[aniemyer]

My XL4, which has admittedly been in use for six years, has begun to show an interesting failure mode: After coming on, and with me able to go through all four available feeds, use the guide, go into My shows, etc., will, if I'm watching live cable feed, intermittently go video blank, and none of the control buttons work. The channel I will be watching will come back, after I get a screen display that it is loading all the channel information. After a bit, the buttons all work again.

Is this a software, TiVo hardware or a cable card issue? Has anyone else seen this kind of behavior before? I have run several of the diagnostics, cable/ethernet feeds all check out fine. Oh, and it DVR's just fine!

TIA for your thoughts on what's happening!

 

[kpeters59]

Does it do the same thing thing with Component Video?

The HDMI on my Premiere went out a while back.

-KP

 

[Teeps]

No clue about your tivo's specific problem.
But if you got 6 years out of the original HDD, then count yourself lucky.
The HDD failed in my XL4 after only 2 years. But with different symptom.

 

[powrcow]

I get that "channel loading" screen once the SDV adapter is up and working properly. It also dumps out any previous live buffers for some reason.

So it may be related to an SDV adapter (if you have one) or a cable card.

Edit: I'm on year 6 of my Premiere

 

[aniemyer]

I get that "channel loading" screen once the SDV adapter is up and working properly. It also dumps out any previous live buffers for some reason.

So it may be related to an SDV adapter (if you have one) or a cable card.

Edit: I'm on year 6 of my Premiere

That seems to be the issue! Due to our cable provider's locally archaic system, we have to have a A2D converter in line on the video feed to the TiVo. A reboot of that seems to have cured the problem. At least for now!

Given the costs these days of the "Kind-of-Sort-of" For Life (Of the box) service, I'm happy it's still getting along. I'd love it if TiVo offered cloud storage for emergency back-up.

As always, this community always provides some great insights into any issue!

Best regards,

 

[Sparky1234]

That seems to be the issue! Due to our cable provider's locally archaic system, we have to have a A2D converter in line on the video feed to the TiVo. A reboot of that seems to have cured the problem. At least for now!

Given the costs these days of the "Kind-of-Sort-of" For Life (Of the box) service, I'm happy it's still getting along. I'd love it if TiVo offered cloud storage for emergency back-up.

As always, this community always provides some great insights into any issue!

Best regards,

Check your stored tuner channels for premium channels. If one of your 4 stored channels is a premium it can cause the problems you indicate. So when not watching TiVo ensure your 4 tuners are not left on premium channels. Sometimes this can't be helped if you have a premium channel recording scheduled.

 

[magicspell]

Does it do the same thing thing with Component Video?

The HDMI on my Premiere went out a while back.

-KP

Interesting you should mention that. I was curious to find out how common this is. I'm just over 5 years on my Premiere XL4 and about a month ago out of the blue could no longer get anything through the HDMI connection. On a "whim" as part of the troubleshooting I connected up component video from the Premiere to my TV and everything showed up again.

Is HDMI failure common on the Premiere?

 

[Teeps]

Is HDMI failure common on the Premiere?

I don't recall seeing many complaints logged here.
But, the HDMI output on my XL4 failed after an electrical transformer blew up a few blocks away.
However the incident also took out the HDMI on a computer monitor and TV; also completely nuked a TiVo Roamio that was connected to OTA.

 

[powrcow]

Is HDMI failure common on the Premiere?

The TiVo HD had more frequent HDMI failures. weaknees.com has a repair service set up to fix HDMI ports. You could probably contact them to see if they would repair it. But I would test different cables and TVs or monitors first.

 

[magicspell]

The TiVo HD had more frequent HDMI failures. weaknees.com has a repair service set up to fix HDMI ports. You could probably contact them to see if they would repair it. But I would test different cables and TVs or monitors first.

Thanks for the pointer to weaknees.com. I may check them out. When I first experienced the issue I did try replacing the cable and trying a different HDMI port on my TV (with no luck). I did not try moving the Premiere to another TV, though. Thanks for the suggestions as they are always appreciated!

 

[SDNick484]

Thanks for the pointer to weaknees.com. I may check them out. When I first experienced the issue I did try replacing the cable and trying a different HDMI port on my TV (with no luck). I did not try moving the Premiere to another TV, though. Thanks for the suggestions as they are always appreciated!

Keep in mind that their repair service is a bit of a gamble. You might have a different issue that they aren't able to repair and then you're out the repair fee and still don't get a working Tivo. This recently happened to me with my Tivo HD which turned out had some sort of motherboard failure that they couldn't resolve. This isn't a knock on them; just making sure the risks are understood.