the channel is not available (even though I do subscribe to it), but at other times the screen will just be completely black with no information at all.

Ah, I forgot--I do also get the spontaneous reboots. "A Tuning Adapter is connected" -- thanks, I thought it already was.

Another San Diegan here.. I'd say the above sums up my situations precisely.

On one aspect of it, I was hoping someone could give some insight on it. The majority of my issues are where you tune to an SDV channel.. and it comes in right away.. and *then* an unavailable message shows up. That is, you can see the video .. I'd even say for at least a full second .. maybe 2. To me, that makes no sense in my very vague understanding of the technology. If the programming is there, then why not just let it come through? Is this how it works for everyone? Or is this some cool special messed up thing they have going for us? I would expect more of a channel not being available until the request.. not being there and then spitting out an error message after the fact.

Your insights are greatly appreciated.

[dlfl]

Next time this happens, go to the DVR Diagnostics screens. Does the channel you tried to tune have Signal Lock? Program Lock? Are the PID numbers filled in? Any other suspicious things?

When I tune an SDV channel, there is a glitch a second or two after the video shows up and I've noticed that's when the correct resolutioin (e.g., 720p) is filled into the program information panel at the top of the screen. Until that point, the resolution from the previously tuned channel is displayed. It sounds like that's when you lose your video.

When I get a tune failure, my diagnostics show no Program Lock but there is Signal Lock. This means video came in but some information was missing or inconsistent regarding things like PID numbers -- so it rejected the video.

Also, in the Tuning Adapter Diagnostics, check the three signal strength numbers as described in this post (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7378554#post7378554). This can be done at any time, not just when a tune failure occurs.

[cdeckert219]

Another San Diegan here..

On one aspect of it, I was hoping someone could give some insight on it. The majority of my issues are where you tune to an SDV channel.. and it comes in right away.. and *then* an unavailable message shows up.

TWC SD here, also. I have that problem occasionally. My biggest frustration, though, is that about once or twice a week I'll come home from work and the TA on both boxes will be blinking continuously. The SDV channels won't be available. I've tried unplugging and restarting the TA. That didn't work. It seems the only way to get the TiVo to reconnect with the TA is to reboot the TiVo. After that it's fine. I seem to have the same problem with both HD boxes... at the same day/time as each other (not the same day/time each week, though).

Any thoughts?

[brentj]

I keep having blocks of channels disappear over time. Very frustrating. Missed recordings. Usually a reboot brings them back. When I get around to it I think I'll plug both the tivo and TA into a timer to manually reboot them at 3 AM every day to keep them on track.

Though it may not be good for the Tivo to constantly unplug it without letting it shut down/reboot gracefully

[rbye]

One of our two TivoHDs gets sporadic "macroblocking" / "pixelation" and sound drop outs. ...


... When I do have blocking, RS corrected and uncorrected errors DO NOT change - they are always zero.

... The pixellation is downright maddening, as it always seems to happen during the middle of important scenes or dialog, and every time it drops out it causes my audio receiver to have to re-train on the dolby audio too (we primarily watch HD channels, most of which are SDV in this market now).

Help? Please?

bradenmcg - has this problem cleared up for you?

Are others seeing this. I read on another thread that this is a known issue that is being worked (presumably by Tivo - but it wasn;t clear).

BTW - I suspect the errors are show as zero after a dropout because the dropouts are cause by the TA having to retune to the channel again, and whenever you cange channel the Tivo resets the error counts.

This is driving me crazy too, I am almost desparate enough to start using the SA Explore 8300 DVR POS !!!

[dlfl]

bradenmcg - has this problem cleared up for you?

Are others seeing this. I read on another thread that this is a known issue that is being worked (presumably by Tivo - but it wasn;t clear).

BTW - I suspect the errors are show as zero after a dropout because the dropouts are cause by the TA having to retune to the channel again, and whenever you cange channel the Tivo resets the error counts.

This is driving me crazy too, I am almost desparate enough to start using the SA Explore 8300 DVR POS !!!
It's just in the Carolinas area that this problems is really being seriously worked on. Apparently the problem is especially severe in that region.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=418262

Since other regions may have different distribution equipment and/or parameter settings, the diagnosis and solution (if found) may not carry over.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7420668#post7420668

You can check out your retune theory (regarding zero error counts) by just looking at the Time Since Tune Start in the same data page as the error counts. (It will be reset to 0 if it actually retuned.) That is an interesting theory.

[SCSIRAID]

bradenmcg - has this problem cleared up for you?

Are others seeing this. I read on another thread that this is a known issue that is being worked (presumably by Tivo - but it wasn;t clear).

BTW - I suspect the errors are show as zero after a dropout because the dropouts are cause by the TA having to retune to the channel again, and whenever you cange channel the Tivo resets the error counts.

This is driving me crazy too, I am almost desparate enough to start using the SA Explore 8300 DVR POS !!!

The diags also show the 'Time since tune start' which lets you determine if a retune was executed. For me, it is rare to see a retune. I do see the base problem where dropouts occur but RS Uncorrected remains zero. TWC current theory is the Cisco Rate Shaper is outputting MPEG which TiVo cannot deal with.

Where are you located?

[dlfl]

This afternoon I noticed the light on my TA was blinking. Sure enough, my SDV channels were missing. After trying many, many combinations of rebooting TiVo, power-cycling TA & TiVo, and unplugging/plugging the USB cable, nothing worked. I would have the 8-blinik-then-pause of the TA green light and TiVo DVR Diagnostics said I didn't have a Tuning Adapter connected.

In 3 mos. of usage, I had lost SDV channels once, and easily got them back by just unconnecting USB, power-cycling TA and reconnecting USB.

Called TWC Southwest Ohio and the CSR after asking some reasonable questions -- you guessed it -- scheduled a truck roll!

Called TiVo tech support. Guy was very nice and and competent. After some reasonable diagnostic tests, he put me on hold and called TWC. Eventually I was on the line with someone from TWC National Cable Card Support, who was also very nice and competent.

He said the problem was my TA was no longer "provisioned", which as far as I could gather amounts to sending one number/signal to the TA that says it's authorized for my account. He provisioned it and after a few minutes I was back in business.

He knew no reaon my provisioning would have been lost other than to guess that someone at TWC Southwest Ohio made a mistake, perhaps thinking they were working on someone else'es account. He confidently stated this should not happen again and apologized for the inconvenience. He stated that the re-provisioning could have been done at the local TWC office.

I asked him to tell me the magic words to say to a TWC CSR if this happened again and his answer was, "Connect me to National Cable Card Support".

I was pleasantly surprised by the competence and good attitude shown by both TiVo and TWC personnel.

[joshuad156]

wow dlfl. Glad I found your post. I just noticed today I had the same blinking TA and like yourself I tried every combination of power cycling and unplugging/plugging int he USB cable and like you can't get a solid green. I guess I will have to call and see if something similar happened to me. Mine has been working for the last month or two (except for a few times i had to restart it) until today when now it simply doesn't work.

Oddly enough I too am in SWO TWC. *sigh* i really dislike calling TW offices. :(

[realityboy]

I'm having the same problem also, dlfl. I guess I'll be calling tomorrow.

[dlfl]

That's at least 3 of us in TWC Southwest Ohio with the same problem. Someone, or some computer program, really screwed up. The guy from National Cable Card Support said he had already fixed three other people's problems from Southwest Ohio before me -- but he said it wasn't the same (provisioning) problem for them. It was something to do with IP numbers.

I strongly encourage you to try to get the TWC CSR you contact to "Connect me to National Cable Card Support". If they won't, call TiVo support like I did.

[bobrt6676]

That's at least 3 of us in TWC Southwest Ohio with the same problem. Someone, or some computer program, really screwed up. The guy from National Cable Card Support said he had already fixed three other people's problems from Southwest Ohio before me -- but he said it wasn't the same (provisioning) problem for them. It was something to do with IP numbers.

I strongly encourage you to try to get the TWC CSR you contact to "Connect me to National Cable Card Support". If they won't, call TiVo support like I did.

I had the same issue yesterday on just 1 of 2 TA's. Tried everything nothing worked. Switched TA's from one set to the other. no help. Figured I would exchange TA's today at the Dayton Mall. But when I checked this morning the problem had resolved itself. Sounds like a fluke on TWC end.

[dlfl]

I had the same issue yesterday on just 1 of 2 TA's. Tried everything nothing worked. Switched TA's from one set to the other. no help. Figured I would exchange TA's today at the Dayton Mall. But when I checked this morning the problem had resolved itself. Sounds like a fluke on TWC end.
Unfortunately, I bet there are "flukes" that will affect TiVo users only -- scary!

Hey guys! Please note the campaign to get TWC to remove CCI Byte copy protection (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=434742). Keep those cards and letters (err.. emails) coming !!!

[realityboy]

That's at least 3 of us in TWC Southwest Ohio with the same problem. Someone, or some computer program, really screwed up. The guy from National Cable Card Support said he had already fixed three other people's problems from Southwest Ohio before me -- but he said it wasn't the same (provisioning) problem for them. It was something to do with IP numbers.

I strongly encourage you to try to get the TWC CSR you contact to "Connect me to National Cable Card Support". If they won't, call TiVo support like I did.

Ok, I tried this, and I did get it fixed, but not without jumping through their usual hoops. The first CSR I called, promptly connected me to the National Cable Card support line* after I asked, but once I told the guy there my problem, he transferred me back to the local office. Frustrated, I hung up, but then I called the local office back myself and went through troubleshooting steps with the local CSR who had never seen a TA before. He asked at one point if I could take the TA card out of my Tivo. Eventually, he set up a truck roll. I asked him to transfer me to the National Cable Card Support line, to see if they could fix it without the need for a truckroll. He did, and they fixed it almost immediately.

*I suspect that she transferred me to the wrong line, but I don't really know.

[dlfl]

Ok, I tried this, and I did get it fixed, but not without jumping through their usual hoops. The first CSR I called, promptly connected me to the National Cable Card support line* after I asked, but once I told the guy there my problem, he transferred me back to the local office. Frustrated, I hung up, but then I called the local office back myself and went through troubleshooting steps with the local CSR who had never seen a TA before. He asked at one point if I could take the TA card out of my Tivo. Eventually, he set up a truck roll. I asked him to transfer me to the National Cable Card Support line, to see if they could fix it without the need for a truckroll. He did, and they fixed it almost immediately.

*I suspect that she transferred me to the wrong line, but I don't really know.
Two theories:

1. The first time you talked to National Cable Card Support (NCCS) he detected you hadn't gone through any diagnosis steps at the local level and they may not want to encourage problems being immediately transfered to them without being "filtered" by local diagnosis. If true, the lesson is to let the local office do whatever troubleshooting they can before asking to go to the NCCS.

(or)

2. The second time you talked to NCCS you just got a more sympatico guy.

The NCCS guy I talked to said there are only about three people in NCCS. The one I got was very siimpatico.

[redwolf4k]

Hey, I am a new member, and I joined the community in search of answers related to the TA.

I have TWC in the hudson valley area, in NY. They just started implementing SDV, about 10 channels or so are SDV. I just learned about needing the TA with my TIVO HD in the near future. TW has the TA's stocked, but they are not "in the system" yet, and therefor not ready for distribution.

I have had the TIVO HD since 2007, since "mystro" came about on the TWC boxes, it was so buggy, I needed to upgrade. I am not allowed to get NHL Center Ice with a tivo hd in my TWC area, which has been hell for me. Now, I am finding out I need a crummy TA, that as I suspected, makes tivo buggy and unreliable....


When I went to get a TA, and found out there not ready yet, the rep I spoke to told me that NHL Center Ice is free this month, and allowed me to take 1 SA 8300HDC DVR box home, for 1 free month, so I could get it. I thought that was really nice due to the inconvinience they are causing me. I came to find nearly all the bugs I experienced are fixed on the TWC box, and am pretty pleased.

I would hate to get rid of my TIVO HD, but it seems TWC's new system makes the tivo pretty anoying.
Plus, with the TA, I am STILL not allowed to get Center Ice. I have had Tivo series 2's and a Hughes Directivo, back when I had Directv, and am quite a big Tivo fan. It seems things have changed quite a bit though, Does Tivo work correctly on any provider besides free Over The Air anymore? Its depressing. I never thought I would feel "bad" about possibly giving up a cable box, like tivo. It's like trying to give up a Dog or pet lol.

This is horrible. I am not even sure if I want to TRY the TA when it is realeased here, maybe just stick with there box....which was probablly there plan afterall...

:(

[dlfl]

...........This is horrible. I am not even sure if I want to TRY the TA when it is realeased here, maybe just stick with there box....which was probablly there plan afterall...

The TA is normally free and is easy to hook up. Suggest you wait and give it a trial. Meanwhile you can get more time on the TW DVR to see if your initial favorable impression is durable.

Your comparitive evaluation of the TW DVR is of interest here. It would probably be appropriate to start a new thread for that if you are going to provide detailed comments, since it would be off topic for this thread.

[Effinay]

Ok, I tried this, and I did get it fixed, but not without jumping through their usual hoops. The first CSR I called, promptly connected me to the National Cable Card support line* after I asked, but once I told the guy there my problem, he transferred me back to the local office. Frustrated, I hung up, but then I called the local office back myself and went through troubleshooting steps with the local CSR who had never seen a TA before. He asked at one point if I could take the TA card out of my Tivo. Eventually, he set up a truck roll. I asked him to transfer me to the National Cable Card Support line, to see if they could fix it without the need for a truckroll. He did, and they fixed it almost immediately.

*I suspect that she transferred me to the wrong line, but I don't really know.

I had the same issue last Tuesday with my TA. After calling my local office, they actually GAVE me the direct number to call for the "Tru 2-Way Specialists" (which I found out later that was a no-no) to fix my blinking TA. I spoke with a guy named Mike, who promptly sent some codes to my TA. I wa at work at the time, so I didn't know if that fixed the problem until later that night.
Well, it didn't fix it. So I called back a couple days later (the ticket was still open) and actually talked to the same guy. He remembered my call and stated I was the first person to call about this issue. I guess nearly everyone with a TA started having issues last week or soon after... at least in the SW Ohio area. He was surprised that sending the signals to my TA didn't fix it the first time. He put me on hold and called a local field tech and asked him to try something.
After about 10 minutes, the TA stopped blinking and the light turned off. I pressed the power button and the light was steady. I've had no problems since.
Someone really messed up at TW and caused all of us some headaches, but I'm glad that the issue was recognized and fixed fairly promptly. I just hope it doesn't happen again.

[dlfl]

I had the same issue last Tuesday with my TA. After calling my local office, they actually GAVE me the direct number to call for the "Tru 2-Way Specialists" (which I found out later that was a no-no) to fix my blinking TA. I spoke with a guy named Mike, ........
Well, now that someone else has already mentioned his name, Mike was the NCCS guy I talked to last week -- who was great!

We can hope that since so many TiVo subscribers were affected, they learned some kind of lesson at the Cinci office .......

[Grumock]

Two theories:

1. The first time you talked to National Cable Card Support (NCCS) he detected you hadn't gone through any diagnosis steps at the local level and they may not want to encourage problems being immediately transfered to them without being "filtered" by local diagnosis. If true, the lesson is to let the local office do whatever troubleshooting they can before asking to go to the NCCS.

(or)

2. The second time you talked to NCCS you just got a more sympatico guy.

The NCCS guy I talked to said there are only about three people in NCCS. The one I got was very siimpatico.

I understand there are actually only 4 & they support then entire National footprint for TWC. I was also made to understand that there is only one day out of the week they are all there, & normally there is just two people on that phone the rest of the time. OUCH!!

[dolfer]

I had the blinking TA as well... I am in the Greater Cincinnati Area.

Before you call, try this. Seems like I was only doing part of the process.

Unplug USB cable from Tivo
Unplug Power cable from TA for 10 or so seconds
Plug Power cable back in to TA and wait for light to go solid (might take up to 10 minutes. Mine took about 4)
Plug USB cable in to Tivo
Select "continue" at the Tuner Detected screen

Before, I was only unplugging the power and not the USB. Unplugging the power only does not seem to work!

The above process worked for me without any special intervention from NCCS. (Yet another spin off?) :D

The CSR said they are having issues with "traffic" and "signals" and "overloading" and it shouldn't last long.

Out,
D

[waltbenn]

Time Warner Cincinnati finally has cable cards, but charges monthly fee in addition to fee for initial acquisition of the card(s), etc. I told them to forget it; will just use Tivo as is (because I thought cable cards were initially to be issued "free of charge"?).

I had some problems with Time Warner tuner/DVR equipment (volume issues & image lock-up, etc., calling someone to fix or else reboot...periodically) and I detest having to pay monthly rent for their damn remote, box, etc., in addition to their already absurdly high monthly fees, so I took all their crap back and told them to keep all that, too, and it is still pretty much a rip-off, but what are consumers to do (they're all a rip-off in my opinion; cable/satellite)?

I'm paying around 87.00/month for basic cable & roadrunner HS internet. Thank goodness my old Tivo series 2 works well, although I would like to be able to record while watching another channel. I may upgrade soon if Tivo lets me transfer my "Lifetime Service":D

[dlfl]

Time Warner Cincinnati finally has cable cards, but charges monthly fee in addition to fee for initial acquisition of the card(s), etc. I told them to forget it; will just use Tivo as is (because I thought cable cards were initially to be issued "free of charge"?).........
Huh?? :confused: AFAIK TWC Southwest Ohio (including Cinci) has had CC's for many months and has always charged for them ($2.54/mo per card). The Tuning Adapters needed to get the many SDV channels are free (so far).

The minimum digital package (which includes Basic, Standard, and Digital Variety packages) + Roadrunner (not turbo) + Two CC's + Taxes & Fees is $118. If you have a TiVo HD you only need one CC (a m-card) but when they installed mine they insisted they only had s-cards, so I have to have 2. Note this is in the North Dayton area, so details may vary elsewhere.

[eddieb187]

Hey Redwolf4k,
I have a Tivo in the Hudson Valley as well.
I just received my tuning adapter today.
I can only find 5 new channels.
687(LVwel), 701(NY1HD), 731(CNBCHD), 738(DisneyHD), and 774(TCMHD).
I have some issues though.
Since connecting the TA my TIVO guide is a bit slower.
Also the channel ID on two of the SDV channels is wrong.
And the guide data on all the SDV channel is either missing or wrong.
Other than that I'm really looking forward to finally getting all the HD channels that were missing.
Albany TWC has nearly 100 HD channels since SDV is implemented there.

[Grumock]

Hey Redwolf4k,
I have a Tivo in the Hudson Valley as well.
I just received my tuning adapter today.
I can only find 5 new channels.
687(LVwel), 701(NY1HD), 731(CNBCHD), 738(DisneyHD), and 774(TCMHD).
I have some issues though.
Since connecting the TA my TIVO guide is a bit slower.
Also the channel ID on two of the SDV channels is wrong.
And the guide data on all the SDV channel is either missing or wrong.
Other than that I'm really looking forward to finally getting all the HD channels that were missing.
Albany TWC has nearly 100 HD channels since SDV is implemented there.

Strange I was not aware that they have launched SDV in the Hudson Valley area as of yet when it comes to HD channels at least.

[eddieb187]

Strange I was not aware that they have launched SDV in the Hudson Valley area as of yet when it comes to HD channels at least.

Yes. I believe 10 SDV channels so far.
The 5 HD channels I mentioned disappear from the guide when I turn the Tuning Adapter off.

[Z06_Pilot]

oh yea, my 1520's have issues!

mine reboot on a regular basis. I found out that TWC in Central Ohio is having issues with two frequencies that cause channels to not show up intermittently. the 1520's can't lock and therefore go into a reset.

I've been putting up with this for 2 months. they tell me that as of yet, they cannot locate the problem and have no idea when it will be fixed. I imagine it's not high on their list as TA's are only for the very small percentage of people who don't use TWC's DVR's.

it pains me but I have decided to go with Dish network, cancel all 3 of my Tivo subscriptions and sell my Tivo Series 3 units.

after 10 years as a Tivo user, they are victims of my cable company...it's a real shame.

Jeff.

[redwolf4k]

Eddie,

I recieved my SDV tuning adapter as well. However, it doesnt detect, or work. It seems to totally bypass or somthing. I have the solid green light, but my tivo never mentions a tuning adapter, and there are no new channels, nor did tivo search for any new channels. I went to the diag screen and tried to "test" the sdv channels, but it said none available.

I called TWC and was told that they just got word moments after I picked up my tuner, to hold off distributing them, as there is a problem. I guess just hold onto it until they work out whatever problem they are having. It didn't work for me at all though.

[dolfer]

Eddie,

I recieved my SDV tuning adapter as well. However, it doesnt detect, or work. It seems to totally bypass or somthing. I have the solid green light, but my tivo never mentions a tuning adapter, and there are no new channels, nor did tivo search for any new channels. I went to the diag screen and tried to "test" the sdv channels, but it said none available.

I called TWC and was told that they just got word moments after I picked up my tuner, to hold off distributing them, as there is a problem. I guess just hold onto it until they work out whatever problem they are having. It didn't work for me at all though.

Did you plug in the USB cable from the TA to the Tivo?

Also make sure you plugged the coax cable running from the TA to "Cable" and not to "Antennae" on the Tivo unit.

so it should be coax from the wall to the TA and then to the "Cable" port of your Tivo. Additionally there is a USB cable connection between TA and Tivo as well...

You should get a blue screen saying a Tuning Adapter has been discovered. Just hit continue and wait for awhile as it gets the new channels.

[redwolf4k]

I double checked that its all connected correctly, and also tried both USB ports on the tivo, but it doesnt give me a screen that says its detected. However, I am able to view the diagnostics screen of the tuning adapter on my tivo, so its there. When i try to go to the section to test the SDV channels, it says no channels available, and in the guide, the 10 channels that are supposed to be there, like ny1 hd and disney hd for example, are not in the guide, nor can i tune to them manually. It's like the adapter is there, but its not really doing anything.

[dolfer]

I double checked that its all connected correctly, and also tried both USB ports on the tivo, but it doesnt give me a screen that says its detected. However, I am able to view the diagnostics screen of the tuning adapter on my tivo, so its there. When i try to go to the section to test the SDV channels, it says no channels available, and in the guide, the 10 channels that are supposed to be there, like ny1 hd and disney hd for example, are not in the guide, nor can i tune to them manually. It's like the adapter is there, but its not really doing anything.

Don't drive yourself crazy... Take it back and get another one. I screwed around for months with what I now believe to be a defective unit. Once I got a new TA things were much better.

[dlfl]

I double checked that its all connected correctly, and also tried both USB ports on the tivo, but it doesnt give me a screen that says its detected. However, I am able to view the diagnostics screen of the tuning adapter on my tivo, so its there. When i try to go to the section to test the SDV channels, it says no channels available, and in the guide, the 10 channels that are supposed to be there, like ny1 hd and disney hd for example, are not in the guide, nor can i tune to them manually. It's like the adapter is there, but its not really doing anything.
That sounds very much like the symptoms I had when my TA needed to be "provisioned" (again). See this post (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7540157#post7540157).

