# Channel Not Available message



## JoeCraw (Apr 23, 2004)

Has the "Channel Not Available" message happened to anyone else's HD Tivo? I got this message Sunday afternoon on every channel I tried to watch (even my OTA channels!) I had to unplug my unit, wait a few minutes and plug it back in to get the unit to work again. Has this happened to anyone else? I have have my unit since July and this has never happened before. What could cause this? 

Thanks,
Joe


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## jmorgis (Jul 21, 2004)

Yes, also happened to me. I had my HD Tivo for 6 monts. Only happedned once. I did a soft reset and all came back ok. Its a software glitch, i would not worry about it. You probibly will never see that message again

John


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## jsdb (Sep 12, 2004)

I also had this problem. It happened on Tuesday 12-28-04. Same thing. No channels were available. I unplugged the machine, waited a few seconds and plugged it back in. It has worked fine for almost a week now.
I also hope that this isn't a sign of things to come.


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## btwyx (Jan 16, 2003)

Sounds like the problem I have, it happens on a semi-regular basis to me.


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## DeputyTIVO (Dec 2, 2001)

Happen to me about an hour ago. A restart fixed the problem.


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## dr_mal (Mar 21, 2001)

I've seen it 2 or 3 times that I can recall. It's very strange -- I go into System Information and it tells me my OTA and satellite tuners are all "not enabled" and my programming source is "Satellite only" instead of "Satellite and OTA".

A reboot fixes it, but it's very puzzling. Glad I'm not the only one.


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## NJChris (May 11, 2001)

This has happened to me about 3 times. I have to do a reset (from the menus).

It appears to happen when I stop another program while it is recording (not sure if all were my season passes or if one was a suggestion). That could just be a coincidence, but that's when it happened to me.

It just happened this past weekend. I hope it doesn't continue to happen!


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## dmuino (Sep 23, 2004)

This happened to me on Dec 21st, two days after I had left for my vacations. When I came back yesterday I was very disappointed to see that all the shows I was expecting to see were missing. Completely jet lagged I called DTV, and blindly followed their instructions which told me to 'Clear Program Data and To Do List.' Big mistake. I lost all my season passes and preferences, including which channels I receive, thumbs up ratings, etc.


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## dr_mal (Mar 21, 2001)

I find it somewhat amusing that the standard D* answer - unplug and reboot the receiver -- actually fixes this problem. So of course, their answer is to clear program data and to do list


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## spinn74 (Dec 14, 2004)

Anyone else ever pay $1000 for a product with this many issues? Isn't this what beta testing is for?


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## btwyx (Jan 16, 2003)

It doesn't fix it, it makes it go away.

I'm hoping if enough people bug D* about this they may fix it sometime. I seem to have the worst case of it.


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## btwyx (Jan 16, 2003)

> _Originally posted by spinn74 _
> *Anyone else ever pay $1000 for a product with this many issues? Isn't this what beta testing is for? *


 How many issues do you think it has? You're average PC costs more and has more issues. In this particular case this problem seems to be sufficiently rare that its off D*'s radar, and probably wouldn't have been picked up even if they had done a real beta test. (Unless they gave one to me that is.)


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## dr_mal (Mar 21, 2001)

> _Originally posted by btwyx _
> *It doesn't fix it, it makes it go away.*


True enough.


> _Originally posted by btwyx _
> *I'm hoping if enough people bug D* about this they may fix it sometime. I seem to have the worst case of it. *


It would be nice, but from other problems (erroneous guide data message anyone?), it seems that D*'s user-reported bug tracking leaves a lot to be desired. I have a feeling if I called about this problem every day for the next year, I'd get a different rep every time that told me they'd never heard of the problem, and I needed to clear my program data, and that would fix it.


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## btwyx (Jan 16, 2003)

> _Originally posted by dr_mal _
> *It would be nice, but from other problems (erroneous guide data message anyone?), it seems that D*'s user-reported bug tracking leaves a lot to be desired. I have a feeling if I called about this problem every day for the next year, I'd get a different rep every time that told me they'd never heard of the problem, and I needed to clear my program data, and that would fix it. *


 The erroneous guide data message wasn't actually causing anyone any problems, apart from existing and confusing (and annoying) people. They fixed that one inside a few months. The channels not available problem prevents basic operation of the unit (mine missed 2 weeks of recordings while I was on vacation).

Their bug reporting leaves everything to be desired. I've been trying to troubleshoot this myself, and everytime I have great difficulty in persuading even level 2-3 techs that I know what I'm talking about. If they'd just shoot a bug report to engineering (or even my observations of repeatability) something might actually get done. I'm not sure that's happened, dspite the higher level techs have told me they were going to make such a report.

If a tech asks me to clear and delete everything, I can tell them I did and the problem came back. I have a lot of "I did and the problem came back"s.


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## hiker (Nov 29, 2001)

This just happened to me on one of my HR10's for the first time. I was watching one program and a SP was recording on the other tuner. Then a little later I went to look for the recoding and it wasn't in the NP list and most channels were missing. 

Reboot and now it looks ok now, except I looked in the Recording History for the recording that started but didn't finsh and found this error message: "This program will not be recorded because the Recorder had an internal error. 4.". What could that mean?


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## bacevedo (Oct 31, 2003)

I had this same thing happen a month ago.

See my post here about this issue and all of the other people having it happen at the same time.

I still think DirecTV is sending out some anti-piracy signal (like a silver bullet) and it confuses our HD Tivo under certain circumstances. I find it odd that many people report the problem around the same time. Sounds like a D* signal issue to me.

Bryan


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## Cheezmo (Apr 26, 2004)

This has happened to me a couple of times in the last year or so. The last time was 4-5 days ago.


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## HomieG (Feb 17, 2003)

This started happening to me yesterday, on my old Sony SAT-A50. It appears when I try to pull up a local station with direct number entry, or using the jump command. If I open the channel guide or use the channel up or down funtion, the channel will appear. Sounds like something has changed at DirecTV...hmmm, that's what we get in exchange for the price increase?


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## tammyandlee (Feb 28, 2002)

This happens to me about twice a week. If I stop recording OTA HD it stops happening.


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