# Emergency Alert System freezes my Mini once a week



## grey ghost (Feb 2, 2010)

The alert was cancelled hours ago on my Roamio, but that night when we crank up the Mini, the EAS scroll is on the Mini. All the functions have ceased to work on the remote and the only way I can get it to work is to unplug the Mini from the power. 

Is there another way to "thaw" my Mini other than unplugging it? TIA for any help

FWIW, the Mini is connected to the Roamio via MoCA and it's the only Mini attached to the Roamio


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## bshrock (Jan 6, 2012)

Have you tried the HDUI reset? <Thumb Down>, <Thumb Up>. <Play>, <Play>


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## grey ghost (Feb 2, 2010)

bshrock said:


> Have you tried the HDUI reset? <Thumb Down>, <Thumb Up>. <Play>, <Play>


No, every single button on the remote freezes and the only sound you get is the "thud" sound that tells you you can't do that.


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## bshrock (Jan 6, 2012)

It may be you're network can you try using Ethernet?

I have not had any EAS interruptions on the Mini at least any that I know of. One of my two Minis would lock up frequently like yours frozen with either a blank screen or the main menu with the view window displaying the Pause symbol. Sometimes I could recover using the HDUI reset like you I would get a delayed error "thud" for the button presses half a minute later I would hear the conformation beep and the Mini would recover. When the HDUI reset did not work I disconnected the Coax cable and the Mini would recover with a network error message. I switched the 2 and the problem stayed with the location so Saturday I ran a network cable and switched that Mini to use Ethernet I have not seen the lock up since Knock on wood.

My configuration was both Mini's using the Premiere XL4 for the MoCA bridge. The problem Mini had 2 splitters and about 40' of coax between the XL4. the Other Mini is on the first 4 way splitter.


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## grey ghost (Feb 2, 2010)

bshrock said:


> It may be you're network can you try using Ethernet?
> 
> I have not had any EAS interruptions on the Mini at least any that I know of. One of my two Minis would lock up frequently like yours frozen with either a blank screen or the main menu with the view window displaying the Pause symbol. Sometimes I could recover using the HDUI reset like you I would get a delayed error "thud" for the button presses half a minute later I would hear the conformation beep and the Mini would recover. When the HDUI reset did not work I disconnected the Coax cable and the Mini would recover with a network error message. I switched the 2 and the problem stayed with the location so Saturday I ran a network cable and switched that Mini to use Ethernet I have not seen the lock up since Knock on wood.
> 
> My configuration was both Mini's using the Premiere XL4 for the MoCA bridge. The problem Mini had 2 splitters and about 40' of coax between the XL4. the Other Mini is on the first 4 way splitter.


In my situation, it is impractical to run ethernet to the Mini. I tried using a wireless bridge and ethernet from there, but it didn't really work. The MoCA network using the Roamio as a MoCA bridge that I'm currently using is much better and is quick and responsive, but it just has this one problem with freezing.

Thanks for the suggestions though. I appreciate it.


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## jrm9999 (Dec 12, 2014)

Did you ever figure this out? My mini freezes every week when the emergency test message comes out. Same problem you had, no buttons work to clear it and have to unplug it.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

Are you actually watching on the Mini when it happens?


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Make sure not to leave the Mini paused on a show when turning off the TV. My wife is in the habit of doing this on her main TiVo so she does it on the Mini as well. When it's paused like that it thinks you're actively watching so it will accept the EAS signal, grab a tuner and drop to live TV. As long as it's on the little screen saver thing I believe it ignores EAS.


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## CoxInPHX (Jan 14, 2011)

Try disconnecting the Coax for a few seconds, that might free it up, instead of a reboot.

Both my Minis grab a tuner and switch to LiveTV with every EAS test, and keep that tuner for 4 hours, unless you go back to TiVo Central. Doesn't matter if it has been inactive or in-use at the time.

I have never had one lockup after an EAS test though.

I know that the behavior of the EAS test is very different between a Cisco system and a Motorola system. My provider finally implemented HUB specific EAS suppression, so instead of getting a test for every single county/area, I now only get the one per week.


