Would cable outage hang TiVo?

[ToddNeedsTiVo]

Earlier today, our cable went out. The TiVo screen went black, but the clock (select-play-select-9-select) in the corner of the screen was operating properly. Hitting the TiVo button made the usual noise, but nothing happened or was displayed...still the black with clock. I could hit info and see the text about the current show that I was (not) seeing, but couldn't get into the normal TiVo menus.

This is a TiVo-brand TiVo, an 80-hour Series 2 unit circa Sept. 2003, with analog cable as its input.

I had to do a hard pull-the-plug reboot to get it going again. It's been a long time since its power has been interrupted this way because I keep it on a UPS that carries most power drops.

I did the reboot after the cable came back, but I assume that since TiVo was behaving again, I would have been able to access recorded programs even if the cable signal was still dead.

Is there some reason why the loss of signal would semi-crash the TiVo? It's not like we've never lost cable for an hour or four before. It was recording at the time, but of course it's always recording or buffering something.

Thanks,

Todd

[gjustice]

Do you have a cable box, or is the cable going straight into the TiVo?

All three of my cable boxes freak out from time to time from apparent cable outages, so I'd guess it "could" happen to the TiVo too.

[ToddNeedsTiVo]

The TiVo itself tunes the cable.

I guess it was all a fluke.

[ToddNeedsTiVo]

Now I found it locked up again this morning. To my knowledge, the cable was not out, but the TiVo's clock was frozen at around 3:30am. With the lockup I originally posted about, the clock did not stop working. This morning's lockup was more harsh as the box was completely unresponsive.

So I guess the question is do I bother with a new drive for a three year old box, or just buy the new dual-tuner box? Since we use analog cable, that would work nicely.

I've seen several threads where people have had spontaneous reboots, but mine has apparently not done that. It's just hung these two times. But I do fear for the health of the drive. Maybe I could try a "Delete Program Info and To Do List" so I could at least keep my existing programs.

Sigh.

Is it good to by directly from TiVo? If I buy at BestBuy, I'd have to pay $250 and then screw around with their stupid rebate, to say nothing of then buying the big prepaid service. At TiVo, I can do that all at once at what seems like a favorable price.

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by ToddNeedsTiVo

Is it good to by directly from TiVo? If I buy at BestBuy, I'd have to pay $250 and then screw around with their stupid rebate, to say nothing of then buying the big prepaid service. At TiVo, I can do that all at once at what seems like a favorable price.

try this link, i just ordered the dual tuner from here.
--
Alan

[mrjam2jab]

My cable went out the other day....but i didnt get anything like what you experienced.

I had a blue screen telling me that Tivo couldnt find the channel (or something to that affect)....and the rest of it worked just fine...