Long-time TiVo user here - I think I’m on my fifth box, I’ve been a customer since the days when I had to plug my analog phone line into the TiVo tuner once a week in order to download schedules.
I’ve noticed an annoying and frequent problem on my Series 5/Roamio box lately. Starting a month or two ago, I started randomly having the following issues:
- Sound cuts out after rewinding, even if just skipping back once. The sound was there when it originally played, and if I fast-forward back to the “live” time code, sound reappears.
- picture frozen after rewinding.
- Can’t play recordings - Screen just freezes at the start of the show, or show will run with no sound, or you’ll hear sound with black screen.
When the box gets into this “mode”, there is no fixing it - different tuners all have the same issue. Playing recordings is spotty, occasionally one will work. The only thing that fixes it is a complete restart, after which everything will be back to normal. Until then, the only thing you can do is watch live tv, at the current time, on any of the tuners.
This started as something that happened every week it two, but I’ve had to restart once a day for the past 4-5 days. So it’s getting a bit ridiculous.
I’m not drawing direct causation here, but this seemed to start at the same time I started seeing Tivo ads run before my shows. Also, when an ad does show before playing a recording, this problem never happens.
When a recording does fail, there is a long pause when I first press play - in my many many years of playing TiVo recordings, I’ve never seen a delay like that before playing. Is it possible it’s looking for an ad to play and can’t find one, so it doesn’t know what to do? I wouldn’t know for sure of course, but it does fit with the symptoms.
The ads are a whole separate topic, and maybe it’s not one for this thread, but ... how in the world is it ok to suddenly take over my service with ads? I pay retail consumer price for hardware, I pay for ongoing service - and you’re going to show me ads too?
I’m trying to think of any parallel product where a non-content creator is trying to squeeze all three streams of revenue like this, and I can’t think of one. Plus, in my head, TiVo has suddenly shifted from being “on my side” in the cold relationship between me and my cable company, to now being another cold relationship -
It will turn out that I can actually save on monthly service, and eliminate some time spent watching ads, by getting rid of TiVo. The downside would be using the less-sleek interface provided by my cable provider. It’s surprising that TiVo doesn’t understand the equation here.
Anyway, my message isn’t going to change the Ad strategy, so no need to answer that, but I would like to get my box working again (I have some time before yearly renewal), so any help there would be appreciated!
I’ve noticed an annoying and frequent problem on my Series 5/Roamio box lately. Starting a month or two ago, I started randomly having the following issues:
- Sound cuts out after rewinding, even if just skipping back once. The sound was there when it originally played, and if I fast-forward back to the “live” time code, sound reappears.
- picture frozen after rewinding.
- Can’t play recordings - Screen just freezes at the start of the show, or show will run with no sound, or you’ll hear sound with black screen.
When the box gets into this “mode”, there is no fixing it - different tuners all have the same issue. Playing recordings is spotty, occasionally one will work. The only thing that fixes it is a complete restart, after which everything will be back to normal. Until then, the only thing you can do is watch live tv, at the current time, on any of the tuners.
This started as something that happened every week it two, but I’ve had to restart once a day for the past 4-5 days. So it’s getting a bit ridiculous.
I’m not drawing direct causation here, but this seemed to start at the same time I started seeing Tivo ads run before my shows. Also, when an ad does show before playing a recording, this problem never happens.
When a recording does fail, there is a long pause when I first press play - in my many many years of playing TiVo recordings, I’ve never seen a delay like that before playing. Is it possible it’s looking for an ad to play and can’t find one, so it doesn’t know what to do? I wouldn’t know for sure of course, but it does fit with the symptoms.
The ads are a whole separate topic, and maybe it’s not one for this thread, but ... how in the world is it ok to suddenly take over my service with ads? I pay retail consumer price for hardware, I pay for ongoing service - and you’re going to show me ads too?
I’m trying to think of any parallel product where a non-content creator is trying to squeeze all three streams of revenue like this, and I can’t think of one. Plus, in my head, TiVo has suddenly shifted from being “on my side” in the cold relationship between me and my cable company, to now being another cold relationship -
It will turn out that I can actually save on monthly service, and eliminate some time spent watching ads, by getting rid of TiVo. The downside would be using the less-sleek interface provided by my cable provider. It’s surprising that TiVo doesn’t understand the equation here.
Anyway, my message isn’t going to change the Ad strategy, so no need to answer that, but I would like to get my box working again (I have some time before yearly renewal), so any help there would be appreciated!
