# 6.x is a joke



## gquiring (Dec 13, 2002)

I am just blown over with this 6.x update. It is no upgrade by any measure with all these freakin reboots, audio dropouts and the array of other issues everyone has reported. Once again while watching Idol during a great performance by Stephanie another reboot. It did not surprise me, the whole show was riddled with audio dropouts which has been a pretty good clue to date that a reboot is coming up. I don't know why but am pretty sure it only reboots on FOX!! I really cannot recall any other channel that it reboots on. All my viewing is D*, no OTA.

Tivo has no excuse for this crap code. DirecTV has no excuse for allowing them to release this junk.


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## JimSpence (Sep 19, 2001)

Well, 6.3c is working just fine for me. There has to be other factors involved.


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## bpratt (Nov 20, 2004)

I had the same issues with 6.x on my two units. I restored 3.1.5f and all the problems went away.


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## shelland (Jul 12, 2003)

I've had the phone line unplugged for months. I'm still toying with whether it's worth upgrading for the DST patch or not.


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## jamesbobo (Jun 18, 2000)

I have 6.3c with none of the problems you describe.


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## Marino13 (Jan 17, 2007)

I have 6.3c on all three of mine and they are all ROCK SOLID!! No problems at all.


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## Da Goon (Oct 22, 2006)

6.3c works great for me. An occassional FOX audio dropout or two, but I set the same show to record on an SDtivo and the glitches were there too so it must have been FOX's sh**ty signal. Only unscheduled reboot happened during a failed mfs_ftp insert.


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## paris5 (Mar 8, 2007)

I had terrible problems with 6.3 and 6.3a with audio dropouts, especially on FOX OTA. It got so bad, I had to downgrade back to 3.1.5f. I couldn't convince my girlfriend that the faster menus outweighed the dropouts (American Idol or some such). With 6.3c, things seem to be working much better. I agree that millions of users should not be used as guinea pigs, but I can't imagine that the test procedures would involve viewing every possible channel for a few hours to see if there are dropouts.


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## boltjames (Dec 21, 2002)

After months of nervousness, I finally went straight from 3.1.5f to 6.3c and I couldn't be happier.

With the DST issue rapidly approaching, I suggest others do likewise.

BJ


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## Todd (Oct 7, 1999)

Since I went straight to 6.3c, I've had several reboots and 2 lockups. Argh....


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## WhyMe (Jul 12, 2005)

The only problem I seen is have the shows cancelled by someone in your home problem and I dont have suggestions turned on.


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## temp357 (Feb 18, 2004)

bpratt said:


> I had the same issues with 6.x on my two units. I restored 3.1.5f and all the problems went away.


+1


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## pdawg17 (Mar 1, 2003)

bpratt said:


> I had the same issues with 6.x on my two units. I restored 3.1.5f and all the problems went away.


+2


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## Sir_winealot (Nov 18, 2000)

JimSpence said:


> Well, 6.3c is working just fine for me. There has to be other factors involved.


+1

After being a longtime 3.1.5f holdout on 2 of my 3 units I've had a single instance of the "someone in your household modified..." thing happen, but no reboots or audio dropouts.

It's frustrating when this happens and your favorite shows are affected!


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## Orient Express (Sep 18, 2006)

My Tivo has been flawless with 6.3c. The OTA signal is better than before, and everything is rock solid! After a year of little problems with earlier versions of the OS, I am finally at a point where everything seems to be sorted out and stable.

I hope that the MPEG4 DVR gets completely sorted out by the time it will be necessary to abandon the TIVO DVR.


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## jgjackson (Oct 27, 2006)

WhyMe said:


> ... and I dont have suggestions turned on.


That seems to be the key. If you don't use what I regard as one of Tivo's coolest features, then 6.x probably works fine... at least until you get far enough behind that the drive fills up anyway.

If it weren't for HGTV and DIY, I think I'd just return to over-the-air. And I may yet do that anyway.


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## GreyGhost00 (Mar 11, 2004)

3.1.5f and I've *never* had:

a spontaneous reboot
a lockup not due to a bad HD
a missed or "canceled" recording
an audio dropout

No folders or speed increases are worth 100% reliability.

Instant cake is your friend.


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## billbillw (Aug 15, 2005)

6.3c has worked perfect for me. I really didn't have any problems with 6.3b either. The speed improvement that came with 6.3 is the only thing that has kept me from jumping to the HR20.


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## phox_mulder (Feb 23, 2006)

Mine was fine on 3.1.5f, just slower than molasses in January.

