No sound

leighv · 10-08-2004, 05:57 PM

I now have just recently got no sound on any of my channels thru Tivo. I have connected my TV straight up to the and there is sound. I have checked all the Scart leads. Any ideas? Thanks.

Robert S · 10-08-2004, 06:24 PM

Reboot?

childe · 12-04-2004, 03:33 PM

Did you fix this problem? My Dad's Tivo has just lost sound on all channels he watches or records via Tivo.

He can still hear sound on old recordings. He can hear sound directly from his Sky box. But via Live TV, or if he presses the aux button he gets no sound.

He has restarted both his Tivo and his sky box, and can't see any obviously loose cables.

He has not changed any of the connections since it was working. He did recently have a problem getting the Tivo to dial for updates, but a restart did fix that. I don't know if there is a connection

Any ideas?

Eric

Robert S · 12-04-2004, 05:52 PM

or if he presses the aux button he gets no sound.

Then it ain't the TiVo. It's probably a loose SCART connector.

tefster · 12-05-2004, 04:59 AM

Interestingly enough the same thing happened to me last night, I lost
sound on my Sky (SCART) channels and sound+picture on all of my RF
channels. Cables were all connected well, and I'd had no reboots inbetween.

I went out, came back and found that X-Men 2 had recorded without sound.
Viewing my Sky box directly I got sound, but when watching Live TV via the
TiVo and playing back the XM2 recording were both silent. Also I lost my RF
channels, TiVo couldn't pick up a signal from them at all.

In my case a full reboot sorted it.

Automan · 12-05-2004, 05:15 AM

My Sony Sky Digibox sometimes yields no sound if the same (current) channel number is selected too many times.

Normally however a change to another channel brings it back but it can lead to the odd silent recording.

Automan.

childe · 12-06-2004, 06:00 PM

Tefster

You say a full reboot fixed it. Do you mean a Restart or a Repeat Guided Setup? My Dad has tried the former with no success.

When you had no sound did you find that even if you pressed the aux button you still had no sound?

tefster · 12-07-2004, 04:26 AM

Sorry, my bad wording, I meant just a regular Restart. When I had no sound I
had no sound even if I pressed the Aux button.

ScoobyDooZ · 09-29-2005, 01:57 AM

Hi did you fix this as i'm having problems too:

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScoobyDooZ

Can anyone help with the sound problem on my Thompson Tivo ?

Having come back from 2 weeks holiday I have found that programs recorded in the second week have no sound.

I also have no sound when watching live TV unless I push the Aux ‘bypass’ button.

I have tried 2 freeview boxes and 2 scart leads. When connected direct to the TV they all work fine.

I have pushed the cables all the way in and give them a wiggle too.

I have also tried powering off and rebooting via the remote.

Can anybody suggest what to try next please ?

ScoobyDooZ

PS. Most of the above was tried after reading through alot of post. If it needs fixing can anyone recommend a place on the south coast (UK) as I have a lifetime subscription.

PeterDevonport · 12-04-2005, 09:04 AM

I've just encountered the same problem, I have a Thomson PVR10UK and a Thomson Sky digital box .

I get sound through AUX and I get sound from old recordings in Now Playing.

I get no sound on new recordings in Now Playing or through Live TV.

All the leads are connected properly, and I've already reset the system.

Has anyone ever managed to fix this or is my TiVo dead?

Peter

blindlemon · 12-04-2005, 09:15 AM

It's not terminal, so don't panic

This problem occurs when the MSP chip fails to initialise properly at startup. Nobody really knows why this happens, AFAIK, but I would suggest trying a couple more restarts from the System Reset menu.

PeterDevonport · 12-04-2005, 09:21 AM

Thanks for the info I'll go give it a try.

PeterDevonport · 12-04-2005, 09:38 AM

I've reset the recorder a few times now but still no sound on live tv.
Any ideas???

ScoobyDooZ · 12-04-2005, 11:36 AM

I never sorted mine, but did read the other day that someone tried a reset without the freeview box plugged in and then plugged it in and it seemed to work.

blindlemon · 12-04-2005, 12:53 PM

OK, try unplugging it from the mains for a couple of minutes - a cold reset - and then see what happens.

