# Partial recording problem...



## sfm (Oct 3, 2006)

Apologize if this has been discussed in other threads but I think this is a significant enough issue to warrant another one! Here's my story:

I have returned to Tivo with the new series 3 after an absence of several years (had a series 1 with lifetime but stopped using it as our prime watching has been with HDTV from Comcast here in Denver for the last couple of years). Have had a couple of 6412 (both a series 1 and series 2) in our house and they have worked fine for the most part.

Replaced one of the 6412 dvrs with the S3 only because of the increased storage capacity and the ability to use our universal remote (harmony) with both dvrs without needing an IR blocking mechanism (because the 6412 does not offer a multiple box capability like the tivo). 

Cable card install went relatively smooth and have had the S3 up and running for about two weeks now. I have made it a point to schedule at least 15 hours of recording each day (HDTV only, network and pay channels, deleting them at the end of the day so as to make sure I have room for the next days recordings) just to test things out.

Noticed lots of little bugs and missing features, all of which we can live with except for we have now had 3 partial recordings in this time frame (indicated by tivo as a "partial recording" with the time line also indicating so). In one instance, only one tuner was active and in the other 2 cases, both tuners were being asked to record something with the other program being recorded finishing without a problem. One recording, the "Ugly Betty" premiere, crapped out after 11 minutes with the other two ("Smith" premiere and an episode of "Brothers and Sisters") stopping after about 21 minutes. In the case of the "Ugly Betty" failed recording, we also had the 6412 scheduled to record that same episode and that went without incident. Both the 6412 and S3 are fed from the same cable line (via a splitter of course). The cablecard installer indicated that the signal into the tivo was fine (although I may try another service call to have this checked again). FYI, I have had no issues with movies recorded (recorded at least 50 so far) from the encrypted pay channels we have (hbo, showtime, cinemax and starz) but that may just be coincidence.

I have opened a case with Tivo on this but of course, they weren't very helpful other than to ask if someone had changed channels while the recording was in progress (no), was there a disk space issue (no), etc. none of which was the case here.

I'm guessing this is some issue with the cablecard/tivo interface (mpeg stream from the cable card interrupted for some reason... which perhaps the tivo doesn't recover from very well).

In my mind this is a serious issue as what good is a dvr if it can't be trusted to record what you asked it to (unlike others, I have never had a failed recording with the 6412)... Are others experiencing this issue? If so, I would strongly suggest that you call tivo support to report this so that this can be recognized as a trend and then can be escalated to engineering (what the csr I talked with suggested).

Thanks for listening...


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

I agree with you-- this is a serious issue. This happened to me once. I was recording the HD broadcast of the Colts Jets game this weekend, and it crapped out at 1:05. I had the other tuner set to record the analog version just in case, and that recording was complete. 
The HD version of CBS was tuned in when I came to watch the game, so there was nothing that I saw that would indicate that I had lost the cable signal or the specific channel.

I suspect that you are right that there was some blip in the signal from which the TiVo could not recover, and it just stopped recording. Why the TiVo didn't know to simply re-acquire the channel and start recording again is beyond me.

Perhaps TiVo Jerry has some insight.


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## jimbojim (Sep 8, 2005)

I have also had this issue occur a few times. 2 Moto Comcast cable cards. It occurs only on HD channels so far. My signal levels are good (96-97 range) although i do use a splitter before plugging into tivo. I am planning on calling tivo about the issue. Has anyone had this partial issue occur and fixed it? I am all ears.

-james


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

See my thread:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=319029

and some others here.

I have spent about 4 hours on the phone with Tivo about this problem in the past few days.

I've seen it happen on two S3 boxes, 4 different CableCARDs involved.

You heard all the standard first line CSR responses to this problem - escalate it. I finally got a supervisor at the second level of tech support to agree to send a note to engineering.

Engineering is apparently SWAMPED and their response time is now about 4 days. It took some work, but I got a commitment from this supervisor to call me back no later than Sunday with a status.

I suspect this is a software problem and that it has something to do with a CableCARD being in an improper state and/or error handling during recording. I have asked a number of questions about the logic and whether or not the CableCARD state change issues I'm seeing are related or coincidental.

I'm hoping to get some answers from a Tivo engineer that knows this stuff, because it's also possible that this is a CableCARD authorization problem, possibly having to do with the Host Validation field.

If I hear anything, I'll post it ASAP - this could be related to a number of things:

- Initial broadcast feed
- Cable rebroadcast
- Cable signal strength/quality
- CableCARD hardware
- CableCARD firmware
- CableCARD authorization and security state
- Tivo software
- Tivo hardware

As soon as you see this problem, go into CableCARD status, look at Condition Access (Motorola) screen (don't know the SA equiv) and see what the card status is. Every time I've had a partial recording, one of the CableCARDs shows to be in an unexpected state, but tuning a channel immediately puts it back in the proper state (with the possible exception of Host Validation not being set properly).

Unfortunately, too many people seem to be jumping the gun here and assuming that it's a Tivo hardware problem and returning the boxes.

Given the sheer volume of people reporting this or similar problems here and on other boards, I find it hard to believe this is a hardware problem (if it is, it's pretty widespead).

But until we get some answers on how things are SUPPOSED to work, it's going to be hard to determine what's wrong.


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## snathanb (Sep 13, 2006)

Open a poll and see if anyone using the S3 strictly for OTA is experiencing partial recording issues. That would seem to go further towards narrowing it down to a cable card issue.

For the record, I'm 100% OTA and I've never had a partial recording. I've also never had a spontaneous reboot or lockup.


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## hookbill (Dec 14, 2001)

I already did that. Well, somthing similar. I got 7 responses and all were partials after cable card installed.


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

I am praying that it is just a software issue that can be tweaked. If nothing else, I would think that the software can be modified to effect a work-around for whatever the root problem is. In my partial recording, when I turned on the t.v., the HD channel was tuned in fine. Consequently, there seems like there would be no reason for the end of the program to have not been recorded. The status bar during play back showed that it was supposed to have recorded for four hours, but the green bar only filled up to 1:05. 

If TiVo engineering need additional data, I would be happy to provide anything I can. I too just want the thing to work.


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## Leo_N (Nov 13, 2003)

PPC1 said:


> I am praying that it is just a software issue that can be tweaked. If nothing else, I would think that the software can be modified to effect a work-around for whatever the root problem is. In my partial recording, when I turned on the t.v., the HD channel was tuned in fine. Consequently, there seems like there would be no reason for the end of the program to have not been recorded. The status bar during play back showed that it was supposed to have recorded for four hours, but the green bar only filled up to 1:05.
> 
> If TiVo engineering need additional data, I would be happy to provide anything I can. I too just want the thing to work.


Sounds a lot like the cable cards are coming in and out without any user/cablecompany intervention. Think there are a couple threads about that happening.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

PPC1 said:


> In my partial recording, when I turned on the t.v., the HD channel was tuned in fine. Consequently, there seems like there would be no reason for the end of the program to have not been recorded. The status bar during play back showed that it was supposed to have recorded for four hours, but the green bar only filled up to 1:05.


These are the same symptoms I've seen as well. I actually caught one failure in progress - I turned on the TV, saw the show I was recording, went to NPL and realized that the recording was a partial recording and then gathered some diagnostic info.

So - just because you can be watching the signal, doesn't mean that it's being properly recorded.


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## jimbojim (Sep 8, 2005)

It seems to me that there are 2 seperate "partial" record issues.

1) 0:00 partials: These seem to be related to bad cable cards that can never tune the channel in the first place due to either faulty equipment or invalid configuration on the cable company side.

2) 0:23 partials (e.g.): These seem to happen when there is some sort of blip in the stream and tivo is not able to recover. When you manually stop the recording, change channels, then change back it always seems to bring the stream right back.

It does not seem to me that the 0:23 partial issue is related to the cable cards since i never have "tuning issues" when live.

-james


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

jimbojim said:


> It does not seem to me that the 0:23 partial issue is related to the cable cards since i never have "tuning issues" when live.


We don't know enough to say this.

All depends on how often Tivo needs to query the CableCARD to get status and/or encryption keys. I think it is related to CableCARDs in some fashion. I have a box recording OTA programs many hours a day on both tuners just to try and duplicate this problem. I have four partial recording problems in six days on cable stations, zero OTA and I'm recording more hours OTA.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

jimbojim said:


> It seems to me that there are 2 seperate "partial" record issues.
> 
> 1) 0:00 partials: These seem to be related to bad cable cards that can never tune the channel in the first place due to either faulty equipment or invalid configuration on the cable company side.


But this is working as designed and is not an "issue" - it's the same as "no input signal" for a Series 2 (and I presume a Series 3 box).


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## jimbojim (Sep 8, 2005)

jfh3 said:


> But this is working as designed and is not an "issue" - it's the same as "no input signal" for a Series 2 (and I presume a Series 3 box).