Might be worth calling TWC support, asking them to check if your TA is provisioned correctly. If they can't do anything, ask to be connected to "National Cable Card Support".

[eddieb187]

Eddie,

I recieved my SDV tuning adapter as well. However, it doesnt detect, or work. It seems to totally bypass or somthing. I have the solid green light, but my tivo never mentions a tuning adapter, and there are no new channels, nor did tivo search for any new channels. I went to the diag screen and tried to "test" the sdv channels, but it said none available.

I called TWC and was told that they just got word moments after I picked up my tuner, to hold off distributing them, as there is a problem. I guess just hold onto it until they work out whatever problem they are having. It didn't work for me at all though.

The first time I connected my Tuning Adapter it did not work either.
As you I had the diag screen but no channels available.
You need to have a solid light on the TA.
At that point with everything connected restart you Tivo by going to Tivo Central, Message and Setting, Restart.
When your Tivo reboots it will recognize the TA and aquire the guide and SDV channels.

[apsarkis]

I have TWC in the hudson valley area, in NY...
When I went to get a TA, and found out there not ready
:(

I was able to pick up one of the 3 TA's that were in stock in their Port Ewen office today, and a friend picked up one of the others. I have a Tivo HD and an S3, and was told they are not giving out TA's for the S3 because they don't work, but they gave me one for the THD. Their web site states explicitly that they support the S3:
http://www.timewarnercable.com/nynj/learn/cable/sdv/default.html
so I hooked the TA up to the S3 anyway, and it's working fine. I'll have to go back on Monday, with a printout of their web page, to see if they still have another TA for my THD.

[spassmeister]

I'm also a San Diego TWC customer with 2 series3s using wireless for tivo network connection. I've had two TAs for several months, and I've had many of the issues in this forum(re-botting, loss of channels, pixelation, etc.) since day 1. It became so bad on one of the units, that I removed the TA - willing to live with less than I was paying for for what was an immediate improvement in reliability. That is, some of the channels that did not require the TA were no longer working either ("searching for signal"). as I had more problems on one setup than the other.

the situation deteriorated rapidly on both setups about 2-3 weeks ago. First I began intermittently losing many channels that had worked days earlier. This happened on both TiVos. I noticed that much of the programming was simply "not able to record" as there was no signal. I looked at the signal from the cable card on the pixelated channels and it was in the low 40s range and the SNR was like 25 dB. (tivo says this is far too low). I assumed something changed on the network side in San Diego and had a technician come out. The CSR told me during the diagnostic call that "the TAs always work - we've never had a problem"

Well the TWC tech guy comes out yesterday, and it was truly pathetic. First, he had no extra TAs on his truck. He really knew almost nothing about TiVos or TAs. He checked the signal strength in the house and said it was "really high", and in fact the pioneer cable box in my office works great. So what does he do? He decides to disconnect the coax lines from the distribution box on my garage to "improve the signal". Seriously? He had just measured the signal and said it was great. I told him at this point "you realize of course what you are doing will do nothing to solve my problem, but it will take a long time." I did find out that Einstein did have two cable cards on his truck I had him get those and I replaced them on one unit and that did nothing, which is what I expected.

Soooo...after rebooting EVERYTHING lots of times, upstairs and down, taking the TAs on and off, swapping out cable cards, etc., I've assuming TWC changed something on the network side that caused these problems.

Has anybody else in San Diego on TWC recently (first weeks of october) seen had performance rapidly decline? I'm in CV

[dlfl]

I have the minimum digital service in the North Dayton area (Basic, Standard and Digital Variety Packages).

Using the technique given in this post (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7394726#post7394726), I've determined the HD channels that are delivered via SDV:

HMHD 1117
SCIHD 1132
APLHD 1133
PLDHD 1267
LMNHD 1278
ESPNUHD 1303
ESPNWHD 1305
GOLFHD 1316
MLBHD 1326
BIG10HD 1333
CNNHD 1350
CNBCHD 1355

I get 39 HD channels total.
7 are broadcast (locals, never use SDV)
12 (listed above) are SDV.

Of course there are many SD channels that are SDV. I'm not going to count them!

[sddave]

Has anybody else in San Diego on TWC recently (first weeks of october) seen had performance rapidly decline? I'm in CV

Have no problems in Mira Mesa

[joshuad156]

Got my TA problem sorted out. Had to wait for a truck roll as the CSR was useless. I was unaware of asking for the "National Cable Card support" people, but I'll keep that in mind for next time. I did ask if there was another tier of support or someone else I could talk to and the CSR said a truck roll was our only option.

Unfortunately, the Technician who showed up had no available TAs to swap out. However, he was able to resolve my problem. The TA seemed to be getting good signal lock, but wasn't tuning on the SDV stations. He ordered a hit on my cable card, and in my disbelief after that my TA started working again.

Between dealing with TAs, the Cable Cards, advertisements on my TiVo, and CableCard programs being copy protected for no good reason, I'm about at the breaking point. I know not everything is TiVo's fault, but the lack of a good solution is really letting me down.

[apsarkis]

I was able to pick up one of the 3 TA's that were in stock in their Port Ewen office today, and a friend picked up one of the others.

I stopped in the Port Ewen, NY office again today (10/21), and they're rationing out the TA's, just one to a customer until they get enough in, even though they've already started moving some premium channels to SDV (and have a massive addition to their HD lineup spread through the next month).
Perry

[Stormspace]

My Issue: Can't see recordings on My HD from my S2's.

OMG! Just spent two hours on the phone with support trying to figure out my issue. First guy had me disabling HME, enabling it, cycling my router :rolleyes:, cable modem, TiVo's, and DHCP server. He checked the versions on two of the boxes, the S2 at 9.3.2b and the HD at 11.0d. Said the different versions were why I had a problem. Said that Series 2's weren't being updated any longer. I asked if TiVo was discontinuing support for them. He said no, I should just upgrade the other two boxes to HD. "Not with the CCI byte issue", I replied. "Tell me where TiVo has made an announcement that Series 2 support is being discontinued." He said please hold. Came back and told me he was escalating the call, transferred and drop! Hung up.

Called immediately back and dude named Josh answered. Nice enough, but told me almost immediately that the HD had issues with the Tuning Adapter. Dude may have just told me what I wanted to hear, but I got another free month out of the deal. That's three months free total TiVo has given me for this issue. TiVo is well on it's way to paying me for the TiVo. I only paid 100.00 for it, from TiVo.

I'm starting to hate my HD TiVo...

[AtariAge]

I have two TiVo HD units that I am using with TWC Austin and the last several weeks I've gotten so frustrated with this setup that I'm very close to ditching TWC (for television at least) and jumping to DIRECTV. I can't keep track of the number of times I've tried tuning to a channel only to see the brief "Channel Not Available" message pop up, leaving behind a black screen. Sometimes tuning up and down will bring the channel back, sometimes not. At least once a week it seems I need to reboot one or both of my TiVos for all the channels to tune properly.

The last few weeks in particular have been worse as I've had numerous programs not record because the signal is not available. This seems to coincide with when the Blockbuster rentals appeared, which I assume was added via a software update, but I didn't pay close attention at the time. It's very inconsistent and usually my TAs are not blinking when channels refuse to tune. I'm paying too much every month (to Time Warner and TiVo) for this to be such a headache.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. If I can't get this working reliably, I'm selling my TiVos and switching to DIRECTV. Which pains me a bit, as I used to work at TiVo (back in 2000-2001) and have been a loyal customer for many years.

..Al

[dlfl]

Have you checked signal strength and SNR on the channels that give you the most trouble? Has TWC checked signal quality at your drop?

Also check the Tuner, FDC and RDC values for the Tuning Adapter per this post (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7378554#post7378554) and the several posts before it.

[AtariAge]

Have you checked signal strength and SNR on the channels that give you the most trouble? Has TWC checked signal quality at your drop?
No, I haven't and no they haven't. The channels that give me trouble are ALL of the SDV channels. Which is quite a few of them, and stuff that I am often trying to record content on. Pretty much if I can't tune into one SDV channel (and going up/down doesn't work), it affects all of them. Sometimes rebooting the TA works, although that is a slow process, sometimes I have to actually reboot the TiVo.

TWC has not checked the signal quality since the installation, which was a royal pain in the neck. I think they were out here 10 times before they got everything working properly. They even brought extra people into my home one day to train them on Cablecard installation (nice). It's been frustrating from day one, to be honest, but at least it's mostly worked, even though the black screens when tuning to an SDV channel has always been an issue. But I wasn't having problems with recordings until just recently.

I haven't read through the 75 page SDV thread yet (*gasp*), or even completely through this thread to see what I should be looking at when I'm having problems. I'll gladly do some troubleshooting if I can get some pointers on what to look at when I'm experiencing issues (links to relevant threads/posts would be much appreciated).

Thanks,

..Al

[dlfl]

Also see the edit I just made to post #304.

[dlfl]

No, I haven't and no they haven't. The channels that give me trouble are ALL of the SDV channels. ......
Are you sure it's just the SDV channels? Here is a link to how to determine if a channel is SDV. (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7394726#post7394726)

[AtariAge]

Also check the Tuner, FDC and RDC values for the Tuning Adapter per this post and the several posts before it.

Thanks, I'll do that the next time I experience this issue on either of my boxes. This post pretty much sums up what I'm experiencing:

Arrgh, can't post links yet. So I'll quote,

I have Cisco TAs, but I haven't seen this issue. What does happen form time to time is the TA just quits properly handshaking with the TiVo. When this happens, I usually lose not only all SDV channels, but frequently all encrypted channels, as well. When it happens, the TA must be rebooted, and sometimes the TiVo also. I've had it happen at different times on all three TiVos.

..Al

[AtariAge]

Are you sure it's just the SDV channels? Here is a link to how to determine if a channel is SDV.
In the past I went through one time and checked and it was only SDV channels. However, I know that sometimes (perhaps most of the time) when this happens it affects many/most/all HD channels. I never have a problem with SD channels, but then, I mostly watch HD content. I'll pay more attention in the future using the information in the post you linked.

Thanks,

..Al

[dlfl]

In the past I went through one time and checked and it was only SDV channels. However, I know that sometimes (perhaps most of the time) when this happens it affects many/most/all HD channels. I never have a problem with SD channels, but then, I mostly watch HD content. I'll pay more attention in the future using the information in the post you linked.

Thanks,

..Al
On my TWC system there are a lot of SDV SD channels, so if this is a TA problem it seems puzzling it wouldn't affect SD channels too, although you may mainly watch non-SDV SD channels.

I would recommend checking the TA values before you have a problem so you have a reference point to see if any of them change with the problem. There are just the three values -- they aren't different for each channel.

I don't have the level of problems you do, but I have had problems and I attribute them all to the TA/SDV system. IMO this is definitely the weak link in the system, at least for TWC customers.

[AtariAge]

On my TWC system there are a lot of SDV SD channels, so if this is a TA problem it seems puzzling it wouldn't affect SD channels too, although you may mainly watch non-SDV SD channels.
It's quite possible that it's affecting the SD channels as well, but usually I'm in the 1500+ channels (all HD) when I experience this issue, and haven't spent a lot of time checking SD channels.

I would recommend checking the TA values before you have a problem so you have a reference point to see if any of them change with the problem. There are just the three values -- they aren't different for each channel.
Good point, I'll do that.

I don't have the level of problems you do, but I have had problems and I attribute them all to the TA/SDV system. IMO this is definitely the weak link in the system, at least for TWC customers.
It's pretty obvious that it's a TA issue and that all the kinks haven't been worked out of this system yet. I feel like a beta tester, without the benefits of being a beta tester.

..Al

[ferror]

At least once a week it seems I need to reboot one or both of my TiVos for all the channels to tune properly.

The last few weeks in particular have been worse as I've had numerous programs not record because the signal is not available.

I have been noticing the exact same issue here in Austin with my setup. I also have two TiVo HD's with Tuning Adapters. I have been using them since the TAs were first available here, and went through all the pains of initially getting them working. For several months, they did work fairly well. Over the last few weeks something has changed. For me, I notice that a recording is missed, and when I look at the log it says the video signal was unavailable. When I check Live TV, I find that I cannot tune any channels at all (grey screen) on both of my TiVo units. The problem always happens to both units at the same time, and I have to reboot them to get the tuners working again.

This just happened to me today during the mid afternoon. I know it was recording shows earlier in the day and then sometime around 3:00pm they both stopped working. Something is causing the tuners to get kicked off the system and then they don't reconnect. Major problem. I can no longer go away from my TiVo units with confidence that they will actually record shows that I've programmed. I've missed quite a few shows lately that were aired only once due to this issue.

It is quite possible it has something to do with all the new "features" Time Warner has been adding (most of them won't work on the TiVo anyway, so it's a big minus for us). My other pet peeve with them is their habit of running weekly emergency system tests which often interrupt late night recordings, and other non-critical warnings like Flash Flood watches and Amber Alerts for domestic issues that are resolved 15 minutes later. Sometimes these are repeated over and over, rendering the TiVo completely useless for actually watching anything until whoever has their finger on the button cuts it out.

I'm with you on wishing there were another alternative for getting TiVo service without putting up with Time Warner. It makes me angry to be treated like a second-class customer because I don't use their box.

[dwgsp]

I can't keep track of the number of times I've tried tuning to a channel only to see the brief "Channel Not Available" message pop up, leaving behind a black screen. Sometimes tuning up and down will bring the channel back, sometimes not. At least once a week it seems I need to reboot one or both of my TiVos for all the channels to tune properly.


I had been having a similar intermittent problem, until last week when the TA finally started continually blinking (eight blinks). Reboots, etc., did not help. I called TWC (Rochester, NY), and was immediately routed to an "HD Specialist" who theorized that the problem was caused by low cable signal strength. When I told him that I had been having an intermittent problem for as long as I have had the TA and that tuning up and down sometimes helped, he became even more convinced that it was a signal strength problem.

The TWC tech arrived the following day, and determined that low signal strength was indeed the problem. No big surprise here, because the coax line coming into my house was installed in the mid 1970's. He ran a new line, and the problem appears to be gone (so far).

The TWC HD Specialist also mentioned that the Tivo wireless adapter sometimes causes TA problems. I had not heard that before, and while my initial reaction is to be skeptical I thought I would mention it here in case someone who is experiencing problems wants to experiment.

[AtariAge]

I have been noticing the exact same issue here in Austin with my setup. I also have two TiVo HD's with Tuning Adapters. I have been using them since the TAs were first available here, and went through all the pains of initially getting them working. For several months, they did work fairly well. Over the last few weeks something has changed.
I wonder if this is affecting many people in Austin who are using Tuning Adapters. Unfortunately, only a very small percentage of such people likely read (much less post in) this forum so it's difficult to gauge from our standpoint.

It is quite possible it has something to do with all the new "features" Time Warner has been adding (most of them won't work on the TiVo anyway, so it's a big minus for us).
I wasn't aware that Time Warner was adding new features to their system. What are they adding? I have one of their DVRs setup in my office and it's atrocious. I basically use it for watching live TV and occasionally recording content on it (such as during the Tour de France). It pains me to use it otherwise. :D

My other pet peeve with them is their habit of running weekly emergency system tests which often interrupt late night recordings, and other non-critical warnings like Flash Flood watches and Amber Alerts for domestic issues that are resolved 15 minutes later. Sometimes these are repeated over and over, rendering the TiVo completely useless for actually watching anything until whoever has their finger on the button cuts it out.
This has to be, by far, the most infuriating thing I've ever seen on broadcast television. Supremely annoying if you are watching live television and these come on, much less repeat. Whoever mandated that these messages will interrupt whatever you're doing and you absolutely cannot do ANYTHING ELSE while the message SLOWLY SCROLLS ALONG should be shot. Repeatedly.

I'm with you on wishing there were another alternative for getting TiVo service without putting up with Time Warner. It makes me angry to be treated like a second-class customer because I don't use their box.
Yeah, TiVo Cablecard/TA users are obviously not a high priority for them. :(

..Al

[AtariAge]

I had been having a similar intermittent problem, until last week when the TA finally started continually blinking (eight blinks). Reboots, etc., did not help. I called TWC (Rochester, NY), and was immediately routed to an "HD Specialist" who theorized that the problem was caused by low cable signal strength. When I told him that I had been having an intermittent problem for as long as I have had the TA and that tuning up and down sometimes helped, he became even more convinced that it was a signal strength problem.

The TWC tech arrived the following day, and determined that low signal strength was indeed the problem. No big surprise here, because the coax line coming into my house was installed in the mid 1970's. He ran a new line, and the problem appears to be gone (so far).
The house I'm in is relatively new (only a few years old) and the install techs spent a fair amount of time making sure the signal strength from all my jacks was strong. I'm skeptical that the wiring is the source of my issues.

The TWC HD Specialist also mentioned that the Tivo wireless adapter sometimes causes TA problems. I had not heard that before, and while my initial reaction is to be skeptical I thought I would mention it here in case someone who is experiencing problems wants to experiment.
This is very interesting, I can't imagine how the TiVo wireless adapter would cause this sort of issue. I am using this adapter on both of my TiVos, and have been since my original installation. Since that aspect of my setup has not changed, this would be pretty low on my list of items to suspect. I'd love to know more about any correlation between the TiVo wireless adapter and TA problems.

..Al

[ferror]

I wonder if this is affecting many people in Austin who are using Tuning Adapters. Unfortunately, only a very small percentage of such people likely read (much less post in) this forum so it's difficult to gauge from our standpoint.

I think many others are likely having the same problem; it's too big of a coincidence to be random, but a third person reporting the same issue here would be helpful to be sure.

I hate dealing with support on these kind of issues, but I might call in and complain about this tomorrow. I probably won't get anywhere with them, but perhaps if enough people call in about it someone will notice.


I wasn't aware that Time Warner was adding new features to their system. What are they adding? I have one of their DVRs setup in my office and it's atrocious. I basically use it for watching live TV and occasionally recording content on it (such as during the Tour de France). It pains me to use it otherwise. :D

I'm referring to their new twists with on-demand service, such as "Start Over." This allows you to replay an in-progress show from the beginning. They are doing it now on some channels and are planning to expand it to more channels. They are also eventually planning on a service ("Go Back") that allows replaying anything that aired in the last 2 days. All this works via their video on demand mechanism, and is not available with cablecards.

The changes probably mean new firmware updates for their boxes, shuffling bandwidth around to squeeze in more video on demand, etc. This is probably causing an above average amount of "messing around" with the system by engineers throughout the day as they test features. Just a guess though.


This has to be, by far, the most infuriating thing I've ever seen on broadcast television. Supremely annoying if you are watching live television and these come on, much less repeat. Whoever mandated that these messages will interrupt whatever you're doing and you absolutely cannot do ANYTHING ELSE while the message SLOWLY SCROLLS ALONG should be shot. Repeatedly.

Yes, almost any other implementation of this feature would be less irritating. How about popping up a message over the screen with the entire text of the message? When you press OK it gets out of your way. The current implementation seems to serve only one purpose -- to induce rage in the person reading the message so they want to destroy their TV. I'm not sure that person is going to be very helpful in any kind of emergency.

[ferror]

This is very interesting, I can't imagine how the TiVo wireless adapter would cause this sort of issue. I am using this adapter on both of my TiVos, and have been since my original installation. Since that aspect of my setup has not changed, this would be pretty low on my list of items to suspect. I'd love to know more about any correlation between the TiVo wireless adapter and TA problems.

I don't have any wireless network adapters in my setup and still have the same issue.

[cornholington]

I've been running the TA and an HD TiVo for about a month.

The first install tech showed up without the TA, even though it was on the work order. We sent him packing.

Second tech brought the TA, but had a hard time getting it on the network. He bailed with the light still blinking.

After following the absurd, hobby kit-style directions (wait until light stops blinking, and only then plug in USB), I got everything working on my own.

Initially, I had a lot of trouble with the TA rebooting. I'd had all the troubles described in this thread and others: "Tuning Adapter now connected" causing interrupted recordings, playback, etc. I'd also had the TA reboot several times, only to fail to reconnect properly, forcing me to repeat the little reboot dance.

When reaching around the box to perform this dance (unplug USB and power, wait several seconds, re-attach power, wait for solid light, re-attach USB), I noticed this silly little box gets ridiculously hot. I'm sure some of this is due it's placement directly on top of my TiVo, but seriously.

My suspicion was that the high temperatures were causing the reboots (for one reason or another), so I set about trying to improve the TA's ventilation. I stuck some oversized rubber leg tips (maybe an inch high) from Ace Hardware to the bottom with some double-sided tape.

I've been running this "solution" for a couple of weeks now. It seems to have fixed the reboot issue, though I could just be getting lucky: my installation and early problems seem to have coincided with some network flakiness on TWCSD that might also have caused reboots.

The only issue I have now is some random appearance of pixelation on some HD channels. It hasn't happened to me tonight during the time I've been reading this monster thread, so I haven't been able to narrow down whether the channels in question are SDV or not, what frequencies they are, or collect S/N or signal strength readings for the affected channels. I am running my signal through the TA (wall to TA, TA to TiVo) with whatever cable the tech gave me, so I still have a lot of things to try..

[dlfl]

..........The only issue I have now is some random appearance of pixelation on some HD channels. It hasn't happened to me tonight during the time I've been reading this monster thread, so I haven't been able to narrow down whether the channels in question are SDV or not, what frequencies they are, or collect S/N or signal strength readings for the affected channels. I am running my signal through the TA (wall to TA, TA to TiVo) with whatever cable the tech gave me, so I still have a lot of things to try..
Yeah, TA's and TWC are a fun combo all right!

I have the same random appearance of pixelation, and rarely freezes, on some channels, actually both HD and SD and mostly the SDV ones. It's not bad enough to be worth any more hassle trying to fix.

You should check signal strengths and SNR, and see this post (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7548644#post7548644)for how to determine if a channel is SDV and also how to check three signal strength numbers for your TA.

[Crrink]

I think many others are likely having the same problem; it's too big of a coincidence to be random, but a third person reporting the same issue here would be helpful to be sure.
...snip...

You can count me as the third.
Exactly what you described in your earlier post has happened to us twice in the last couple of weeks, today being the most recent event (well, last night, actually, but we didn't notice until today when the show we wanted to watch was nowhere to be found even though we saw the recording indicator in the NP List last night.)

Getting a single cable card and tuning adapter working was such a pain the first time that when I bought my second HD TiVo I decided to use it OTA only (I live down at the SW end of Circle C and can get a clean signal for all the broadcast stations with a good tabletop antenna.)
Rather than call and waste an hour on the phone with TWC customer care I'm planning to make a habit out of checking LiveTV whenever I'm done watching TV for the day. That should allow me to catch this problem the majority of the time...I think :)

Good luck to you if you do call to complain.

