# Verizon FIOS Channel Signal Strength Issue



## escrge (Apr 30, 2003)

Verizon FIOS just installed M-Cards in two Premier TiVos for me this morning. The master bedroom seems to be fine. However, the one in my office has intermittent drop-outs of several HD channels. When a tech came back out, he said there is a known issue with the new TiVos where the signal strength is too strong and causes channel drop-outs and that Radio Shack carries a filter of some sort.

He installed an 8db attenuator which seemed to help and gave me my missing channels back. Then later this afternoon, I had several other channels drop out intermittently.

Anybody hear about this signal strength issue? And what sort of filter would he be referring to?


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

I don't know about the Premiere, but the TiVo HD had this problem for years. Search the S3 forum for details. It was a black art as to how many attenuators would be needed. Then TiVo came up with a software fix that solved most if not all of the problem (probably by changing some settings in the tuner, but I don't think they ever explained what they did).

I don't know where the menu is on the Premiere. But on the TiVo HD you can go to:

Messages & Settings
Account & System Information
DVR Diagnostics

There you will see the frequency for each tuner. If you're tuned to a channel that has dropouts, you should see Signal Strength fluctuate. You should also see RS Uncorrected and RS Corrected increasing.

E.g. right now I'm tuned to 780, which is Disney HD. I see some Signal Strength fluctuation and a few errors. But not enough to really notice when watching the program.

I suspect you'll see changes to these values with/without the attenuator installed. Report back to us with what you find.

The "filter" at RS was probably just an attenuator. The other thing to try is something called a diplexer. It's used a lot for DBS (satellite). It takes an input and splits the low frequencies (below about 900 MHz) and the high frequencies (above) to two outputs. Those high frequencies are used by FiOS for MoCA (ie program guide), and there's some speculation that the high frequencies adversely affect the TiVo (which doesn't need them).


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## DeWitt (Jun 30, 2004)

In the Series 3 forum you will see a long thread on Verizon compatibility. Essentially a hot sigmal had to be attenuated so the Tivo could handle it. That issue was resolved in a software update earlier this year. After the update I removed all attenuation on my THD and have had no issues. 

My Premiere is also connected without attenuation without any issue.

What signal strength are you seeing?


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## escrge (Apr 30, 2003)

DeWitt said:


> In the Series 3 forum you will see a long thread on Verizon compatibility. Essentially a hot sigmal had to be attenuated so the Tivo could handle it. That issue was resolved in a software update earlier this year. After the update I removed all attenuation on my THD and have had no issues.
> 
> My Premiere is also connected without attenuation without any issue.
> 
> What signal strength are you seeing?


Well, without any attenuators attached, on channel 622 (Science HD) I get 0 signal strength and 899 (HBO HD) I get a signal of 32 (in the red zone.) This doesn't match what the tech was describing where the signal was too strong.


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## jay_man2 (Sep 15, 2003)

I have attenuators for my S3 because the signal's too hot.


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## DeWitt (Jun 30, 2004)

Wow, a zero! Mine are all in the 90's. How did the tech have the nerve to tell you a filter to reduce the signal strength would help you?


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

I have no signal issues here with FiOS, but I also never had any issues with the TiVoHD either on FiOS. Although I did need to attenuate the signal on the TiVoHD when I had Comcast.
I used a variable attenuator from Radio shack. It was inexpensive and easily let me adjust the signal strength.


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## oViTynoT (May 18, 2007)

> How did the tech have the nerve to tell you a filter to reduce the signal strength would help you?


Because that was a HUGE DEAL about a year ago, but as was mentioned previously, a software fix corrected that (was that 11.0c?)

Anyway, the tech was employing what he heard. However, what's important is that a ZERO signal strength does not get improved by this. This was a signal strength in the 90s and a SNR in the high 30s that would cause this problem, evidenced by tens of thousands of Uncorrected Errors per second in the statistics.

Take that attenuator out for now; I don't think it's helping you.

You may have a bad cable in your house; if you can surf the channels and look at the FREQUENCY of those channels (in the System Information page, I think), you might find a specific BAND of frequencies that are troublesome.

The channel NUMBERS won't correspond to adjacent frequencies, either.

At any rate, if you find a notch in the band where channels aren't working, that highlights a coax cable issue.


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## waltengr (Apr 10, 2010)

My week-old new Premiere is my first TiVo (after 4 years with a Panasonic EH-55). Crashed twice - not surprising for as much new code as Premiere probably has. I have one annoying problem: channels with indicated "Signal Level" above the low 60s will not lock in, and after some seconds of delay, display either "not authorized" or "having trouble, try again..." errors. My RF setup now has a booster (originally needed for Panasonic + HDTV+set-top box) with a splitter with one output port open, it seems likely that an impedance mismatch is bouncing UHF around to give uneven signal at the TiVo's tuner input.


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## ciucca (Jun 29, 2004)

escrge said:


> Verizon FIOS just installed M-Cards in two Premier TiVos for me this morning. The master bedroom seems to be fine. However, the one in my office has intermittent drop-outs of several HD channels. When a tech came back out, he said there is a known issue with the new TiVos where the signal strength is too strong and causes channel drop-outs and that Radio Shack carries a filter of some sort.
> 
> He installed an 8db attenuator which seemed to help and gave me my missing channels back. Then later this afternoon, I had several other channels drop out intermittently.
> 
> Anybody hear about this signal strength issue? And what sort of filter would he be referring to?


I certainly hope the tech was only talking about stuff he heard in the past. It would be unacceptable for the premiere to have the dreaded pixelation the TivoHD had.


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## oViTynoT (May 18, 2007)

Yep; you should always put terminators on unused splitter taps....


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## waltengr (Apr 10, 2010)

My 4/13/10 post was far too inventive... no signal strength problem. What was found to be wrong, after one technician on two successive days, and another on the third day, had each spent several hours was that an office person at our local Comcast office - instructed by the first technician to enter Host and Cable Card IDs, entered the Host ID where the Cable Card should have been (and of course, the Cable Card ID where the Host ID should have been). Once that error was corrected by the third technician, everything works PERFECTLY. What more can I say?
walt


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

ciucca said:


> I certainly hope the tech was only talking about stuff he heard in the past. It would be unacceptable for the premiere to have the dreaded pixelation the TivoHD had.


I never had any issues with my TiVoHD boxes and FiOS. Now I did when I had Comcast and had to put an attenuator on the line. But no problems with the FiOS signal. I was able to remove the attenuator when I switched to FiOS in 2007..


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## GmanTiVo (Mar 9, 2003)

DeWitt said:


> In the Series 3 forum you will see a long thread on Verizon compatibility. Essentially a hot sigmal had to be attenuated so the Tivo could handle it. That issue was resolved in a software update earlier this year. After the update I removed all attenuation on my THD and have had no issues.
> 
> My Premiere is also connected without attenuation without any issue.
> 
> What signal strength are you seeing?


Glad to hear your Premier XL does NOT have any issues with FIOS.

I had them problems as well (now fixed) with my S3's, and am thinking of picking up a Premiere XL.... and it not being able to handle the hot signal we get in NJ would be a deal killer for me, tho I have many attenuators collecting dust right now


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