I agree with you here.

Interesting that you are not seeing the "0:23 partial" issue ever with OTA. How are your cable cards setup? Comcast in my area (Seattle) does not pair them with the head-end. They just associate them with my account and activate them when i call in. When asked about pairing, multiple CSR's explained that is was unneeded in my area.

I am going under my house into the crawl space tonight to trace back the cable and see if there are splitters in line that i don't know about, hoping this is just a signal issue.

-james


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## Leo_N (Nov 13, 2003)

jimbojim said:


> It seems to me that there are 2 seperate "partial" record issues.
> 
> 1) 0:00 partials: These seem to be related to bad cable cards that can never tune the channel in the first place due to either faulty equipment or invalid configuration on the cable company side.
> 
> ...


It still might be a Cablecard/Cablecompany issue (with your 0:23 example) because I believe there are plenty of us who haven't had this at all. I have 2 S3's that have been recording a lot of programming (requested, season passes, and suggestions) and neither has had a partial yet. So if the Tivo code is to blame, why are WAY more people not seeing this.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Leo_N said:


> So if the Tivo code is to blame, why are WAY more people not seeing this.


Read post #4 - could be many things.

I think it may be a problem with error handling (e.g. Tivo doesn't deal with an unexpected status from the CableCARD), so it makes sense that it's an intermittent problem.


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## Leo_N (Nov 13, 2003)

jfh3 said:


> Read post #4 - could be many things.
> 
> I think it may be a problem with error handling (e.g. Tivo doesn't deal with an unexpected status from the CableCARD), so it makes sense that it's an intermittent problem.


That is kind of my point with it being a cablecard problem. The cablecards shouldn't be going to any unexpected status. I'm not sure what you would want the Tivo to do if all of a sudden the cablecard went to a non-authorized status.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Leo_N said:


> That is kind of my point with it being a cablecard problem. The cablecards shouldn't be going to any unexpected status. I'm not sure what you would want the Tivo to do if all of a sudden the cablecard went to a non-authorized status.


Well, at minimum I want an error entry in recording history. If the Tivo knows something is amiss, log it where the end user can see it or flag the program with a warning icon or SOMETHING ...

One of the questions I want answered is exactly the question you ask - what does the Tivo do if the card goes into an unauthorized (or unexpected) state during a recording? Maybe it just stops recording ... which would explain the "partial recordings" problem!


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## Leo_N (Nov 13, 2003)

jfh3 said:


> Well, at minimum I want an error entry in recording history. If the Tivo knows something is amiss, log it where the end user can see it or flag the program with a warning icon or SOMETHING ...
> 
> One of the questions I want answered is exactly the question you ask - what does the Tivo do if the card goes into an unauthorized (or unexpected) state during a recording? Maybe it just stops recording ... which would explain the "partial recordings" problem!


That would seem to me is what it does. But I'd have to agree it would be nice to see some official statement on that. Also I agree about some type of error log. That would be very helpful in that you would know exactly which cablecard to start looking at right away.


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## sTrey (Sep 11, 2002)

Well I've joined the club; Bones recording quit after about 6 minutes, was recording something else at the same time, it and the 2 simultaneous shows later in the evening all recorded fine. Of course this happens on a night I get home late.
Other than very occasional and brief audio dropouts or picture scrambling I haven't had problems up to now. As others have mentioned, making some record of the problem and also trying again at intervals, would be much better than giving up so fast. This is with moto cards, greater Seattle area, Comcast. No signal problems that I know of. No problems ever with the S2; had the S3 a bit over a week.
The 6 minutes that did record looked and sounded fine. It was in the middle of commercials when it gave up.

Is the consensus that it's best to spend a day waiting for a cable installer to come check signals? I've read that too high and too low can be problems. Even if this is the case, Tivo's error handling by immediately giving up on the recording leaves something to be desired, imo.


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## Buran (Mar 29, 2005)

Out of all the shows I've tried to watch I've seen one 0:23 recording so far. There may be more that I haven't found yet as I haven't watched everything that's waiting. I also didn't try watching the partial but just deleted it. I'm hoping it was a onetime glitch. If it happens again I'll probably file a bug report.

I am pretty sure the cards are Scientific Atlanta, and I'm a Charter user in St. Louis.


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## sharding (Feb 11, 2001)

So, I was just watching ABC HD live, and it went black for a second, then said something like "searching for signal," then a few seconds later the picture came back. I wonder if that's what's causing the partial recordings. I've only seen one so far, but if it happened within the first 24 hours of having this unit, I'm sure I have more in my future.


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## jimbojim (Sep 8, 2005)

sTrey said:


> This is with moto cards, greater Seattle area, Comcast. No signal problems that I know of. No problems ever with the S2


I am exactly the same. Everything has recorded fine this week, but Lost crapped out as a partial last night. I was watching something else while it was on live. I looked in the now playing list to read the description before it was over and the recordeing was listed as "0:59 (InProgress)". I came back to it later and it was listed as 0:11 (Partial). I did switch tuners back to Lost about halfway through by accident and saw the picture just fine. This would lead me to believe that the station was tuned the whole time.

Is is possible that this is bug in tivo that is just clipping the show after recording?

-james


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## sTrey (Sep 11, 2002)

So you don't know until after the show's over that Tivo lost it, that's nasty. And points at the Tivo, not mere signal imo.

Is it useful for us all to open cases at Tivo about this, or does it just further clog their support people? I don't mind being on hold and getting no immediate help, if it would aid in bringing attention to the problem by increasing the number of reports.

If however they already acknowledge an issue then no point wasting more time.
What has anyone heard from Tivo about this?


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

That's how the TiVo software has always worked. It shows the complete expected duration of the recording with (In Progress) next to it until the show is actually over. Once it's over it displays the actual duration with the (Partial) designator if need be.

As for switching over and seeing the channel... It was most likely a fluke of timing. Out of 59 minutes there were 11 minutes where the channel was available. Which means you had about a 20% chance of switching over to it while it was active. I bet if you play back the partial recording the part you saw last night when you switched over is there.

Unfortunately this is a fact of life when dealing with digital stations. I've had a Moxi DVR from the cable company for about a year and a half now and this just happens on occasion. Luckily there is BitTorrent. 

Dan


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

I don't think that what he saw when he accidentally flipped over to Lost was part of the first 11 minutes that was recorded. He said it was about half way through. 11 minutes in is not half way through. The problem isn't that the signal is giving out and staying out. The problem is that TiVo stops recording the signal that is there to be recorded. 

I know that when it happened to me, I turned the TiVo on way after ( 2 hours after) the point at which the TiVo actually stopped recording, and the signal was there, but the recording did not capture it.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Just because it says 11 minutes doesn't mean it was the first 11 minutes. The TiVo software is designed to continue to record every time the signal comes back. So that 11 minutes could be comprised of 30 second chunks from throughout the entire recording if the signal was cutting in and out.

I think that's where people are getting their confusion. They assume that once the signal cuts out the TiVo just stops recording and you get only what was up to that point. When in fact it constantly monitors the signal and continues recording as soon as it can. For example last week I had a 39 minute partial of ER. I started watching it just to see what it got and about 6 minutes into the program it jumped to a scene about 30 minutes into the program. I had a backup analog recording on one of my S2 TiVos so I watch the missing portion on it, then switched back to the S3 and finished the program. I lost 20 minutes of the program from the middle. The beginning and the end were both completely intact.

Dan


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

Well, you may be right as to what is going on with others, but in my case , I watched the programing, and it was only the first 1:05, and it was a comlete 1:05. It wasn't untill the show stopped recording that I realized I didn't have all of it. So what you are describing did not happen in my case. Once the recording cut out, it did not come back ever, even though there was a signal on live t.v.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

When you turned on your TV and found it tuned to the proper channel was it actually still within the block of time that was supose to be recording? If so then this is definfitely a bug. If not then it's still possible that the signal was out for the remainder of the recording block and simply came back after that.

Dan


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## jimbojim (Sep 8, 2005)

The 11 minutes that were recorded were the first 11 minutes. This has been the cas with every partial recording that i have encountered. What is odd is that when i flipped tuners half way through the show i saw footage live that was not in the 11 minute partial. 

Another thing to note is that i watch a lot of live HD stations and have never once had a signal cutout or any interruption of service. This is only happening on HD recordings. 

-james


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## sharding (Feb 11, 2001)

> in my case , I watched the programing, and it was only the first 1:05, and it was a comlete 1:05.


Mine was like that too. It was the first N minutes of the show, and then it quit completely. I wasn't here to verify if the signal was good during the rest of the show, but given how few cable outages I have, I'd be pretty surprised if it were out that entire time. It seems like it hits one problem and then gives up. But I'll keep gathering data. One sample certainly isn't enough to dismiss Dan203's claims.