[AtariAge]

Went to watch Mythbusters tonight on the TiVo in my bedroom, and of course it didn't record it. Tried tuning to 1618 (Discovery HD) and just get the "Channel Not Available" message for a split second and a black screen. Other HD channels are the same.

I went to look at the Tuning Adapter diagnostics screen to look at the Tuner, RDC and FDC numbers, but was told that the diagnostics are not available. I rebooted the TA, but nothing changed. I'm rebooting the TiVo.

I have little faith that calling TWC will result in this issue being resolved. If someone does, through some miracle, actually get a resolution to this I'd love to hear it. Every day that goes by where my recordings are missing and/or I have to reboot my TiVo to watch TV is one day closer to my calling DIRECTV.

The fact that rebooting the TiVo will (temporarily) fix this issue really makes me wonder if TiVo is somewhat culpable.

..Al

[AtariAge]

Okay, now that my TiVo has rebooted, I can get into the TA Diagnostics. Here are the values for Tuner, FDC and RDC:

Tuner: -6 dBmV
FDC: -2 dBmV
RDC: 44 dbMv

..Al

[dlfl]

Okay, now that my TiVo has rebooted, I can get into the TA Diagnostics. Here are the values for Tuner, FDC and RDC:

Tuner: -6 dBmV
FDC: -2 dBmV
RDC: 44 dbMv

..Al
As you should have seen in the posts I linked, these are acceptable values AFAIK. Unfortunately it looks like you may not be able to read these values when things are "bad". However they are important, since they are OK during normal times. If they were out of range that would be suspicious.

What was the TA light doing when you discovered the latest problem?

When you rebooted the TA, did you also disconnect then re-connect the USB to TiVo? This might save you having to reboot the TiVo. After you reboot the TA, wait until the TA light is either solid or blinking the 6-blink-pause sequence before reconnecting the USB.

Whenever you're done trying things I think it would be worth a call to TiVo support. Hopefully they will get you connected to TWC's National Cable Card Support people, who are your best shot at actually knowing what is going on. This is the way it worked for me when my TA lost provisioning.

[AtariAge]

As you should have seen in the posts I linked, these are acceptable values AFAIK. Unfortunately it looks like you may not be able to read these values when things are "bad". However they are important, since they are OK during normal times. If they were out of range that would be suspicious.
Good to know those are "normal" values, thanks. The next time this happens on either of my boxes I'll try going into the TA diagnostics screen again to see if I'm able to access it. The fact that I wasn't able to last night certainly suggest that TiVo has lost communication with the TA for some reason.

What was the TA light doing when you discovered the latest problem?
It was solid green.

When you rebooted the TA, did you also disconnect then re-connect the USB to TiVo? This might save you having to reboot the TiVo. After you reboot the TA, wait until the TA light is either solid or blinking the 6-blink-pause sequence before reconnecting the USB.
The first thing I tried was unplugging the USB and plugging it back in. This did nothing. I then rebooted the TA, but did not try disconnecting and reconnecting the USB cable after it was finished booting. Next time I will try that and see if it saves me having to reboot the TiVo.

Whenever you're done trying things I think it would be worth a call to TiVo support. Hopefully they will get you connected to TWC's National Cable Card Support people, who are your best shot at actually knowing what is going on. This is the way it worked for me when my TA lost provisioning.
I believe I've become quite cynical towards support for technical issues of this nature, but I am willing to give TiVo support at least one call to see what they can do. :)

Thanks,

..Al

[Thistledown]

This problem is infuriating. I have the STA1520 on two Tivo's (one an S3 and one an HD). They both exhibit the same problem -- random locking of the STA1520. When the device locks, I can't tune any HD channels, and they can't be powered off with the button on the front. The way I resolve the problem is to pull the plug on the STA1520, and then reboot the Tivo. Perhaps rebooting the Tivo alone fixes this problem, but I haven't tried that yet. I do know that only power cycling the STA1520 doesn't fix the problem, but it does fix the locking of the tuning adapter such that the power button works.

I love the Tivo interface, but I'm seriously considering switching to another provider such as DirecTV. I shouldn't have to micromanage my DVR. I never had to in the past.

[AtariAge]

This problem is infuriating. I have the STA1520 on two Tivo's (one an S3 and one an HD). They both exhibit the same problem -- random locking of the STA1520. When the device locks, I can't tune any HD channels, and they can't be powered off with the button on the front. The way I resolve the problem is to pull the plug on the STA1520, and then reboot the Tivo. Perhaps rebooting the Tivo alone fixes this problem, but I haven't tried that yet. I do know that only power cycling the STA1520 doesn't fix the problem, but it does fix the locking of the tuning adapter such that the power button works.
Well, you are now the fourth person from Austin chiming in with this issue, so I think that's enough data to demonstrate that there is something awry going on.

I love the Tivo interface, but I'm seriously considering switching to another provider such as DirecTV. I shouldn't have to micromanage my DVR. I never had to in the past.
I agree--I'm a very technical person, but as you said, having to micromanage my DVR is the last thing I really want to have to worry about. When I sit down at the end of a long day to watch some television (which I don't do a heck of a lot of), I want whatever programs I recorded to be ready to go. Instead of relaxing recently I've just been getting frustrated.

..Al

[dlfl]

This problem is infuriating. I have the STA1520 on two Tivo's (one an S3 and one an HD). They both exhibit the same problem -- random locking of the STA1520. When the device locks, I can't tune any HD channels, and they can't be powered off with the button on the front. The way I resolve the problem is to pull the plug on the STA1520, and then reboot the Tivo. Perhaps rebooting the Tivo alone fixes this problem, but I haven't tried that yet. I do know that only power cycling the STA1520 doesn't fix the problem, but it does fix the locking of the tuning adapter such that the power button works.

I love the Tivo interface, but I'm seriously considering switching to another provider such as DirecTV. I shouldn't have to micromanage my DVR. I never had to in the past.
You might avoid having to reboot the TiVo by unplugging the USB cable before you reboot the TA then wait for a solid green light or the 6-blink-pause sequence before connecting the USB.

Also be sure you're TA is getting some ventilation.

Have to agree there's a pattern in Austin.

[fcflint]

I am another TWC user in Austin with two HD Tivos with TAs who lost all ability to watch or record any channel this week. Rebooting the systems solved the problem, but I called in anyway to complain. They gave me a refund on my HD Tier bill for 90 days and transferred me to support who promptly told me this was a common problem with TAs. The inference made was that I should just accept it and shut up.

I hate this crap.

In my case, I discovered there was a problem after being away for a couple of days and all my scheduled recordings were either blank or not present. it kinda defeats the purpose of having a DVR if you have to watch live TV several times a day to ensure they are working properly, especially if you are away from home quite a bit.

[dlfl]

I am another TWC user in Austin with two HD Tivos with TAs who lost all ability to watch or record any channel this week. Rebooting the systems solved the problem, but I called in anyway to complain. They gave me a refund on my HD Tier bill for 90 days and transferred me to support who promptly told me this was a common problem with TAs. The inference made was that I should just accept it and shut up.

I hate this crap.
...........
You've got to realize TiVo digital subscribers are not part of TWC's business plan! They would be happy if we just vanished, or even better, switched to their DVR's.

Won't it be satisfying whenever you get away from TWC ?

[fcflint]

You've got to realize TiVo digital subscribers are not part of TWC's business plan! They would be happy if we just vanished, or even better, switched to their DVR's.

Won't it be satisfying whenever you get away from TWC ?

YES!

I have a Home Theater PC wit four HD Tuner cards in it, and it works perfectly day after day, year after year.

I don't blame my Tivo for these problems, but I am growing to hate TWC more every day.

[AtariAge]

I am another TWC user in Austin with two HD Tivos with TAs who lost all ability to watch or record any channel this week. Rebooting the systems solved the problem, but I called in anyway to complain. They gave me a refund on my HD Tier bill for 90 days and transferred me to support who promptly told me this was a common problem with TAs. The inference made was that I should just accept it and shut up.
Seriously? If I call TWC and I get this same response, my next phone call will be to DIRECTV and my next call to TWC will be to cancel my television service. I sure hope new DIRECTV TiVo boxes are still coming out next year.

..Al

[fcflint]

Seriously? If I call TWC and I get this same response, my next phone call will be to DIRECTV and my next call to TWC will be to cancel my television service. I sure hope new DIRECTV TiVo boxes are still coming out next year.

..Al

All of my experience with DIRECTV is that their HD signals look terrible - and I have many friends and family members with DIRECTV. I don't need low quality TV, I'd rather read a book.

[AtariAge]

All of my experience with DIRECTV is that their HD signals look terrible - and I have many friends and family members with DIRECTV. I don't need low quality TV, I'd rather read a book.

I haven't looked at DIRECTV in a long time. I will need to do so before I make any decision to switch. PQ isn't that great with Time Warner either. U-Verse is another option for me, but not sure I want to go down that road. Had that early in the year before I moved to my current residence and I wasn't happy with their HD picture quality.

..Al

[macwhizROC]

I stopped in the Port Ewen, NY office again today (10/21), and they're rationing out the TA's, just one to a customer until they get enough in, even though they've already started moving some premium channels to SDV (and have a massive addition to their HD lineup spread through the next month).
Perry

Having read about problems getting TAs in the Hudson Valley, I called TWC last week and asked if they had any TAs in the Port Ewen office that I could pick up on the weekend. They called the Port Ewen office and they gladly held one for me.

So, try calling in and asking nicely before you make the trip :)

[AtariAge]

Got home a few minutes ago to find that the TiVo HD in my living room was completely locked up. Black screen, not responding to input, and not even displaying the yellow LED when pressing a key on the remote. The Tuning Adapter was blinking, and I power cycled it.

I rebooted the TiVo and after it finished booting I hit the "Live TV" buton. The menu went away (but the background video continued playing) but the TiVo locked up again. :rolleyes: After booting the TiVo a second time it seems to have worked (it's acquiring guide data now).

Patience quickly dwindling. Haven't even checked the TiVo upstairs yet.

..Al

[AtariAge]

Finally went upstairs to look at the TiVo in my bedroom, and it also was completely locked up. Both recording LEDs were active, but the TiVo was not outputting a video signal and not responding to the remote (no yellow LED when pressing buttons on the remote). The TA light was solid green. Rebooting now.

This is getting quite ridiculous. I am sad. :(

..Al

[Max Camber]

Add me to the list of people having trouble with TWC in Austin, TX (well, Cedar Park)

TiVo HD + Cisco STA1520 tuning adapter

Symptoms:
- Loss of SDV channels
- TA light is solid green
- TA does not respond to power button
- Tivo is unable to access TA diagnostics screen

Tivo support has some sort of tech bulletin regarding "corrupted packets" locking up the Cisco tuning adapters but is unable to give me any info related to firmware revisions or possible solutions.

I have a tech coming back today to swap out the TA but it sounds like that isn't going to do much. I'll do my best to get this escalated ASAP.

The above symptoms are 100% TA related, but I'm also dealing with a hot signal issue (according to Tivo support). The Tivo is always pegged at 100% signal strength with a SNR of 38-40 dB. Tivo support suggested that I should target 80-85% and 32-35 dB. The TWC tech said that there was no such thing as too much signal and the line test looked good. I've tried attenuators but they drop the high frequency channels (700 MHZ+) below 50% strength and 29 dB long before bringing the low frequency channels to the suggested levels. Not sure if it is related, but it probably isn't helping the situation at all.

[AtariAge]

Add me to the list of people having trouble with TWC in Austin, TX (well, Cedar Park)
I'm in Round Rock, for what it's worth. Thanks for your additional information. I hope there is ultimately a solution to this problem, and something relatively soon.

..Al

[dlfl]

........I'm also dealing with a hot signal issue (according to Tivo support). The Tivo is always pegged at 100% signal strength with a SNR of 38-40 dB. Tivo support suggested that I should target 80-85% and 32-35 dB. The TWC tech said that there was no such thing as too much signal and the line test looked good. I've tried attenuators but they drop the high frequency channels (700 MHZ+) below 50% strength and 29 dB long before bringing the low frequency channels to the suggested levels. Not sure if it is related, but it probably isn't helping the situation at all.
TiVo support documents say 80-99 is the recommended range and as low as 65 is OK for the HD. I don't believe the 65. I think you need 80 or above.

TiVo is right that you can have too much signal for an HD tuner -- TWC is wrong.

I have variations across the channels like you, so when I get the lowest signals around 80 about a third of my signals are 100 (or above -- you don't know from the reading). I know they are only slightly above 100 because of what they were before I removed an attenuator. I seem to get by with them slightly above 100, I'm guessing 105 or less. Of course I do get occasional pixelation and freezing on some channels. I don't know if that's worst on the channels that are above 100.

TWC can measure signal strengths but I've heard they only do it at a few different frequencies. I don't know if they can do anything to make them more uniform across all channels.

Unless your cabling is new, it may pay to examine all cables, connectors and splitters that you can reach and replace any that might be old. I see posts where people say the cable co replaced splitters but I don't know if they did it for free or not. I think I'm responsible for the cabling inside my house but maybe not.

[SCSIRAID]

Rather than looking at the signal levels, I would be looking at the RS Corrected and Uncorrected values. A lot of Uncorrected's could indicated a signal issue. If signal level is 100 but Uncorrected's hold at zero then all is well. Note that every time you change channels, the RS Statistics clear to zero. You can look at time since tune start to see how long of a period the RS stats 'covers'. My signal strengths run right at 100 or just a little under on my S3 and I have no problems (except for SDV channels but that is a different problem).

[woodburger]

Also in Austin on TW. TA has dropped channels lately. ("Channel unavailable") A reboot restores. Now TiVo (2 cable cards) is also crapping out - i.e.: needs reboot. Last night TiVo refused any remote control, just came up black screen. Unplugging and replugging brought it back.

I don't know where to start. I sure don't trust that shows will be recorded.

[Max Camber]

If signal level is 100 but Uncorrected's hold at zero then all is well.

The RS Corrected/Uncorrected values do not change even though my signal must be well above 100% on the lower frequency channels and I routinely get audio drops, frozen picture, and macro-blocking. I can generate errors by disconnecting or heavily attenuating the signal so I know the counters are still working.

I'm posting my numbers here in case they turn out to be relevant to the tuning adapter issue, but for now I'm assuming it is a separate problem.

117 MHZ 345 MHz 585 MHz 771 MHZ
Attenuator Str SNR Str SNR Str SNR Str SNR

None 100 39 100 38 100 38 100 36
3 dB 100 38 100 38 100 37 81 34
6 dB 100 38 100 37 100 36 62 32
6+3 dB 100 37 93 35 87 35 44 29
10 dB 100 37 93 35 87 34 44 29
10+3 dB 87 35 75 33 68 32 - -
10+6 dB 75 33 56 31 45 29 - -

[SCSIRAID]

The RS Corrected/Uncorrected values do not change even though my signal must be well above 100% on the lower frequency channels and I routinely get audio drops, frozen picture, and macro-blocking. I can generate errors by disconnecting or heavily attenuating the signal so I know the counters are still working.

I'm posting my numbers here in case they turn out to be relevant to the tuning adapter issue, but for now I'm assuming it is a separate problem.

117 MHZ 345 MHz 585 MHz 771 MHZ
Attenuator Str SNR Str SNR Str SNR Str SNR

None 100 39 100 38 100 38 100 36
3 dB 100 38 100 38 100 37 81 34
6 dB 100 38 100 37 100 36 62 32
6+3 dB 100 37 93 35 87 35 44 29
10 dB 100 37 93 35 87 34 44 29
10+3 dB 87 35 75 33 68 32 - -
10+6 dB 75 33 56 31 45 29 - -


If you are getting breakups/pixelations with RS Uncorrected remaining zero then the problem is coming from the provider or there is something wrong with the mpeg TWC is generating or your TiVo is busted (HDD possibly). Are these problems on linear channels or just SDV channels?

[Max Camber]

If you are getting breakups/pixelations with RS Uncorrected remaining zero then the problem is coming from the provider or there is something wrong with the mpeg TWC is generating or your TiVo is busted (HDD possibly). Are these problems on linear channels or just SDV channels?

Looks like just the SDV channels so far. I noticed some comments in the Pixelation Troubleshooting thread (starting at #1190) about not seeing RS errors on SDV channels and wondering if that might apply.

I feel like I'm trying to troubleshoot multiple independent issues but all I get from TiVo and TWC is a lot of useless finger pointing.

[Max Camber]

Not sure whether I should be posting here or in Pixelation Troubleshooting, but it seems like the issue is related to TWC SDV.

I just had my tuning adapter swapped out for a new (fresh from the box) unit and within a few minutes I started seeing pixelation on some of the HD SDV channels. My understanding is that these numbers are right in the sweet spot for the TiVo:

Channel: 1615 TLCHD (729 MHz)
Signal Strength: 93
SNR: 35 dB
RS Uncorrected: 0
RS Corrected: 0

At this point I think the TiVo tech support analysis of "too much signal" was wrong and this is actually an encoding/decoding problem as suggested by SCSIRAID in the SDV thread.

[dlfl]

Not sure whether I should be posting here or in Pixelation Troubleshooting, but it seems like the issue is related to TWC SDV.

I just had my tuning adapter swapped out for a new (fresh from the box) unit and within a few minutes I started seeing pixelation on some of the HD SDV channels. My understanding is that these numbers are right in the sweet spot for the TiVo:

Channel: 1615 TLCHD (729 MHz)
Signal Strength: 93
SNR: 35 dB
RS Uncorrected: 0
RS Corrected: 0

At this point I think the TiVo tech support analysis of "too much signal" was wrong and this is actually an encoding/decoding problem as suggested by SCSIRAID in the SDV thread.
If you've been reading this thread you know there has been a flurry of TA problems in the Austin area -- however the symptoms are much worse than just some pixelation.

I agree with your analysis, but just to be thorough, how about your cabling, connectors and splitters? Are they all relatively new and in good condition? Also, a long shot, the short cable that comes in the new TA box used to be notoriously bad. Did the installer replace it with one he/she made up?

I get occasional pixelation and even freezes on some of my channels and my numbers are like yours. The only possible explanation I know of is just encoding parameters that the TiVo decoders can't handle, but which TWC's STB and DVR decoders do handle. I guess it's not impossible my problems could be cable/connector/splitter related. The house is 10 years old so I have just been assuming they should be OK. Frankly I'm afraid to have TWC mess with it. They might make things, including my internet, worse!

[InvaderZim]

Just to chime in, I have two month-old TIVO-HDXL units with TAs, TWCable in Austin. Both hung up last night about an hour apart -- one with the black screen on all channels (not just switched), the second with a frozen screen. Rebooting both TIVO fixed the problem but the one with a black screen hadn't recorded anything over the previous 18 hours.

Switched video went out earlier this week. I've already had TW out twice before, and each time it was resolved with them rebooting (I tried that, didn't fix it), then calling their support line and sending the adapter EMMs. This time, I followed the procedure described elsewhere in TivoCommunity -- unplug power and USB from the TA, count to 60, plug in power, wait for the light to go solid the second time, plug in USB. That fixed the switched channels on both TIVOs immediately -- no TIVO reboot required.

My signal strength is 87 on both TIVOs. It was 95 until the last tech messed with some stuff outside the house to bring the levels down a bit.

So I hope TWAustin figures out whatever is hanging the TAs.

[Max Camber]

If you've been reading this thread you know there has been a flurry of TA problems in the Austin area -- however the symptoms are much worse than just some pixelation.

I agree with your analysis, but just to be thorough, how about your cabling, connectors and splitters? Are they all relatively new and in good condition? Also, a long shot, the short cable that comes in the new TA box used to be notoriously bad. Did the installer replace it with one he/she made up?

I get occasional pixelation and even freezes on some of my channels and my numbers are like yours. The only possible explanation I know of is just encoding parameters that the TiVo decoders can't handle, but which TWC's STB and DVR decoders do handle. I guess it's not impossible my problems could be cable/connector/splitter related. The house is 10 years old so I have just been assuming they should be OK. Frankly I'm afraid to have TWC mess with it. They might make things, including my internet, worse!

I also have the problem with the TA locking up. Mine has never caused issues with the TiVo itself, but obviously I do lose all the SDV channels. The replacement TA is still running fine but it's only been about 6 hours.

I gutted the old coax and replaced it with quad shielded RG6 using compression fittings. I have a direct feed from outside into my patch panel and a single 2-way splitter feeding the TiVo and one other TV so there isn't much to go wrong. I don't have a cable modem or TW phone service so my setup is about as pristine as you can get for testing.

I'm not sure what else I can do on the TA locking up issue other than log the times when it happens. With the pixelation issue I can at least continue to gather data and hopefully get it into the right hands at some point.

[Max Camber]

As far as I can tell, the SDV channels range from 705 MHz to 747 MHz in 6 MHz increments. Last night I sat and watched a channel at each frequency until I saw pixelation and then moved to the next frequency. Every SDV frequency showed some pixelation, typically within the first 10 minutes. Signal levels were always within the TiVo recommended range and RS errors stayed at zero in all cases.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2484/4061587033_759c501e38_m.jpg
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/alundeby/4061587033/)
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2424/4061585119_7942abaeea_m.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/alundeby/4061585119/)

[SCSIRAID]

As far as I can tell, the SDV channels range from 705 MHz to 747 MHz in 6 MHz increments. Last night I sat and watched a channel at each frequency until I saw pixelation and then moved to the next frequency. Every SDV frequency showed some pixelation, typically within the first 10 minutes. Signal levels were always within the TiVo recommended range and RS errors stayed at zero in all cases.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2484/4061587033_759c501e38_m.jpg
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/alundeby/4061587033/)
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2424/4061585119_7942abaeea_m.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/alundeby/4061585119/)

Is it ONLY the SDV channels that have the problem? That is the problem we have been chasing here in Raleigh. TWC/Cisco/Tivo are involved. The theory is that it is an MPEG Incompatibility between the Cisco rate shaper and TiVo.

[Max Camber]

Is it ONLY the SDV channels that have the problem? That is the problem we have been chasing here in Raleigh. TWC/Cisco/Tivo are involved. The theory is that it is an MPEG Incompatibility between the Cisco rate shaper and TiVo.

Yes, I believe it is limited to the SDV channels only. Sorry I forgot to include that in my last post. I can't confirm it 100% but I've watched several hours of HD on broadcast channels with no issues today. I'm logging everything at this point (times, channels, frequencies, signal levels) so I'll post an update if I see it on anything other than SDV. I'm happy to pass along any of my info if it will help them narrow down the problem.

[texaslabrat]

Count me in as another Austin TA-locking-up victim. I noticed that we are still running .0701 firmware. I tried calling customer support to inquire about a firmware upgrade. They were clueless as expected, and suggest that I go to the service center and ask there. Um, yeah..I'm going to stand in line for 2 hours just to ask a question that the tech support people should know and be able to tell me over the phone. I'll try again during the week...the weekend crew seems to be made up of just warm bodies to answer phones and I've had pretty good luck talking to the techs in the late evenings during the week. /crosses fingers.

