Tivo Black Screen and Reboot

I have the series 3 HD, and I'm seeing the same problem. The video blacks out, and it either spontaneously reboots, or I power cycle the unit to get it back.

I currently have SW Version: 9.1-01-2-648. After talking with TiVo support, they're going to fast-track me to 9.2, but it doesn't sound like that's going to solve my problems.

I am using two cablecards, and my cable service is Comcast.

Tivo has claimed that if the software update doesn't fix it, they may send me out a new unit. Hmm. I don't know if that's the right track to take.

 

I had a similar but slightly different problem. I started transferring a video via TTCB from my mac, and immediately the background went black. All the menus worked fine, but the Live TV feature and trying to play any shows on the TiVo didn't work. After a reboot, all was well. This has happened to me twice in a month. I have a TiVo HD with OTA only.

 

If Tivo locks up and you have no menus then chances are very low that its a cablecard or cable company issue. Sounds like a bad Tivo to me.

 

It could be either of those problems.

Removing the external drive and seeing if that eliminates the issue would be one thing. Diagnosing the power supply is probably outside most folks capability.

Then I would call customer service back and play CSR Roulette and see if you can get one with a brain....

 

I started seeing the same problem with 9.1 and 9.2 made it worse. It's not the cablecards, and it's probably not any hardware at all. Look at the other threads in this forum. For me, I work around it by not using standby.

 

Add me to the list of people whose Series 3 is locking up since 9.1. And I don't have an external disk drive or any cable cards. My unit is a year old and had been working beautifully until the 9.1 upgrade -- obviously a serious bug has slipped past QA in 9.1.

 

Yep, when I try to come out of standby, there's basically no signal to the TV since it throws up a blank screen with the "DVI" text at the top to indicate the input in use. I also have SA cablecards, but have never seen the cablecard info screen (grey border, black field) in association with this problem, and it happens regardless of whether TiVo is recording anything, so I doubt the cablecards are part of the problem (for once).

 

If you use HDMI, this is the thread:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=369334

 

I also have this issue. I have 9.2J, no cablecards, no eSATA. It is extremely frustrating. My TiVo is over a year old, just started doing this within the last month or so.

 

I just got a TiVoHD a few days ago and I've had the black screen & freeze up described in post #1 happen once and the black screen but with menus described in post #3 happen twice.

My TiVoHD is running 9.1. I just had the CableCards installed today (Cablevision of Warwick) and while browsing around in some random menu after the installers left, I hit the LiveTV button and the screen went black. Pressing the buttons on the remote did nothing - TiVo didn't even acknowledge with its orange LED that I was pressing the buttons. I had to unplug it to reboot.

When I first hooked it up a couple of days ago without any CableCards installed the issue described in #3 happened to me. I think I was browsing through the guide at the time when the TV channel shown in the background went dark. I closed the guide and tried changing channels, but everything was black. Even the colorful backgrounds of the menus weren't displayed - the backgrounds were just black. I rebooted via the menu.

This same thing happened while the cable guy was installing the CableCards today. He was browsing around the menus while installing the CableCards when the backgrounds of the menus disappeared and were replaced by blackness. A reboot brought everything back.

 

My month-old TiVo HD just did something similar to this. I went to start playback of a recording, and it went black with no playback. I hit "left" or perhaps the TiVo button and it gave me the keep/delete prompt normally seen at the end of playback. The menus seemed normal, but the colored graphics normally seen beneath them were absent. Tried a couple other playbacks with the same results.

I initiated a reboot from the menu and now it seems to be working fine. It came back up and resumed the two scheduled recordings.

Not sure what to make of that. Hope it doesn't happen again. Using HDMI, OTA & analog cable (no CableCARDS).

 

I discovered that the problems lies with HDMI/HDCP when your menu backgrounds go black, but the menus themselves still work. I checked the System Information screen when this problem happened again moments ago and in the HDMI Status field it normally says "HDCP enabled" but for me it was simply blank.

A reboot of the TiVo fixed it, but someone in another thread mentions that changing to an analog channel and then cycling the power on your TV will also fix the problem. Haven't tried this solution yet.

 

If recordings were underway while this menu-on-black glitch occurs, would they be disrupted or would they just carry on properly but not be viewable until a reboot?

 

Recordings recorded, but they only recorded blackness. I rebooted in the middle of a recording and so the part before the reboot was blackness and the part after the reboot was a proper recording.

 

Not completely clear. It happened to me with no CableCards and only a composite output (to an SD TV).

 

I have had a similar problem happen a few times.

The symptoms are:

1. While browsing channels at some point the output will become black or gray, and no further channel changing is possible (trying to enter number makes an error sound, the channel change keys do nothing, and the guide does nothing)

2. The menu still operates, but the usual Tivo background is not present anywhere (the red or green backgrounds) and neither are the white "frames" that appear on the menus, but the entries on the menu are there.

3. A restart of the tivo does fix the problem temporarily.

4. This is a fresh tivo, just installed a few hours ago when the Cable company installed the dual-stream cards.

Am using 9.2a