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## sfm (Oct 3, 2006)

I had another two partial recordings last night... One was a movie from HBO... actually recorded nothing (showed 00:00 (partial)). The other was "Lost" (10:00 (partial))... got the first 10 minutes then nothing. In both cases the other tuner was also recording something (HD for both... one a movie from a movie channel and the other a network show) and those recordings went without a hitch. I had the 6412 set up to record Lost as well and that recorded just fine so I doubt that my problems are due to extended loss of signal problems (both he Tivo and 6412 are hooked to the same cable in via splitter). All of my partial recordings have been from the beginning of the program to the time where Tivo decided to stop (well, except for the 00:00 length partial recording).


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

sTrey said:


> Is it useful for us all to open cases at Tivo about this, or does it just further clog their support people? I don't mind being on hold and getting no immediate help, if it would aid in bringing attention to the problem by increasing the number of reports.


Absolutely - if you see the problem, report it.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Dan203 said:


> When you turned on your TV and found it tuned to the proper channel was it actually still within the block of time that was supose to be recording? If so then this is definfitely a bug.


I saw this exact scenario last Friday and was on the phone with Tivo 2 minutes later.


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## Indefinity (Oct 5, 2006)

For the last two weeks, my Season Pass recordings for the HD broadcast of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip have been cut off (partial) at precisely the moment that the first commercial airs. Last week, this was at the 23 minute mark, and this week it was at 17 minutes. There are no program conflicts, and this is not an overlap protection issue.

My theory is that there's some software problem with either the CableCards or the TiVo system that is triggered by the switch to commercial -- perhaps the encryption is dropped, or changes at this point. It seems too coincidental that it happened at the same point two weeks in a row.


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## Indefinity (Oct 5, 2006)

(Continued)

I have had no problems with any other recordings, including HD recordings of ER on the same channel, plus multi-hour HD recordings of movies on HBOHD, etc. There's definitely enough space on the drive left, as other things record fine afterwards.

I'm going to try a manual recording covering the same time on the same channel; with dual tuners I may be able to narrow it down. Just frustrated at only being able to watch the first 15 mins of Studio 60 in HD before having to switch to SD.


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## hookbill (Dec 14, 2001)

Indefinity said:


> For the last two weeks, my Season Pass recordings for the HD broadcast of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip have been cut off (partial) at precisely the moment that the first commercial airs. Last week, this was at the 23 minute mark, and this week it was at 17 minutes. There are no program conflicts, and this is not an overlap protection issue.
> 
> My theory is that there's some software problem with either the CableCards or the TiVo system that is triggered by the switch to commercial -- perhaps the encryption is dropped, or changes at this point. It seems too coincidental that it happened at the same point two weeks in a row.


Yep, you may have hit the nail on the head. When I had the SA 8300 we had a problem just like that with FOX. Adelphia and Fox had to get together to work something out in the code to stop it. That would more then likely make it a cable card problem.


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## jimbojim (Sep 8, 2005)

Wow Tivo CSR was worthless when trying to explain this problem. I now have a case open but the solutions that they gave me were pretty weak; restart Tivo, rerun setup, etc. Has anyone had any better luck with Tivo CSR's on this issue?

-james


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## jimbojim (Sep 8, 2005)

What CableCards/Service is everyone running who is having an issue. Possibly an issue there?

Mine are both Motorola v4.21 Comcast cards (Seattle, WA)

-james


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

jimbojim said:


> Wow Tivo CSR was worthless when trying to explain this problem. I now have a case open but the solutions that they gave me were pretty weak; restart Tivo, rerun setup, etc. Has anyone had any better luck with Tivo CSR's on this issue?


That's the standard reply.

You have to convince them that you understand all the basic stuff and that you're pretty confident none of that applies.

This is a cable card status problem and/or error handling problem during the recording process. Indicate that there are many people having similar problems and insist that they escalate it to engineering.


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## mickeymammoth (May 9, 2002)

I got hit with this yesterday. A 0:00 partial recording of project runway. Although Bravo is analog according to my channel listings, I suspect it is a case of digital simulcast. For example, when I view upcoming episodes, it shows it on the analog Bravo channel, but also on a higher channel (digital) that isn't even in my channel listing.

I tuned into Bravo about a half hour after the "recording" ended, and it seemed to come in OK. And both tuners looked OK. Luckily, they replay that constantly and I was able to re-record it.

No other shows taping at that time. I hope I don't see this very often. It really seems to be some kind of Tivo/cable card nastiness.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Wow this is really odd! A question for all you people who are having this problem on a regular basis.... What brand are your CableCARDs? SA or Motorola?

Dan


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## sfm (Oct 3, 2006)

sorry... forgot to mention that in my original post... they are both motorola cards with 4.21 firmware. And this is for Comcast in Denver.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

jimbojim said:


> Wow Tivo CSR was worthless when trying to explain this problem. I now have a case open but the solutions that they gave me were pretty weak; restart Tivo, rerun setup, etc. Has anyone had any better luck with Tivo CSR's on this issue?


It makes no sense to come down so hard on the TiVo CSR, if there isn't a known solution to the problem.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

Indefinity said:


> My theory is that there's some software problem with either the CableCards or the TiVo system that is triggered by the switch to commercial -- perhaps the encryption is dropped, or changes at this point. It seems too coincidental that it happened at the same point two weeks in a row.


 Yes this makes sense. When local commercials are spliced in at the headend perhaps something odd is happening. I have a DVICO Fusion HDTV capture card capable of unencrypted QAM recordings and a few months ago there was a problem with it crashing as soon as a channel it was recording switched to commercials. A subsequent software update for the tuner card from DVICO solved the problem. In that case it was anything recording on that channel switching to commercials, not just a specific program. It's possible something along those lines is happening with the S3 though the fact that it is program rather than channel specific doesn't quite jive with that theory.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Interesting theory, but it doesn't apply to those seeing it on premium channels like HBO. Although it's possible there are two different issues here that are just being lumped together.

Dan


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## jimbojim (Sep 8, 2005)

The partial recordings that i have had are stopping at random times, not just when they hit a commercial break. CSI last week partial'd right in the middle of a scene.

-james


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## sTrey (Sep 11, 2002)

jimbojim said:


> Wow Tivo CSR was worthless when trying to explain this problem. I now have a case open but the solutions that they gave me were pretty weak; restart Tivo, rerun setup, etc. Has anyone had any better luck with Tivo CSR's on this issue?
> 
> -james


As another data point, that wasn't my experience at all. They didn't offer any suggestions just took my information, asked some questions, opened a case # and asked me to call back with that case number if it happens again.

I don't think the person I spoke with had heard about it, but they were certainly willing to hear about it, and about the fact that many people are reporting it in the forums. It didn't feel at all like a brush-off, it's exactly what I would want in this situation. Other than an instant fix, of course.

Assuming it happens again I'll see how far I can get in escalating the case.

p.s. jimbojim I have the same cards, cable company and general location. And fwiw CSI on KIRO-DT recorded just fine for me last week.


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

FWIW, I have SA cards. I don't know if it cut out at a commerical.

Also, I had a different issue last night. I came in and the front display said that it was recording ER.

After it was over, I went to now playing, and it was nowhere to be found. I went to recording history, and it said it was not recorded because there was no cable signal. I hit live t.v., and the screen is grey. I hit it again to switch tuners, and the other tuner came in fine. I switched back to the first tuner, still grey. I change the channel down, and the next channel came in fine. I turned back to HDNBC, and the screen was grey. Thus, there does seem to be some intermitent problem tuning and/or cable card authorization that was fixed simply be re-tuning the receiver. I think this is a totally unrelated phenomenon.


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## gurgeous (Oct 5, 2006)

I am seeing this exact same problem as well, which I've dubbed the "gray screen of death". Bugs need a catchy name if we want them to receive the proper attention.

We've seen at least half a dozen shows get chopped (either at the front or back). One show lost the first 53 minutes. Another lost the middle 40.

I've got Comcast in Seattle, and the installer said our signal strength was "excellent".

Adam


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

Gurgeous,

Are you seeing two seperate recording issues: 1) Entirely missed or partially missed recording due to the "grey screen of death" and 2) partial recordings even though there is no grey screen of death at the time of the recordings?

Your description of missing the middle 40 minutes sounds like what Dan was describing where the cable signal gives out temporarily, but the returns before the recording is over. As Dan describes it, the TiVo will record the entire time, but simply redact the portion where there is no signal present. This seems inconsitent with the scenario where for some reason the TiVo is not recording, despite the fact that there is a viable signal present during the portion of the recording that is ommitted.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

PPC1 said:


> After it was over, I went to now playing, and it was nowhere to be found. I went to recording history, and it said it was not recorded because there was no cable signal. I hit live t.v., and the screen is grey. I hit it again to switch tuners, and the other tuner came in fine. I switched back to the first tuner, still grey. I change the channel down, and the next channel came in fine. I turned back to HDNBC, and the screen was grey. Thus, there does seem to be some intermitent problem tuning and/or cable card authorization that was fixed simply be re-tuning the receiver. I think this is a totally unrelated phenomenon.