But in the mean time, it really seems to be a memory leak issue in the way it behaves...it is fine for stretches at a time and then locks up. So, to mitigate the issue for now, I've put the tivo and the TA on a separate power strip with a power switch. Once or twice a week I power cycle both of them as I'm going to bed and that seems to keep the problem at bay (for me, at least).

[spassmeister]

While the number of us in San Diego who have posted with the TWC/TA issue is fewer than in Austin, the similarity is uncanny (at least with my experience here): something changed in the past 6-8 weeks. I've had my TAs (two of them) since they were available earlier this year. Never had these issues. Recently the issue I saw in San Diego appeared in Austin as well, also with TWC. I too have learned that a weekly reboot has become necessary. Since we're the red-headed step children of customers with our TiVos and cable cards, only a threat of litigation will induce TWC to actually address the issue with somebody capable of solving it. At this point...or maybe endless truck rolls by everybody on the thread.

[Max Camber]

Truck roll #3 tomorrow. It's been upgraded to "unresolved problem" status so I'm slowly working my way up the chain. My goal is to get this to the point where you can talk to tech support and say "I have a TiVo, a Cisco tuning adapter, and am experiencing problem X" so that they stop treating this like a brand new problem each time someone calls in.

[txporter]

I will add my name to the list of folks with TA issues in Austin. I actually started having Tivo lockups a couple of months back. I had a lot of difficulty getting the adapters to initialize at all (one did eventually, the other never did). I began to have issues with being unable to tune any channel as others have. I got fed up. Both of my TAs are now sitting unattached to my TivoHDs. I hope that it does get fixed, but I would rather have no SDV channels than have random times with NO channels recording.

[Max Camber]

Nothing to report on the tuning adapter front at this time. Mine is still running fine but as soon as it locks up I will put in another call.

As for pixelation issues, the TWC tech set up one of their DVRs and we both recorded the same channel (1624 SCIHD) until there was a noticeable glitch on the TiVo. There was no matching glitch on the TWC DVR and neither unit showed any corrected/uncorrected blocks. I know this isn't surprising at all, but it helps rule out a few more things and still fits with the Cisco rate shaper theory.

[SCSIRAID]

Nothing to report on the tuning adapter front at this time. Mine is still running fine but as soon as it locks up I will put in another call.

As for pixelation issues, the TWC tech set up one of their DVRs and we both recorded the same channel (1624 SCIHD) until there was a noticeable glitch on the TiVo. There was no matching glitch on the TWC DVR and neither unit showed any corrected/uncorrected blocks. I know this isn't surprising at all, but it helps rule out a few more things and still fits with the Cisco rate shaper theory.

Yup... that is exactly what happens here. I will have some mpeg soon captured from the shaper that corrosponds with the glitches seen on TiVo. It will be interesting if the glitch occurs when i TTG it to TiVo.

[dlfl]

I have a closely related question:

Is it possible for SDV channel streams that originate at the same head end to arrive at two different drops (perhaps on different nodes) with differences in mpeg2 encoding? Or, in other words, can they get re-encoded at some point downstream of the head end? (I've heard the term "QAM Edge" used.)

I have occasional pixelation and some freezes on some channels, mostly SDV, maybe all. My RS error counts are always very low, almost always zeros. As I undertand it this means my TiVo is getting exactly the distributed digital signal to decode, correct? BTW there are many HD and SD stations on which I don't get any such glitches, and both my tuners read the same numbers for any given station. I've ruled out hard drive problems based on this and other factors (available upon request).

So here's an example that leads to my question:
My system just added an SDV HD channel (MNBCHD). I get frequent pixelation and freezes. I've determined that another TiVo user located about ten miles from me on the same cable system (but probably not on the same node) is NOT getting these problems -- and he watched for 45 minutes.
Again Signal Strrength, SNR, error counts are all good.

I can't imagine any explanation for this other than the other person is actually being fed a different signal than I am. (????)

[SCSIRAID]

I have a closely related question:

Is it possible for SDV channel streams that originate at the same head end to arrive at two different drops (perhaps on different nodes) with differences in mpeg2 encoding? Or, in other words, can they get re-encoded at some point downstream of the head end? (I've heard the term "QAM Edge" used.)

I have occasional pixelation and some freezes on some channels, mostly SDV, maybe all. My RS error counts are always very low, almost always zeros. As I undertand it this means my TiVo is getting exactly the distributed digital signal to decode, correct? BTW there are many HD and SD stations on which I don't get any such glitches, and both my tuners read the same numbers for any given station. I've ruled out hard drive problems based on this and other factors (available upon request).

So here's an example that leads to my question:
My system just added an SDV HD channel (MNBCHD). I get frequent pixelation and freezes. I've determined that another TiVo user located about ten miles from me on the same cable system (but probably not on the same node) is NOT getting these problems -- and he watched for 45 minutes.
Again Signal Strrength, SNR, error counts are all good.

I can't imagine any explanation for this other than the other person is actually being fed a different signal than I am. (????)

I would expect the answer to be 'no' but it could depend on the layout of the system. My understanding of our system here in Raleigh is that the rate shaping is done at the head end and then distributed to the hubs. The Edge QAM's in the hubs should all receive the same rate shaped source and then assemble the requested streams into transport streams for modulating onto a QAM carrier and shipping to the individual nodes that the particular Edge QAM serves.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/video/ps9159/ps9195/ps9258/product_data_sheet0900aecd806cec44.pdf

[dlfl]

I would expect the answer to be 'no' but it could depend on the layout of the system. My understanding of our system here in Raleigh is that the rate shaping is done at the head end and then distributed to the hubs. The Edge QAM's in the hubs should all receive the same rate shaped source and then assemble the requested streams into transport streams for modulating onto a QAM carrier and shipping to the individual nodes that the particular Edge QAM serves.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/video/ps9159/ps9195/ps9258/product_data_sheet0900aecd806cec44.pdf
What could be other explanations? Could it be decryption errors, perhaps caused by a bad CableCARD? Wouldn't that show up on all encrypted channels? If one of the mpeg2 decoders is defective, it seems unlikely it would be just as bad on both tuners, and also not so bad or not bad at all on other channels. What else could do it?

[SCSIRAID]

What could be other explanations? Could it be decryption errors, perhaps caused by a bad CableCARD? Wouldn't that show up on all encrypted channels? If one of the mpeg2 decoders is defective, it seems unlikely it would be just as bad on both tuners, and also not so bad or not bad at all on other channels. What else could do it?

The Edge QAM could be doing something wierd to the Transport Stream it is creating based on what mix of streams is on the QAM. That will be different between service groups and could lead to different behavior across service groups. Ive had my suspicious about this all along. TWC believes otherwise so we are trying to confirm/deny MPEG encoder first.

[texaslabrat]

Not sure whether I should be posting here or in Pixelation Troubleshooting, but it seems like the issue is related to TWC SDV.

I just had my tuning adapter swapped out for a new (fresh from the box) unit and within a few minutes I started seeing pixelation on some of the HD SDV channels. My understanding is that these numbers are right in the sweet spot for the TiVo:

Channel: 1615 TLCHD (729 MHz)
Signal Strength: 93
SNR: 35 dB
RS Uncorrected: 0
RS Corrected: 0

At this point I think the TiVo tech support analysis of "too much signal" was wrong and this is actually an encoding/decoding problem as suggested by SCSIRAID in the SDV thread.

What was the signal strength on the OTHER tuner at the time? Reason I ask is that I noticed something very interesting the other night. I was trying to replicate "on demand" the SDV "black screen until tune up and back down" issue. I didnt' have much luck (of course...watched pot never boils and all that) until I had inadvertently left a tuner on ESPN-HD after tuning to it to compare signal metrics with SDV channels. Turns out that ESPN-HD is a VERY high-strength channel in my house (dunno if it's universal...), and after leaving that tuner on ESPN-HD, I was able to cause the SDV failure about every 3rd channel change. Even after a 6dB pad was installed between the TA and the Tivo, the ESPN-HD signal strength was still reading 100%. And still, the SDV channel changing issues remained (but reduced a bit in frequency to maybe one in 10 channel change attempts). Swapped the 6dB pad for a 12dB pad...ESPN-HD finally dropped below 100% (runs about 93% or so), and I haven't seen a single SDV channel change issue since (though a few other channels now drop out due to low signal strength but luckily I never watch them..and I can always play around with the attenuation amount to find the optimal spot later if this pans out). So, it seems to be an issue of signal strength overall that the tuners are dealing with, and not necessarily just the one that you are trying to watch at that moment.

It's only been 2 days, so it's a bit short on the sample size (I've given my wife marching orders to record the time and channels tuned to if she runs into the issue during the day)...but I have to say that I'm encouraged. I'm hoping that this will also help the TA-locking-up thing as well. It may very well be that the overly-hot signal is causing the Tivo to do all sorts of weird things...possibly even crashing the TA via spurious USB commands. Just a theory, but I thought I'd pass along my prelimary findings in case someone might find them useful. I'll post a followup in a few days.

[Effinay]

I had the same issue last Tuesday with my TA. After calling my local office, they actually GAVE me the direct number to call for the "Tru 2-Way Specialists" (which I found out later that was a no-no) to fix my blinking TA. I spoke with a guy named Mike, who promptly sent some codes to my TA. I wa at work at the time, so I didn't know if that fixed the problem until later that night.
Well, it didn't fix it. So I called back a couple days later (the ticket was still open) and actually talked to the same guy. He remembered my call and stated I was the first person to call about this issue. I guess nearly everyone with a TA started having issues last week or soon after... at least in the SW Ohio area. He was surprised that sending the signals to my TA didn't fix it the first time. He put me on hold and called a local field tech and asked him to try something.
After about 10 minutes, the TA stopped blinking and the light turned off. I pressed the power button and the light was steady. I've had no problems since.
Someone really messed up at TW and caused all of us some headaches, but I'm glad that the issue was recognized and fixed fairly promptly. I just hope it doesn't happen again.

Tuning adapter started blinking again today. Tried to do everything I could without calling TW. After about 20 minutes of rebooting/unplugging stuff, I gave up and called. They had to reinit the box again. Why does this keep happenning? Are they just trying to annoy those of us who use the TAs in an effort to get us to switch from TiVo? This is starting to become a PITA.

[dlfl]

Tuning adapter started blinking again today. Tried to do everything I could without calling TW. After about 20 minutes of rebooting/unplugging stuff, I gave up and called. They had to reinit the box again. Why does this keep happenning? Are they just trying to annoy those of us who use the TAs in an effort to get us to switch from TiVo? This is starting to become a PITA.
If the blink sequence is 8-blinks-then-pause, I believe you can assume you need to be "hit" again -- try one TA reboot and usb unplug/plug -- don't waste any more time rebooting your TiVo, etc.

This started happening in SW Ohio a month ago -- TWC is really screwed up some way or another.

I also talked to Mike when it happened to me. Nice guy but by now I would think he would be yelling pretty loud at TWC, SW OH.

[AtariAge]

Well guys, this issue went away for a few days, but it's back in full force again. Tonight I discovered one of my TiVos was "recording" two shows, only to see that they were actually recording nothing at all. One channel was SD MSNBC, the other a local ABC HD station. So much for watching the second episode of V tonight.

I cannot get into Tuning Adapter diagnostics, so I'm rebooting the TA now. I'm pretty pissed off at this point--after a long day I just wanted to relax for a few hours and catch up on some shows. I checked my other TiVo and it also has several scheduled recordings from the past two days that were not recorded due to no signal available.

I am going to likely waste my time by calling Time Warner tomorrow. I don't want them to send a truck out as I know that's a huge waste of time. If new information on this issue does not come to light soon, I will have DIRECTV or AT&T here ASAP, even if PQ will suffer. Having worse picture quality is better than not being able to watch TV at all.

..Al

[pmiranda]

Yeah, my TA crapped out sometime today. The RDC power is sky-high and it's not getting through, although a SA HD settop on the same splitter is working fine. Signal strength in TiVo is 100%. I guess I'll check the RDC power on the settop while I wait for the truck tomorrow. For that matter, maybe I'll just swap the box in the morning instead of waiting for the truck to show, since they never seem to carry a spare. :mad:

[ferror]

Well guys, this issue went away for a few days, but it's back in full force again. Tonight I discovered one of my TiVos was "recording" two shows, only to see that they were actually recording nothing at all. One channel was SD MSNBC, the other a local ABC HD station. So much for watching the second episode of V tonight.

I cannot get into Tuning Adapter diagnostics, so I'm rebooting the TA now. I'm pretty pissed off at this point--after a long day I just wanted to relax for a few hours and catch up on some shows. I checked my other TiVo and it also has several scheduled recordings from the past two days that were not recorded due to no signal available.

I am going to likely waste my time by calling Time Warner tomorrow. I don't want them to send a truck out as I know that's a huge waste of time. If new information on this issue does not come to light soon, I will have DIRECTV or AT&T here ASAP, even if PQ will suffer. Having worse picture quality is better than not being able to watch TV at all.

..Al

Yep, me too. My two TiVo units were showing gray screens on both tuners when I sat down to use them tonight, and they were not recording anything. The tuners were unable to tune any other channels until I rebooted each one. Everything was fine after that.

We have a definite correlation here with several people. Clearly, they just did something earlier today that triggered the problem area wide. At least it appears very likely it was area wide. My guess is whatever they did caused every TiVo/TA setup in the Austin area to quit working.

What a pain. I will call Time Warner tomorrow too. It is such a hassle and the last thing I want to think about spending time on, but persistence is probably the only way this will ever get fixed. They are probably completely oblivious to it.

[pmiranda]

Hmm...My cablebox is is broadcast-only with RDC power way up at 51dBmV, yet it's still getting a SDV channel, presumably by just using the last-known carrier firequency...or maybe the handshake is actually working and it just can't tell.
Weird. TA is still wedged but by power cycling it, TiVo can now record non-SDV channels again.

[dlfl]

Keep in mind your ultimate weapon: dropping cable service and using ***antenna OTA*** (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=436961), plus NetFlix, Amazon and YouTube. You can pay for NetFlix and a lot of Amazon downloads for what you're paying for digital cable.

And you will be free, free at last, from TWC, CableCARDs and TA's! :D

The fundamental flaw of the CableCARD/Tuning Adapter system is the Cable cos. have nothing at stake in making it work well -- plus it's a kludge design.

[woodburger]

I am in Austin and also in TW/TiVo hell. Sporadic issues for weeks now but last 3 nights when I go to the TV, I get black screen from TiVo which can be restored to life by unplugging, waiting 30 secs, replugging. TiVo then goes through it's "Almost There" dance which is annoying as all get out. Anyway, after that, TiVo works fine until next death.

Dead: green light on front of TiVo is lit, no command on remote flashes yellow light. Rear of TiVo shows no lit leds until rebooted; I think the fan is also not running when this happens.

Have a multi-stream cable card, the TA adaptor from TW. Through this ordeal, while TiVo is dead, green light is steady on TA.

Someone suggested trying to reboot the TA instead of TiVo and I will try that... does anyone KNOW if the TA can cause the TiVo box to die as completely as I describe?

Thanks,

Bob Wood

[pmiranda]

I am in Austin and also in TW/TiVo hell. Sporadic issues for weeks now but last 3 nights when I go to the TV, I get black screen from TiVo which can be restored to life by unplugging, waiting 30 secs, replugging. TiVo then goes through it's "Almost There" dance which is annoying as all get out. Anyway, after that, TiVo works fine until next death.


I'm not sure that you're seeing the same thing other people are...or maybe I'm not. If you leave the USB cable to the TA disconnected (which won't get you any SDV channels, but should let you keep getting everything else), does TiVo still hang?

[texaslabrat]

SDV working fine in Austin for me...though as I've previously discussed I've got a fair amount of attenuation installed on the line now. I've got 2dB of pad on the input to the TA, and then 9dB on the output of the TA (which leads to the Tivo). Not a single issue. Just a data point to consider.

[MrPlastic]

I live in central Austin and I have had some troubles with my TA at the same times that you guys have had but they don't seem to be as bad to fix. Yesterday morning I was unable to get alot of the SDV channels but was able to fix it by just removing the usb cable from the TA to the Tivo and this fixed it except for the sports pack. When I returned from work I was able to get the sports pack back by once again just removing the usb cable and waitng a few seconds to connect it. So I think you guys are right that it is something TW is doing system wide. So far I haven't missed any programs. Thanks for your posts. I also have a SA box for a different set and I notice that it won't have any problems, though for a while there both box and TA would give me grief.

[pmiranda]

SDV working fine in Austin for me...though as I've previously discussed I've got a fair amount of attenuation installed on the line now. I've got 2dB of pad on the input to the TA, and then 9dB on the output of the TA (which leads to the Tivo). Not a single issue. Just a data point to consider.

You know, I dismissed that as a fix for my problem last night, thinking that my problem is the transmit power is sky-high, meaning the TA isn't getting feedback...but maybe the received power is so high that the TA is getting feedback and just not recognizing it... I'll have to dig out my attenuators if I have time before the tech arrives.

[pmiranda]

OK, so before the truck got here somebody back at the office got DMCS to send hits to the TA and I rebooted my SA settop and now everything's working perfectly again. The guys that arrived thought there was nothing wrong with 51dBmV RDC because "it's not red". Hard to tell who's right but I guess I'll start keeping an eye on the RDC power until the next time it craps out and maybe I'll know more.

[lrhorer]

OK, so before the truck got here somebody back at the office got DMCS to send hits to the TA and I rebooted my SA settop and now everything's working perfectly again. The guys that arrived thought there was nothing wrong with 51dBmV RDC because "it's not red". Hard to tell who's right but I guess I'll start keeping an eye on the RDC power until the next time it craps out and maybe I'll know more.
The flat loss going back to the headeand can vary a huge amount from one customer to the next (not from one moment to the next), especially at frequencies near or below 50 MHz. For downstream communications, the big issue tends to be cable losses, because the greater the distance, the higher the loss, and the loss factor is higher at higher frequencies.

To be a bit more clear and specific, the output from a distribution amplifier may be something like +39 dBmV (analog) for 50 MHz and +48 dBmV at 750 MHz (analog), the "tilt" allowing for the fact the losses as the signal goes down the cable are higher at the higher frequencies. Thus, a customer serviced right at the output of an amplifier would see the highest frequency channels being +9 dB higher than the lowest. Now, at the amp, the levels are way, way too high to be practically delivered in their entirety to a customer, but then again the CATV company wants to deliver to more than one customer, anyway. Thus, rather than take the signal directly to the customer, it is passed through a subscriber tap which only "peels off" a small amount of the total signal for the houses (typically 2, 4, or 8) being fed at that point. The tap loss at the subscriber outputs may be perhaps 29 dB, dropping the signals to the customer into the +10 dBmV to +19 dBmV range, or therabouts, allowing for 70 meters or so of drop cable (usually RG-6) and a 4 way splitter for each house. Meanwhile, the main signal has been depleted by perhaps 0.2 or 0.3 dB headed towards the next subscriber tap. Along the way, the signal suffers not only the 0.3 dB passive loss from the tap, but also an attenuation from passing through perhaps 100 meters of exterior plant cable (usually 1/2" aluminum coax or better). This attenuates the high end much more than the low end, so that at the next tap, the tilt may only be +8 dB or so. In order to make up for the lower input levels at the next tap, it will also typically be of a lower value than the first tap. This trend continues all the way to the end of the CATV distribution, at which point the highest frequencies may be as low as +17 dBmV, while the low frequencies may be as high as +27 dBmV or so. The last tap, then, may be just a four way splitter, which drops the signal to each leg by about 8 dB.

Look what has happened, though. At the output of the amplifier, the loss at 750 MHz getting from the amp to the TA may be perhaps 42 dB, while the loss at 50 MHz is almost the same - perhaps 37 dB. At the far end of the main distribution cable, however, the loss at 750 MHz by design is perhaps 45 dB, while the loss at 50 MHz is only 26 dB or so! Thus, if you happen to be very close to an amplifier, and maybe have 4 or 8 outlets in your house, then the loss between you and the amplifier on the return channel may be 50 dB, or perhaps even a bit more. Meanwhile, a subscriber at the very end of the distribution who only has 1 outlet in his house may see as little as 26 dB of loss on the return channel. So no, an upstream output of +51 dBmV from the modulator in the TA is not necessarily excessive, depending on just where you are in the distribution path and how many outlets you have. If the levels of the highest frequency channels are significantly higher than those of the lowest frequency channels, then it is to be expected. OTOH, if the high frequency channels are "in the mud", while the low frequency channels are enjoying much higher levels, then the carrier from the TA should also be low, comparatively speaking. If not, then there is something wrong, somewhere.

[dolfer]

I'm getting the blinking TA today in SW Ohio ;( In the middle of the unplug / reboot process but still blinking.

Anyone else????

[bobrt6676]

I'm getting the blinking TA today in SW Ohio ;( In the middle of the unplug / reboot process but still blinking.

Anyone else????


Check this thread out.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=436548


Seems to a common problem recently.

[BrentlyL]

I used to love my TiVo S3 and then came the tuning adapter. Now I'm starting to dislike TiVo. Isn't that sick? I never thought I'd be mad at my TiVo but I do realize that this is all Time Warner's fault. I absolutely HATE Time Warner. HATE HATE HATE them!!! I'm a custom installer and I sell and install TiVo so all these problems that we're having I get to hear about from all my clients. I sold my clients a box that I love and stand behind and now my reputation is being soiled. Thanks Time Warner you dirty disgusting company. Thanks a lot!

I'm in Palm Springs, CA and I have been staring at the 8 blink led TA light since yesterday. I have no TA channels and TW doesn't know when they'll fix it. Also, TiVo just sent me a brand new HDXL to replace my original Series 3 that was rebooting all the time. The other night the brand new XL box froze while changing channels and then rebooted. After reading the forums it sounds like people are blaming the Tuning adapters for this and I think they're right. I seriously doubt my new TiVo HDXL is bad and my old box was probably fine too. Another mysterious problem I'm having is the lack of Suggestions recordings. The old S3 box stopped recording them and now my new box isn't recording them and it's practically empty. I don't know how this could be related to the TA but I have a feeling it is.

The TiVo box itself can't be this bad. Hey TiVo, are you listening??? Are you doing all you can to pressure Time Warner into getting their act together?? I think many of us switched to TW because DirecTV abandoned us and I think a lot of us are going to switch back ASAP especially if these problems aren't solved fast. I know I'm leaving the day that new box drops.

Please God, let the new DirecTV TiVo be the perfect box I've always dreamed of. I want so badly to say FU to Time Warner and never give them another penny. This current situation is an expensive nightmare.

[FrancesTheMute]

For anyone else in San Diego that's having issues, I just got off the phone with the CS rep and he said they have a known issue with SDV and the TA's that's currently being investigated but they don't have any solutions yet. We'll see what happens, but at least we know that they are aware of the issue, he said a lot of people had called in.