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## MichaelAinNB (Dec 28, 2013)

Kind of late to the party here but those EAS broadcasts knock my Premiere back to a local channel (typically our local CBS or Government channel), regardless of what I am watching at the time (live, stream, or recorded program). This is particularly annoying if I'm not physically in front of the DVR and am recording a program. If an EAS broadcast happens to occur while I'm recording something, I lose the remaining portion of the program being recorded and instead, the channel the EAS broadcast sent the TiVo to is recorded. If I happen to be watching TV when the alert is broadcast, I have to wait for an additional 30 seconds or so after the alert has cleared before TiVo will allow me to change channels or modes (ie- return to watching a recorded program) and return to what I was watching.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

This is a requirement of the CableCARD specification. The TiVo is required to display the EAS as long as it's receiving the signal from your cable company. If you leave it alone it should return to the previous channel it was on and complete whatever it was recording after the EAS is over.


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## MichaelAinNB (Dec 28, 2013)

Dan203 said:


> This is a requirement of the CableCARD specification. The TiVo is required to display the EAS as long as it's receiving the signal from your cable company. If you leave it alone it should return to the previous channel it was on and complete whatever it was recording after the EAS is over.


Thanks for the prompt reply Dan. In retrospect, I erroneously inferred that when watching live TV, the TiVo device always stays on whatever channel it changed to to display the EAS. There have been times when the DVR has returned to the original channel after x amount of time transpires (typically 30-60 seconds), but that seems to be the exception, not the rule. But, I can't recall a time when the DVR has returned to my pre-recorded program after displaying the EAS. I have to manually go to TiVo Central and return to watching the pre-recorded program that way.

Don't wanna beat a dead horse. Just thought I'd toss in my 2 pennies.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

It definitely wont return to your recording. I meant that if the EAS interrupts something that is being recorded it will return to that channel and finish recording that program once the EAS is over. You wont get a recording of the EAS channel for the remaining X minutes/hours.

If it kicks you to live TV while you're actively watching a previously recorded show then you have to wait until it's over and then return to that show manually. I tend to watch TV a lot late at night so I get interrupted by tests all the time like this. It's very annoying, especially since the station it uses is way louder then the ones I typically record. I've gotten into the habit of hitting mute as soon as I realize it's dumping me out to live TV so I don't have to hear it.


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## MichaelAinNB (Dec 28, 2013)

Dan203 said:


> It definitely wont return to your recording. I meant that if the EAS interrupts something that is being recorded it will return to that channel and finish recording that program once the EAS is over. You wont get a recording of the EAS channel for the remaining X minutes/hours.


 Well, that's exactly what my Premiere did at about 10:30 a.m. today which is what triggered me to search this board to see if others had experienced the same issue. I was home but doing some work in the garage and I was recording Gangland Undercover on the History Channel and an EAS test alert came across. The channel was changed to I believe Channel 3 which is our local government access channel. After the alert cleared, the DVR stayed on the government access channel. Fortunately, I had come in from the garage and missed only about 9 minutes of the program I was recording. I had to manually change back to channel 56 so I could finish recording Gangland Undercover.


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## burdellgp (Mar 28, 2008)

Dan203 said:


> This is a requirement of the CableCARD specification.


My TiVo has six tuners - are they all required to switch? Surely TiVo can switch one tuner, trying to avoid active recordings, and leave the rest alone.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

burdellgp said:


> My TiVo has six tuners - are they all required to switch? Surely TiVo can switch one tuner, trying to avoid active recordings, and leave the rest alone.


Observation on my weekly test. Roamio switches to cable company Info channel, does the test, switches back. Mini gets enabled (grabs a tuner) and displays the message. It does not release the tuner until the four hour timeout or I do it manually. I normally leave it on the info channel, but I will move it to see if it switches back next week.


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## JWhites (May 15, 2013)

Dan203 said:


> Make sure not to leave the Mini paused on a show when turning off the TV. My wife is in the habit of doing this on her main TiVo so she does it on the Mini as well. When it's paused like that it thinks you're actively watching so it will accept the EAS signal, grab a tuner and drop to live TV. As long as it's on the little screen saver thing I believe it ignores EAS.


From my own personal experience, with the banner alerts the mini drops out of screensaver and displays live TV while the banner scrolls on top. I'm not seeing a problem with this. I'm glad it's all working the way it's supposed to.


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## JWhites (May 15, 2013)

grey ghost said:


> The alert was cancelled hours ago on my Roamio, but that night when we crank up the Mini, the EAS scroll is on the Mini. All the functions have ceased to work on the remote and the only way I can get it to work is to unplug the Mini from the power.
> 
> Is there another way to "thaw" my Mini other than unplugging it? TIA for any help
> 
> FWIW, the Mini is connected to the Roamio via MoCA and it's the only Mini attached to the Roamio


I've had this happen when my Roamio restarted in the middle of a test. Both are using ethernet. I simply restarted the mini and all was well.