Normally the failure to initialise the sound chip is a transitory thing. If that fails you could try replacing the PSU, as this may be voltage-related - although there's no guarantee it will do the trick.

healeydave · 12-05-2005, 08:15 AM

There are a few slightly differing "No Sound" issues floating around. I have had quite a few boxes from my stock over the years with this symptom, in fact its the most common fault second to modem issue probably!

I recently found I can cure some of these with some board re-work which I always try now when I come accross a unit with these symptoms. Generally from a cold start, the unit will show a picture but no sound, sometimes it takes a while for the picture to appears also or the picture is intermittant when doing channel changes.

I will consider looking at units for people whilst I'm still proving the fix. I can't make any guarentees because there are many differing causes for the "No Sound" problem and my cure probably ony addresses one or a few of them!

Postage being covered + a nominal charge for my time will only be required whilst I'm still looking into it if anyones interested.

Regs
Dave.

ScoobyDooZ · 12-05-2005, 10:35 AM

Hi, that's a kind jesture.

Where abouts in UK are you ?

Might be able to drop Tivo off !

healeydave · 12-05-2005, 10:39 AM

Worcester (Midlands)

ScoobyDooZ · 12-05-2005, 10:44 AM

Are you far from banbury ? sometimes I have to go there.

blindlemon · 12-05-2005, 12:18 PM

www.multimap.com

healeydave · 12-06-2005, 03:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScoobyDooZ

Are you far from banbury ? sometimes I have to go there.

With rings on your fingers and bells on your toes?

Sorry couldn't resist, and if some people don't know the rhyme, they will be wondering what the hell I'm talking about :-)

Although as the crow flies, Banbury isn't that far away, its just over an hour by Motorway

wytee · 12-09-2005, 04:54 PM

Hi All,

I'm a new UK Tivo owner - I recently bought one on eBay. I've just returned from living in the US for two years, so I had to give up a rather nice Series 2... but even the UK Series 1 is still miles better than Sky+ !!

Anyway, I've started having a similar sound problem and it's becoming increasingly common and annoying.

During the middle of a program, the sound will drop out and the picture wil start going "blocky" (intermittently). Sometimes, the sound does not completely drop out, but everyone sounds like a Dalek and the "blocky picture" problem is apparent. Connecting the Sky box directly to the TV proves that the Sky feed is fine.

Sometimes changing the channel fixes the problem (so the next program recorded will often be fine). But increasingly, I have to do a full reboot to resolve the problem. Currently I have to reboot about once a week, but like I say, it's getting more common that I have to reboot rather than just change the channel

If it makes any difference I upgraded the unit when I bought it to 250MB + Cachecard with 256MB (thanks to blindlemon)

Has anyone got any ideas?

One thought I had was to force the Tivo to reboot every day, say at 3am in the morning. Would this be easy to do?

Any ideas greatly appreciated!

Regards,

Martin

healeydave · 12-09-2005, 05:06 PM

When the problem starts, does it persist or clear itself?

I have seen units with cachecards installed corrupt when a call comes into a mobile!
and only clears when the call is ended or the phone goes to another room, very stange.

Also, how long does the unit work for before the corruption starts, if its days, I would be inclined to suspect the Hard Disk rather than a motherboard problem.
A motherboard problem might not start until a failing component gets hot, but this would be hours at the most and clearing the fault would require the unit to be left off (cold) for the fault to take a similar time to re-appear (again minutes or hours, not days).

I wouldn't try to circumvent the issue by rebooting the tivo regularly, if its the drive (most likely), it might be only a matter of time before the problem get worse!

blindlemon · 12-09-2005, 05:14 PM

I have to agree that it could well be a drive problem - most likely a few dodgy sectors that your TiVo hits from time to time. Unfortunately, even new drives that test perfectly sometimes develop these after a few months. In a PC it wouldn't be a serious problem, but the TiVo has no code to force the drive to reallocate bad sectors so they just hang around and keep causing problems

Please contact me by email and I will arrange a replacement.

stevebax · 01-04-2006, 05:54 PM

Just had an occurence of this problem. Upgraded yesterday from original twin drive to single 200Gb + Cachecard. Also changed PSU for brand new one.