[digs0]

Feel like a broken record posting again, but I'm having the same problem as folks in other regions. Here's my setup, for what it's worth:

Cable co: Time Warner San Diego
TiVo: Series 3 connected via HDMI to TV and via Ethernet to wireless router
Western Digital Expansion Drive (500 GB)
Tuning Adapter: Cisco STA1520

The TA is not tuning certain specific channels, and it's giving me the 8 blink/pause pattern. Restarting it doesn't help. Restarting the TiVo doesn't help. Calling Time Warner certainly doesn't seem to help. They sent a tech out about a month ago, and he replaced a bunch of the coax cables just for the heck of it. It seemed to help... but of course that wasn't really the problem.

The most frustrating part of it is that there are some really helpful CSRs that you can get to, but most of them don't know any more about the TA than I do. So you have to do the same song and dance, reboot the TiVo (gee, why didn't I think of that????), etc., all to have them say they have to send a tech out. And I know how that dance ends, too.

My question is: is there anybody out there with a cable card-using TiVo who *isn't* having problems?

[mihalik]

I'm also in Austin (Cedar Park) and have been experiencing issues. I have had two recurring issues over the past few months. These sound similar to what others have described.

1. Completely locked up. No blinky light when I hit buttons on the remote no output to the TV. Once this happened and almost all of the lights on the front of the unit were lit up (including the Fixed/1080i/720p lights that I never see).

2. All channels showing up black. Nothing records and live TV does not work but the UI is responsive otherwise.

In the first case I can recover by unplugging/replugging the Tivo. In the second case, however, there is a specific set of steps that I need to do in order to recover. I unplug the TA and the Tivo, plug the TA in until the light stops blinking, and then plug the Tivo in. I tried a few other things (just unplugging the TA or just unplugging the Tivo) the first few times it happened and that order was the only one that worked so that is what I do every time.

I'd say the problems average around once a week. Sometimes it is maybe two weeks between issues and a few weeks ago it was 4 times in a single week. It seemed like there was something wrong every time I turned it on. A lockup last night prompted me to check this thread again.

I have not raised the issue with TW because I don't have the time or energy to spend on the phone/waiting around for someone to come out but I guess I should complain to them so they know that it is more than just an isolated few that have issues.

[dlfl]

..........The TA is not tuning certain specific channels, and it's giving me the 8 blink/pause pattern. Restarting it doesn't help. Restarting the TiVo doesn't help. Calling Time Warner certainly doesn't seem to help. ............My question is: is there anybody out there with a cable card-using TiVo who *isn't* having problems?
Regarding the 8-blink-pause, did you see this recent post (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7597864#post7597864)? You can ask a TWC CSR to connect you to the TWC National Cable Card Support center, or TiVo support can also do that. The "hit" to your TA is normally done at the local office but the NCCS center can "expedite" that -- in other words they know what has to be done when sometimes the local office doesn't seem to have a clue.

There could be a lot of people not having trouble, but most of them don't read here or at least don't post. There certainly is a growing trend of TA 8-blink problems showing up on the forums here: San Diego, Austin TX and Southwest Ohio.

[digs0]

Regarding the 8-blink-pause, did you see this recent post (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7597864#post7597864)? You can ask a TWC CSR to connect you to the TWC National Cable Card Support center, or TiVo support can also do that. The "hit" to your TA is normally done at the local office but the NCCS center can "expedite" that -- in other words they know what has to be done when sometimes the local office doesn't seem to have a clue.

There could be a lot of people not having trouble, but most of them don't read here or at least don't post. There certainly is a growing trend of TA 8-blink problems showing up on the forums here: San Diego, Austin TX and Southwest Ohio.

Thanks for the link and the info, dlfl. I've tried just cutting to the chase and asking CSRs to do the "hit" or a Refresh of Service (terms I made a point of jotting down after a call with a particularly helpful TA specialist a while back), but I haven't had much luck with it.

Good point about those who don't have trouble not posting—that ought to be written up as a general Law of the internet if it hasn't been already. Most of the CSRs I've talked to say they don't field a lot of TA-related calls, but the last time I asked, the guy said that San Diego TWC has maybe 4,000 cable card customers out of over a million in total. That explains a lot, I guess.

[Shmooh]

Regarding the 8-blink-pause, did you see this recent post (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7597864#post7597864)? You can ask a TWC CSR to connect you to the TWC National Cable Card Support center, or TiVo support can also do that. The "hit" to your TA is normally done at the local office but the NCCS center can "expedite" that -- in other words they know what has to be done when sometimes the local office doesn't seem to have a clue.

There could be a lot of people not having trouble, but most of them don't read here or at least don't post. There certainly is a growing trend of TA 8-blink problems showing up on the forums here: San Diego, Austin TX and Southwest Ohio.

Don't forget Raleigh, NC. :(

On the up-side, I had the 8-blink issue last week (as did many people in my area - see http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=418262&page=36 ). I called TWC, they re-provisioned/hit the TA, restarted the TA, and I was running again. Took less than 15 minutes from the moment I picked up the phone. The CSR I talked to was pretty decent, though.

I find it difficult to believe that there are people out there with cable (not OTA) and Tivo HD's that aren't having problems. Our tuning adapter has certainly been regularly problematic, and our cable card has been occasionally as well.

RANT:
I wonder if these cable companies realize that if we have to dump Tivo that we'll just dump cable as well? I know I will - I got the Tivo to get away from TWC's crappy DVR. Even if they get the issues with them fixed (stable software, decent feature set, much larger disk), I'm still miffed at them for forcing it on us in the first place. There's always OTA, satellite, U-Verse, and the internet (even if we have to start paying for services like Hulu). It's not about money - I just want something that works consistently!
/RANT

[dlfl]

........RANT:
I wonder if these cable companies realize that if we have to dump Tivo that we'll just dump cable as well? I know I will - I got the Tivo to get away from TWC's crappy DVR. Even if they get the issues with them fixed (stable software, decent feature set, much larger disk), I'm still miffed at them for forcing it on us in the first place. There's always OTA, satellite, U-Verse, and the internet (even if we have to start paying for services like Hulu). It's not about money - I just want something that works consistently!
/RANT
Even if they do realize, it can't be of much concern to them, since TiVo digital cable subscribers are only about 0.5% of all digital subscribers. I don't think there's any way to influence them (unless you have a few Senators in your hip pocket!).

[notting]

Don't forget Raleigh, NC. :(
I find it difficult to believe that there are people out there with cable (not OTA) and Tivo HD's that aren't having problems. Our tuning adapter has certainly been regularly problematic, and our cable card has been occasionally as well.


I wasn't... until last night. We'll see how long it takes on the phone to get them to re-provision it today.

[aine]

There could be a lot of people not having trouble, but most of them don't read here or at least don't post. There certainly is a growing trend of TA 8-blink problems showing up on the forums here: San Diego, Austin TX and Southwest Ohio.
And then there are people like me, Time Warner San Diego customers and owner of TiVo Series3 box, who see these posts and steer clear of the Tuning Adapter until the bugs are ironed out. Although I'd like to receive some of the channels (e.g. sports), I have to weigh that against my family complaining that TiVo isn't working (read: TA isn't working).

I realize the chicken-and-egg problem (More TA users means more chance of problems getting solved, but early TA adopters hit all the problems). However, the Series3 is already troublesome enough without introducing another source of problems.

[Shmooh]

And then there are people like me, Time Warner San Diego customers and owner of TiVo Series3 box, who see these posts and steer clear of the Tuning Adapter until the bugs are ironed out. Although I'd like to receive some of the channels (e.g. sports), I have to weigh that against my family complaining that TiVo isn't working (read: TA isn't working).


The most frequent problem I have with the TA is that it 'gets confused' (sorry for all the techno mumbo-jumbo, there). We have to force both the tuners on the Tivo to change channels, and that seems to fix it. Until we do that, we don't get any SDV channels. I'm almost certain that other channels continue to work fine (my wife is usually the one who runs into this). This happens about once every 2 weeks or so.

The issue is that we can't rely on any of the SDV channels being there for recordings - it might get confused and we'll ultimately miss the show. If we want to watch live (a rarity), it's not really a problem.

So - net result - the TA gives you SDV, but only works well for live viewing. Otherwise, you're not getting SDV channels anyway, so no real harm in having the TA other than the irritation.

[dlfl]

And then there are people like me, Time Warner San Diego customers and owner of TiVo Series3 box, who see these posts and steer clear of the Tuning Adapter until the bugs are ironed out. Although I'd like to receive some of the channels (e.g. sports), I have to weigh that against my family complaining that TiVo isn't working (read: TA isn't working).
.........
Making that decision will just get more difficult as TWC adds more SDV HD channels, as they are doing in my service area. On the minimum digital service I get 49 HD channels, of which 23 are SDV. They just added 10 more.

[dolfer]

I wasn't... until last night. We'll see how long it takes on the phone to get them to re-provision it today.

Same here... Just noticed the blinking last night. Reboot/Power cable/USB unplug didn't work this time.

As for a way to get TW to care about Tivo? Forget Senators... A new round of patent infringement lawsuits might get them to care a little more...

[notting]

Same here... Just noticed the blinking last night. Reboot/Power cable/USB unplug didn't work this time.


I dialed the main 866 number, talked to CSR, transferred to the cablecard help desk, got the hit that fixed it, and was off the phone in 9 minutes.

They seem to be getting used to dealing with it - the initial CSR seemed to have some sort of warning/notice that once I said the magic words about tuning adapter/tivo/8 blinks immediately decided to transfer me.

[pninen]

Time Warner San Diego ... My tuning adapter has been blinking (8 blinks then pause) for the last 48 hours. Power cycle doesn't fix it.

I'm on a TiVo email list at my company, and many other folks reporting same malfunction.

I called TW today, and they said yes, tuning adapters are not working over all of San Diego, and there is no estimated time for it to be fixed.

[lrhorer]

I find it difficult to believe that there are people out there with cable (not OTA) and Tivo HD's that aren't having problems. Our tuning adapter has certainly been regularly problematic, and our cable card has been occasionally as well.

Well, I have three Series III class TiVos with TAs, and while I cannot say I have never had an issue with the TA, the level of problems I have had have been quite low and not teribly aggravating. First of all, I don't think I have ever owned or manged an electronic device of any sort - not even a flashlight - which has never given me any problems, and I have used literally thousands of them in the last half-century. Even with the TA, the TiVos fall pretty far down the list when it comes to unreliability. Every few weeks or so, one or the other of my 3 TAs will require a reboot. Compare that to the Windows machine in my office which can rarely manage going a whole week without a reboot. In every case but once so far, rebooting the TA or at most both the TA and the TiVo solved the problem. The only times I have had to reboot the TiVo (this only two or three times) was when all channels were blank. Usually, only the SDV channels are gone.

[dwgsp]

The most frequent problem I have with the TA is that it 'gets confused' (sorry for all the techno mumbo-jumbo, there). We have to force both the tuners on the Tivo to change channels, and that seems to fix it. Until we do that, we don't get any SDV channels.

I have this problem, too (with TWC in Rochester NY), but it's happening less often. As I recently mentioned here, a few weeks ago I had the eight blink problem and the root cause was diagnosed by TWC as a signal strength issue. The existing cable feed into my house was installed in the mid-1970's, so TWC ran a new cable into my house. I have not seen the eight blink problem again, and I have also noticed that the 'gets confused' problem seems to occur much less frequently.

[BrentlyL]

3 days now and my adapters are STILL not working. I called AGAIN tonight. This time "I thought we had fixed this but my supervisor just told me we didn't and we don't know when it will get fixed". I'm in Palm Springs CA

TiVo has been tainted by Time Warner. Our wonderful TiVos are now only as good as Time Warner Cable. In other words they suck. I knew when these TAs came it was going to ruin the experience but I could never have imagined it would be this bad.

They would never have done this to their non TiVo/Tuning Adapter customers for this length of time. Time Warner doesn't care about us.

[dlfl]

.........They would never have done this to their non TiVo/Tuning Adapter customers for this length of time. Time Warner doesn't care about us.
It's hard to imagine any reason they would care about us -- other than pity, or even worse malice. We are only about 0.5% of their digital subscriber base and we compete with their DVR's and we can't order PPV or VOD from them.

We should be realistic and make contingency plans. Or grit your teeth and try to hold out in case it gets better.

[pninen]

It's hard to imagine any reason they would care about us -- other than pity, or even worse malice. We are only about 0.5% of their digital subscriber base

We simply have to become the squeaky wheel. They will care if we are 50% of the customer service calls.

I called TW again tonite. This morning they told me that the TA outage was all of San Diego, and they were workin' on it. However later in the day I heard from several coworkers who said they had called TW and got them to remotely reauthorize the box and then it worked. (ie seemingly conflicting information)

Armed with this knowledge I called TW. A woman there had me go thru a long involved dance unplugging power to the TA, plugging it back in, asking me if the light was still blinking, do it again, etc etc. She says she tried to push something to the box but it obviously wasn't getting thru. I asked if she was getting lots of these calls tonite. She said "yea".

So now I'm into the 3rd day down hard.

[dolfer]

I just had them hit my TA via Time Warner Chat Support... I can't wait to see if it actually worked when I get home!

When it works you can't beat Chat support! No waiting... No talking! ;)

[Max Camber]

I just got back from vacation to find my TA locked up as expected. I'll get back in touch with TWC Austin and see where they want to go from here.

Woodburger: I now believe that a locked up TA can cause the symptoms you describe on an otherwise healthy TiVo unit. I went from the usual "no SDV channels" TA lockup to the "black screen on all channels" in the last 12 hours and simply unplugging the TA USB cable brought my TiVo back to life. Because of this, it seems likely that the TiVo becoming totally unresponsive due to something coming from the TA over USB (or at least related to the TiVo handling of the USB connection) is also possible.

[aine]

The most frequent problem I have with the TA is that it 'gets confused' ... we don't get any SDV channels. I'm almost certain that other channels continue to work fine
...
So - net result - the TA gives you SDV, but only works well for live viewing. Otherwise, you're not getting SDV channels anyway, so no real harm in having the TA other than the irritation.

So -- your experience -- there's no harm in having the TA because at the moment, I get none of those SDV channels. At least with the TA I would have some >0 probability of a successful recording on SDV channels.

But then I read Max's comment:

I now believe that a locked up TA can cause the symptoms you describe on an otherwise healthy TiVo unit.

that describes the TA possibly locking up the TiVo and preventing recordings even on NON-SDV channels. This is exactly the problem I want to avoid, and the reason why I have so far decided to forgo the TA even though I am missing many channels.

Thanks to all those "early adopters" who are complaining to Time Warner and helping to work out the issues. The rest of us are grateful.

[gbrown]

While I had a horrid time getting the TA setup, once it started working, I have had very few problems. Only once (yesterday to be exact) I had to call TWC-SanDiego to have them restart the device.

It is my understanding that there are two different TAs that TW uses. I have the CISCO TA.

[pninen]

I'm into my 3rd day of TA nonfunction. San Diego.

I called TW again this morning. They connected me to the "tuning adapter center". Tech there went thru the usual sequence of trying to send stuff to my TA, with no success.

He says he's received lots of these calls, but has been able to restore most boxes by sending (whatever they send) to the TA. Mine however just sits in the 8 blinks mode.

He put me on hold for about 5 minutes then said he would try to download "new code". That didn't work either. He then said there's nothing he could do.

[dlfl]

I'm into my 3rd day of TA nonfunction. San Diego.

I called TW again this morning. They connected me to the "tuning adapter center". Tech there went thru the usual sequence of trying to send stuff to my TA, with no success.

He says he's received lots of these calls, but has been able to restore most boxes by sending (whatever they send) to the TA. Mine however just sits in the 8 blinks mode.

He put me on hold for about 5 minutes then said he would try to download "new code". That didn't work either. He then said there's nothing he could do.
Maybe the TA is just bad (?) Or has it already been replaced? You are power-cycling the TA before and after they hit it, correct? Leave it powered down for 30 secs. No, it shouldn't need a second power cycling after they hit it, but it's just a desperation move.

[BrentlyL]

Day 4...

Today they said that I can plan on waiting "a few more days" for this to be fixed. Criminals! F this company

[BrentlyL]

As a TiVo dealer I have access to the higher-ups and I was just told by them that they didn't know about this current issue. (At least the person I spoke to didn't know about it.) I'm told their process is to bring it to engineering immediately and then it will go to corporate. The person I spoke with said that someone at the corporate level will contact me once they know better what is happening. I tried to convey to them that they MUST put pressure on Time Warner because TW is ruining the TiVo experience.

It's my feeling that someone at TW knows exactly what's going on right now. I think this because of the fact that it's happening in many states at the same time. I don't think it's a coincidence. My guess is that they're making a system switch of some sort and some suit made the decision to not notify us customers of anything beforehand, why...because it would have cost them money to notify us. This process is very typical of TW.

I'll say it again, "Please let the new DirecTV TiVo be perfect". I'm going to make that my signature.

[BrentlyL]

We should be realistic and make contingency plans.

DirecTV's new TiVo. That's my plan

[dlfl]

As a TiVo dealer I have access to the higher-ups and I was just told by them that they didn't know about this current issue. (At least the person I spoke to didn't know about it.) I'm told their process is to bring it to engineering immediately and then it will go to corporate. The person I spoke with said that someone at the corporate level will contact me once they know better what is happening. I tried to convey to them that they MUST put pressure on Time Warner because TW is ruining the TiVo experience.

It's my feeling that someone at TW knows exactly what's going on right now. I think this because of the fact that it's happening in many states at the same time. I don't think it's a coincidence. My guess is that they're making a system switch of some sort and some suit made the decision to not notify us customers of anything beforehand, why...because it would have cost them money to notify us. This process is very typical of TW.

I'll say it again, "Please let the new DirecTV TiVo be perfect". I'm going to make that my signature.
You're a TiVo dealer? Store front, or what kind?

I'm amazed TiVo doesn't know about this. I can't believe some of them don't read this forum. How high up was your contact?

We are a pimple on TWC's business plan, and they would probably like to pop us. When I talk to a TWC CSR, after twice giving my telephone mumber, they don't seem to know I'm a TiVo user until I tell them. I wonder if that's even in their databases. Well I know it's in one database: the one that makes sure I'm charged for cable cards! Anyway, they probably don't have an easy way to prepare a mailing list for just TiVo users.

[dolfer]

I just had them hit my TA via Time Warner Chat Support... I can't wait to see if it actually worked when I get home!

When it works you can't beat Chat support! No waiting... No talking! ;)

Me and my TA are solid baby... Solid... Looks like the dude on the TW Chat Line knew what he was doing.

I came home and the TA was powered off? I turned it on and it remained solid. Hopefully it will stay that way for awhile... Nighty night... :D

[BrentlyL]

You're a TiVo dealer? Store front, or what kind?

I'm amazed TiVo doesn't know about this. I can't believe some of them don't read this forum. How high up was your contact?

We are a pimple on TWC's business plan, and they would probably like to pop us. When I talk to a TWC CSR, after twice giving my telephone number, they don't seem to know I'm a TiVo user until I tell them. I wonder if that's even in their databases. Well I know it's in one database: the one that makes sure I'm charged for cable cards! Anyway, they probably don't have an easy way to prepare a mailing list for just TiVo users.


I'm an independent custom installer. I spoke to TiVo Dealer Services. I pointed out that I'm not inclined to sell TiVo anymore because of the problems Time Warner is causing. They don't like hearing that.

My goal for my clients is a system that works perfectly all the time. When people have Time Warner's hardware they end up calling me all the time because of the lousy box. I recommend TiVo because it's a better box. I can always be sure it will work...at least I used to be able to. Now it seems the TiVo is more problematic than the Scientific Atlanta boxes and that's because of the the tuning adapter. Given TW's track record with hardware I knew this was going to happen. I think that adapter IS the pimple popper. It's going to make people dislike their TiVo and go with whatever is less hassle even if it mean fewer features. I'm sure as heck not going to recommend TiVo if it doesn't work properly, for whatever reason.

Time Warner is required BY LAW to support these devices and they're not doing it. I wish I could connect with a brilliant class action lawyer and discuss the possibilities.

I just spoke with another TW rep. They say it's a sync issue and that it's still not fixed and there's no eta. You are a lucky dude dolfer.

[dlfl]

I'm an independent custom installer. I spoke to TiVo Dealer Services. I pointed out that I'm not inclined to sell TiVo anymore because of the problems Time Warner is causing. They don't like hearing that.

My goal for my clients is a system that works perfectly all the time. When people have Time Warner's hardware they end up calling me all the time because of the lousy box. I recommend TiVo because it's a better box. I can always be sure it will work...at least I used to be able to. Now it seems the TiVo is more problematic than the Scientific Atlanta boxes and that's because of the the tuning adapter. Given TW's track record with hardware I knew this was going to happen. I think that adapter IS the pimple popper. It's going to make people dislike their TiVo and go with whatever is less hassle even if it mean fewer features. I'm sure as heck not going to recommend TiVo if it doesn't work properly, for whatever reason.

Time Warner is required BY LAW to support these devices and they're not doing it. I wish I could connect with a brilliant class action lawyer and discuss the possibilities.

I just spoke with another TW rep. They say it's a sync issue and that it's still not fixed and there's no eta. You are a lucky dude dolfer.
Surprisingly, cable cos. are not required by law to support TA's as far as I know. See this post and the answering post #4 (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7513965#post7513965) by bicker, who is quite well read on the laws of the cable industry.

I agree it looks like the TA may be the TiVo breaker, whether by intent or by negligence, or maybe by just being a poorly implemented technical solution.

I'm curious how you define "works perfectly all the time". I haven't had the massive problems with my TA that many are having, but some of my SDV channels do have occasional breakups (pixelation) and, rarely, even freezes. I've studied the problem a lot using the diagnostics built into the TiVo and I'm convinced these problems are actually in the signal encoding as distributed by TWC. They may not cause problems for TWC STB's or DVR's because they use different mpeg2 decoders than TiVo and obviously TWC tunes the encoding of their signals to be OK for their equipment (or they get massive complaints). Thus I don't believe the best possible installation (at my house anyway) could avoid these pixelation/freeze problems. Would that prevent it from being an acceptable installation by your standards?

What does TWC mean by a "sync issue" I wonder?

[lrhorer]

Surprisingly, cable cos. are not required by law to support TA's as far as I know.
No, but it would be strange for them not to, since they invented them.

I agree it looks like the TA may be the TiVo breaker,
Unlikely. Most people are not having severe problems with the TA.

whether by intent or by negligence, or maybe by just being a poorly implemented technical solution.
That is only partially the CATV people's fault. They weren't the ones insisting on a USB solution for no good reason.

They may not cause problems for TWC STB's or DVR's because they use different mpeg2 decoders than TiVo
Uh-uh. 'Same Broadcomm chip.

and obviously TWC tunes the encoding of their signals to be OK for their equipment
There is no "tuning". The encoding is produced by the broadcaster, not the CATV company, unless of course they are the broadcaster.