6.3 came along, only problem I had was the audio dropouts on FOX OTA, but it was noticeably faster.
6.3a, same dropouts but still fast.
6.3b fixed the dropouts and it was rock solid and still fast.
6.3c, I assume I'm fixed for DST, still fast, still solid.

No problems software wise, other than the dropouts.

Guide data problems on the other hand.
I never missed a recording because I'm diligent about checking the ToDo list on a regular basis, but caught many "won't record because someone modified the SP" before the recording was missed.

Had some rebooting issues, but they happened on either side of my recordings so I never missed one (I don't think I did anyway)

I think I missed a recording because of a huge wet snowstorm here, maybe I'll blame that on 6.3a.


phox


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## Sanjoseguy (Jan 29, 2004)

No problems here with the latest update. I have two HR-10s and both work beautifully. 

The only 6.X problem I ever had was audio drop-outs. 

SJ


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## mgoddard1 (Jun 2, 2004)

No problems with 6.3c here, sounds like you have other issues going on such as a failing hard drive. If you're not happy with your HDTivo then just 'upgrade' to an HR20


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## gquiring (Dec 13, 2002)

mgoddard1 said:


> No problems with 6.3c here, sounds like you have other issues going on such as a failing hard drive. If you're not happy with your HDTivo then just 'upgrade' to an HR20


So a failing hard drive only audio glitches on HD channels. It only produces green / black screens on ABC. It only reboots when tuned to FOX. Yeah that really sounds like a hard drive problem. I didn't know Western Digital was that in tune to what channel I watch


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## mgoddard1 (Jun 2, 2004)

It's certainly not out of the realm of possibilities that there are still bugs in the 6.3 OTA tuner code but it sounds like your case may be isolated. It would be interesting to know if any other HDTivo owners in your area have the same problem with your local FOX affiliate. A 'Clear and Delete' has been known to fix some people's odd problems but of course that will mean you'll lose everything on your hard drive.



gquiring said:


> So a failing hard drive only audio glitches on HD channels. It only produces green / black screens on ABC. It only reboots when tuned to FOX. Yeah that really sounds like a hard drive problem. I didn't know Western Digital was that in tune to what channel I watch


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## JonR (May 1, 2004)

When my unit updated from 3.1.5f to 6.3a I encountered audio and reboot problems. I removed the hard drive and ran WD diagnostics and found HD errors which I corrected with a low level erase. I then installed 6.3c IC onto the drive and it has been rock solid since. 

I believe on some units there was file corruption when upgrading from 3.1.5f to 6.3x.  

John


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## rminsk (Jun 4, 2002)

JonR said:


> When my unit updated from 3.1.5f to 6.3a I encountered audio and reboot problems. I removed the hard drive and ran WD diagnostics and found HD errors which I corrected with a low level erase. I then installed 6.3c IC onto the drive and it has been rock solid since.


Comparing 6.3a to 6.3c is like comparing apples to oranges. 6.3a had audio drop outs and reboot problems. 6.3b fixed those. 6.3c fixes DST issues.


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## Mark Lopez (Jan 1, 2000)

rminsk said:


> 6.3a had audio drop outs and reboot problems. 6.3b fixed those. 6.3c fixes DST issues.


From what I have been reading (and experiencing) 6.3a had long audio dropouts on OTA. 6.3b fixed that and was solid. 6.3c now has many short audio dropouts on all channels. This happens on both of my units, so it's not a HD problem.


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## gquiring (Dec 13, 2002)

To eliminate that 1% possibility that my hard drive is bad I replaced it over the weekend. No surprises after the switch, I watched Idol, 24 and a few other shows on NBC & HBO and the audio dropouts are still there. I also cannot get rid of that damn green thumbs up while watching any FOX show that I am already recording. I can press the clear button to stop it but why it keeps coming back is a real mystery.


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## Sir_winealot (Nov 18, 2000)

gquiring said:


> To eliminate that 1% possibility that my hard drive is bad I replaced it over the weekend. No surprises after the switch, I watched Idol, 24 and a few other shows on NBC & HBO and the audio dropouts are still there. I also cannot get rid of that damn green thumbs up while watching any FOX show that I am already recording. I can press the clear button to stop it but why it keeps coming back is a real mystery.


Pretty certain that what you're talking about is embedded in the programming and cannot be cleared (green thumbs up).


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## MikeCC (Jun 19, 2004)

Let me join the growing chorus of those whose 6.3b, and now c, software on my HDTiVo is rock solid and totally reliable.


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## kkluba (Oct 18, 2002)

I have two HDTivo's. Both were solid and slow on 3.1.5f. I gave up on OTA long ago. Even though I have excellent signal strength the local stations were too spotty in their own delivery and there were too many missed recordings. 