Sometime between 00:30 and 00:55 it stopped recording sound. Tried Restaring the Recorder (using the menu option). No joy. Pulled the plug for a hard reset which did the trick.

Here is the log after one of the soft resets.

Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Box setup for PAL mode
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Loading FPGA driver
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: fpga driver configured in PAL mode.
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: fpga module running SAA7118 video encoder
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: I2C arbitration error at address 0x88.
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) last message repeated 2 times
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: error reading MSP HW ver.
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: MajorRevCode Version 0x0
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: I2C arbitration error at address 0x88.
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: error reading ROM ver.
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: ROM Version 0x0
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: ProductCode = 0x0
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: *** Unknown MSP product!!! ***0x0
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: memstart = 0x80154000 : size = 0x120000
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Standin 0: addr 0x80158000, len 0x11c000
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Checking for Kickstart panic signal
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: No panic situation detected
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Cleanup /dev/hda9 pass 1
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/hda9 is mounted.^M
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: /dev/hda9 was not cleanly unmounted, check forced.
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Fix summary information? yes

Here is extract from kernal log during the last hard reset.

Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Loading i2c driver
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Box setup for PAL mode
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Loading FPGA driver
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: fpga driver configured in PAL mode.
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: fpga module running SAA7118 video encoder
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: MajorRevCode Version 0x4
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: ROM Version 0xa25
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: ProductCode = 0xa
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Msp: MSP3410
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: MSP34X0D
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: memstart = 0x80154000 : size = 0x120000
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Standin 0: addr 0x80158000, len 0x11c000
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Checking for Kickstart panic signal
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: No panic situation detected
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Cleanup /dev/hda9 pass 1
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/hda9 is mounted.^M
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: /dev/hda9 was not cleanly unmounted, check forced.
Jan 1 00:03:13 (none) kernel: Fix summary information? yes

If you compare you can see that it is having trouble with the MSP device (whatever that is).

I'm hoping this is a rare occurence - I'll post again if it repeats.

Automan · 01-04-2006, 06:12 PM

If you do a google search on msp error tivo others have had the same problem.

I myself have had this problem but have never checked the log at the time.

Searching on MSP comes up with

Multi Standard Sound Processors of the MSP-Family.

Which would indeed also point to the sound chip in Tivo which suits both US and UK TV systems.

This fault does seem to occur more often on Tivo boxes with added extras.

Automan.

Automan · 01-04-2006, 06:18 PM

http://www.datasheetcatalog.com/data...MSP3410D.shtml

Perhaps someone will figure out why we get this problem with this chip?

EDIT:
Reading the datasheet it is clear the chip handles and switches audio from tuner and scart.

I have found I can always restore audio to my three tivo by restarting with their digboxes switched off at the mains.

I am just curious if this problem only effects users with sky digboxes which do seem to have strange voltages floating around e.g. you can get a shock from them

Automan.

healeydave · 01-05-2006, 03:11 AM

No, the Sound Problem has occured on my test bench with a Freeview setup.

I think all sound problems are related to the issues Nick @ Silicondust had.

The Tivo's MSP Sound Chip is really susceptible to minor fluctuations in the timing on the board and unfortunately the Tivo's Main board is really susceptible to fluctuations of component tolerances which cause these timing issues :-(

This goes for Un-modified and Modified Tivos but the extra drain on the Card-Bus when a Cachecard + Memory is added seems to still be a common factor but I think this only generally happens now if there is a weak point on the Tivo's main board that the extra drain emphasises. For example I have had a Tivo exhibit the No Sound problem as soon as I have added the memory to a cachecard and cured again with memory removal and it was a blantant as that, in and it didn't work, out and it did.

stevebax · 01-05-2006, 03:27 AM

My setup is a Freeview box (Sony VTX-D800U). So not related to Sky. Does this problem only occur on initialisation or can it manifest at any time?

Automan · 01-05-2006, 02:15 PM

Would it help to provide a seperate power supply for the disc/s or would that just be a waste of money / time?

Idea being to reduce load on intergrated power supply unit.

Automan.