My crashing story

ColinYounger · 04-12-2011, 11:40 AM

Literally ten minutes after I had voted that my TiVo hasn't crashed, I had a reboot. What has followed has been frustrating but I merely document it for other's use rather than as a bashing post.

The symptoms:

Single stutter and pause in video\audio
Message box saying you're not subscribed to channel, contact VM if it's wrong
Standard TiVo behaviour of a reboot when it's lost signal
Starting up screen
Heartbeat light is red, tuner 2 is red and tuner 4 is blue.
Stays like this for about 20 mins, then goes heartbeat red, tuner 2&3 red
That's all folks!

The first day this happened - arund 10am - I left it for a couple of hours, rebooted during that time and then called 150. TIP: Just say "I have a problem with my TiVo" repeatedly and you get through quicker.

An engineer was booked for the next day. About half an hour afterwards I had a callback from what I like to call a "TiVo Tech" - someone a little more switched on. He went through some diagnostics, but left it for the engineer to check details.

The "heartbeat" light (the one under the heart) is the link back to VM. If it loses it's "return path", the box won't show pictures and won't reboot as it's assuming it's off-network. I gleaned this from other threads here.

Box came back around 5pm, so I cancelled engineer. TIP: Mistake.

Next day - 10:48am - the box did it's thing again. Same calls happened, another engineer booked. The TiVo Tech bloke was much more interested and gave me direct contact numbers and email in case the box came back again and he could look at the logs. Box eventually came back around 9pm.

Another day. Engineer arrives at 10am (as I'd suggested!) to a fully functional box. Checks levels, etc and leaves. Box promptly crashes later, and another call-TiVoTech-Engineer cycle is started. To be fair to VM, they're being as helpful as they can and I'm getting through to the right people extremely quickly.

Saturday arrives, and so does an engineer. He's not been TiVo trained though, so he ups the levels and goes - in other words, does his best. TiVo crashes later in the day. TIP: Ensure that the engineer being booked is TiVo trained and that he DOESN'T unplug the box while it's recording F1 Qualifying.

Another cycle, and we're nearly there. TiVo engineer came yesterday and adjusted levels, changed connectors. Then did a box-swap. DISASTER. Two months of setup gone!

He then phones me later to give me his mobile number as all he's done is removed the work that Saturday's engineer did. TIP: Don't let the engineer dismiss your knowledge of what's going on: I repeatedly stated that the other engineer had upped the levels and maybe they needed to come down again - it's not the box and my precious recordings (some partial)

So. we'll see where we go from here.

Again, this is merely posted in the spirit of sharing information rather than starting a bashing thread.

ColinYounger · 04-12-2011, 11:46 AM

Oooh! One thing I forgot to menton.

I saw a TiVo "Starting Up" screen, complete with TiVo Guy

When the engineer plugged the replacement box in, he didn't press Up\Down on front of the box for long enough to get to the engineering screens and it went to a screen I hadn't seen before with a giant TiVo Guy.

richw · 04-12-2011, 12:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ColinYounger

and then called 150. TIP: Just say "I have a problem with my TiVo" repeatedly and you get through quicker.

They seem to keep it quiet, but apparently you can get straight through to the Tivo team on 0800 052 2199.

jonphil · 04-12-2011, 01:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ColinYounger

Oooh! One thing I forgot to menton.

I saw a TiVo "Starting Up" screen, complete with TiVo Guy

When the engineer plugged the replacement box in, he didn't press Up\Down on front of the box for long enough to get to the engineering screens and it went to a screen I hadn't seen before with a giant TiVo Guy.

So Tivo guy is just hidden from us

mikerr · 04-13-2011, 07:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ColinYounger

I saw a TiVo "Starting Up" screen, complete with TiVo Guy

When the engineer plugged the replacement box in, he didn't press Up\Down on front of the box for long enough to get to the engineering screens and it went to a screen I hadn't seen before with a giant TiVo Guy.

This Giant TiVo guy ?

ColinYounger · 04-13-2011, 07:57 AM

Like the very last frame of that video, except TiVo guy was in the upper middle, with "Just a few more minutes" underneath.

ColinYounger · 04-13-2011, 08:04 AM

@richw - thank-you.

How is your tale of woe getting on?

richw · 04-13-2011, 09:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ColinYounger

How is your tale of woe getting on?

Still rebooting every couple of days at least, they are still deciding whether to replace the box again or not, although seemed to have forgotten about me until I chased it again a couple of days ago.

It's not ruined an important recording for a while which is an improvement.

richw · 04-13-2011, 10:28 AM

Some progress at last, an engineer is coming on Friday to have another look at the box. Not that it made much difference the last time they did that.