(or they get massive complaints).
Well, they are, although perhaps not the same complaints you have. The problems they are having are sometimes pretty bizarre.

What does TWC mean by a "sync issue" I wonder?
It means the OP spoke to a moron who has no idea of what they speak, and then the OP bought the ridiculous load of crap.

[dlfl]

............
Uh-uh. 'Same Broadcomm chip.
...........
There is no "tuning". The encoding is produced by the broadcaster, not the CATV company, unless of course they are the broadcaster.
............
I'm not convinced (not yet at least) that:

1. Using the same mpeg2 decoder chip means identical response to input signals.

Are there no parameters involved? E.g. buffer sizes, max bit rates, and something called "rate profiles" that I've heard mentioned?

2. Cable cos. don't modify the encoding in some cases.

See for example posts 358-361 in this thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7594992#post7594992), where SCSIRAID is working with TWC engineers on TA problems.

[dolfer]

I'm an independent custom installer. I spoke to TiVo Dealer Services. I pointed out that I'm not inclined to sell TiVo anymore because of the problems Time Warner is causing. They don't like hearing that.

My goal for my clients is a system that works perfectly all the time. When people have Time Warner's hardware they end up calling me all the time because of the lousy box. I recommend TiVo because it's a better box. I can always be sure it will work...at least I used to be able to. Now it seems the TiVo is more problematic than the Scientific Atlanta boxes and that's because of the the tuning adapter. Given TW's track record with hardware I knew this was going to happen. I think that adapter IS the pimple popper. It's going to make people dislike their TiVo and go with whatever is less hassle even if it mean fewer features. I'm sure as heck not going to recommend TiVo if it doesn't work properly, for whatever reason.

Time Warner is required BY LAW to support these devices and they're not doing it. I wish I could connect with a brilliant class action lawyer and discuss the possibilities.

I just spoke with another TW rep. They say it's a sync issue and that it's still not fixed and there's no eta. You are a lucky dude dolfer.

Bret, it seems California might be having a bigger problem... But don't discount the fact that you just might have a bad TA unit. When I first got my TA I tried and tried to get it to work and it just wasn't reliable. It kept rebooting periodically. I waited through firmware updates. And most of the time it remained disconnected. Disgusted, I thought I would just try and get a new one. Since then it has been very solid. I have had to call/chat twice to get it "hit" by TW. A price I am willing to pay to stay away from the godawful TW DVR. (We have it at work so I know how truly terrible it is! ;) )

How's Palm Springs???? I attended a huge Microsoft event there in the late 90's! Web Tech Ed?? Or some awkwardly-named Microsoft named affair. Awesome mountains!

[lrhorer]

I'm not convinced (not yet at least) that:

1. Using the same mpeg2 decoder chip means identical response to input signals.
Well, first of all, the decoder doesn't receive the "input signals". The receiver does. It demodulates the signal into a 38 Mbps mux stream. The stream is then demuxed and sent to the CableCard. The CableCard inspects the stream for encryption. If it is not encrypted, the signal is passed through the CC without modification. If it is encrypted, then the signal is decrypted and then re-encrypted for delivery to the video system. In the TiVo, the stream is re-encrypted again and then sent to the hard drive. Whenever the user wants to watch the content (perhaps immediately), it is read off the hard drive, decrypted, and sent to the decoder. With the exception of the Tivo encryption, which is proprietary, everything else in the path must conform to industry standards, many of which are set by CableLabs. MPEG standards are set by the Motion Picture Experts Group, which is an arm of the International Standards Organization. All MPEG coders and decoders are required to meet the standards laid down by MPEG.

Now yes, the decoder chip responds to code in the host, and a bug in that code can cause the chip to react inappropriately. In the same vein, a bug in the software controlling an encode chip can do the same thing.

Are there no parameters involved? E.g. buffer sizes, max bit rates, and something called "rate profiles" that I've heard mentioned?
'Tons of them. Take a look at the documentation for ffmpeg some time. They are all covered in the spec, however, and the values of the parameters are embedded in the transport stream. That's how the decoder knows how to decode the stream. They are also variable within a stream. The encoding for a commercial may be different than the encoding for the main program, for example.

2. Cable cos. don't modify the encoding in some cases.

See for example posts 358-361 in this thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7594992#post7594992), where SCSIRAID is working with TWC engineers on TA problems.
He is talking about rate shaping, which can involve transcoding, but rate shaping is not employed to provide some superior function for some proprietary something in the CATV system devices. It's employed to allow more video to fit in a 38MHz QAM. Remember, too, that the CATV company does not manufacture the DVRs and STBs. They buy them off the shelf - in large quantities, of course. They don't buy from a single manufacturer, however. I believe TWC buys essentially all their DVRs from Cisco, but they often buy STBs from Pace and Zenith, as well as Cisco. SDV protocols are proprietary, but everything else is standardized.

Now all that isn't to say TWC in your area isn't inadvertantly doing something that the Tivo doesn't like, or that conversely the TiVo doesn't have a bug which prevents it from responding correctly to the rate shaping being done by TWC in your area. I don't have enough data to say one way or the other.

[SCSIRAID]

Now all that isn't to say TWC in your area isn't inadvertantly doing something that the Tivo doesn't like, or that conversely the TiVo doesn't have a bug which prevents it from responding correctly to the rate shaping being done by TWC in your area. I don't have enough data to say one way or the other.

TWC has seen the issue here in Raleigh with their own eyes and have concluded that they are generating something that is tripping up TiVo resulting in macroblocking/pixelation which their Cisco STB's are handling with no issue. The key experiment is doing a simultaneous recording of a show on multiple TiVo's plus an 8300. The 8300 recording is clean. The TiVo recordings all exhibit breakups at exactly the same spot in the recordings and look basically identical. Just prior to the end of the recordings, the RS Stats for the TiVo's all indicate Uncorrected = 0 and the 'tune time' is correct indicating no 'retunes' have occured. This issue is only seen on SDV channels. The current TWC theory is that the rate shaper is generating something that TiVo doesnt like. However, TWC further indicates that all the Edge QAM's (Cisco GQAMs) for the different service groups should be receving the same rate shaped MPEG. This would mean that the same issue should be seen on all service groups if the rate shaper theory was correct. We did an experiment last night which showed that not to be true... My friend (on a different service group) and I recorded the same show and mine exhibited breakups on multiple TiVo's with 8300 clean while his TiVo recordings did not exhibit breakups at the time spots that mine did. That would seem to suggest that the problem is in the Edge QAM... I wouldnt expect the GQAM to be messing with the 'video' mpeg but perhaps he is fouling up the muxing information or not handing the merging of new streams properly (from TiVo's perspective anyway).. just a guess on my part though... Ill be passing the results of this experiment on to TWC next week.

Any input / thoughts / theories would be appreciated....

[digs0]

In case it's of interest, I'm going to report some details I overheard from the calls the TW tech here in the house yesterday placed to a guy he described as the best cable card expert he knew in the company. Unfortunately, my computer seems to have destroyed the notes I took, but I'll try to recreate the info as well as my limited technical knowledge allows.

According to the service tech and his expert, TW introduced some kind of service update on Wednesday, November 11. The guy on the phone was saying that TW cable boxes have to be reauthorized (not sure that's the exact word he used) basically every month to keep working. Otherwise they get "bricked." He was saying that Tuning Adapters have never had the capacity to receive that reauthorize hit, but it didn't ever seem to matter before the service update on Wednesday, because they didn't get bricked. Apparently, since the service update on Wednesday, the Tuning Adapters can now get bricked by not receiving the regular 30-day reauthorization.

As of last night when the tech left, my Tuning Adapter still wasn't working (after a reboot and the hit being sent and the usual rigamarole), but the CC expert on the phone was saying that he hadn't been able to get in touch with the engineers in charge of creating the fix for the TAs, and it may not have been implemented yet. They told me that they expected the problem to be solved sometime within the next few days and to keep trying the SDV channels.

Given that my TA has been nothing but a bundle of trouble since I got it, I was skeptical, but I'm happy to report that as of this morning, it came back to life. Instead of the 8-blink pattern, it was completely lightless this morning. I hit the power button on the front and it immediately went solid. I've learned not to trust the light as an indicator, but after a few seconds I briefly got the "acquiring channels" screen that you normally get after a reset, and after that, my SDV channels were working again. I'm choosing naively to hope that whatever service update caused this problem in the first place may solve all the problems I was having before, as well. (I'll change my tune at the first sign of trouble.)

Contrary to beliefs that I and others have had about TW's level of interest in TiVo customers, both the in-home tech and the guy on the phone evinced quite a bit of concern about making my setup work right. I have to give them credit. They were saying, however, that when it comes to TA and cable card issues, the TW engineers who work on that stuff are practically like a secret club and only dole out information sparingly.

As for whether TW is legally required to support TAs, I'm no lawyer nor an expert on the FCC, but if I understand it correctly, the law requires them to provide the same level of channel access to customers who don't use their boxes as to those who do. I thought the whole reason for the existence of the TA was that legal mandate. SDV removes channels from non-cable company boxes, and the cable co is legally required to make those channels available. If that's not the case, then the FCC mandate to provide the same level of service has absolutely no teeth whatsoever.

Regardless of federal law, though, contractually they are certainly bound to provide me with the channels I'm paying for. I subscribe to one of their tiered packages, and all of the channels included therein seem to be SDV. If those channels don't come through, they're not providing me with a service that I have paid directly for and they will have to answer for it.

[BrentlyL]

Bret, it seems California might be having a bigger problem... But don't discount the fact that you just might have a bad TA unit. When I first got my TA I tried and tried to get it to work and it just wasn't reliable. It kept rebooting periodically. I waited through firmware updates. And most of the time it remained disconnected. Disgusted, I thought I would just try and get a new one. Since then it has been very solid. I have had to call/chat twice to get it "hit" by TW. A price I am willing to pay to stay away from the godawful TW DVR. (We have it at work so I know how truly terrible it is! ;) )

How's Palm Springs???? I attended a huge Microsoft event there in the late 90's! Web Tech Ed?? Or some awkwardly-named Microsoft named affair. Awesome mountains!

This morning my adapters were not blinking, their lights were off. I pushed the button, the lights turned on and they're working again...for now. 4 full days of Time Warner BS is totally UNACCEPTABLE.

Have 2 TA's plus all the TA's that belong to all of my clients. Every client I spoke with was having the same issue. (Part of my hatred of TW is the fact that when they screw up, my clients all call me instead of TW). Now days I send an email blast to them letting them all know that I already know what TW is doing to them.

What I meant earlier about "TiVo used to work perfectly all the time before the TAs arrived" was that I didn't get calls from my clients about the TiVo box acting up but of course now it's the only box I sell that has constant problems, thanks to TW. Yes, we have the same issue with pixelation like everyone else has but we live with it. I've worked with Time Warner field supervisors a lot trying to resolve the pixelation issue but they don't know why it happens and they don't really care to investigate beyond getting a "proper" signal into the home. I love the fact that some of you guys are really digging into the pixelation issue but I can't help but think TW should be doing this. If you can do it, they can do it...yeah right.

If the new DirecTV TiVo proves to be good I will move most of my clients over to that. A lot of them and myself used to have the old HR-250 DTVTIVO and feel that that box performed better than the TiVoHD on a cable system. (the price we pay for our love of TiVo goes way beyond a dollar value) I personally am at a point where I'd rather have that old HR-250 DTVTIVO without the big HD lineup and network functionality just so that I can have peace of mind.

Hey dolfer, Palm Springs is awesome right now. It's sunny and 74. That convention center was remodeled a few years ago and now looks like something from the Flintstones

http://www.palmspringscc.com/

[pninen]

My Cisco TA suddenly has a solid green light this morning (TW San Diego) after 4 days of blinking.

Now we get to see if TW can keep it working for more than 5 days in a row (their previous record).

TW did a very poor job with this situation. Their customer service people were ill-informed. Their special "Tuning Adapter Center" technical support people were ill-informed. They wasted my time, and the time of thousands of other customers, as well as the time of all their folks who answered our phone calls.

I have to rate TW a 0 on a scale of 1 to 10.

[dlfl]

Well, first of all, the decoder doesn't receive the "input signals". ........
Yes I knew that. What I meant by signal was the binary bitstream after correction/reconstruction by the Reed-Solomon error correction algorithm, which yields the RS Corrected and RS Uncorrected error counts seen in the DVR Diagnostics Pages. These values are almost always zero even for channels that are pixelated. This is supposed to mean that the TiVo is processing the exact binary stream as sent where ever the RS encoding was applied.
.............. Take a look at the documentation for ffmpeg some time. They are all covered in the spec, however, and the values of the parameters are embedded in the transport stream. That's how the decoder knows how to decode the stream. They are also variable within a stream. The encoding for a commercial may be different than the encoding for the main program, for example.
........
Yes, I've used FFMpeg. I believe one of the parameters is buffer size (`-bufsize size' ). As an example of the kind of problem I was wondering about, what if the transport stream specified a buffer size greater than what the TiVo can provide? Or perhaps something related to `-maxrate bitrate' ? Is every last thing like this guaranteed to be OK just because the same decoder chip is used and the TiVo design supposedly meets industry standards?

[dlfl]

TWC has seen the issue here in Raleigh with their own eyes and have concluded that they are generating something that is tripping up TiVo resulting in macroblocking/pixelation which their Cisco STB's are handling with no issue. The key experiment is doing a simultaneous recording of a show on multiple TiVo's plus an 8300. The 8300 recording is clean. The TiVo recordings all exhibit breakups at exactly the same spot in the recordings and look basically identical. Just prior to the end of the recordings, the RS Stats for the TiVo's all indicate Uncorrected = 0 and the 'tune time' is correct indicating no 'retunes' have occured. This issue is only seen on SDV channels. The current TWC theory is that the rate shaper is generating something that TiVo doesnt like. However, TWC further indicates that all the Edge QAM's (Cisco GQAMs) for the different service groups should be receving the same rate shaped MPEG. This would mean that the same issue should be seen on all service groups if the rate shaper theory was correct. We did an experiment last night which showed that not to be true... My friend (on a different service group) and I recorded the same show and mine exhibited breakups on multiple TiVo's with 8300 clean while his TiVo recordings did not exhibit breakups at the time spots that mine did. That would seem to suggest that the problem is in the Edge QAM... I wouldnt expect the GQAM to be messing with the 'video' mpeg but perhaps he is fouling up the muxing information or not handing the merging of new streams properly (from TiVo's perspective anyway).. just a guess on my part though... Ill be passing the results of this experiment on to TWC next week.

Any input / thoughts / theories would be appreciated....
Thanks for the update SCSIRAID. It is so satisfying to see logical analysis and experimentation being applied to these problems instead of the guessing games we usually have to settle for! I just hope the Raleigh solution can lead to solutions in other TWC service areas. Do you have any tips on how to establish a contact with the right TWC technical people, as you apparently have done?

[SCSIRAID]

Thanks for the update SCSIRAID. It is so satisfying to see logical analysis and experimentation being applied to these problems instead of the guessing games we usually have to settle for! I just hope the Raleigh solution can lead to solutions in other TWC service areas. Do you have any tips on how to establish a contact with the right TWC technical people, as you apparently have done?

I started with a calm email to the Customer Care manager whose name and address were on the local executives page of the local website to grease the skids on my cablecard install (2006). I asked some questions and asked for some help. I got a email from a manager in technical operations and the rest is history. My tip is talk nicely and respectfully and form your statements carefully so you dont come off as mad or as a 'know it all'. I always let the tech ops folks know that I appreciate their efforts and the level of access that they are allowing above and beyond the normal situation. The rest is history. I also dont post their email addresses or cell phone numbers and try not to abuse the 'privledge' ive been granted.

[texaslabrat]

I thought I'd post a followup now that my rig has been running awhile with the attenuation in place. The TA lockups seem to have been completely eliminated. The SDV channel-changing issues have been reduced in frequency, but they still happen. So, it does look like (at least in my house) a good portion of the issues were caused by, or at least aggravated by, excessive signal strength into the Tivo.

YMMV, IANAL, etc.

[Shmooh]

So -- your experience -- there's no harm in having the TA because at the moment, I get none of those SDV channels. At least with the TA I would have some >0 probability of a successful recording on SDV channels.

But then I read Max's comment ...

that describes the TA possibly locking up the TiVo and preventing recordings even on NON-SDV channels. This is exactly the problem I want to avoid, and the reason why I have so far decided to forgo the TA even though I am missing many channels.


Yeah - that would definitely be a deal killer for me. The TA would have to go. But - We just don't experience that. I don't think we've had a non-SDV recording fail in... months, at the least. I can't even remember the last time it happened.

It's also possible that the SDV stuff has stabilized a bit, but we've been avoiding recording SDV anyway (e.g., recording off of SD versions of SDV HD channels).

[woodburger]

Here's my update (Austin). 8 problems since 10/29, mostly on TV (Time-Warner). Mostly black screen on TiVo. Saturday lost all Switched DIgital channels until I rebooted TA which then went into "Acquiring Channels" after which all was right - except I had a recording of nothing for an hour of the UT football game. Today I have lost the ISP at least 4 times. Rebooting the router seems to cure it - but not always for any length of time. This is the 3rd router, the second in weeks. TW also replaced my modem about 4 weeks ago. A head tech will come out on Wednesday to see what he can do. This is very very frustrating. Without reason, I suspect the TA is crashing TiVo. Or I have a bad router, a bad modem, a bad TA, a bad TiVo... which I doubt.

[walt oswego]

I had TiVo with Directv for years and loved it. When I moved a little over a year ago, I signed up with Time Warner here in Central NY (Syracuse) and got their Scientific Atlanta DVR. I didn't like it and my wife hated it. I bought an HD TiVO about 3 weeks ago. I like TiVo every bit as much as before but I have the SDV "missing channel" problem that many others are reporting.

After a TA reset, things works fine for a while. SDV channels get tuned in as they should. The problem eventually shows up. Tuning to an SDV channel will show the channel for a few seconds before losing it. This gradually spreads to more and more SDV channels.

First - some miscellaneous info:

1 - I had pixellation problems on HD channels with the Time Warner DVR. They were bad enough on some channels to make me not watch or record them at all. It seemed that every HD channel would have some pixellation sometime. Time Warner told me it was an issue with the signal(s) they received and were working on it. Since I got the TiVo, I have not seen a single instance of pixellation on any channel - with or without the Tuning adapter.

2 - My tuning adapter has never "locked up." I always get the non-switched digital channels even when I have the problem with switched channels.

3 - Time Warner has, so far, been very cooperative regarding the "missing channels". They have done the usual stuff remotely as I've talked to them on the phone and they have sent technicians to my house twice. After the last visit, they said they were getting a new tuning adapter to try. After reading this forum, I doubt that a new TA will fix it - but at least they are trying. It seems clear though that this is a national problem and the local techs, who have never seen a TA before, come into it without any support. It must be costing Time Warner quite a lot for local tech time for all of us who complain.

4 - My tuning adapter came with an undated sheet telling me about the missing channel problem. It said that a firmware fix would be downloaded in early January. The Time Warner techs had their own corresponding info. Theirs said the fix would be downloaded in January 2009. That's right - 2009 not 2010.


Now, my question. Why are we letting TiVo get by without criticism or complaint? We heap it all on Time Warner and / or Cisco.

- It's the TiVO that tunes the SDV channel correctly and then loses it. I can't believe that the TA somehow filters the channel out of the RF that the Tivo receives. I also find it hard to believe that the TA changes its mind and gives TiVO a wrong frequency after first providing the correct one.

- When I disconnect my tuning adapter to reset it, Tivo notices it's gone and presumably clears all of its internal data. When the TA is reset, the TiVo is also starting fresh. From my experience with real time software, it seems just as likely to be a TiVo software / firmware problem as a TA firmware problem.

- Can it be that TiVo has decided to commit all of their resources to the new Directv box while paying lip service to us?

[Shmooh]

Now, my question. Why are we letting TiVo get by without criticism or complaint? We heap it all on Time Warner and / or Cisco.


I think one of the major reasons is that TWC rolled out SDV before fully engineering a solution for CableCard customers. I.e., these types of problems should have been ironed out ahead of time instead of trying to fix it later.

My guess is that TiVo is not blameless (for at least some of the reasons you suggest). However, TiVo has a significant vested interest in keeping and enlarging its customer base. They don't want their customers telling others how much of a hassle it is to own a TiVo.

Ergo, it would certainly seems like TiVo should want this issue resolved ASAP.


- It's the TiVO that tunes the SDV channel correctly and then loses it. I can't believe that the TA somehow filters the channel out of the RF that the Tivo receives. I also find it hard to believe that the TA changes its mind and gives TiVO a wrong frequency after first providing the correct one.


I don't have this particular problem. Assuming you're not alone in this (as in, it's not just your setup or something)... While it's entirely possible (probable?) that the TiVo is screwing up here, it could just as easily be that the TA is sending erroneous data (wrong frequency or otherwise). Or, it could be that the back-end data stream is corrupted and the TiVo barfs (rightfully) after a couple bad key frames? After all - there are apparently some issues with the encoding/rate-shaper that causes the pixelation on SDV channels.

In other words - who knows. We can't assume it's TiVo's fault, and we can't assume it's the TA's. Either is possible.

I don't mean to sound like a TiVo apologist/fanboi - I'm definitely not. I'm just willing to give them the benefit of the doubt given their need for TiVo owners to be happy (versus TWC's lack of need for that), and because TWC has a reputation/history for putting a very lackluster effort into their CableCard support (meaning corporate policy - not individuals, some of whom are excellent engineers/technicians).

Two recent cases come to mind - 1) TWC being fined and forced to provide Tuning Adapters by the government because of their premature SDV rollout, and 2) TWC being forced to use CableCards in their own set top boxes because of poor CableCard support.

TWC would like nothing more than for us to give up on TiVo and use their boxes. While that mentality may change once they get tru2way, for now, we're a hassle for them. Personally, if I have to dump the TiVo, I'm going to give U-Verse a try.

[dlfl]

............
In other words - who knows. We can't assume it's TiVo's fault, and we can't assume it's the TA's. Either is possible.

That's the simple statement of fact and it's amazing, actually ridiculous, how many words have been wasted speculating or trying to prove who's fault it is on these forums without facts available.
............
Two recent cases come to mind - 1) TWC being fined and forced to provide Tuning Adapters by the government because of their premature SDV rollout, and 2) TWC being forced to use CableCards in their own set top boxes because of poor CableCard support.
.......
References? Links? Please?

[walt oswego]

That's the simple statement of fact and it's amazing, actually ridiculous, how many words have been wasted speculating or trying to prove who's fault it is on these forums without facts available.


That's because the facts are not available and no one is making them available - not technical facts anyway. The problem is frustrating, we'd like it fixed and there's no way to do that except to continue to make noise. This particular thread is useful because there's an attempt to deal with the technical issues while complaining. There are other threads in this forum that are nothing but rants that have degenerated into attacks on other contributors.