When you change the channel when nothing is recording it actually uses the tuner you are not currently watching to tune the new channel. So it's possible that you're having a hardware problem with one of the two tuners in the box.

Dan


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

PPC1 said:


> Your description of missing the middle 40 minutes sounds like what Dan was describing where the cable signal gives out temporarily, but the returns before the recording is over. As Dan describes it, the TiVo will record the entire time, but simply redact the portion where there is no signal present. This seems inconsitent with the scenario where for some reason the TiVo is not recording, despite the fact that there is a viable signal present during the portion of the recording that is ommitted.


This situation can also apply to recordings missing the entire beginning or end, it just depends on when the signal actually goes out.

Dan


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

Dan, I clearly am having a "problem" with at least one of the tuners in the box (or both), whether related to the cable card, the tuner itself, or both. The problem tuning in channels is intermitent. Almost universally, when I tune in, the channel comes in fine with both tuners. Once in a while, I will get the grey screen. But it only happens when I first tune in a particular channel, and usually only when I have been scrolling through a bunch of channels in rapid succession. The grey screen has never happened spontaneaously when watching live T.V. without a channel change. The completely failed ER recording is the first of its kind on my S3.

I am not sure you are correct that changing the channel when nothing is recording causes the TiVo to tune in the new channel with the other tuner. The buffer fills up on the other tuner, and remains filled, even when you change channels on the tuner you are watching. Thus, if watch what's on tuner one, change to tuner two, change the channel on tuner 2 (thus resetting the buffer on tuner 2), then switch back to tuner 1, tuner one will have the exact same buffer content as before. If it had changed the channel with the tuner utilizing the one that you were not watching, it would have wiped the other tuner's buffer. Thus, I am pretty confident that when I changed the channel from NBCHD down to FoxHD, it was re-tunning the same tuner that ER was supposedly recorded on. When I did that, FoxHD tuned right in with no problems. Turning it back to NBCHD, it came in right away then, too. 

I suspect that there is an intermittant problem with the cable cards authorizing the particular channel. It seems to happen more often with lots of rapid channel changes. But what specifically causes it, I don't know. But again, this all seems to me to be a completely seperate issue from what occurs with the partial recordings that have happened when the TiVo is otherwise showing a good signal and there is no grey screen present.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I checked on the tuner behavior and the alternating tuner thing I described only applies if the other tuner has been inactive for a set period of time. So if in your case you had actually done something on the other tuner, like trick played it or something, then that counter would be reset and the behavior you described would hold true. Sorry for the confusion. I've been using TiVo for a very long time, but this is my first dual tuner unit. 

It definitely sounds like a tuner and/or CableCARD issue in your case. I personally have seen the gray screen a couple of times when I first tune to a channel, but it always catches and tunes the video after a few seconds. I've never had one stall on the gray screen indefinately. Also the only partial recordings I've seen were definitely signal issues because I was able to confirm the same result on my cable supplied Moxi DVR. (the anlog recording on my S2 was fine in both cases)

You should use the CableCARD test screen to scroll through channels and see if you can figure out if just one of the cards is causing the problem. If you can narrow it down to one card then you can just have it replaced.

Dan


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

Thanks, Dan. 

I will take a look. I am reluctant to just pull the cards and start fresh because both tuners do pull in all of the channels, almost all of the time. I am getting no audio signal on one channel (Fox Soccer), and the problem appears on both tuners. But I am afraid I will just make things worse. If I can get the audio on Fox Soccer, I will probably just leave it for now unless I keep getting missed recordings.


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

I was watching Heros live and recording it. At the end of the live, I had the dreaded grey screen. I told the TiVo to start recording the analog feed, thus locking up the other tuner. Then I stopped the HD recording. Still a grey screen. Changed the channel up, then down, and the signal was there. Thus the TiVo or the cable card apparently just lost lock on the signal that was there. Frustrating.


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## painkiller (Jun 23, 2005)

I hope this doesn't 'break the mold' but I have had two separate instances of partial recordings over the past two nights on one of my 540's (S2).

Both instances were basically an entire program being split into two parts.
How much material was missing I do not know since I just decided to delete them.

I'm on Directv, both recordings were scheduled in the early am (late at night).
One on the Family Channel, the other on IFC, I think.

What I am unsure of - due to the late hour & I'm asleep - if there was video loss causing this - or something else going on.
(Since I read through this thread, and noticed one of DAN203's responses I thought I'd say that much.)

Hope we can get some answers on this eventually as I am unsure if I have a Directv receiver problem or a TIVO problem.


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## 188 (Oct 15, 1999)

On a related note, I have had scheduled recordings not record and the "To do" list states that no recording occurred because there was no signal on the cable input.


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## jimbojim (Sep 8, 2005)

I have been "partial" free for over a week. Before it was happening every 3 days or so. Nothing has changed except for the release of 8.0.1b, but that only happened a little bit ago. Fingers crossed.

-james


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## SCSIRAID (Feb 2, 2003)

Encountered my first partial today. The show was CSI: Miami on Monday night. This is unencrypted network TV so its probably unrelated to the cablecards. The show ran good for 2 minutes and then ended. The program showed a 2 minute duration and 'partial'. I still have my 8300 duplicating my recordings as a just in case. The 8300 recording was fine with no anomolies seen.


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## sfm (Oct 3, 2006)

I was hopeful the "b" update addressed this issue but, alas, no such luck. The recording of "The Nine" last night was partial... the first 14 minutes only (and reflected such in the status display for the recording). The 6412 recorded this show without issue. All other recordings for the day on the Tivo were fine (FYI, I only record HD with the S3).

Mystified as to why Tivo can't figure this one out... a quick glance at the source code should reveal what reasons cause the Tivo to stop recording (or trying to record) a requested program (or perhaps the program/thread is crashing, but surely, they have some error recovery built in for that case?). 

Ah well, off to pester Tivo support some more.


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## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

sfm said:


> Mystified as to why Tivo can't figure this one out... a quick glance at the source code should reveal what reasons....


I wish all debugging is that simple.


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## MikeO (Jan 24, 2001)

Argh! Looks like I have the problem again.. It has only happened twice before tonight.

Survivor was recording. I was watching some already recorded shows "waiting" to timeshift survivor... around 8:55 right before survivor was about to end I went to the Now Playing and selected survivor. Nothing, it showed it was recording but there was nothing recorded. I hit LiveTV and cbs channel was blank as if it wasn't tuned.

I have read many of these posts about the problem and went to the diagnostics screen and both tuners said they were tuned.. I went ahead and stopped the recording (that was just blank.... ) and cbs immediately tuned in. Recording was empty which should have been :58

Has anyone had any luck getting this into to Tivo?? TivoPony and TivoJerry have not been here lately ( posting anyways.. )


this HAS to get fixed! help!


mike


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## Cloud (Oct 16, 2003)

This is getting old.... I've gotten 6 partial or no recordings in the two weeks I've had this S3... Not off to a very good start at all...


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Another one for me, perhaps appropriately, during "Lost" on Wednesday.

I really hate not being able to count on Tivo getting all of my recordings all the time.

This HAS to be some sort of error handling bug.


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

Not that you are required or anything, but TiVoStephen or TiVoJerry, it sure would make me feel a lot better if I heard from one of you that someone is looking at the issue. Any chance you guys might give us some insight as to the current thoughts of TiVo on this? Thanks in advance.


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## hookbill (Dec 14, 2001)

jfh3 said:


> Another one for me, perhaps appropriately, during "Lost" on Wednesday.
> 
> I really hate not being able to count on Tivo getting all of my recordings all the time.
> 
> This HAS to be some sort of error handling bug.


It's not happening to me and I did have that problem with my SA 8300. But there is definitely a problem if it keeps happening to you guys. Hopefully TiVo can figure out whats going on.


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## SCSIRAID (Feb 2, 2003)

PPC1 said:


> Not that you are required or anything, but TiVoStephen or TiVoJerry, it sure would make me feel a lot better if I heard from one of you that someone is looking at the issue. Any chance you guys might give us some insight as to the current thoughts of TiVo on this? Thanks in advance.


Has anyone called it into support and gotten it escalated into engineering?


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## Cloud (Oct 16, 2003)

I called support with three issues, tuner issues, missed or blank spots in recordings, and TiVo rebooting during play back of a few shows. They are sending me a replacement TiVo with out me even asking. The thing that bugs me is I don't expect the replacement TiVo to fix any of these issues..... The partial recording and reboots sure seem like an issue that software could and should fix....