Both were stock and worked fine with 6.3a, 6.3b and 6.3c.


I yanked the 250gb on one and replaced it with 2-750gb drives. I upgraded it to 6.3c manually and have had no problems.

After my other HDTivo got 6.3c I replaced the one 250gb drive with a 500gb. Works fine.


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## sluciani (Apr 21, 2003)

MikeCC said:


> Let me join the growing chorus of those whose 6.3b, and now c, software on my HDTiVo is rock solid and totally reliable.


I've got 4 HR10s and agree that 6.3b is rock solid.

Since 6.3c, I've been getting 2-3 sub-second audio "hiccups" an hour, mostly on FOX (88). Others are reporting the same in other forums. No one seems to know what 6.3c was intended to fix. It's not the DST bug, as erroneously reported by many on here. Any version of 6.3 had that patch, confirmed by reports from others since the time change.

Whatever they did, the Tivo engineers took a small step backwards with 6.3c, IMHO.

/steve


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## Bitz69 (Jul 29, 2000)

sluciani said:


> I've got 4 HR10s and agree that 6.3b is rock solid.
> 
> Since 6.3c, I've been getting 2-3 sub-second audio "hiccups" an hour, mostly on FOX (88). Others are reporting the same in other forums. No one seems to know what 6.3c was intended to fix. It's not the DST bug, as erroneously reported by many on here. Any version of 6.3 had that patch, confirmed by reports from others since the time change.
> 
> ...


I just swapped mine back to 6.3b(6.3a with the one file copied over), 6.3c was locking up daily. before I went to 6.3c I was at 30+ days with no lockups/reboots...


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## sluciani (Apr 21, 2003)

Bitz69 said:


> I just swapped mine back to 6.3b(6.3a with the one file copied over), 6.3c was locking up daily. before I went to 6.3c I was at 30+ days with no lockups/reboots...


Fortunately, I've never had one lock-up with on any of my four units with 6.3c (or a or b). Just the occasional "hiccups" I mentioned above, which I suppose I can live with for the time being.

If there is no "d" coming, I may try to move back to "b" at some point as well. It will be a royal PITA to re-image units, tho, so I'm hoping the Tivo engineers are still working on this. The new contract extension they signed with D* has them providing support through 2010.

/steve


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## Todd (Oct 7, 1999)

Mine locked up for the 4th time yesterday.  It also reboots every couple of days. 6.3c is WAY more unstable than 3.1.5f!!


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## beanpoppa (Jan 7, 2004)

Mine was having lockup issues, but I removed some season passes for my local OTA PBS station, which had a weak signal, and it's been rock solid on 6.3b. I have no intention of upgrading to c. Recording 24 on FOX OTA with no problems.


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## temp357 (Feb 18, 2004)

I'm happy to say 3.1.5f is still working on for me even without the DST change.


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## sluciani (Apr 21, 2003)

temp357 said:


> I'm happy to say 3.1.5f is still working on for me even without the DST change.


Don't get me wrong, except for an occasional (now 1-2 per hour) sub-second audio hiccup, 6.3c is working for me too. I'm just ticked that it's apparently a baby step back from 6.3b, which was flawless, IMHO.

So why go to 6.3? I could care less about folders, but being able to make a change or addition to my Season's Pass list in 10-15 seconds? Priceless!

/s


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## bpratt (Nov 20, 2004)

> So why go to 6.3? I could care less about folders, but being able to make a change or addition to my Season's Pass list in 10-15 seconds? Priceless!


The only problem with 3.1.5f is that the database grows over time and doing things like adding to the Season Pass list gets slower and slower. I solve that problem by doing a "clear and delete everything" every 8 months to 1 year. After the "clear and delete everything" the delay in adding a season pass is about 2 seconds.

I am having no problems with 3.1.5f on either of my units. When I was on 6.3, I had audio problems, lockups, re-boots and short and missed recordings. I would rather not have to do a clear a delete everything every 8 months, but a reliable HD DVR is more important to me than one thats not.


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## sluciani (Apr 21, 2003)

bpratt said:


> The only problem with 3.1.5f is that the database grows over time and doing things like adding to the Season Pass list gets slower and slower. I solve that problem by doing a "clear and delete everything" every 8 months to 1 year. After the "clear and delete everything" the delay in adding a season pass is about 2 seconds.
> 
> I am having no problems with 3.1.5f on either of my units. When I was on 6.3, I had audio problems, lockups, re-boots and short and missed recordings. I would rather not have to do a clear a delete everything every 8 months, but a reliable HD DVR is more important to me than one thats not.


I never experienced 2 second season's passes with 3.15f, but then again, I've never done a clear and delete on any one of my units.

