Odd recording issue - Roamio Plus, M-card or Tuning Adapter?

Sounds like typical TA weirdness to me.

 

I'm with tim1724 in that I think it's TA weirdness. How many shows did this happen on? Did every failure have 1-2 minutes of recording, or was there more variation? Did it always happen around the same time? Did it ever happen when more than one recording was in progress, and if so were all of the recordings truncated, or just one?

 

With my STA1520 a monthly reboot doesn't do anything useful. It can fail at any time, even 30 minutes after booting, whereas other times it works perfectly four or five months without me needing to reboot it. There are a few different failure modes. The one I encounter most often is that it loses its connection to the SDV server at the head end; once that happens it just refuses to do anything (but for the most part it acts like it's working, so the TiVo doesn't usually notice that it's not working)

 

I reboot the TA. Nothing else fixes it. When it's in the "I can't find my server so I'm not going to do anything but I'll pretend I'm working and tell the TiVo that everything's fine" mode I don't think it blinks the LED to indicate a problem .. because it doesn't seem to think there is any problem.

There are other failure modes in which it will blink the LED. (For example, ever since the last TA update that Charter pushed out around 2 years ago my TA will refuse to boot if it's connected to the TiVo via USB. I have to disconnect the USB, power cycle the TA, wait until it's reached a point where it gets to what I call the "fast blink" stage, then reconnect the USB. Or alternatively I can reboot the TiVo and the TA at the same time, which will cause the TiVo's USB port to be inactive during the critical phase of the process. Either way it's a pain.)

 

I have a Cisco STA1520 that is used with Spectrum (used to be TWC). Since configuring a regular reboot of the TA, I haven't had a single recording failure. Before that, I would probably have a failure every 3-4 months.

Before I setup an automated reboot, I was able to simply unplug the power to my TA at which point the Tivo would say it had lost communication with the TA. Then I would plug in the TA and after it rebooted the Tivo would say that it detected a TA. I never had to unplug the USB.

My automated reboot happens once a week at 4am Monday morning. I bought a $16 timer off of Amazon that has two plugs that can be individually programmed. I plugged the Tivo into one, and the TA into the other. Then at 4am, the timer turns off both plugs. At 4:01 it turns back on the plug for the TA. At 4:06 it turns on the plug for the Tivo. I would have chosen a less frequent reboot, but this timer only supports daily or weekly, nothing longer. The timer I use is https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M31OP44?ref_=ams_ad_dp_ovrl.

 

That worked for me until two or three years ago when Charter pushed out a firmware update.

 

I hate it when updates break things!

 

Hi--I've been having this EXACT issue for several months. TiVo Roamio Pro with Spectrum. Have swapped out EVERYTHING-- several TAs, cable cards, cables, and I had a failing drive and installed a new hard drive three weeks ago, but that wasn't the issue. I started taking notes on what frequency certain channels use. I noticed one channel when working perfectly fine was on one frequency. When the TA flipped out and started flashing, the channel no longer had a sharp digital picture. It was fuzzy like analog and the frequency had changed. It didn't change back until I rebooted everything. I removed that channel and now just use the HD version. I've wondered if the problem was with something happening on Spectrum's end, or now I'm wondering if I have a bad tuner. Did you ever come across a solution? I don't have the problem as long as I don't turn to some suspect channels, but that's not an option as I do watch some.

 

Thanks. I'm going to keep looking for a fix. I do know it wasn't a problem when the company was still Time Warner. But after Spectrum, software updates have caused issues. And they're not much help since they got rid of the CableCard division. I just went for a stretch of 11 days without having to reboot anything by staying away from some channels. I usually can go no more than 36 hours. So I think I'm close to narrowing it down. But I pay them too much money for it not to work, so I'm going to keep trying. I'll post again if it gets fixed.

 

Your problems sound eerily close to the problems I've had (check my posts, there aren't many).
When I thought it was my TA, it was actually my signal strength. Added an amplifier and problems went away.
When I had recording issues, I replaced my hard drive and the problems went away.
Again, check out my posts if you haven't already. They may help you.

 

Well, I wrote to the FCC 1/26. The site said describe your problem in 3-5 sentences. I wrote a lengthy essay. Spectrum Corporate Escalation called me today (1/28). Then an hour later the local director of operations called. They'll be here Saturday. I'll keep you posted.

 

I have Xfinity--no TA. If I had to go back to a TA I would drop TIVO. If Comcast can do it , why cant everyone else including TIVO make it work?

 

Okay. A Spectrum field operations supervisor came Saturday. We talked over all that was going on. We discussed possible interferences with the cable. He checked the work of the techs that had been here in late October, checked signals, etc. He also noted that the people behind us were having issues as well. He went out on the pole and found one cable that had been sliced, and oddly, he brought in a 1 foot long coax cable that had been spliced, was plugged in and just dangling on the line connected to nothing. He said that in itself was probably spraying signals all over the place. (And why didn't the techs from October see it?)

I purposely avoided turning to any of the problem channels before he got here, hoping the TA would flake when he got here so he could see it and the dramatic loss of signal. Of course, it didn't happen. There were no TiVo issues while he was here. We walked around the house and checked various Spectrum boxes. I'd told him of us constantly getting messages to upgrade when we turned to channels we are already paying for. Rebooting makes these messages go away. Fortunately, it happened while he was here. He said to call and tell customer service that is happening.

Now, earlier in the week, we had a circuit breaker that tripped. It was for one of the rooms with a TiVo with problems. When Spectrum was here on Saturday, it just happened to trip again, several times. It would't stay on. He checked the breaker box and said there was electricity leaking. The electrician wasn't available until today, but they told us don't try to reset the breaker. Just leave it off until they arrive. The Spectrum tech said that the electricity could also be wreaking havoc with the cable signal--including the constant messages to upgrade our package.

Electrician came today and replaced the breaker. I'm to call Spectrum back on Wednesday and let them know what's happened and if there have been any problems. He's coming back anyway to do some additional work. Other than some very slight pixilation Sunday on Showtime, there have been no problems since Saturday with the TiVos or Spectrum boxes. That breaker was off for two days. It's been back on for a few hours now. I'm going to wear out the problem channels over the next couple of days. But so far so good. I still think I'm going to unplug the TAs for the Super Bowl. My Chiefs are there and I don't want to take any chances. I'll update again after the tech comes back Wednesday. Hope this helps someone.