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## SCSIRAID (Feb 2, 2003)

Cloud said:


> I called support with three issues, tuner issues, missed or blank spots in recordings, and TiVo rebooting during play back of a few shows. They are sending me a replacement TiVo with out me even asking. The thing that bugs me is I don't expect the replacement TiVo to fix any of these issues..... The partial recording and reboots sure seem like an issue that software could and should fix....


You may be right.... but.... you will know for sure if the replacement repeats the issues. :up:


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

SCSIRAID said:


> Has anyone called it into support and gotten it escalated into engineering?


I've been told my case has been sent to engineering - I've spent at least 8 hours on multiple calls on this. Engineering is supposed to be calling me, but I don't hold out much hope for that - it's been the better part of two weeks since the confirmation of escalation. (Originally I was told that engineering was swamped and that the normal reponse target of 24 hours was now 4 days, though that was a week ago).

I did get a call from a supervisor last Sunday, basically telling me that nothing had changed. I don't know if engineering has actually reviewed the case or even reviewed the questions I had (trying to determine if the partial recording problems could be related to CableCARD state changes I've observed).

I did hear one thing from the supervisor that concerned me - apparently, if you have an open ticket that has been put in the engineering queue it will be removed from that queue if you call in and someone updates your ticket (e.g. it will be reassigned to the initial queue and you lose your escalation timestamp) so he suggested that if you are calling to check on status have the rep look at the record, but not update it.

Obviously, I've stopped calling in with all the detail they wanted every time I get a partial recording.

I'm hoping that TivoJerry or someone else from engineering will post some sort of status update. I understand they may not have a fix yet, but it would be nice to know if they acknowledge it's a problem.

This certainly seems to be the most serious problem for the Series 3 so far and it would be nice to know if the partial recording, CableCARD state change and random tuner loss issues are related.

It's also very frustrating, because I'm sure someone on the engineering team could answer the questions in the record in about 10 minutes and that would go a long way to helping provide the information required for end users to diagnose or catagorize their problems.

As hard as it is to get a problem ticket escalated above the first level team, I would encourage others to try. But you will have to convince them:
- No one could've cancelled the recording
- Your cable signal is fine
- You had no power problems
- There is nothing in recording history
- You have info on the program(s) in question, including what else was recording at the same time or immediately after and what tuner it was

Not easy and not always possible, though I did get lucky and caught the holy grail when I was on the phone with the rep on my second call - I was watching the station that was supposedly recording at the time and found I had not only a partial recording of the same program, but an unexpected cablecard status as well.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Cloud said:


> I called support with three issues, tuner issues, missed or blank spots in recordings, and TiVo rebooting during play back of a few shows. They are sending me a replacement TiVo with out me even asking. The thing that bugs me is I don't expect the replacement TiVo to fix any of these issues..... The partial recording and reboots sure seem like an issue that software could and should fix....


This is exactly the type of response you would hope could be avoided.

I would be stunned if this was a hardware problem or, at the very least, a problem that couldn't be handled in the software.

I've seen the partial recording problem on each tuner on each of two boxes.
I've got a near perfect input signal to each box, as calibrated by a great cable tech.
When I've had instances of the same show recording on both boxes at the same time and had a partial recording, it's always been partial on one box, fine on the other (though it's not like the partial recordings always happen on one box).

It's got to cost Tivo a lot of money to exchange boxes that may not even have a problem. If they know there's a hardware problem, fine. But swapping out hardware doesn't do anything to find the true root cause of the problem.


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## Roderigo (Mar 12, 2002)

jfh3 said:


> I would be stunned if this was a hardware problem or, at the very least, a problem that couldn't be handled in the software.


I wonder if somehow this is a cablecard problem? Is this happening with both Motorola and SA cards?


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Roderigo said:


> I wonder if somehow this is a cablecard problem? Is this happening with both Motorola and SA cards?


From what I've read here, CableCARDs seem to be involved in some way - I haven't seen anyone report the same type of partial recordings when CableCARDs are not in use.

My cards were/are brand new, never used before, Motorola cards at the 4.21 firmware level.

Everytime I check CableCARD status close to when I see a partial recording, I have at least one CableCARD not in the state I expect.

That's one of the reasons I asked engineering when/how Tivo queries the card for status/encryption request, etc.

So far, I've not seen a partial recording on a premium or encrypted channel, only on the digital local networks, but that's the bulk of my current recordings.


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## SCSIRAID (Feb 2, 2003)

Roderigo said:


> I wonder if somehow this is a cablecard problem? Is this happening with both Motorola and SA cards?


Dont know if there is enough data on the table to know...

I would hope that Tivos have an event log that their engineering could query remotely. It could indicate abnormal events such as a recording terminating early with an indication of why... If Tivo knows about you they possibly could start watching your log... Hypothetical though... I dont know if they have such capability. If they dont.... they need to consider it for future code releases!


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## hookbill (Dec 14, 2001)

When I had this problem with my SA 8300, no cable card of course it happened to me only on network HD channels during prime time. Weird, huh?

Nobody could ever fix my problem so that's why I went with the S3. Since the S3, no problem.


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## SCSIRAID (Feb 2, 2003)

jfh3 said:


> From what I've read here, CableCARDs seem to be involved in some way - I haven't seen anyone report the same type of partial recordings when CableCARDs are not in use.
> 
> My cards were/are brand new, never used before, Motorola cards at the 4.21 firmware level.
> 
> ...


If its on an unencrypted channel, it would seem that the cablecard isnt involved except for perhaps a bad channel mapping change. Ive only had one partial and it was also on an unencrypted digital channel (2 min of CSM:Miami).

My cards are SA.


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## Leo_N (Nov 13, 2003)

hookbill said:


> When I had this problem with my SA 8300, no cable card of course it happened to me only on network HD channels during prime time. Weird, huh?
> 
> Nobody could ever fix my problem so that's why I went with the S3. Since the S3, no problem.


Same here, had this many a time with the Moxi when I had that. Not a single problem with either S3 so far.


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## Leo_N (Nov 13, 2003)

SCSIRAID said:


> If its on an unencrypted channel, it would see that the cablecard isnt involved except for perhaps a bad channel mapping change. Ive only had one partial and it was also on an unencrypted digital channel (2 min of CSM:Miami).
> 
> My cards are SA.


People unexpectedly losing their HD local channels and getting them back has been a common problem with cablecards so far. It probably does have something to do with channel mapping.

The one thing that would be nice is if Tivo could generate some error message when a signal is lost. At least there would be something for people having problems to go to the cable companies with.


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## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

I don't have CableCards yet. Yesterday my two 6-hour test recordings (one 1080i and one 720p) ended up being 5:57 and 5:59.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Just heard from someone in Tivo engineering - this issue of partial recordings is an open issue that's being worked on, along with the other two I mentioned (see below). They couldn't really tell me more, but at least we now have confirmation that engineering recognizes that the partial recording issue is a real problem.

The three issues I had specifically mentioned:
- Partial recording issue
- Tuner loss issue (may be related to the partial recordings)
- Audio dropouts

I'm still hopeful this is a software (error recovery) issue, but got no indication either way.

Also a comment about not doing more with Customer Service on this, since they don't have much info to work with (not terribly surprising). I presume this means that people that see this problem, but haven't reported it can call in and say "me too", but those with already open tickets aren't likely to provide additional information engineering doesn't already have.


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## SCSIRAID (Feb 2, 2003)

jfh3 said:


> Just heard from someone in Tivo engineering - this issue of partial recordings is an open issue that's being worked on, along with the other two I mentioned (see below). They couldn't really tell me more, but at least we now have confirmation that engineering recognizes that the partial recording issue is a real problem.
> 
> The three issues I had specifically mentioned:
> - Partial recording issue
> ...


Thats Great news JFH.... Thanks!!!!


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Excellent news, indeed. Hopefully, we'll get a timely update if the fix isn't in the November service update.


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## sommerfeld (Feb 26, 2006)

jfh3 said:


> Just heard from someone in Tivo engineering - this issue of partial recordings is an open issue that's being worked on, along with the other two I mentioned (see below). They couldn't really tell me more, but at least we now have confirmation that engineering recognizes that the partial recording issue is a real problem.


That matches what I've heard.

My original S3 -- which suffered partial tuner loss and a few partial recordings -- is en route back to tivo engineering for some sort of "failure analysis", with several partial recordings on its disk.

Its replacement arrived today and, so far, appears to not exhibit the tuner loss problem.

Interestingly, my unit has never seen a cable card -- the problems were entirely with analog cable. The new unit appears to have slightly better analog picture quality than the original but it's hard to tell for sure.


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

I hope I am not overly optimistic that they will get this fixed. If they do fix this, I will absolutely love, love, love my S3.

