[SVTarHeel]

I got an e-mail from an acquaintance last night. He has an Elite XL4 with Lifetime and has been told it has a bad tuner but doesn't know any more than that. What do I need to know to find out if it's fixable? My only Premiere experience is with the 2-tuner/antenna models...

 

[ThAbtO]

If it is a bad tuner, it is not fixable, and must be replaced.

 

[SVTarHeel]

If it is a bad tuner, it is not fixable, and must be replaced.

Thanks, that was my fear. Is there anything I can do to verify that it is indeed bad? I suspect the stumbling block will be the lack of a cable account/card...

 

[JoeKustra]

Thanks, that was my fear. Is there anything I can do to verify that it is indeed bad? I suspect the stumbling block will be the lack of a cable account/card...

Simple. Restart the box. When it's done, check all the tuners in Diagnostics. They should be identical since they will all be on the same channel.

Sorry, no cable card: no channels. Unless he has a clear QAM channel. So run a channel scan. Maybe it will find one. I have two.

 

[SVTarHeel]

Simple. Restart the box. When it's done, check all the tuners in Diagnostics. They should be identical since they will all be on the same channel... no cable card: no channels. Unless he has a clear QAM channel.

Thanks, that makes sense. I have since discovered that he also has a Roamio with a bad tuner. With *2* units with a diagnosed bad tuner, what do you think the likelihood is that it would be 1) poor customer support from the cable company (there's a CableCard hiccup and they default to "Uhh, you have a bad tuner."), or 2) some kind of power surge or lightning strike fried them both?

But those are largely guesses from ignorance. I've never used a TiVo with anything besides an antenna.

 

[JoeKustra]

If you are using the same cable card in both units I would speculate that the card is bad. I don't know if you can program a card for just three tuners.

 

[SVTarHeel]

If you are using the same cable card in both units I would speculate that the card is bad.

I don't know if it's the same card giving the issue or not. I'm operating blindly since I don't have access to the units.

I think, in the end, he'd like to get rid of both units and move forward. I was operating on the (perhaps erroneous) assumption that a bad tuner was uncommon enough - especially in two units of differing model numbers - that it might be something simple (or nothing at all) and I could get them from him, test and update them, and re-home them to someone who could use them... I hate to see usable tech scrapped.

 

[snerd]

I've experience hiccups that cause the CableCard to have problems with individual streams, which would look like a "bad tuner". Power cycling the hardware fixed the problem.

If the problem persists when changing to a different CableCard, then it isn't fixable.

 

[SVTarHeel]

Thanks for the feedback snerd

 

[SVTarHeel]

Updated info: the diagnosis came via a call to TiVo. Apparently, they helped diagnose through the read out system and said it was a tuner issue.

Any educated guesses as to whether or not they’re likely to live again? I don't have them in my possession to test anything and wouldn’t be able to do much with the Elite since I don’t have cable service. Is a TiVo rep likely to punt with a ‘bad tuner’ diagnosis when flummoxed?