[gwuinsf]

I apologize for the noobness of this post but I'm not very tech savvy. I'm having some problems with my DirecTivo and I'm thinking I need a new hard drive but I'm not sure and I know there's an enormous Tivo brain trust on these forums.

What's happening is every once in a while I'll get a program that records that has horizontal pixilated streaks through it, and the sound and picture is jerky. Basically it's completely unwatchable. So far this has only happened to shows on the SciFi Channel and USA. There have been times where I've caught a streaky program recording, I go to Live TV and the screen is black with the message that it can't get a signal from Satellite 2. I've gone to my other TV that's just on the DirecTV tuner box and I can see the program fine.

Would a problem with the hard drive affect my ability to see the program via Live TV?

Is it possible that I have a bad area on my Hard Drive that Tivo is writing to?

As far as my Tivo goes, from memory, I think I have a Phillips. The hard drive is upgraded, but that was years ago.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Fezmid]

Sounds more like a tuner is starting to go bad...

You don't mention which DirecTiVo you have and how it's connected to the TV. If you're connected via S-Video, there seems to be a bug where some things don't record off of tuner 2 very well. I had no problem for a few years, and then it just popped up a few months ago. I switched to composite and the problems recording on tuner 2 went away.

Hope that helps.

 

[JimSpence]

The first things to troubleshoot are the cabling, connections, and the LNB and multiswitch (if applicable). Swap cables in the back and see what changes. Check signal strengths.

 

[gwuinsf]

Thanks for the advice. The satellite company that manages the dish in my building hooked up my Tivo, so honestly I have no clue how the cables are set up. Like I said, sorry for my noobness.

 

[JimSpence]

You can at least swap the cables on the back of the TiVo to see what symptoms change, if any.