I could still use sound on Fox Soccer, but still, I will be a VERY happy camper.


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## SCSIRAID (Feb 2, 2003)

PPC1 said:


> I hope I am not overly optimistic that they will get this fixed. If they do fix this, I will absolutely love, love, love my S3.
> 
> I could still use sound on Fox Soccer, but still, I will be a VERY happy camper.


Is Fox Soccer analog or digital on your system? (if you record it do you get a 'quality' option?). If digital, could it be a channel mapping issue that the cableco would have to fix? Do you know anybody in your area with a cablecard that dont have the issue?


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

Fox Soccer Channel (FSC) is on the digital tier (ch. 122). 

I do get sound on FSC on my other outlet using my Pace set top box. I did get sound for FSC on the same Pace box on the outlet my S3 is now on, before I relegated it to the den.

Looking at the S3 diagnostics screen, there is a value for the audio PIDs (67, I think). It could be the PAT, but I am by no means an expert on this. Any advice given would be much appreciated.

Oh, and no, I don't know anyone around me that has a cable card.


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## Roderigo (Mar 12, 2002)

PPC1 said:


> I do get sound on FSC on my other outlet using my Pace set top box. I did get sound for FSC on the same Pace box on the outlet my S3 is now on, before I relegated it to the den.
> 
> Looking at the S3 diagnostics screen, there is a value for the audio PIDs (67, I think). It could be the PAT, but I am by no means an expert on this. Any advice given would be much appreciated.


Does this channel have any alternate audio tracks? To check, select the dolby icon in the banner. Maybe it's picking the wrong audio track by default. I know around here, KQED has audio tracks with no actual audio on them. If the diagnostics screen is showing a PID, it seems like it's at least trying to play some audio.


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

Thanks, Roderigo. That's one of the thoughts I had. (Great minds think alike, eh?) Unfortunately, there was no alternate audio track when I checked.


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

FWIW, Brighthouse CSR indicated that she just needed to "re-send the sigal" and that I would need to re-boot and that will fix it. She indicated that they had seen that before. We will see when I get home if it works. Thanks all for sharing suggestions.


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## BillRos (Oct 16, 2006)

I posted here about my issue and did not see this one first. I will be calling tomorrow. This describes the issue I had exactly.


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## jchapman (Mar 29, 2005)

I've senn the partial recording problem myself twice; once when recording the same program on both tuners (one of the tuners had a partial recording of 0:00 length) and again last night after a series of reboots. I had been watching an HD program while a SD program was recording, and something in the HD recording caused the Tivo to reboot (repeatably at the same moment). This of course stopped the recording of the SD program, so there were three versions of it in the "Now Playing" screen after two reboots. Ultimately I stopped trying to watch the HD program, and the SD program continued to record. Unfortunately, the recording of that program was stopped prematurely for no apparent reason; the Tivo grabbed an additional 30 minutes and not more (there was another hour to record). It may or may not be related to the reboot that had happened about 30 minutes earlier, but those are the only two times I've experienced the partial recording problem.


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## SCSIRAID (Feb 2, 2003)

SCSIRAID said:


> Encountered my first partial today. The show was CSI: Miami on Monday night. This is unencrypted network TV so its probably unrelated to the cablecards. The show ran good for 2 minutes and then ended. The program showed a 2 minute duration and 'partial'. I still have my 8300 duplicating my recordings as a just in case. The 8300 recording was fine with no anomolies seen.


Found another partial last night.... Discovery HD - Atlas Brazil ended after 1:39 but scheduled for 2:00. Bummer......


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

I'm wondering if the cablecard loses auth temporarily for whatever reason does the tivo just give up at that moment? 


Tivo needs to put in some addtional diagnostic screens so we can figure out what the cablecards were doing at the time these partial recordings and screwed up copyright flags are hitting.


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## gsusong (Oct 17, 2006)

I have had this problem also. 3 or 4 times I've had partial recordings. Once I had a show not record at all. All were HD shows.

One thing I have noticed is on occasion I will switch to an HD channel and the screen will go blank. If I move up or down off that channel and then go back, the picture will be there.


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## dbogus1 (Oct 16, 2006)

I have had 3 partial recordings in the last 10 days. (The wife is now looking at me with the what did you get us into gaze). I called tivo today and reported the issue. THe CSR maintained that she/they have never heard of this issue. I told her that there is a posting on their own support forum talking about it. She maintained they have nothing on this, and the only thing to do is to reset all season passes.

What I hate is when I get lied too. I'm sure there is no quick fix for this, but my desire was to let them know they have another customer with this issue, and to log it. When they say "you are the first one to report this" even after I tell her about their own forum, its a bit disappointing. A better response would have been "yes sir we know about this issue are are trying our best to fix it, would you be willing to participate in the fix process?" Luckily I keep my partial recordings numbered (and around) for just such an occasion.

I think that all partial recording victims need to post to a new thread on the tivo forum so that some visibility can be had. There is a thread that I started called Series 3 Partial recording over at tivo's forum. ( i can't post urls yet being a newbie to this forum). Please post there too!


Maybe we should also start collecting specifics about the partials...something like:
Cable Provider: Comcast Denver
October 7th Channel 652 Desperate Housewifes - 17 minutes
October 14th Channel 652 Desperate Housewives -- 43 minutes
October 17th Channel 652 Boston Legal -- 5 minutes


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

you should include your cable provider. And the channel you were tuned to (by name)

Cablecard brand and firmware version. (if you have them installed)


then maybe we can figure out a pattern.


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## dbogus1 (Oct 16, 2006)

Cable Provider: Comcast Denver
Cable Cards: Motorola v4.21
Recordings:
October 7th Cable Channel 652 (kmgh abc) Desperate Housewifes - 17 minutes
October 14th Cable Channel 652 (kmgh abc) Desperate Housewifes -- 43 minutes
October 17th Cable Channel 652 (kmgh abc) Boston Legal -- 5 minutes


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

interesting that it's always the same channel.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

As long as you are listing all the details you should also include the channel RF frequency and signal strength (from diagnostics menu). There may be some particular tuner frequency range for which this problem occurs for example.


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## SCSIRAID (Feb 2, 2003)

MichaelK said:


> interesting that it's always the same channel.


My two instances were on different channels... one encrypted Discovery HD and the other unencrypted NBC.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

moyekj said:


> As long as you are listing all the details you should also include the channel RF frequency and signal strength (from diagnostics menu). There may be some particular tuner frequency range for which this problem occurs for example.


good points- i think the RF might be a factor since some report it on certain analog stations.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

SCSIRAID said:


> My two instances were on different channels... one encrypted Discovery HD and the other unencrypted NBC.


how 'bout the card info and the rf info for those channels?


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

I've been tracking missed recording details for weeks with two Series 3 boxes. The ONLY time I've ever had the same partial recording on both boxes was when Comcast had a transmission problem with the channel involved.

Every other time I've had a partial recording, one box recorded the program fine and the other had the partial recording.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

dbogus1 said:


> Cable Provider: Comcast Denver
> Cable Cards: Motorola v4.21
> Recordings:
> October 7th Cable Channel 652 (kmgh abc) Desperate Housewifes - 17 minutes
> ...


Same market as you - got all those recordings fine on two Series 3 boxes.

This particular issue has got to be a Tivo error recovery issue, not a cable source issue.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

The Motorola DCT64xx DVR has a diagnostic screen for each tuner with Signal/Noise ratio, Automatic Gain Control & 5-sec correctable and uncorrectable error counts for digital channels. The numbers refresh themselves every 5 seconds. All those are very useful for diagnosing signal problems. Would have been useful for Tivo S3 diagnostics to include such stats rather than just "signal strength" which really doesn't mean a whole lot.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

dbogus1 said:


> What I hate is when I get lied too. I'm sure there is no quick fix for this, but my desire was to let them know they have another customer with this issue, and to log it. When they say "you are the first one to report this" even after I tell her about their own forum, its a bit disappointing.


You've really hit the nail on the head. I think I pretty much shrugged it off the first time, but when I call to report something happening to me for the second time, don't you dare tell me that no one ever reported a problem like that before. That's just plain insulting.



> A better response would have been "yes sir we know about this issue are are trying our best to fix it, would you be willing to participate in the fix process?"


While that would be nice, that might be asking a bit much. We're not even getting any feedback on these issues from the TiVo folks who typically participate here. There seems to be some sort of gag order in effect, for everything except TiVoCast.

I'm not sure what they hope to gain from not communicating honestly with their customers.


