# Funny black screen behavour



## OG Quantum (Oct 13, 2001)

I recently got a second tivo. When I got home the last two days the tivo has a black screen and no green line on the time bar suggesting its not recording the live buffer in live tv. When I press aux I can see the freeview box feed fine. When I go back to tivo live tv i see a black screen. If i disconnect the scart lead to the freeview box I get the blue screen with tivo guy saying check connections. When I reconnect I get the black screen again. Changing channels had no effect the other day but a reboot fixes this. Tonight i changed channels on the tivo and it when briefly to the blue man screen then to a black screen. This time however when I changed channels again it went back to normal. Any ideas?
thanks
Paul


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## ericd121 (Dec 12, 2002)

What happens if you hit the Tivo Button?

I think I've seen this, possibly when a prog has been recorded whilst LiveTV has been active (i.e. instead of Tivo playing back a recording or being on a menu screen).

BTW If you break your text into paragraphs, it's much easier to read.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

Mine did this for the first time this week. I think that it may have been due to the heat. I could see via AUX, and I could see recorded programmes, which made me think that the MPEG encoder had seized up, so stopping the live buffer from being recorded.

A soft restart didn't fix it, but pulling the plug for a minute did. I suspect that the latter was necessary to clear an internal lockup within the encoder.


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## agoodey (Mar 14, 2005)

iankb said:


> Mine did this for the first time this week.


The plot thickens - one of my TiVos did exactly the same thing for the first time on Thursday... I assumed at first that it was the Sky HD box, but soon realised that the TiVo needed a reboot to sort it out. Don't think that it can have been heat related as everything is installed in an Xrack2 which is cooled by 6 very large fans, and the temperature monitoring inside the rack didn't show any abnormal heat.


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## RWILTS (Apr 21, 2006)

Came down this morning and No Picture 'Black screen' only... First time ever. Had not read the thread before so just tried everything i could think of and after re booting NTL PACE box ( may not have been necessary) and pressing Live tv /guide button the picture came back.....With my experience I could press TIVO and get all the menus and pre recorded shows but the live feed was blank and again as previously posted no timeline bar..

Is this down to some dodgy daily calls.. ?


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## mhalver (Nov 3, 2005)

Same thing here. Just saw it for the second time now. I saw it the first time about when this thread was started. Heres how it worked out the second time (Series 2 running 7.2.2):

I have some trouble getting NBC and the TiVo likes to give me the blue screen on that channel (don't think it is a problem with the TiVo as my DVD recorder says no signal on that channel and it comes in horrible if I just hook it up to the TV directly).

I tried NBC again to see if it would work (it does sometimes so I think there is some fluctuation on the strength of the signal - I have a switch with an antenna on it so I can use OTA if I need to get NBC). It tried to work, but got choppy and then gave me the blue screen. After that whenever I changed channels all I'd get is black screen and the same sort of behavior as was stated above - the recording bar does not fill up.

Is this a problem with a few units or do some of the tech people think this could be a software/etc problem?


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## ramriot (Jan 2, 2003)

Glad I looked at the forum today, I though I was alone. 

As of yesterday, my One-and-only 240GB Tivo unit has been acting strange. From standby, when recording (red light on, Green off) it will sometimes not respond to remote signals. Only way I've found to fix is a power off reboot.  

Its done this twice now.  

Temp' at present is reporting 40C, not unusual for this time of year. 

If this is a recent phenomena shared amongst several users perhaps there is some shared configuration that is being triggered by a recent download? 

So for comparison my unit is as Version: 2.5.5.01-1-023 has 2x 120GB drives and no other mods except the obligatory 30 second skip. 

Any thoughts anyone?


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## Weirdwolf (Jul 4, 2006)

Hiya

New to the forums..Have similar thing going on with mine too.

Black screen where there should be pictures - menus etc are fine. With AUX pressed you can see the TV so indicates maybe the encoding is up the swanny.

Tried a soft reboot which didn't work, then tried pulling mains plug out. This however had the effect of making EVERYTHING disappear including the menu screen/TIVO welcome screen/timeline bar so now I don't get anything unless its seen direct thru via AUX. 

However, I'm still getting audio. Maybe because I'm seing it via the RGB output perhaps its switched somehow to PAL output only hence the black screen?? Will try wiring it up when I get home to see if anything appears via PAL output into my plasma.


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## Nero2 (Aug 22, 2005)

Interesting, I've experienced the exact same thing twice this week. I have a virgin TIVO (hard to believe, I know), and a bog standard Nokia Freeview STB. Experienced a completely black screen, via the TIVO "channel", initially I assumed it was a problem with the STB, but no blue screen, and pressing the Aux button gave a working picture.

Fixed it by hard booting (i.e. pulling the plug) on all the gear, I realise this wasn't very scientific but I was desperate to get Dr Who recorded.

From the other recent posts in this forum, it would appear that something odd is happening. Is it possible that dodgy guide data can cause this? My only reason for suggesting this, is that apartt from the hardware, this is the only thing we all share.


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## Weirdwolf (Jul 4, 2006)

Odd that guide data would do this sort of thing...

Maybe try to force it to make a phone call will help...except I can't see the menus to do this!!


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## Weirdwolf (Jul 4, 2006)

Me again. 

Sorted it this morning....basically as I said I wired up a PAL only (composite) SCART lead to the composite input on my TV and lo and behold I could see everything (albeit in soft pal-o-vision).

I tried changing the SCART input settings to 'PAL only' on both AUX input and TV out and nothing changed (of course). Changed it back to 'RGB or PAL' and it magically started working again!! (looking at RGB input to the TV - as I want it).

Give this a go if you're still having trouble.


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## B33K34 (Feb 9, 2003)

Very Very Weird. Do you think this is the beginning of the end? ;-)

The last few nights i've fired up my kit in the usual way (hit 'watch tv' on the Harmony) and the screen has come up black despite Tivo being on.

Hitting the Tivo button brings up the menus and everything seems to be recording Ok so i've not worried about it. I've not needed to reboot but i've not tried watching live tv or the recording that's in progress.


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## B33K34 (Feb 9, 2003)

same again last night. recorded programmes are fine but there's nothing in the buffer. Pressing Live TV brings up a picture. 

I'll try a reboot


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## torii (Nov 17, 2002)

Anyone find a fix to this? Mine has started to do this, usually Friday night which seems odd. I go to watch live t.v. and I get a blank screen. I can work all the tivo things I have recorded but have to reboot to get a live channel!


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