Fios Cable Card Issue with Premiere XL - Missing Some Channels

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Yesterday I replaced 4 Tivo HDs with 4 Tivo Premiere XLs (I kept 1 Tivo HD). So I have 5 units total.

I had the Verizon Fios install guy at my house yesterday to replace my 8 s-cable cards with 5 m-cable cards.

3 of my Premiere XL units work fine with no issues. The Tivo HD that I kept works fine with no issue. However, one Premiere XL unit is not receiving all of the channels. It gets most of the channels but not all. For example. It receives channel 570 (ESPN-HD), but not 572 (ESPN2-HD) or 572 (ESPNU-HD). But then 574 comes in no problem. The higher channels do not come in (like the HBOs and Showtimes) but another premium channel does.

So what I did was to swap the m-cable card from a unit that was receiving all the channels (the Tivo-HD) with the one that wasn't. Well the Tivo-HD with the supposed bad cable card got all the channels and the Premiere XL once again did not get all the channels.

What am I missing here? I ran the guided set up and made sure all the channels were set up correctly.

Is this a common issue with Premiere? Is this a Fios cable card issue? I don't think its a cable card pairing issue since Verizon's cards don't pair up with the units.

Any help would be appreciated?

 

Arronwt,
It sounds like you initially had all your channels but then lost some of them. My issue is that from the beginning, I've been missing some channels on this one Tivo Premiere unit. But when I swap a known working M-cable card into this Tivo Premiere unit, I still cannot get those channels. And the M-cable card that I had in that same unit, if I put it in another Tivo unit (like the Tivo HD), I get all the channels. It appears to be a Tivo Premiere issue.

I wonder if this could somehow be a Verizon Fios signal strength issue. I recall when I installed my Tivo HD units over 3 years ago, the Fios signal was too hot for the Tivo HDs. So I had to put attenuators to cool the signal down. On this particular line, I had a -3 attenuator which the Verizon tech took off when we had the problem with the cable card. He tested the line and said there was no issue but perhaps that is the problem. I don't recall if the higher channels ran hotter than the lower ones (as the higher channels are the ones I an losing).

 

There is an 8 way splitter in place that was installed by Verizon 3 years ago that solved the signal strength issue when I had the Tivo HDs installed.

The only change to the line going into the Tivo Premiere I am having a problem with is the Fios tech took off the -3 attenuator but he did check the signal strength and said it was fine. Tonight, I will put the same attenuator back on and see if that solves the problem. If that doesn't, then I will call Tivo tech support to see if I'm missing something. But I think the problem is narrowed down to one of four issues:

1) Signal strength too hot (low probablility)
2) Bad cable card (don't think so since I put a good card in this unit and it still didn't work)
3) Bad install - i.e. didn't do guided setup correctly (don't think so since I did it correct on 3 other units on the same day)
4) Bad Premiere unit (hope not - but I did buy 3 yr warranty)

 

Looks like the problem was #4) - the issue I had was a bad Premiere unit which Tivo is in the process of replacing.

Here is how I figured it out.

I bought 4 Premieres. 3 work fine but one is missing some channels. I ruled out a cable card issue as I simply swapped the cable cards between units and saw that the the cards work fine.

I then went to a location in my home where a Premiere was working fine and put on ESPN-HD (570) and ESPN2-HD (572) and measured the signal strength which was at 96 (very close to 100%). I then swapped the good Premiere unit with the bad one and measured the signal strength on the same channels. ESPN-HD (570) was coming in at 45 and ESPN2-HD (572) wasn't coming in at all (because the signal wasn't strong enoungh). Since the I was using the same coax line that worked fine on the other Premiere, I know the tuners are bad on this particular Premiere.

Now I have to go through Tivo to get another Premiere and hope it is a new unit and not a refurbished unit. But since I bought the 3 year warranty I can return it if it doesn't work properly. Just a pain that a new unit isn't working properly out of the box.

BTW - I bought my unit at Electronics Expo which I'm seeing that other people are having issues with. But since I got my 4 Premiere XLs for $277 each and 3 of the 4 are working with no problems, I guess I should feel lucky.