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## jleonar1 (Jan 19, 2003)

I have had several partial records.**Some analog channel, some digital channel and some on HD channels.**I reported this twice to Tivo and they are giving me nothing.**Yesterday they call back and say "9 out of 10 times this is a problem with defective CableCards.**Call your cable company and request new cards."
A few of shows listed as "partial record" have been recorded for 0 minutes.**Tivo rep suggested I watch the show live so I could see what was happening when I was getting the partial record.**If I wanted to watch TV live why would I spend $1000 on a Tivo.**Told him this was not an option.**
I have been an early adopter many times and often there are problems but I think Tivo's lack of honest response to us has not been encouraging.**I bought from their site with $200 lifetime package and they tell me to watch the shows live.


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

I am no expert, but this seems to me to be a TiVo issue, not a cable card issue. At least it is not solely a cable card issue. I get these partial recordings occasionally. When watching live T.V. I will occasionally lose the tuner lock. But invariably, changing the channel and then changing back brings the station in. I think the prior poster is correct about an error recovery issue. Given that the TiVo obviously recognizes when the signal is lost, and a manual instruction to re-tune fixes the problem, why can't the TiVo automatically attempt to re-tune the station?

FWIW:

Brighthouse, Indy.
SA cards.

Partial Recordings:
NFL Football on CBS-HD (Colts v. Jets)
Heroes on NBC-HD
Project Runway Bravo (analog)


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## SCSIRAID (Feb 2, 2003)

PPC1 said:


> I am no expert, but this seems to me to be a TiVo issue, not a cable card issue. At least it is not solely a cable card issue. I get these partial recordings occasionally. When watching live T.V. I will occasionally lose the tuner lock. But invariably, changing the channel and then changing back brings the station in. I think the prior poster is correct about an error recovery issue. Given that the TiVo obviously recognizes when the signal is lost, and a manual instruction to re-tune fixes the problem, why can't the TiVo automatically attempt to re-tune the station?
> 
> FWIW:
> 
> ...


Bingo... And I would hope that they had an internal error log where things such as the reason a recording was aborted would be logged. They should be able to pull that log remotely and find out what is going on.


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## jchapman (Mar 29, 2005)

This happened to me last night during "Lost" (HD ABC with an Comcast SA CableCard in Northern Virginia): The red 'recording' LED and display name on the front panel of the Series 3 was lit for the entire hour indicating that Lost was recording, and the "Now Playing" list indicated that the program was being recorded for the entire hour. 45 minutes into the recording I selected the program in "Now Playing" to view its details and begin watching it, and the duration was shown as only 4 minutes! The Tivo still thought it was recording the program, but the duration remained 4 minutes until the 10pm when recording stopped. I tried playing the episode (both while it was still 'recording' and afterwards, and only the first four minutes were there. On screen during playback, the black and green progress indicator showed the program was an hour long, but only the first four minutes were green. When playing the final moment of the four minutes, the screen just went black and then back the the menu, no indication of signal breakup or problems.

Edit: There was another program being recorded at the same time, btw.


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## SCSIRAID (Feb 2, 2003)

jchapman said:


> This happened to me last night during "Lost" (HD ABC with an Comcast SA CableCard in Northern Virginia): The red 'recording' LED and display name on the front panel of the Series 3 was lit for the entire hour indicating that Lost was recording, and the "Now Playing" list indicated that the program was being recorded for the entire hour. 45 minutes into the recording I selected the program in "Now Playing" to view its details and begin watching it, and the duration was shown as only 4 minutes! The Tivo still thought it was recording the program, but the duration remained 4 minutes until the 10pm when recording stopped. I tried playing the episode (both while it was still 'recording' and afterwards, and only the first four minutes were there. On screen during playback, the black and green progress indicator showed the program was an hour long, but only the first four minutes were green. When playing the final moment of the four minutes, the screen just went black and then back the the menu, no indication of signal breakup or problems.
> 
> Edit: There was another program being recorded at the same time, btw.


Interesting.... so the recording didnt 'terminate' early... it was just not getting a data stream so it wasnt recording anything so 'time' wasnt increasing in the buffer or recording... ie no data from ATSC/QAM tuner doesnt 'advance time'.

Are your HD Locals encrypted? probably not. If not... this seems to exclude cablecard issue since it isnt involved with nonencrypted channels. Could be that tivo tuner lost its mind or didnt know how to recover from a stream glitch.

This is a valuable clue IMHO.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

SCSIRAID said:


> This is a valuable clue IMHO.


And not news to Tivo.

I was on the phone with Tivo when one of these was happening on one of my boxes and detailed it for them in my problem record.


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## SCSIRAID (Feb 2, 2003)

jfh3 said:


> And not news to Tivo.
> 
> I was on the phone with Tivo when one of these was happening on one of my boxes and detailed it for them in my problem record.


Glad to hear that. This was the first time that I understood that the recording wasnt actually terminating early... but was in fact still going but just not recording anything. That fact hadnt been mentioned or I just missed it.


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## jchapman (Mar 29, 2005)

SCSIRAID said:


> Are your HD Locals encrypted? probably not. If not... this seems to exclude cablecard issue since it isnt involved with nonencrypted channels. Could be that tivo tuner lost its mind or didnt know how to recover from a stream glitch.


Nope; no encryption on the HD locals. I have had issues in the past with digital recordings being copy protected incorrectly, but that has not happened since the "b" update (knock on wood).


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## jimmythemoose (Jun 5, 2003)

This has been happening to me too. I've noticed at least 2 partial recordings, 1 HD and 1 non. Don't think anything else was recording at the time. SA cablecards.


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## robus (Sep 14, 2006)

Got my first partial the other night - Grey's Anatomy - 49 mins. I'd gotten the 0 mins recording issue back when first getting cablecards working - but it's been fine since, until the Grey's Anatomy. I'll keep an eye out for any pattern. But definitely think the TiVo should provide an explanation as to why a show that is supposed to be 1 hour only recorded 49 mins. I don't think it even called it a "Partial"(!) but can't swear to that.

Robert.


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## OhioUmpire (Dec 2, 2003)

I have never had partials until this last 2 weeks... Friday Night Lights only recorded for 39 minutes and then stopped. This was a non-HD channel. I use the DirecTV w/Tivo HD receiver, but again, this was not a HD channel.

This past Sunday I was recording the Steelers-Falcons HD Game and it too was a partial. Tivo is making a great case for me to dump and go to the DirecTV DVR as opposed to Tivo.


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## r11roadster (Oct 24, 2006)

Well I am having a possibly related problem. I am on my 2nd tivo and 2nd set of cable cards. The first unit would not tune analog channels from 43-53 on tuner #2, though fringe channels would occasionally lock in. The new unit will not tune channels 59 through 70ish but only two at a time are affected, 59&60 or 60&61 on up. . Odd thing is if I tune #2 to digital for a while the channels effected go up the dial. I just displays the searching for signal message. I did get the haven't heard this exact issue from tech support and it may be true since I am seeing slightly different problems than I am reading here and he did forward the issue to engineering. My first unit got back to them today so hopefully they can poke around in it and see what is going on. I hope they get this frittered out because I really like this unit. 

FWIW I am on Charter using Motorola cards


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

Another partial recording of Heroes last night. This seems to be my S3's favorite show to mess up.

Studio 60 immediately after was fine.


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## Brad Porter (Sep 26, 2006)

Last week my S3 chopped off Gilmore Girls at the 23 minute mark. This week I was watching it live just in case it happened again. It did.

Around 21 or 22 minutes into the show the feed paused, came back momentarily (a second or two at the most), then went to black screen. I could go back in the buffer and view what had already recorded before the first pause, but moving past that point just gave me more black screen. Switching to the other tuner (which was successfully recording Friday Night Lights with no probelm) and back didn't help, so I stopped the recording. It re-tuned the channel after I stopped the recording, and everything was just fine for the rest of the hour (although I was watching live and no longer attempting to record it). When I went back to the recorded content the first pause is still there followed by a few seconds of choppy video. Then I get the delete menu pop-up. Everything after the time it went to black screen was not included in the recording.

My grabbing at straws for an explanation theory: That's twice that I've had it cut off at roughly this same time for this same show. Bit rates can vary from channel to channel and show to show, but I would suspect that they would be roughly similar for individual episodes of the same show on the same channel. This makes me suspicious that there could be a problem with the file handling as it grows over some particular file size. I'm further suspicious about this because my only other previous partial recording (the pilot of Ugly Betty) cut off around 49 minutes which is roughly double the size of a 23 minute cutoffs (albeit on a different channel with a different rate). I've seen other posts here for cutoffs in the 20-25 minute range and the 40-50 minute range. As far as the interface software knows it is still recording something for the rest of the hour, but at that point the file actually got closed and wouldn't take anything more in. Am I crazy?

