New TiVo HD losing all channels - getting gray screen on cablecard

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I'm experiencing this as well with my 2 TiVoHD units, bought at different times. I'll report this tomorrow to TiVo. It actually looks like there is no signal from the CableCard.

What I did find is that going into the CableCard Decoders menu and testing the channels "reinstates" the CableCard and things start to work again.

You don't need to reboot the TiVo to get your channels back.

This doesn't fix it, but helps with some of the pain when you're waiting for the reboot.

 

This isn't entirely correct.

I get this same problem with analog only cable on my tivohd. The OTA channels work fine but the the analog cable channels (I have no digital) stop working on both tuners. The only solution to the problem that I can find is to reboot the tivo.

I can't go into any kind of cablecard testing menu since I don't have any, and naturally I can't get the cable company to "hit" a cablecard that isn't there to begin with.

 

This is a pretty major issue that's been known for over two months now. Why hasn't tivo issued a software update to resolve this?

 

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It's getting annoying already. Friday night HD for CBS,NBC,Fox and ABC went dark to the grey screen. Saturday morning I rebooted twice, and then it worked again. Then just a little while ago it happened again.

 

+1.

My new CC install and TA went down the grey screen of death route not more than 3 hours from being installed. I had re-run the guided setup and pulled the plug (part of trying to find out why the TA was blinking at me 8 times in a row).

I did a soft reboot and hope that'll sort thing out. The TiVo claimed to be recording something this morning, so I'm curious to see if I get a program, or grey wallpaper.....

Seggers

 

I just got a TivoHD last week and it's now having this problem. Crap.

 

Tivo Series 3 HD, SW version 11.0-01-2-652. Unit is new and has been installed for 2 weeks. The first week was analog only as I was waiting for Comcast to get Sci Atlanta M card which they claimed was on back order. During the analog week I had no problems. The CC has been installed for a week now and I have already had to reboot 3 times becasue all channels had gone grey. No signal issues becasue the Comcast tech was getting almost perfect S/N readings on the meter. I have a series 2 in the bedroom which is having no problems with analog.

So..... seems my problems are falling in line with others as reported here.

As a side note... I'm a newbie here and I really appreciate this site. It helped me navigate the initial cable card install process by educating my Comcast installer based on information gleaned from this site.

 

TiVo representatives are telling people over the phone that a fix is in testing now, and that users can sign up to help test it.

If you want to help TiVo test a fix, sign up at TiVo's Field Trials site. Be sure to use the same screen name that you use here, so TiVo knows that you are experiencing the problem.

Signing up is no guarantee that TiVo will pick you, but it increases your chances from none to potentially much greater than none if they recognize you as having a problem for which they are testing a fix.

For the rest experiencing this issue, I don't think there's much we can do besides calling to complain and waiting forTiVo to roll out a public fix that works for everyone. TiVoJerry posted the following two weeks ago:

 

I also got a TiVo HD this weekend to replace my ReplayTV (that finally died). I was expecting a flawless device...Hah! I get the grey screen several times an hour when channel surfing. No cable cards, no antenna, no "extra" scanned QAM channels, just "standard basic" cable from Comcast. I was hoping whenever the box upgrades to 11.x the problem would go away (my box is so new it still has the "original" SW version: 8.1.7c2-01-2-652).

After looking at this thread, I wonder if the problem is hardware/firmware. I've been running MythTV as a "backup" on an old PC, but would really like a seamless DVR that works with HD. Not yet ready for the cablecard adventures if I can't even get the device working on standard cable out-of-the-box. I plan to call TiVo after the software updates - not sure when that will be - I keep forcing connections through my broadband link, but no new software is coming.

Just thought I would add another datapoint that the grey screen of tuner death happens on a stock box running pre 11.0 with no cable cards or external drives. (BTW, I did do the channel scan thing to "see" the QAM HD channels for testing, and they work fine. Its only "analog" cable that greys out. I've since reverted to plain analog cable through guided setup again, but still get the grey screen of tuner death when only tuning analog channels.)

