[jerrymc]

Last year I noticed I was getting recordings missed because of a no signal message. I checked the diagnostics page and saw one of the tuners had no signal. Lived with it a few weeks until I had the cable guy come out for an unrelated issue. After he messed around a bit and had the Comcast office make some adjustments to the configuration on their end, the new issue was fixed. Later I noticed the "bad" tuner was working again. Awesome!

Fast forward to a couple of months ago, and the tuner is out again. I replaced the power supply when it failed to boot up reliably. That fixed the boot issue and I had hoped that was the problem with the tuner, but no joy. Has anyone else experienced something like this?

If there was a way to disable the tuner, I could live with 3. Right now, I have to check what channels my upcoming recordings are on and preset the tuners to those channels. And make sure the bad tuner is on channel 1.

I think need to try it with OTA to see if this is a cable only problem. Any other ideas?

 

[Scott9mm]

Any chance this is tuning adapter related?

 

[lhvetinari]

Any chance this is tuning adapter related?

OP mentions Comcast, so doubtful - don't think Comcast uses SDV anywhere.

What's the Diagnostics screen say for the bad tuner? Could be a cablecard programming issue, or a marginal signal issue. I'm not inclined to think it's an actual bad tuner yet since you said it was working for awhile after they arsed around on the backend of your account.

 

[jerrymc]

OP mentions Comcast, so doubtful - don't think Comcast uses SDV anywhere.

What's the Diagnostics screen say for the bad tuner? Could be a cablecard programming issue, or a marginal signal issue. I'm not inclined to think it's an actual bad tuner yet since you said it was working for awhile after they arsed around on the backend of your account.

Right, not a TA, using cable card with Comcast. Definitely hoping it's not a tuner problem since I have lifetime on this.

Attached a screen shot. The Modulation keeps switching between QAM256 and the other choice (don't remember). So it seems it's not getting a strong enough signal to lock onto. All the other tuners are at 95%.

 

[JoeKustra]

Right, not a TA, using cable card with Comcast. Definitely hoping it's not a tuner problem since I have lifetime on this.
Attached a screen shot. The Modulation keeps switching between QAM256 and the other choice (don't remember). So it seems it's not getting a strong enough signal to lock onto. All the other tuners are at 95%.

Try an attenuator. 90% is normal for a basic Roamio on cable, so you may be giving it too much. It's worth a shot.

 

[jerrymc]

Hmmm. You may be onto something. The other three tuners are at 95%, 95% and 92%, with SNR of 38db. The bad tuner shows millions of RC Uncorrectables (bad packets?) and 10db SNR. Going to my local Xfinity store tomorrow to pick up an attenuator. Will report back with results. Thanks!

 

[jerrymc]

These guys at the Xfinity store had no idea what an attenuator was. I came back with a couple of barrel coax devices from their recycle bin and a splitter. The two inline devices turned out to be MoCA filters, so it shouldn't hurt to try them, but no idea what, if any attenuation they'll provide. I'll try then and the splitter and see what happens.

 

[brobin]

Have you tied removing and reinserting the cable card? You might try a new cable card from Comcast. If you add a splitter that'll give you at least 3.5db attenuation. Amazon has attenuators for 3, 6 and 10db for about $5 each. You could order one of each and return what doesn't help.

 

[jerrymc]

Have you tied removing and reinserting the cable card? You might try a new cable card from Comcast. If you add a splitter that'll give you at least 3.5db attenuation. Amazon has attenuators for 3, 6 and 10db for about $5 each. You could order one of each and return what doesn't help.

I haven't seen any evidence that implicates the cablecard in this, so no, I haven't tried that. Given my experience trying to pair cablecards in the past, there's no way I want to repeat the experience if it can be avoided. Most techs don't know how to debug cable card issues and I get tired of providing free training to their people. I have tried a splitter (only had one) but that didn't accomplish anything.

UPDATE:
After a mixup on the first tech visit (no show), I finally got a guy out here today. I let him test the signal and check a few things before trying attenuation. He claimed the signal from the street was actually weak and "unbalanced" which he corrected. That still didn't fix the Tivo tuner and I explained again that Tivos are know to be sensitive to "hot" signals.

Long story short, a 9db attenuator did the trick! He left me with an additional 3db in case the 9db turned out to be marginally effective.

Kudos to JoeKustra for the suggestion!

 

[tai4de2]

I had something similar with FIOS on my Roamio. Signal was too hot leading to random behaviors... adding attenuation fixed it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[jerrymc]

Alas! Tuner is out again. Tried adding more attenuation. Tried adding less. No dice. Letting it sit powered down over night and will check in the morning. If it works then, I probably have a marginal tuner.