[jasonander]

A few months ago a switched from the *awful* Comcast DVR to the Tivo S3 and have been enjoying the benefits of a stable and reliable DVR that is the Tivo S3... until this week. A strange problem just started to surface... for the last three evenings, all of my recordings on CBS HD and NBC HD have some issues when I try to play them back. While viewing the channels live, there is no problem. While viewing the channels while they are recording, again there is no problem. However, once the recording is finished, the problems occur when I try to play back the recording. If I hit the fast forward button, the show will fast forward at 2x as usual. However, if I hit play, then the show skips to the end of the buffer. Likewise, if I try to hit the fast forward button 2 or 3 times, instead of fast forwarding at the fast speeds, the show will skip to the end. If I try to 30 second skip, the show will either skip to the end or to the 20 minute mark, and then the 40 minute mark. Trying to rewind has no effect... the show will not rewind. If I watch the show in its entirety at 1x without fast forwarding, the entire show is there with no problems. If I am in the middle of the show, and go to the Tivo menu, and try to go back to resume the show, it starts back at the beginning of the buffer instead of where I left off. My recordings of Leno and Conan for the last 3 nights all have this problem, as does Jericho from last night. My recording of So You Think You Can Dance on Fox HD from Wednesday Thursday night was fine, although I watched it nearly live while the recording was still in the buffer. My SD recordings, like Doctor Who and Psych, were not affected.

I called Customer Service and the agent said he has never heard of this issue and all he could say is he would escalate it and gave me a case number, with no promise of followup. :down:

Has anyone experienced a similar problem and had it resolved? I have already tried resetting my Tivo. If it helps, I live in the SF Bay area, about 5 minutes down the road from Tivo HQ, but the CS agent said that would not be helpful to solving this.

Like I said earlier, my Tivo S3 has worked without a problem for the last few minutes, and I've loved it. However now I'm beginning to feel I just chucked $800 out the window for nothing.

 

[jasonander]

I just wanted to post a followup. I undeleted Wednesday's and Thursday's recordings of So You Think You Can Dance from Fox HD. While I originally watched both of these near live, I definitely used fast forward to skip commercials, etc. With these recovered programs, the Wednesday show has the same problem (fast forwarding skips to the end), and with the Thursday show, fast forwarding will skip 24 minutes into the show, and the transport functions work properly for the remaining 36 minutes. The only thing I can think of is I started watching the Thursday show approx. at 9:24 (so that I could skip commercials and fluff). I also recovered Traveler from ABC HD on Wednesday night. This program plays back just fine. All of my old HD programs that I have recorded more than a week ago also play back normally.

I normally keep my Tivo in Standby mode when I am not using it, to avoid the bug where the Tivo will cut off a recording due to an EAS/Amber Alert. I use a Harmony remote to automatically do this.

This is feeling like a conspiracy to try to get me to waste my time watching repetitive, mind-numbing commercials. Ugh.

 

[moyekj]

Are CBS HD & NBC HD on the same QAM? You can check by tuning both tuners to those channels and then going to Messages&Settings->Account&System Information->Diagnostics menu and checking the Frequency - if they are both the same frequency they are carried on the same QAM and it could well be your cable company recently switched to do some strange multiplexing or bit-rate shaping that your Tivo can't handle. If that's the case you could mention that to customer support to see if they changed something recently on that QAM. The other thing you could do is see if someone else in your neighborhood with a Tivo or cable co. DVR has issues on those channels.

 

[jasonander]

Are CBS HD & NBC HD on the same QAM? You can check by tuning both tuners to those channels and then going to Messages&Settings->Account&System Information->Diagnostics menu and checking the Frequency - if they are both the same frequency they are carried on the same QAM and it could well be your cable company recently switched to do some strange multiplexing or bit-rate shaping that your Tivo can't handle. If that's the case you could mention that to customer support to see if they changed something recently on that QAM. The other thing you could do is see if someone else in your neighborhood with a Tivo or cable co. DVR has issues on those channels.

CBS HD and FOX HD are on the same QAM frequency. NBC HD is on another. I will try posting on AVS Forum on the Bay Area thread. In case anyone reads this here, I'm in Sunnyvale in a 550 MHz slum.