Personally, I do not know what to do except complain. I think that's true for everyone. My post was simply an attempt to get people complaining to TiVo too. Maybe it is their problem and they have not looked at it carefully enough. If it not their problem and they are sure of that, than maybe thinking we hold them responsible anyway will get them to act. They certainly have more clout and better technical contacts than any of us do.

I have 6 days left to return my TiVo to Best Buy and to cancel the Tivo service before I'm stuck paying for both. I guess I like TiVo better than the Time Warner DVR but I intend to spend the next 6 days looking for an alternative while complaining. If I stick with TiVo, I'll be complaining until the issue is resolved.

Thanks, Shmooh, for your thoughtful reply.

[woodburger]

FWIW, my problems continue, though there were a few days trouble free... most recently (yesterday) I lost the internet repeatedly and each time it could be brought back by unplugging/replugging my router. Each time it came back for maybe 15 minutes or so. Later, in the evening, when I went to the HD TV (and TiVo), (and the internet was still out) TiVo was dead (again - this is becoming almost a daily event.) I rebooted it. But the SDV channels were still lost, so I had to reboot the TA twice.

Here's the interesting thing... when I went to the TV the internet was down again. BUT after what I reported above, the internet was back.

Could the TA be taking everything on the network out?

I have a head tech coming tomorrow but honestly, I will be surprised if he can shed any light on this.

[dlfl]

........ My post was simply an attempt to get people complaining to TiVo too. .........
The problems are due to the combined system of cable co and TiVo and we have no facts to definitely analyze how to distribute the blame. Thus we should be complaining **to** both of them and letting them work out between them how they will respond.

That would mean calling or sending mail to both entities. Complaining **about**either one of them (e.g., on these forums) is fine but it is, at best, an indirect way to complain to them. For TWC I seriously doubt if complaints here have any impact at all. For TiVo, we can hope they may be reading here, but we can't assume that. Even if they do read here, they may miss a lot of the "complaints".

TiVo should already know that whether or not we hold them responsible, the marketplace soon will. If they don't realize that, they are such poor business people they are doomed to go out of business anyway.

Bottom line: if this is important enough to continually complain on this forum, by all logic one should also be contacting TiVo and TWC directly with the same complaints.

[Max Camber]

Woodburger: The lead tech and supervisor just left my place. They have another TA call tomorrow which I'm assuming is you. I pretty much just explained the locked up TA issue and showed some recordings with pixelation but they weren't really able to do anything.

Just to add another variable to the mix, does anyone in the TWC Austin area know when the problems started with pixelation? I couldn't remember when the tech asked me, but apparently TWC finished converting the nodes from a "synchronous feed to RGB" (fully digital of some sort, just repeating what they said) about 3 months ago.

[AtariAge]

Still having problems on my end here in Austin. Pretty much every day now one or both of my TiVos will be unable to record or is locked up solid and needs to be rebooted. If I want to make sure shows are recording, I have to turn the television on and make sure the TiVo can tune to the proper channel. Half the time I turn the TV on it's tuned to black. If that's the case and the TiVo isn't locked up, a channel up/down will usually result in the channel tuning in.

I haven't yet called TWC, but I've been very busy and don't want to dive into that pool yet. Will try to do so tomorrow. I agree that calling TWC and TiVo is better than complaining in this forum, however, it is still useful to do so here so people can corroborate their experiences with this issue. I do keep getting offers from DIRECTV in the mail, amusingly enough.

TiVo and Time Warner are going to start losing customers over this, if they haven't already. Time Warner won't care, but I'm guessing TiVo can't afford to lose customers as well as the poor word-of-mouth this will bring by those affected.

..Al

[DrMark]

TiVo and Time Warner are going to start losing customers over this, if they haven't already. Time Warner won't care, but I'm guessing TiVo can't afford to lose customers as well as the poor word-of-mouth this will bring by those affected.

..Al

I live in Austin, and I've wanted to upgrade to an HD Tivo (I hate the TW box). I'm going to wait until I get word that this problem is solved. The second I get an alternative that works with Tivo (U-verse, FIOS, or Satellite), I'm switching.

--Mark

[rv65]

SDV should be launched in the Ex Adelphia part of the San Diego system. They'll deploy Moto tuning adapters.

[AtariAge]

I live in Austin, and I've wanted to upgrade to an HD Tivo (I hate the TW box). I'm going to wait until I get word that this problem is solved. The second I get an alternative that works with Tivo (U-verse, FIOS, or Satellite), I'm switching.

--Mark
I absolutely would not get an HD TiVo here in Austin until this issue is resolved.

..Al

[Shmooh]

Originally Posted by Shmooh
............
Two recent cases come to mind - 1) TWC being fined and forced to provide Tuning Adapters by the government because of their premature SDV rollout, and 2) TWC being forced to use CableCards in their own set top boxes because of poor CableCard support.
.......

References? Links? Please?

My bad - I thought this was common knowledge (seriously - no sarcasm, I should've provided links).

Here's one on the cable co's being forced to use Cable Cards in their boxes:
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/10/missing-cablecard-set-top-box.ars

Here's one on the SDV rollout / TA / fining thing:
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Time-Warner-Cable-Cripples-TiVO-Gets-FCC-Fine-97222


They're both a bit old, but they explain the situations pretty well.

[dlfl]

My bad - I thought this was common knowledge (seriously - no sarcasm, I should've provided links).

Here's one on the cable co's being forced to use Cable Cards in their boxes:
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/10/missing-cablecard-set-top-box.ars

Here's one on the SDV rollout / TA / fining thing:
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Time-Warner-Cable-Cripples-TiVO-Gets-FCC-Fine-97222


They're both a bit old, but they explain the situations pretty well.
Thanks, I just went digital this summer and had not been following these events.

[dlfl]

..........
Quote:
Originally Posted by dlfl
What does TWC mean by a "sync issue" I wonder?

It means the OP spoke to a moron who has no idea of what they speak, and then the OP bought the ridiculous load of crap.
Here is a post in the GSAS thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7548984#post7548984)discussing losing sync as a problem. Sounds plausible to me. Still think it's a "load of crap" ?

[dlfl]

My bad - I thought this was common knowledge (seriously - no sarcasm, I should've provided links).

Here's one on the cable co's being forced to use Cable Cards in their boxes:
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/10/missing-cablecard-set-top-box.ars

Here's one on the SDV rollout / TA / fining thing:
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Time-Warner-Cable-Cripples-TiVO-Gets-FCC-Fine-97222


They're both a bit old, but they explain the situations pretty well.
Forfeiture rulings regarding SDV and TA's were reversed in June -- see **this post** (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7618906#post7618906). It now appears there is no FCC ruling or law requiring tuning adapters. The only requirement is 30 day advance notice before service is reduced by moving channels to SDV without furnishing a tuning adapter.

[walt oswego]

This is a follow up on my post of 11/16/09.

My "missing channels" problem has been taken care of. Time Warner (Syracuse) sent an incredibly determined and dedicated technician and he worked away at it until it was OK. He was here for a day and a half. He even called me the following day to be sure that it was still OK.

On the first afternoon two Time Warner techs came. Neither had ever seen a tuning adapter before and they both said that they had limited experience with cable cards. One of them told me there were only about 100 tuning adapters in their entire service area, all of Central NY. But they were both determined to learn and to get it right. One of them got called away after a couple of hours to do other work, the other worked on it the rest of the afternoon, called me the next day to tell me he was researching the issue, came back the following day and after several hours and many phone calls to various Time Warner people, fixed it.

I do not know which of the things they did were part of the solution and which were dead ends but here's some stuff that seems relevant.

1 - I have a new tuning adapter. After it was replaced the problem changed complexion. Instead of tuning to a new SDV channel for a few seconds and then losing it, there were some SDV channels that were simply never there at all.

2 - The tech figured out that the missing channels were always on the same QAM frequency. Leaving out all of his troubleshooting work and phone calls, the problem was finally fixed remotely. As we watched, the tuning adapter missing screen came up, the tuning adapter went through its blinks, the tuning adapter connected screen came up and it has worked right since then.

3 - As far as I can tell, no changes were made to the TiVo. It was reset a few times during the troubleshooting but I do not know if that was a necessary part of the solution.

I learned that TW has a national service desk for tuning adapters. Only TW techs can talk to them and they wait on hold to get their turn. You'll be happy to know that TW techs listen to the same TW ads while they hold that we do.

I've had a working TiVo for 2 days now. I get all my channels. It's great!!

[Stone1555]

sounds like the channels weren't in the T/A's map. When the T/A rebooted did the acquiring channel info screen come up?

[dlfl]

..........
I learned that TW has a national service desk for tuning adapters. Only TW techs can talk to them and they wait on hold to get their turn. ........
You can also get connected with the TWC National Cable Card Support group by a TiVo support rep -- they did that for me. This was after my local TWC telephone support gave up, not having a clue (and scheduled a truck roll -- of course!).

[Stormspace]

My bad - I thought this was common knowledge (seriously - no sarcasm, I should've provided links).

Here's one on the cable co's being forced to use Cable Cards in their boxes:
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/10/missing-cablecard-set-top-box.ars

Here's one on the SDV rollout / TA / fining thing:
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Time-Warner-Cable-Cripples-TiVO-Gets-FCC-Fine-97222


They're both a bit old, but they explain the situations pretty well.

IIRC part of the cable card regulation would require Cable Providers to use the same mechanism to connect that third party devices use. However I think what happened was that cable companies rushed SDV out ahead of the implementation date in the hopes of getting a stay on the cable card requirement.

[walt oswego]

sounds like the channels weren't in the T/A's map. When the T/A rebooted did the acquiring channel info screen come up?

Not that I recall. I suspect it was not the channel map. The problem was that I could not get whichever channels were on that particular QAM frequency. For example, USA is a channel that I watch a lot. I could get it at some times and not others. Turned out that I could not get it whenever it was on that frequency.

Rereading my post, I see that I never said that even though I thought it was important.

[Shmooh]

IIRC part of the cable card regulation would require Cable Providers to use the same mechanism to connect that third party devices use. However I think what happened was that cable companies rushed SDV out ahead of the implementation date in the hopes of getting a stay on the cable card requirement.

That's my guess as to what happened as well (hoping for a stay). I vaguely remember that they stalled that CableCard requirement for a long time, but that after several years the FCC just said, "No, you've had long enough. Do it."

I was asking over on the SDV FAQ thread about CableCard legality, and a poster there clearly stated that there is no requirement for cable co's to provide tuning adapters. I.e., that they could just roll out SDV and all they had to do was tell CableCard users that channels would be going away.

While that seems wrong to me (given the local monopolies cable companies have), it would be an interesting twist if they are indeed required to use the same mechanisms for third party devices.

[KungFuCow]

Is there anywhere I can find a list of what the led sequences mean, assuming they mean SOMETHING.. my TA is blinking 8 times, pausing and repeating. Before I call TW, I wanted to see if I could figure out whats going on with it.

[Grumock]

Is there anywhere I can find a list of what the led sequences mean, assuming they mean SOMETHING.. my TA is blinking 8 times, pausing and repeating. Before I call TW, I wanted to see if I could figure out whats going on with it.

when & if you call them tell them to just send a balancing hit to the account. You could try before calling them to unplug USB cord & reboot TA if you have not already done that, but I think you will need the "Balancing hit" sent. If i am not mistaken after that the light may go off entirely & then just hit the power button & all should come back in.

That is also IF the TA is still assigned to an occurrence, which from what i have heard, has happened to some who have seen this behavior in your area.

[Max Camber]

Just posting to let the TWC Austin people know that I'm still on the case. I've been exchanging email with a local tech supervisor and thanks to SCSIRAID he is now in touch with the group working on the tuning adapter issues. I'm still trying to create a streamlined process for reporting the TA issues but I'm not expecting to hear back until after Thanksgiving at this point.

[KungFuCow]

when & if you call them tell them to just send a balancing hit to the account. You could try before calling them to unplug USB cord & reboot TA if you have not already done that, but I think you will need the "Balancing hit" sent. If i am not mistaken after that the light may go off entirely & then just hit the power button & all should come back in.

That is also IF the TA is still assigned to an occurrence, which from what i have heard, has happened to some who have seen this behavior in your area.

Sweet.. it was working fine and I had to unplug my Moxi and move it and I guess that caused the TA to freak out. I kept noticing some things werent recording and when I looked, the channels werent even listed.

[Grumock]

Sweet.. it was working fine and I had to unplug my Moxi and move it and I guess that caused the TA to freak out. I kept noticing some things werent recording and when I looked, the channels werent even listed.

could be the disconnection to the cable spurred it, but i think you are feeling the left over affects of the update they are doing for the new software to be released. I think Sccraid & Biginjapan both have the new firmware (.1001)that is coming down the line. I am still showing the .0801 on the three I have now, but i am in the GSO market in NC.

BTW if all that "Balancing HIT" does not work right away, just ask to be transferred to the Cable Card Support desk.

[dlfl]

.......BTW if all that "Balancing HIT" does not work right away, just ask to be transferred to the Cable Card Support desk.
I think you have inside knowledge. I notice you call it a "Balancing HIT". I have two questions, if you know:
1. Why is it called a Balancing hit? (What is being balanced?).
2. Are there other kinds of "hits" they make to TA's?

Also, an earlier poster asked for definitions of what the TA blink sequences mean. Here is what I believe about that:

Continuous blinks -- total meltdown. Power cycle TA, cycle USB connector, reboot TiVo, call Cable Co. and/or TiVo support. But first wait 10 minutes at least. When first booting up you can have continuous blinks a long time.

Repeated 8-blink-then-pause sequences -- The TA has "lost provisioning", i.e., needs a hit from the cable co.

[B]Repeated 6-blink-then-pause sequences -- The TA has lost communication with the TiVo. Plug in or cycle the USB connector.

Steady -- Usually means all OK. However the TA can also stop working and still show a steady light in some cases.

General Tips when there's a problem:
1. First plug-cycle the USB
2. If not fixed, power-cycle the TA, leaving off at least 30 secs.
3. If not fixed, reboot the TiVo.
4. When you call either the Cable Co. or TiVo, after they do everything they can think of and it's still not fixed, ask them to connect you to the TWC National Cable Card Desk. There are plenty of cases posted where that was the only way a Tuning Adapter problem was fixed.

This info may be incomplete or incorrect. Corrections are welcomed!

[Grumock]

I think you have inside knowledge. I notice you call it a "Balancing HIT". I have two questions, if you know:
1. Why is it called a Balancing hit? (What is being balanced?).
2. Are there other kinds of "hits" they make to TA's?

Also, an earlier poster asked for definitions of what the TA blink sequences mean. Here is what I believe about that:

Continuous blinks -- total meltdown. Power cycle TA, cycle USB connector, reboot TiVo, call Cable Co. and/or TiVo support. But first wait 10 minutes at least. When first booting up you can have continuous blinks a long time.

Repeated 8-blink-then-pause sequences -- The TA has "lost provisioning", i.e., needs a hit from the cable co.

[B]Repeated 6-blink-then-pause sequences -- The TA has lost communication with the TiVo. Plug in or cycle the USB connector.

Steady -- Usually means all OK. However the TA can also stop working and still show a steady light in some cases.

General Tips when there's a problem:
1. First plug-cycle the USB
2. If not fixed, power-cycle the TA, leaving off at least 30 secs.
3. If not fixed, reboot the TiVo.
4. When you call either the Cable Co. or TiVo, after they do everything they can think of and it's still not fixed, ask them to connect you to the TWC National Cable Card Desk. There are plenty of cases posted where that was the only way a Tuning Adapter problem was fixed.

This info may be incomplete or incorrect. Corrections are welcomed!

When you reboot the TA leave the USB cord unplugged until light stays solid.
(there are times when it will go to a 6 blink & pause mode meaning the USB is Disconnected &should go solid as soon as you connect USB)

Once solid you should see the Tuning adapter connected page when u reconnect the USB cord. If not then you need to try other USB port on the back of TIVO & remove the wireless adapter if you have one connected. If still no page comes up then reboot the Tivo. Leaving the USB disconnected until TIVO is back up all the way.

8 Blinks means that it has lost is authorization in the DNCS & normally from what i have gathered a "Balancing Hit" can get that to stop but not always.

Now as far as inside information goes. LOL I wish, I was just very curious when on the phone getting mine taken care of & asked a lot of questions.

[walt oswego]

Repeated 8-blink-then-pause sequences -- The TA has "lost provisioning", i.e., needs a [balancing ?] hit from the cable co.



I can add some unconnected pieces - wish I knew enough to put them together better.

The tech who did the work at my house called the 8 blink sequence "brick mode" I assumed that it meant that in that mode the TA was as useful as a brick - but I did not ask.

Balancing hits (whatever they are) did not bring it out of brick mode. Apparently balancing hits can be sent by level 1 support. What seemed to get it out of brick mode was a "provisioning hit"( also called a "staging hit") In order to get one of those, he needed to talk to someone at the head end.

[jmfirestone]

I have a new issue, one that I haven't seen before and I am not sure what the deal is.

First, my Tuning adapter stopped getting all channels. TWC came and fixed my signal and replaced my adapter. Evrerything seemed find upon checking, but it really wasn't.

I have since rebooted it 3x, but I have an issue now where some channels tune in for 2 seconds and then gives me the message saying the channel is unavailable. Normally, if there was no room for the SDV channel I wanted, I would get the message right away. It would not come in at all. Now it comes in, then disappears.

Some channels work fine, some don't. I have not been able to get SyFyHD in for days with this issue. I find it hard to believe it has not been available in that long.

I see earlier in this thread that it's a TA issue. Ugggh...

[Grumock]

I have a new issue, one that I haven't seen before and I am not sure what the deal is.

First, my Tuning adapter stopped getting all channels. TWC came and fixed my signal and replaced my adapter. Evrerything seemed find upon checking, but it really wasn't.

I have since rebooted it 3x, but I have an issue now where some channels tune in for 2 seconds and then gives me the message saying the channel is unavailable. Normally, if there was no room for the SDV channel I wanted, I would get the message right away. It would not come in at all. Now it comes in, then disappears.

Some channels work fine, some don't. I have not been able to get SyFyHD in for days with this issue. I find it hard to believe it has not been available in that long.

I see earlier in this thread that it's a TA issue. Ugggh...

I would be inclined to think it is a possible return issue on the line. If you can bring up the Tuning Adapter Diagnostic screen you can check this.

Tivo Central /Messages & settings/ Account & system information / Tuning adapter / Tuning Adapter Diagnostics. From there choose Status Summary & then hit the select button then hit it again so that it takes you to second page in the Status summary screen. In there you will see 3 sets of Tuner, FDC & RDC. The middle set with DBMV are what you are looking at. Your return or RDC should be within no less then 36 & no higher then 55. Your FDC should also be as close to 0 as possible.

[Grumock]

I can add some unconnected pieces - wish I knew enough to put them together better.

The tech who did the work at my house called the 8 blink sequence "brick mode" I assumed that it meant that in that mode the TA was as useful as a brick - but I did not ask.

Balancing hits (whatever they are) did not bring it out of brick mode. Apparently balancing hits can be sent by level 1 support. What seemed to get it out of brick mode was a "provisioning hit"( also called a "staging hit") In order to get one of those, he needed to talk to someone at the head end.

during initial installs you might see that Brick Mode or 8 blink mode not able to be changed with a "Balancing hit" & in those cases the head end should be contacted.

I guess from what i gathered though, there are a few markets in the TWC footprint that did some type of update for the new firmware that is to come that put many TAs into the brick mode. For those i was told that all that was needed was a balancing hit & in some rare occasions the USB had to be pulled & the TA rebooted after that hit was sent. This is of course knowledge obtained through the grapevine.

[SCSIRAID]

I have a new issue, one that I haven't seen before and I am not sure what the deal is.

First, my Tuning adapter stopped getting all channels. TWC came and fixed my signal and replaced my adapter. Evrerything seemed find upon checking, but it really wasn't.

I have since rebooted it 3x, but I have an issue now where some channels tune in for 2 seconds and then gives me the message saying the channel is unavailable. Normally, if there was no room for the SDV channel I wanted, I would get the message right away. It would not come in at all. Now it comes in, then disappears.

Some channels work fine, some don't. I have not been able to get SyFyHD in for days with this issue. I find it hard to believe it has not been available in that long.

I see earlier in this thread that it's a TA issue. Ugggh...

Do you have a regular TWC box in addition to the TiVo? Can you tune those channels on the TWC box? If you dont have one... perhaps borrow one from a neighbor?

[DrSnoCaps]

I would be inclined to think it is a possible return issue on the line. If you can bring up the Tuning Adapter Diagnostic screen you can check this.

Tivo Central /Messages & settings/ Account & system information / Tuning adapter / Tuning Adapter Diagnostics. From there choose Status Summary & then hit the select button then hit it again so that it takes you to second page in the Status summary screen. In there you will see 3 sets of Tuner, FDC & RDC. The middle set with DBMV are what you are looking at. Your return or RDC should be within no less then 36 & no higher then 55. Your FDC should also be as close to 0 as possible.

I have an RDC of 32 and FDC of 14 and those values are outside the range you cited. Is there anything as an end user I can do that might improve them (and thus my TA performance, which kind of sucks :-( )

[Grumock]

I have an RDC of 32 and FDC of 14 and those values are outside the range you cited. Is there anything as an end user I can do that might improve them (and thus my TA performance, which kind of sucks :-( )

well I would not recommend using attenuators just as a personal choice. You would or should get a tech out to try & get those levels straight. The problem is that lots of times you will get a tech out who is not willing to get is straight. I forget if you are a TWC user or not? If you are & you get a tech out that is looking at those signals & is telling you they are good you may want to get him to contact the Cable Card Support Desk before he leaves so that there is not a repeat trouble call for the same issue.

[SCSIRAID]

I have an RDC of 32 and FDC of 14 and those values are outside the range you cited. Is there anything as an end user I can do that might improve them (and thus my TA performance, which kind of sucks :-( )

What is the 'Tuner' value? 14 for FDC is huge... I would imagine that the tuner value should be in the same range and is too high.

[Grumock]

What is the 'Tuner' value? 14 for FDC is huge... I would imagine that the tuner value should be in the same range and is too high.

I agree with you 100%

[DrMark]

Just posting to let the TWC Austin people know that I'm still on the case. I've been exchanging email with a local tech supervisor and thanks to SCSIRAID he is now in touch with the group working on the tuning adapter issues. I'm still trying to create a streamlined process for reporting the TA issues but I'm not expecting to hear back until after Thanksgiving at this point.

I'm just checking to see if there has been any progress with TWC in Austin.

Thanks,

--mark

[DrSnoCaps]

What is the 'Tuner' value? 14 for FDC is huge... I would imagine that the tuner value should be in the same range and is too high.

Tuner value is 12 dBmV. I'm right up the road from you near 55 & HighHouse so if you know a good TWC tech, please let me know!