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## JWhites (May 15, 2013)

CoxInPHX said:


> I know that the behavior of the EAS test is very different between a Cisco system and a Motorola system. My provider finally implemented HUB specific EAS suppression, so instead of getting a test for every single county/area, I now only get the one per week.


And which style of alert are you seeing? I know your on a Cisco headend since your using Cisco cards.


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## CoxInPHX (Jan 14, 2011)

JWhites said:


> And which style of alert are you seeing? I know your on a Cisco headend since your using Cisco cards.


Mine are a dark blue banner with scrolling pinkish (not really red) letters, that gets overlaid at the top of the screen of the foreground tuner. The EAS does not have any sound, the LiveTV sound is still heard.

All TiVos and Minis switch to LiveTV and then the scroll starts, for about 45 seconds


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## JWhites (May 15, 2013)

This depends on the endec equipment and settings at the cable headend. Where I live we use Cisco cablecards and I've always gotten just the scrolling banner which looks like this: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=225350, but during the national test back in 2011 I received a forced tune slate alert which looks like this: http://cdn.avsforum.com/c/c0/c05269a8_vbattach225351.jpeg. Secondly I know what you mean about the silent scroll, there was an SCTE 18 option to permit audio but TiVo and chose not to implement it apparently. I've also had alerts that lasted the full 2 minute max limit when my state did a statewide IPAWS-CAP alert test which banner scrolled the text verbatim of what normally would be heard in the audio portion of the alert, looping the scrolling text. Also came across this thread on the AVS forum that has a lot of info about this stuff if your interested. http://www.avsforum.com/forum/25-hdtv-technical/1280119-emergency-alert-system-eas.html


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

In my area they force the TiVo to tune to CSPAN and then they have a normal EAS overlay in the video. It's not something special like either of the examples you posted. It's an old school EAS with some way to force the TiVo to tune to the proper channel while it's happening.


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## JWhites (May 15, 2013)

Yeah I remember that system and I've seen examples of that on YouTube. Some providers in certain markets have a dedicated EAS channel that displays a blank screen until an alert activates and is forced tuned to, or in other markets they use whatever channel QVC is on or a local channel and force tune to that. It has to be a channel that everyone can receive, even those with basic service. In the analog days a text generator would create a text crawler which would be displayed on every channel informing the user to tune to a specific channel which would use the old style slate screen and audio, or the text crawler would display the alert message itself and override the channel's audio and insert the emergency audio such as here: 



, or all channels would be overlaid with the old style slate screen and emergency audio. This of course is equipment specific. These days with digital, forced tuning is done through the set top box and scrolling banners generated by the set top box itself.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

They use C-SPAN here. Although back before they went all digital it didn't actually work on my Premier Elite because C-SPAN was an analog station and the Elite couldn't tune analog stations. So it would just sit on a black screen until the EAS was over with zero indication as to what it was doing. And when the EAS happened during a recording the recording would just be "partial" with a chunk missing where the EAS would have been. Took me a few times to figure out what the heck was going on. I even rebooted my TiVo once thinking it was locked up.


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## mangochutney (Apr 7, 2015)

My first post and it's a moan! This sounds like a Royal PITA.

With a HTPC using a Ceton tuner and newest beta fw you have an option to disable EAS (until the next Ceton re-init).
Would TiVo consider such a tweak to be enabled if required by the user? I assume this is all within spec and requirements.


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## JWhites (May 15, 2013)

Nope, to disable the EAS would be a violation of the FCC Part 15 rules, a violation of CableLabs, and a violation of ANSI/SCTE 18. TiVo could get into insurmountable trouble and lose the license to use CableCARDs which would affect every single TiVo user using digital cable. Anyway for most people the glitch that is being discussed in this thread doesn't even occur and is generally an issue with network communication between the Mini and the DVR. As I said before, I've only had this happen once and that was because the Roamio crashed mid alert. Once I rebooted the Mini it went away.


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## JWhites (May 15, 2013)

Here's some related techie pdf's. http://www.scte.org/documents/pdf/Standards/ANSI_SCTE 18 2007 J-STD-042A 2007.pdf
http://www.scte.org/documents/pdf/Standards/ANSI_SCTE 18 2007 J-STD-042A 2007.pdf


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## mangochutney (Apr 7, 2015)

Interesting thanks. I wonder how Ceton are allowing temporary circumvent. I highly doubt they would do anything that breaks the rules. Perhaps you are actually allowed to by choice disable EAS until a reboot or power cycle defaults the ocur back to EAS enabled.


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