I have four HR-10's on 6.3c. Two units have less than 25 season's passes, and the delay is about 5 seconds or less for a change or addition. On the two units with up to 50 SP's, the delay is about max 10-15 seconds, sometimes less.

Since I've been fortunate to never experience lock-ups or reboots on any of the four units with any version of 6.3, I'm willing to live with the random sub-second audio dropouts. The dropouts may be coincidental and not even related to 6.3c, but I never noticed them before 6.3c, so I'm choosing to blame them on 6.3c.

There was a 2-week period of time last year when I experienced random reboots with 3.15f on a couple of my HR-10's, but the problem cleared up on it's own and hasn't been back since, even with 6.3x.

If it helps, here's some more info on my set-up, since I'm apparently experiencing less problems than others:

One unit, my oldest, has a Weaknees bracket and a second hard drive. I record and output Dolby Digital on two units. I have suggestions turned off on all four units. Two units are 2 sats + OTA, one unit is 2 sats, and one unit is 1 sat + OTA. Two units are connected via DVI, one via HDMI and one via component.

/steve


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## cover (Aug 11, 2004)

I never had any real issues on 3.15, 6.3a or 6.3b. Now that I have 6.3c, I've been having 

* sub-second audio glitches
* random reboots, one of which did not complete on its own - got stuck at "Almost there..." screen and I had to pull the plug
* lock-ups - TiVo becomes unresponsive to any commands from remote or front panel

One of the reboots happened in the middle of recording a season pass - not cool.

Reboots were rare with previous software versions and the lockups were almost unheard of.


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## dbuchthal (Dec 25, 2001)

cover said:


> I never had any real issues on 3.15, 6.3a or 6.3b. Now that I have 6.3c, I've been having
> 
> * sub-second audio glitches
> * random reboots, one of which did not complete on its own - got stuck at "Almost there..." screen and I had to pull the plug
> ...


I was a very happy camper on 3.1.5f. My HDTiVo went south over the winter with 6.3a, with tons of hangs and skipped recordings. I eventually gave up and Cake'd my drive to go back to 3.1.5f. All was going well, but when I didn't hear anything leading up to the DST change a couple weeks ago, I used the Slicer to roll forward to 6.3c.

Since then, everything has worked flawlessly. To reiterate, my history is:

3.1.5f: Worked great
6.3a: Hangs and missed shows
3.1.5.f again: Worked great
6.3c: Working great

The only difference on my side is that I am actively tracking my logs now that I have PTVnet on my TiVo. When I first got 6.3c, my tvlog frequently grew to a fairly large size, but as of late, that has gone away. I suspect that D* had some head-end problems that were hammering all 6.3* boxes, but these seem to have disappeared.

In the end, I'm very glad that my TiVo rolled forward to 6.3c. It's faster and folders are very nice, particularly since I have suggestions turned on. I do still check my tvlog from time to time, but I haven't "caught it" bloating uncontrollably in a while.


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## stevel (Aug 23, 2000)

The last time my 6.3c HR10 rebooted was more than a month ago, and that's because I told it to. I have had no spontaneous reboots, freezes or any other problems with 6.3c.


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## georgemoe (Nov 7, 2001)

No problem with 6.3c here.


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## GotATiVoToo (Apr 20, 2002)

I'm one of those lucky folks who were totally screwed by the 6.3/6.3a update -- my HR10-250 became totally unusable, with stuttering video, reboots, etc, etc.

The unit has been sitting unplugged for several months because it's worthless. I bought a Series3 and am very happy with Comcast.

However, now a friend would like to buy the 10-250 from me, so I reconnected it and have been trying to get it to take the latest update, in the hopes that it will be more stable.

It has been running for about 2 days, and despite forcing a couple of calls, it's still on 6.3a.

How long does it generally take for the update slices to be onboard? Is there any trick to getting them onboard faster, short of hacking the box?


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## stevel (Aug 23, 2000)

My guess is that you have hard disk problems. Any time stuttering/crash symptoms begin just after an update, it's usually due to the previously inactive partition being active and bringing a new set of disk sectors into play.

There's no "general" answer to your question about updates. I don't know if 6.3c is still in the satellite stream - if it is, it may take a week or so for you to get it.


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## gquiring (Dec 13, 2002)

stevel said:


> My guess is that you have hard disk problems. Any time stuttering/crash symptoms begin just after an update, it's usually due to the previously inactive partition being active and bringing a new set of disk sectors into play.
> 
> There's no "general" answer to your question about updates. I don't know if 6.3c is still in the satellite stream - if it is, it may take a week or so for you to get it.


I doubt the hard drive is the issue. I replaced mine and it is no better.


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