[SCSIRAID]

Tuner value is 12 dBmV. I'm right up the road from you near 55 & HighHouse so if you know a good TWC tech, please let me know!

Ive got some attenuators you could borrow and see if it fixes your issue.

[dcstager]

Just posting to let the TWC Austin people know that I'm still on the case. I've been exchanging email with a local tech supervisor and thanks to SCSIRAID he is now in touch with the group working on the tuning adapter issues. I'm still trying to create a streamlined process for reporting the TA issues but I'm not expecting to hear back until after Thanksgiving at this point.

One thing TWC in Austin could do is push out the latest firmware update for the TA. Mine is at .701 and people are posting that they have .1001 I don't know what others in Austin have. I have had the pixellation problems and the issue with having to channel up then down to see a channel and blank recordings on SDV channels and pretty much every bug mentioned here has shown up.

A firmware fix might be the solution but chances are Tivo will have to build some error checking into their end of it to be sure the Tivo is receiving the SDV channel. TWC will have to insure there is enough bandwidth on the requested SDV channel to overcome the pixellation problems.

[dlfl]

One thing TWC in Austin could do is push out the latest firmware update for the TA. Mine is at .701 and people are posting that they have .1001 I don't know what others in Austin have. I have had the pixellation problems and the issue with having to channel up then down to see a channel and blank recordings on SDV channels and pretty much every bug mentioned here has shown up.

A firmware fix might be the solution but chances are Tivo will have to build some error checking into their end of it to be sure the Tivo is receiving the SDV channel. TWC will have to insure there is enough bandwidth on the requested SDV channel to overcome the pixellation problems.
The "current" version of TA firmware has been .0801 for months now. The only place I'm aware of 0.1001 being deployed is in the Raleigh NC area presumbaly as part of the investigation being done by SCSIRAID there.

Also, I doubt that "sufficient bandwidth" can either be checked by the TiVo or is a primary factor in the pixelation problems. Last I heard, the problems in the Raleigh area are something to do with the way the binary transport stream is formulated in the TWC delivery system that causes problems only for TiVo's, not for TWC STB's or DVR's. Unfortunately one cannot assume the delivery systems in different TWC regions are identical, so we can only hope the solution for Raleigh is also the solution for Austin or other regions.

[comcastblows]

Hey guys, I'm glad to have found this forum, misery loves company I guess. I'm about a month into no HD channels except for the major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS & FOX). It's like I'm waiting for the tuning adapter to finally get to my house, all over again...

I've got a HD tivo with TWC near Charlotte, NC. A few weeks back I lost most of the HD programmimg. Since then I've been through two techs, two tuning adapters, and enough power cycles to make you crazy. But yet I'm still not getting receiving all the HD channels that I'm paying for (Disc, TLC, HISTHD, and other random channels like BBC, god I miss top gear).

I was happy to see the info posted about the 8 blinks. I kept suggesting to the techs that HAD to mean something as I didn't remember it happening in the past. So I guess I'll call tomorrow and request a "balancing hit", reboot, and see if that helps. Then I should call again and request a "provisioning hit"? Or will I just have to wait for another tech to come out and do that?

Thanks for the help. It's pretty horrible to have spent money on a nice TV, a higher end tivo, and then shell out over $110 a month to TWC only to not be able to watch my shows in HD.

Should I have posted this in the main TWC section as I don't really know if it's tuning adapter or the card?

(and yes "comcastblows" is my login, but I now have TWC. But I'm feeling similarly about them...)

[SCSIRAID]

Hey guys, I'm glad to have found this forum, misery loves company I guess. I'm about a month into no HD channels except for the major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS & FOX). It's like I'm waiting for the tuning adapter to finally get to my house, all over again...

I've got a HD tivo with TWC near Charlotte, NC. A few weeks back I lost most of the HD programmimg. Since then I've been through two techs, two tuning adapters, and enough power cycles to make you crazy. But yet I'm still not getting receiving all the HD channels that I'm paying for (Disc, TLC, HISTHD, and other random channels like BBC, god I miss top gear).

I was happy to see the info posted about the 8 blinks. I kept suggesting to the techs that HAD to mean something as I didn't remember it happening in the past. So I guess I'll call tomorrow and request a "balancing hit", reboot, and see if that helps. Then I should call again and request a "provisioning hit"? Or will I just have to wait for another tech to come out and do that?

Thanks for the help. It's pretty horrible to have spent money on a nice TV, a higher end tivo, and then shell out over $110 a month to TWC only to not be able to watch my shows in HD.

Should I have posted this in the main TWC section as I don't really know if it's tuning adapter or the card?

(and yes "comcastblows" is my login, but I now have TWC. But I'm feeling similarly about them...)

If you are missing channels, they you likely need a 'balancing' hit. If you pull the TA USB cable, do you get the missing channels? I would expect not since the TA just provides tuning resolution, not entitlement. You dont need to reboot anything though. If you reboot before all the EMM's are received you may defeat the hit.

[bobrt6676]

If you are missing channels, they you likely need a 'balancing' hit. If you pull the TA USB cable, do you get the missing channels? I would expect not since the TA just provides tuning resolution, not entitlement. You dont need to reboot anything though. If you reboot before all the EMM's are received you may defeat the hit.

My recent experience with TW CC/TA hotline suggests it takes 3 HITS to get the EMM's up enough to receive all channels.
1 Hit- I received 2 EMM's no new channels
2nd Hit- 4 EMM's partial channels restored
3rd Hit- 6+EMM's all stations restored :D

[comcastblows]

Thanks for the help. Yes, I don't get the channels with T/A unplugged either.

I called today and got a "balancing hit" and absolutely nothing changed. I still don't get those channels and I still have the eight blink sequence going on. Is the balancing hit for the T/A or for the cable card? Should I bypass the T/A for the hit and plug the hd tivo/cable card in directly?

[SCSIRAID]

Thanks for the help. Yes, I don't get the channels with T/A unplugged either.

I called today and got a "balancing hit" and absolutely nothing changed. I still don't get those channels and I still have the eight blink sequence going on. Is the balancing hit for the T/A or for the cable card? Should I bypass the T/A for the hit and plug the hd tivo/cable card in directly?

I would remove the TA and get the basic TiVo working first...

Missing channels typically means that your account isnt set up properly and your cablecard doesnt have the entitlements that it needs to decode the channels you subscribe to. They typically fix this by 'balancing' your account. This assumes you cablecard is authorized though... If you go into CC Menu... do you have CP AUTH RECVD?

[jmfirestone]

I would be inclined to think it is a possible return issue on the line. If you can bring up the Tuning Adapter Diagnostic screen you can check this.

Tivo Central /Messages & settings/ Account & system information / Tuning adapter / Tuning Adapter Diagnostics. From there choose Status Summary & then hit the select button then hit it again so that it takes you to second page in the Status summary screen. In there you will see 3 sets of Tuner, FDC & RDC. The middle set with DBMV are what you are looking at. Your return or RDC should be within no less then 36 & no higher then 55. Your FDC should also be as close to 0 as possible.

FDC = -1, RDC = 41. Sounds pretty good? TW is coming this morning to look at it.

Do you have a regular TWC box in addition to the TiVo? Can you tune those channels on the TWC box? If you dont have one... perhaps borrow one from a neighbor?

The same channel will come in fine on a normal box. That was one of the first things I checked since there is an announcement on the TW phone line that they are having problems with a bunch of set top boxes. I thought it might just be an overall SDV issue. It wasn't.

[jmfirestone]

The guy came and checked my signals. He said my main signal was way to high at a +15 or something and the max it should be is a +8. He adjusted that, but it still didn't help. He said it's a system wide issue that is going on all over. Raleigh, Charlotte, here in Greensboro. Apparently G'boro gets its feed from Raleigh.

He said it's an engineering issue with the servers, the only thing he can do is escalate it to his supervisor. He did, and his supervisor is apparently going to check all the QAMs from here to the office or something to make sure everything is good. That would take a few days, and once they verify everything is good they pass it on to engineering.

So, I wait...

[scottc42]

I am TWC Milwaukee. I received my Tuning Adapter several months ago, and I installed it myself with no apparent problems. It pretty much worked right out of the box, and a couple days later I got a call from someone at Time Warner asking if I was happy with the Tuning Adapter and if I needed any support in installing. I said everything was great, and I was pretty pleased with getting the call. Until a few weeks ago, the only problem I had was the occasional "channel not available", but it never interfered with recordings.

Then Time Warner completely changed the channel lineup. This really threw me off, because my memory gets harder and harder to reprogram these days! At first it seemed like my guide really had a hard time adjusting to the new lineup, but this seemed to resolve itself after a few days. Then it seemed like there were a bunch of new channels (maybe they were there before, and I just did not know) in the channel list, but I could not tune to them. Then I noticed that channels I think I should get (FOXHD, SCIENCEHD) were no longer coming in. I never had any blinking lights, but I tried rebooting a few times with no success. I did not bother calling Time Warner. Then yesterday I noticed many of the "missing" channels were back (FOXHD & SCIENCEHD included). I went to the channel list and found more channels I did not know were available (The Weather Channel HD) and selected them. Then I went to watch some of these channels. I could tune to them, but when I tuned away, they dissapeared from the guide and they were unselected in the channel list.

Is this something that also will resolve itself over time?

[rover1]

A couple of weeks ago TWC added 8 HD channels to the lineup....the next day they added 1 more and a couple of days later they added one more. The problem is that the original 8 adds will not tune for me at all. I get a plain gray screen. No Temp unavailable or any notices....just the gray screen. The channel added the next day works fine and the last add works just fine. I have called Oceanic and the very nice gentleman went through several steps (from the manual) about rebooting the Tivo and rebooting the TA---which I had already tried before I called. He checked a couple of things with the tech folks while I was on hold but nothing worked. I have a truck roll on 15DEC--the first available date since right after T-giving. I have sent email to TWC support and they have (slowly) been working on a fix. Today I get the notice that a new hit has been sent to both cable card and TA and for me to try the reboots again---still nothing. I told them that it is almost as if the TA is not aware that I am supposed to get those 8 channels. Any suggestions? I am off island for a week starting Sunday so that gives them a few days to maybe come up with a solution--short of the truck roll on the 15th. TIA for any help.
Bill :confused:

[rover1]

More info...I looked at the Tuner Summary and it's as follows... Tuner: -3dbmv FDC -16dbmv RDC 55dbmv... I also looked at a page the addressed EMMS..... they all read Zero. Am I stuck waiting for the tech to come next week?
TIA- Bill

[SCSIRAID]

More info...I looked at the Tuner Summary and it's as follows... Tuner: -3dbmv FDC -16dbmv RDC 55dbmv... I also looked at a page the addressed EMMS..... they all read Zero. Am I stuck waiting for the tech to come next week?
TIA- Bill

FDC and RDC are certainly out of whack.... The Tuner value is fine though... odd.

[woodburger]

I am still having problems with lost switched digital channels, lost isp to computer - all on TW Austin. This despite the tech dropping my signal level (another splitter), replacing the cable run to street (300 feet) and putting some sort of noise trap somewhere. One thing I can't figure is when I reboot my router (to get internet back) I ALSO have to reboot TiVo. Does that make sense? I'd say - without looking at my records - I have to reboot something, TA/TiVo, router, at least once a week. I am on my 3rd router and second cable modem.

[PAClaxton]

Hey guys, I'm glad to have found this forum, misery loves company I guess. I'm about a month into no HD channels except for the major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS & FOX). It's like I'm waiting for the tuning adapter to finally get to my house, all over again...

I've got a HD tivo with TWC near Charlotte, NC. A few weeks back I lost most of the HD programmimg. Since then I've been through two techs, two tuning adapters, and enough power cycles to make you crazy. But yet I'm still not getting receiving all the HD channels that I'm paying for (Disc, TLC, HISTHD, and other random channels like BBC, god I miss top gear).

I was happy to see the info posted about the 8 blinks. I kept suggesting to the techs that HAD to mean something as I didn't remember it happening in the past. So I guess I'll call tomorrow and request a "balancing hit", reboot, and see if that helps. Then I should call again and request a "provisioning hit"? Or will I just have to wait for another tech to come out and do that?

Thanks for the help. It's pretty horrible to have spent money on a nice TV, a higher end tivo, and then shell out over $110 a month to TWC only to not be able to watch my shows in HD.

Should I have posted this in the main TWC section as I don't really know if it's tuning adapter or the card?

(and yes "comcastblows" is my login, but I now have TWC. But I'm feeling similarly about them...)

I'm on TWC-Charlotte as well and had the same problem about a month ago, (the 8 blink and pause on the TA). I called support several times before I got it to work doing the following --

1. Unplug the USB cord connecting the Tivo to the TA.
2. Unplug the power to the TA
3. Wait 2 minutes or so - VERY IMPORTANT
4. Plug in TA and DO NOT connect the USB to the TIVO
5. Once you get a solid green light, you can then connect the USB to the TIVO.

(If you connect the USB to the TIVO to early, that will cause the 8 blink that wouldn't resolve itself.)

Hope this helps,
Phil

P.S. I used to have Comcast in Florida and they were awful. I have been very happy with TWC-Charlotte since I started with them over a year ago.

[Max Camber]

I'm just checking to see if there has been any progress with TWC in Austin.

None at all. I've been extremely polite and patient but am still getting minimal/no response to my email at this point. I'm contacting the VP of Customer Care today but have very low expectations.

[darkavich]

Hello,
I have been working with Time Warner for the past 12 months to try and get a problem resolved. The configuration that I have is:

Tivo Series 3
-Dual Cable Cards
- Tuner Adapter .801 firmware

Tivo HD
- Multi-stream Cable Card
- Tuner Adapter .801 firmware

After a reboot of the Tuner adapter, which takes about 2-3 minutes before it is authorized to display SDV channels, everything works fine. I can tun in every channel. After a few hours (usually no more than 3) several channels stop working (not 100% of all channels). I can tune them in, and I get 1-2 seconds of the program and then I get the stock message that "This channel is temporarily unavailable".

The problem is resolved (temporarily) by power cycling the tuner adapter. It will then fail to work after a few more hours.

All the technicians at TWC want to do is test the signal of the cable. They tell me it's too high then another says too low. All the time, the problem is not resolved until I reboot. Then a few hours later it fails again.

Does anyone have any advise for trying to work with TWC to resolve this problem? I am in the process of escalating. At this point, I feel like we need a protocol expert from both Cisco and TWC to help me solve this problem.

At the moment, all my SDV channels are worthless to try and record, because I get a 90% failure rate because the tuner adapter will not tune in the channel.

Thanks in advance,
-Steve

[Grumock]

Hello,
I have been working with Time Warner for the past 12 months to try and get a problem resolved. The configuration that I have is:

Tivo Series 3
-Dual Cable Cards
- Tuner Adapter .801 firmware

Tivo HD
- Multi-stream Cable Card
- Tuner Adapter .801 firmware

After a reboot of the Tuner adapter, which takes about 2-3 minutes before it is authorized to display SDV channels, everything works fine. I can tun in every channel. After a few hours (usually no more than 3) several channels stop working (not 100% of all channels). I can tune them in, and I get 1-2 seconds of the program and then I get the stock message that "This channel is temporarily unavailable".

The problem is resolved (temporarily) by power cycling the tuner adapter. It will then fail to work after a few more hours.

All the technicians at TWC want to do is test the signal of the cable. They tell me it's too high then another says too low. All the time, the problem is not resolved until I reboot. Then a few hours later it fails again.

Does anyone have any advise for trying to work with TWC to resolve this problem? I am in the process of escalating. At this point, I feel like we need a protocol expert from both Cisco and TWC to help me solve this problem.

At the moment, all my SDV channels are worthless to try and record, because I get a 90% failure rate because the tuner adapter will not tune in the channel.

Thanks in advance,
-Steve


Curious, have any of the techs tried to replace the power supply to the tuning adapter or the TA itself?

When you go to the status summary screen in the Tuning adapter Diag screens go to the second page & you will see three sets of tuner/ FDC / & RDC. What does the middle set that have DBMV next to them read?

[iggygirl6]

Hi all,

After reading about all of the Time Warner tuning adapter issues in this thread, I did not see very many posts about issues in Maine. I was wondering if TWC customers in Maine are having the same issues with the tuning adapter?

I had purchased a TiVo HD recently, but later returned it after reading about all of the problems with cablecards and the tuning adapter. I switched to the the TWC DVR and I hate it. I really want the TiVo back! After some very helpful advice on here, I've decided to take a chance and have ordered another TiVo HD, which is on its way. As a TWC customer in Maine, once I have the cablecards and tuning adapter installed with the new TiVo, am I going to run into the same problems as others have posted on here (rebooting, losing channels, etc.)? Or has the tuner adapter rollout in Maine been better? Thanks in advance for your help.

[darkavich]

Curious, have any of the techs tried to replace the power supply to the tuning adapter or the TA itself?

When you go to the status summary screen in the Tuning adapter Diag screens go to the second page & you will see three sets of tuner/ FDC / & RDC. What does the middle set that have DBMV next to them read?


I have two separate units. So I don't think the power supply is a problem or the unit.

The value for the middle RDC is 41 dBmV.

Thanks,
-Steve

[Grumock]

I have two separate units. So I don't think the power supply is a problem or the unit.

The value for the middle RDC is 41 dBmV.

Thanks,
-Steve

well that RDC is fine. Both of your units are doing the same exact thing?

[darkavich]

well that RDC is fine. Both of your units are doing the same exact thing?

Yes, they both do the same thing, but not at the same time. The HD version seems to take longer to fail, while the S3 version does it in less than 3 hours.

[SCSIRAID]

Hello,
I have been working with Time Warner for the past 12 months to try and get a problem resolved. The configuration that I have is:

Tivo Series 3
-Dual Cable Cards
- Tuner Adapter .801 firmware

Tivo HD
- Multi-stream Cable Card
- Tuner Adapter .801 firmware

After a reboot of the Tuner adapter, which takes about 2-3 minutes before it is authorized to display SDV channels, everything works fine. I can tun in every channel. After a few hours (usually no more than 3) several channels stop working (not 100% of all channels). I can tune them in, and I get 1-2 seconds of the program and then I get the stock message that "This channel is temporarily unavailable".

The problem is resolved (temporarily) by power cycling the tuner adapter. It will then fail to work after a few more hours.

All the technicians at TWC want to do is test the signal of the cable. They tell me it's too high then another says too low. All the time, the problem is not resolved until I reboot. Then a few hours later it fails again.

Does anyone have any advise for trying to work with TWC to resolve this problem? I am in the process of escalating. At this point, I feel like we need a protocol expert from both Cisco and TWC to help me solve this problem.

At the moment, all my SDV channels are worthless to try and record, because I get a 90% failure rate because the tuner adapter will not tune in the channel.

Thanks in advance,
-Steve

Where are you located?

[darkavich]

Where are you located?

San Diego, Ca

[darkavich]

Hello,
I have been working with Time Warner for the past 12 months to try and get a problem resolved. The configuration that I have is:

Tivo Series 3
-Dual Cable Cards
- Tuner Adapter .801 firmware

Tivo HD
- Multi-stream Cable Card
- Tuner Adapter .801 firmware

After a reboot of the Tuner adapter, which takes about 2-3 minutes before it is authorized to display SDV channels, everything works fine. I can tun in every channel. After a few hours (usually no more than 3) several channels stop working (not 100% of all channels). I can tune them in, and I get 1-2 seconds of the program and then I get the stock message that "This channel is temporarily unavailable".

The problem is resolved (temporarily) by power cycling the tuner adapter. It will then fail to work after a few more hours.

All the technicians at TWC want to do is test the signal of the cable. They tell me it's too high then another says too low. All the time, the problem is not resolved until I reboot. Then a few hours later it fails again.

Does anyone have any advise for trying to work with TWC to resolve this problem? I am in the process of escalating. At this point, I feel like we need a protocol expert from both Cisco and TWC to help me solve this problem.

At the moment, all my SDV channels are worthless to try and record, because I get a 90% failure rate because the tuner adapter will not tune in the channel.

Thanks in advance,
-Steve

I contacted Tivo today and they told me that there are two possible problems that would result in this behavior. The first is that my signal is too high. I do have an amplifier on my cable that is adding +8dB.

The second problem is there is a software problem with the Cisco devices that are causing corrupted packets.

I am going to see if the cable company has another brand of tuner adapter and remove the booster from this segment to see if that fixes it.

[darkavich]

I contacted Tivo today and they told me that there are two possible problems that would result in this behavior. The first is that my signal is too high. I do have an amplifier on my cable that is adding +8dB.

The second problem is there is a software problem with the Cisco devices that are causing corrupted packets.

I am going to see if the cable company has another brand of tuner adapter and remove the booster from this segment to see if that fixes it.

So Time Warner called me back (They are on their way out in the morning). The supervisor that will be coming out claims he knows the exact problem and how to fix it. The statement they made was that the cable cards were not bound correctly. <shrug> not sure why other things would be working fine if that was the case.

But, I am cautiously optimistic.

[Max Camber]

TWC Austin users should be getting a tuning adapter firmware upgrade tonight.

[dlfl]

TWC Austin users should be getting a tuning adapter firmware upgrade tonight.
To what version number?

[Max Camber]

To what version number?

No idea. I'll post as soon as I find out.

[cableguy763]

No idea. I'll post as soon as I find out.
10.01. I'm assuming Aaron gave you a call Max?

[Max Camber]

10.01. I'm assuming Aaron gave you a call Max?

Oh good, TWC is stalking me. :D

Aaron didn't know which version they were going to push out tonight, just that the update was happening.

TiVo support is also going to follow up with me tomorrow to make sure the new firmware takes care of the problem.

[txporter]

I guess I need to start watching this thread again. If the roll-out goes well, I might consider reconnecting my tuning adapters...

[waldrondigital]

I'm on TWC-Charlotte as well and had the same problem about a month ago, (the 8 blink and pause on the TA). I called support several times before I got it to work doing the following --

1. Unplug the USB cord connecting the Tivo to the TA.
2. Unplug the power to the TA
3. Wait 2 minutes or so - VERY IMPORTANT
4. Plug in TA and DO NOT connect the USB to the TIVO
5. Once you get a solid green light, you can then connect the USB to the TIVO.

(If you connect the USB to the TIVO to early, that will cause the 8 blink that wouldn't resolve itself.)

Hope this helps,
Phil

P.S. I used to have Comcast in Florida and they were awful. I have been very happy with TWC-Charlotte since I started with them over a year ago.

Your fix was genius. I've been missing a bunch of HD channels for ages and did the steps in order and my previous blinking light TA is now solid and I get my missing channels!! Thank you!

[Max Camber]

The firmware update just finished around 1:10 AM.

STA1.0.0_1520_LR_F.1001

[dcstager]

I woke up this morning to discover a "Tuning Adapter Connected" message on my Tivo. So, my box updated to .1001 overnight. Let's see if it corrects some of the bugs.