I'll test the "fast channel changing" theory put forth. It also seems to grey out the screen after a (forced?) connect. I am rebooting again now - the 4th time in the last hour. What gives?!?! Ugh!

 

I have this same problem, where my TIVO has switched to the grey screen and I didn't notice since I watch almost everything per-TIVOd to avoid commericals.

One thing I tried was to take the cover off. I now go a few weeks between failures where as I was having trouble every couple of days.

The box is about 5 years old and the problem did show up last Dec like everyone else though which does imply the software is the problem.

 

Did someone say that a gray screen and black screen are effectively the same thing and that it depends on whether you've chosen gray or black for sidebars? I've been getting a black screen occassionally on my new TivoHD. For those of you that get the gray/black screen can you still see the Tivo menus and Guide, just not channel program picture?

 

I just started experiencing this in the last week. I have a year-old Tivo 3 HD, with 2 Comcast cable cards.

All occurrences happened when the TV had been turned off overnight, but Tivo remained on. One time, after turning on the TV, it had the gray "loss of signal" screen. 2 other times, after turning on the TV, there was a signal on the channel it happened to be on, but then after switching the station to a different one, the "loss of signal" screen appeared.

In all 3 cases, restarting the Tivo solved the problem.

Right now I am deleting a bunch of recorded programs to see if disk space might be the issue.

 

I'm struggling with the same problem as everyone else: About once a week (and sometimes more often than that) I get the black screen of death on most of my digital channels. A soft reset always fixes the issue and it never comes back until at least three or four days after each reset. Usually I can go about a week between resets. I've considered plugging my TiVo into a digital timer that could kill the power every three or four days at 3:00 a.m. which (in theory) would prevent us from missing any shows. I have a TiVo HD connected to an external My DVR Expander. I would probably leave the external drive running and just reset the TiVo itself. My question is would it damage the TiVo to do a hard reset that often? Or should I just tough it out until they come up with a fix? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

Don't worry about hard reboots. You aren't going to "harm" the Tivo. Just make sure your Tivo is plugged into a good surge suppressor/battery backup. Bad power/power spikes will do more harm to your box than hard reboots.

 

I posted this to another thread and then found this one, which matches what I am seeing.

I have a Tivo HD and my provider is Comcast. My initial cable setup about a year ago consisted of 2 s-cards. Everything was fine until about a week ago. I left home with a fine picture but when I returned a few hours later the screen was grey with the "searching for signal" message bar on the screen. However, my internet service was fine as was the analog TV feed. A week later and several Comcast visits, it appears that I have an intermittent loss of the digital TV signal. It will be on for a few hours and look great, and then go off again and I never lose my Internet. Comcast has be reasonably helpful and did the following: 1) boosted the signal at the pole, 2) replaced the cable from the splitter to the TIVO, 3) replaced the S-card with a Motorola m-card. None of these fixed the problem and neither has restarting the TVIO. I just checked and I do have v11 software.

 

After getting 11.0 software update nothing has changed. Get grey screen of death after 15 minutes or less. I did call TiVo, and the tech said they are "aware of issues with tuning standard cable", but had no pending fixes in the works - the bug sounded like it was in a "need more research" state. (You'll love this - he suggested using CableCards, claiming they seemed to work better than just using standard cable!) His suggestion: return the TiVo and get another one. My next step: return the TiVo and get my money back. Maybe I'll try TiVo again in a few years when they get their HW/SW figured out, but for now I'm back to mythbuntu + roku + etc.

In case it helps others, I did throw an antenna on the TiVo, and the tuning bug seems to *NOT* impact ATSC (Over The Air) HD programming (using the antenna jack). I'm not sure about the old units, but I suspect the new HD Series 3 units have some buggy/flaky tuners in them. I'm not convinced TiVo will be able to fix this with a software patch - certainly not soon, and I'm not willing to wait thru my 30-day money-back period to find out.

BTW - Thanks to everyone on this forum. Your posts inspired me to try TiVo in the first place. I'm actually very disappointed - I really wanted a nice dual-tuner HD DVR that included NetFlix streaming and was user-friendly enough for the whole family. I really wanted this thing to work. Sigh.

Best