ColinYounger · 04-14-2011, 08:08 AM

Are your symptoms similar to mine i.e. the return path being lost (red light under heartbeat)?

Last engineer replaced all the connections from the cabinet to TiVo itself, including the wires from the point where the cable entered the building.

I really don't think it's the boxes in these cases, and box-swap is the default "I don't know" response.

richw · 04-14-2011, 12:16 PM

When mine crashes all the lights on the front light up at the same time. They've said it's kernel panicking, but I don't know if that's what it does when the return path fails.

The broadband is on the same cable into the house, and there are no problems with that. I might get them to remake the cable from the splitter to the Tivo though.

OzSat · 04-14-2011, 12:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by richw

When mine crashes all the lights on the front light up at the same time. They've said it's kernel panicking, but I don't know if that's what it does when the return path fails.

I think all the lights come up on any reboot.

sjp · 04-14-2011, 12:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by richw

The broadband is on the same cable into the house, and there are no problems with that. I might get them to remake the cable from the splitter to the Tivo though.

swap them yourself and see if the fault moves?

richw · 04-14-2011, 02:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sjp

swap them yourself and see if the fault moves?

T'other cable isn't long enough

geekspeak · 04-14-2011, 03:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by richw

T'other cable isn't long enough

Not sure if you have been through this already but in Settings - Video Output Formats, how many formats do you have ticked. If more than one, you could try with just one ticked (e.g. 1080i) for a few days. See if that makes any difference.

richw · 04-14-2011, 03:40 PM

Just 1080i, it's always been that way.

richw · 04-15-2011, 07:26 AM

Well the engineer came today, and despite seeing in the logs that it's rebooting several times per day declared that he can't find anything wrong, and it's all down to the software.

No box change, no PSU change, and no cable change as that can't possibly be causing it.

sjp · 04-15-2011, 09:59 AM

you'd think by now they'd be turning up with orders to do whatever you asked. not sure my sanity could put up with this myself.

richw · 04-15-2011, 10:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sjp

you'd think by now they'd be turning up with orders to do whatever you asked. not sure my sanity could put up with this myself.

My Dad happened to be here when the engineer came, as he left my Dad commented "he hasn't got a bloody clue has he?" A fairly accurate summing up really. Once a Tivo box starts to misbehave, the engineers are worse than useless. They know how to connect them up and get into the service menu, beyond that it's a mystery to them.

ColinYounger · 04-15-2011, 10:35 AM

@richw - with my problems, I had access to a development guy as well as an engineer (mobiles and emails). Your experience sounds really off as the engineers that I've had have at least phoned their supervisor or emailed my contact. Worst one was the non-TiVo guy, but at least he knew he was out of his depth.

It's nuts that they aren't analysing the logs (mine are).

Is @DigitalFanatic listening in on this thread? Any nudges you can give?

cwaring · 04-15-2011, 11:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by richw

My Dad happened to be here when the engineer came, as he left my Dad commented "he hasn't got a bloody clue has he?" A fairly accurate summing up really. Once a Tivo box starts to misbehave, the engineers are worse than useless. They know how to connect them up and get into the service menu, beyond that it's a mystery to them.

I could be wrong, but I wonder if "installers" and "engineers" are different people? Probably not

richw · 04-15-2011, 11:17 AM

They certainly have higher-level "principle-engineers" who deal with the non-standard stuff, as one of those came out for my second visit.

However he was tied by what the back-office staff would let him do.

Adder · 04-15-2011, 11:17 AM

The guy who installed mine said he was a service engineer and rarely did installs full stop and occasionally got assigned them and that he had been installing TiVos since Christmas, but hadn't done one for a few weeks. I got the impression he was employed by Virgin directly as he said he wasn't from one of the contracting companies that Virgin have.

Bob49 · 04-15-2011, 02:54 PM

Mine was installed by someone who claimed to have installed a number of Tivos but needed to be talked through the setting up by phone to an expert. Without the his advice it just wasn't working. Clearly these boxes are not suitable for a self-install yet.

Pine Cladding · 04-17-2011, 01:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by richw

When mine crashes all the lights on the front light up at the same time. They've said it's kernel panicking, but I don't know if that's what it does when the return path fails.

The broadband is on the same cable into the house, and there are no problems with that. I might get them to remake the cable from the splitter to the Tivo though.

Mine sounds very similar to yours, no warning no judders, the screen just goes black and the front lights up like a Christmas tree. I really must get round to contacting the TiVo team.

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