New Bolt VOX reverts to 480p after standby/power cycle

Advertisements

Besides my litter of broken TiVos, I currently have an active Premier and a Roamio Pro. They are hooked up to a Denon A/V receiver and the receiver outputs to a Pioneer plasma via HDMI with an HDMI/DVI adapter at the TV side. The TV supports 1080i.

When I look at the video settings on the old TiVos, they show 1080i selected, but if I click on the setting, everything shows 'not supported' except 480p. Even the 1080i setting, which is currently selected, shows not supported. However, both TiVos maintain this 1080i setting throughout reboots and standbys and cat fights and hail and snow storms. I set 1080i during guided setup and they know I meant it.

Now enter the Bolt. It failed to auto-detect the supported video during guided setup. Ok, neither did the other two. I went through testing the modes, clicking thumbs up, etc. When done, I deselected everything but 1080i. I complete guided setup, which reboots itself a couple of times. When it comes up, all the menus are in 1080i. Good. Eventually, the system will only display 480p and the only way to get out of that mode is to repeat guided setup. After a lot of testing, I found that the triggers are 1) go into standby and 2) pull the plug. Apparently it rebooting itself doesn't cause the issue.

I called TiVo and, even though I have two other TiVos functioning perfectly fine, they spent at least 45 minutes trying to blame the issue on my other equipment and/or the cable company. They finally acknowledged it was an issue and sent out a new unit, which I received today. I just now completed guided setup and immediately put it into standby and when it came back, what? 480p.

Has anyone else experienced an issue like this? Is this a known issue with Bolt's or do you think that I've somehow ended up with two lemons? I'm not looking forward to my next call.

 

@rgr I posted to that thread too. I hadn't gotten my replacement at that point to determine that it was an issue with Bolts in general and not an issue with the specific Bolt that I had received.

Do you also have an 'older' TV that the TiVo doesn't have the ability to auto-detect the video format (no -- looks like you have something with 4k)? I'd be ok with just not letting it go to sleep because I never do that. However, it would be an absolute pain in the butt to have to re-run guided setup every time there is a power outage or that I have to pull the plug to resolve some issue with the tuning adapter.

I did some further testing yesterday evening and hooked up my son's Xbox TV in front of my Panny plasma. It supports 1080p and full-on HDMI. So we're working with the same input on the amp and the same cable in the wall. Without even re-running guided setup or touching the video settings, the Bolt started using 1080p throughout sleeps and reboots. When I hooked the Panny back up, I immediately got 480p.

My issue has to be a software problem and not a hardware problem. What I mean is that the unit isn't saving the fact that it had to be manually set to a resolution during guided setup and that it needs to stay that way. Because until I tell you that you CAN auto-detect the resolution, you can't.

 

Advertisements

Nooo...This is a 15yo commercial TV with audio L/R, component video, s-video, composite video and DVI (1 each). And I added the DVI with a plug-in board. There's no speakers. No tuner. No nothin' but a screen and that's all you need when you drive your system with an a/v receiver and a rack of TiVos.

Admittedly, I'm working my way up to replacing the TV because I know it won't last forever. I recently replaced my old Denon with a new one that supports 4k and the new Bolt is in service of 4k. I don't want to replace the screen until I can move it over to a location that can support 65". Interestingly, I got a OLED to replace it when they first came out with flat ones (because who would want a curved one?). I eventually returned it because it just didn't look $5k better than the Panny given that I mostly watch broadcast TV.

 

I did some more troubleshooting. I downgraded from Hydra to the classic interface this morning. After repeating guided setup, the unit stays on 1080i after standby and power cycles.

I do have a different problem though. Being a plasma-phile, I have an even older plasma in my bedroom that only supports 720p and has no HDMI input. My old amp used to have component video out for zone2, but my new one only has HDMI. I have an HDMI -> component converter at the Denon end in the wiring closet. The converter is set to convert 1080i to 720p.

When I switch the Bolt from the Family Room to the Bedroom, the Bolt changed to 720p. When I switched back to the Family Room, it was still 720p and I couldn't set it back to 1080i. I then went back to BR and went into the video settings and saw that it would let me check 1080i (which had been checked originally -- but whatever). Now when I switch back and forth between the FR and BR, it stays on 1080i. So weird. Another weird thing is that every once in a while, I will get a black screen on the BR TV when I switch to the Bolt. That never happens with the other two TiVos.

Note: Although I can run the same source on both zones at once, throughout these tests, only one zone was on at a time and the old zone would be turned off before the target zone was turned on (that's how my remote works).