Brad


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

Brad Porter said:


> Last week my S3 chopped off Gilmore Girls at the 23 minute mark. This week I was watching it live just in case it happened again. It did.
> 
> Around 21 or 22 minutes into the show the feed paused, came back momentarily (a second or two at the most), then went to black screen. I could go back in the buffer and view what had already recorded before the first pause, but moving past that point just gave me more black screen. Switching to the other tuner (which was successfully recording Friday Night Lights with no probelm) and back didn't help, so I stopped the recording. It re-tuned the channel after I stopped the recording, and everything was just fine for the rest of the hour (although I was watching live and no longer attempting to record it). When I went back to the recorded content the first pause is still there followed by a few seconds of choppy video. Then I get the delete menu pop-up. Everything after the time it went to black screen was not included in the recording.
> 
> ...


what channel? 
From an antenna?
From cable?
If from cable- a rebroadcast of an over the air channel?
or a "cable" channel?
Digital cable channel?
or analog cabel channel?

will be interesting to know...


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## lorelevitt (Apr 30, 2002)

I got my first partial recording last night on the S3. It was only set to record ONE program-- Boston Legal from the HD local channel. It recorded only 47 minutes of the 60. No indication anywhere why it stopped. A program that was due to record AFTER Boston Legal-- a non-HD program-- recorded in its entirety.

I think this sucks. This has never happened to me with the SA 8300HD box from the cable company. I will have to seriously think of returning the unit if there is no software fix for that.


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## Brad Porter (Sep 26, 2006)

> will be interesting to know...


Comcast digital cable. Unencrypted HD feed remapped from the QAM channel to the designated digital cable channel. It's the only CW program that I record, so I can't confirm or deny that other shows on that channel might also have the problem.

There's enough variety in the reported recording sources with this error that I really think this is a file handling bug on the TiVo end.

Brad


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

No news.


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## JimPa (Oct 25, 2006)

bump


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## d23perry (Nov 1, 2006)

I've only had my S3 1 day and I've received my first partial (actually 0.0). I have House and Standoff scheduled to record back to back on FOX in HDTV (705). I have both shows scheduled to stop recording 1 minute late so I won't miss any previews of the next episode. As a result, I believe the two shows overlap 1 minute. I'm a little vague with the events but I believe I turned on the House prior to the start of the show and caught the final few seconds of Standoff (credits). When House began, I believe the it S3 switched to other tuner and the screen went black. I didn't realize this was an issue so I didn't think anything of it. I went to the Now Playing List and thought I would resume the show from there not knowing that I would still get the black screen. Because the show was recording the Tivo would not let me change the channel. I had to stop the recording then I was able to change channel. When I tuned back to the channel the signal resumed. 

Cable Provider: Cablevision - NY
Cable Cards: SA


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## hookbill (Dec 14, 2001)

lorelevitt said:


> I think this sucks. This has never happened to me with the SA 8300HD box from the cable company. I will have to seriously think of returning the unit if there is no software fix for that.


Happened all the time to me with the SA 8300. At least twice a week. Since I got my S3 I have not had a single partial recording.

And FWIW it happed on my SA 8300 only on HD Primetime Network shows. Happened a lot with CBS but with other networks as well.


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## Brad Porter (Sep 26, 2006)

Partial recording of Jericho last night, but it cut off at 7 minutes, not 23. Comcast HD, unencrypted feed of CBS.

That's four recordings (1 CBS, 1 ABC, 1 CW) that have failed out of probably 80-100 total recordings in the past month. That might be acceptable if there was redundancy in scheduling, but some of these shows aren't going to get re-aired. This needs to get fixed.

Brad


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## mwarner (Dec 12, 2000)

Partial recording of Mythbusters last night .. first 15 minutes only - analog cable feed.
Other tuner was recording Lost in HD via cable and it was complete.

-Matt


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## hookbill (Dec 14, 2001)

Well, I got bit by it tonight. Only 50 minutes of Gray's Annatomy. CSI recorded completely, both HD shows.

I wonder if it was because I switched to live tv because it happened exactly when I switched from the TiVo menu to the live menu.

Well, it's a first for me with the S3 and still beats the crap out of the two times per week it happened with the SA 8300.

Something else I found interesting. When I tuned to live tv the screen was grey and it showed the timing bar had stopped just when I changed the tuner. On the SA 8300 you had no idea that it was a partial until the show completed because if you watched live you would see the show like nothing was wrong. It was only when you went to the menu that you would see it was a partial and after the show had completed.

The good news is Grey's Anatomy is on tomorrow at 8:00, same episode so I can catch it there.


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## Brad Porter (Sep 26, 2006)

It's being spiteful now that I've complained again. Grey's Anatomy got chopped at the 26 minute mark. Fortunately, there is a backup broadcast tomorrow.

That's 5 recordings in total, and two for ABC, all of which have been on HD channels. I leave the SD recordings for my Series 1.

Brad


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## Marconi (Sep 8, 2001)

jimbojim said:


> Interesting that you are not seeing the "0:23 partial" issue ever with OTA.
> 
> -james


FWIW, I have seen two instances (of which I'm aware) of partial recordings on my S2 boxes since the most recent s/w updates (along with a number of other problems). The ends of recordings are mysteriously clipped. I assumed the reasons were attributable to the analog cable going down for a while or that it was Just One Of Those Things.

The problem may not be limited to S3s, it may be that S3s are more susceptiple for some reason, so it appears to be a S3 problem when it's actually part of a bigger problem affecting S2s and S3s. Maybe.


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## snathanb (Sep 13, 2006)

I'm really not trying to gloat or anything, but I will throw this out as a data point. 

On average, I record 5 hours of programming every day. 

I have never (knock wood) had a partial or missed recording.

The key? OTA only.


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## JimPa (Oct 25, 2006)

snathanb said:


> I'm really not trying to gloat or anything, but I will throw this out as a data point.
> 
> On average, I record 5 hours of programming every day.
> 
> ...


You know, there is a lot to be considered in your reply.

I'm having trouble recording/tuning my 3 local HD channels through cable. I'm thinking about raising my outside antenna another 10 feet(much more involved that you would think) and just record off of OTA.


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## hookbill (Dec 14, 2001)

Just got off the phone with a TiVo rep. He put me on hold for just a couple of minutes then told me that this issue is going to be addressed with the next update in a couple of weeks.


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## SCSIRAID (Feb 2, 2003)

hookbill said:


> Just got off the phone with a TiVo rep. He put me on hold for just a couple of minutes then told me that this issue is going to be addressed with the next update in a couple of weeks.


Did you happen to ask about the audio dropouts followed by pixillations?


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## hookbill (Dec 14, 2001)

SCSIRAID said:


> Did you happen to ask about the audio dropouts followed by pixillations?


No, sorry, I'm a bit self centered I guess. Since I don't have those problems I didn't think to ask.


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

hookbill said:


> Just got off the phone with a TiVo rep. He put me on hold for just a couple of minutes then told me that this issue is going to be addressed with the next update in a couple of weeks.


Oh, man, oh, man, oh man. I sure hope so. TiVo bliss awaits.


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

Sigh, failed recording of Heroes, yet again.


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## jchapman (Mar 29, 2005)

I may as well mention that this is still happening to me as well; "Adult Swim" on Saturday cut off after 50 or so minutes (a manual recording of the entire block). 

Personally I get two types of partials: partials that are 0:00 long and partials that begin recording correctly but for some reason stop prematurely at a random time (while the "recording" LED continues to remain lit for the duration of the recording). 
I do wonder if these are two separate problems; perhaps the 0:00 recordings are caused by the tivo not tuning the channel in time... it can take a second or two (or three) for a channel to appear from a black screen immediately following a channel change, perhaps if this takes too long the Tivo stops the recording immediately and we get 0:00 partials. The other kind of problem when the recording just stops at some point with no apparent cause is still a mystery. 

I do hope the next update fixes this one; I'm still relying on the Series 2 for my recording needs... slow and SD but reliable.


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## mad6c (Nov 2, 2003)

I've caught mine a few times. The CableCard screen will pop up and display, "Please wait while your viewing card is initialized" After this point the current channel that card was tuned will be a black screen. Looking in the diagnostics menu most the items like "Channel, frequency, modulation, etc." show as "NOT AVAILABLE." 99% of the time just pressing channel up and channel down locks the channel in again. It just seems that the TiVo does not know how to handle this situation. 

The real kicker is if this happens during a recording. It happened to me last night during Prison Break. From the point the CableCard re-initializes the tuning lock is lost and the rest of the recording will be missed. 

CableVision of Hauppauge, NY

Mike


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## jlarmore (Feb 27, 2003)

You guys are talking about your cable cards and multiple tuners but I have an old Series ! Phillips that has just started doing these partial recordings and playbacks and then cutting out and rebooting. This all started as Time Warner Cable was changing the lineups from the old Adelphia ones. At that point channels would stutter and cut out much more "explosively" than ever before. My Tivo used to chug along with blank screen or a little static when a signal was lost but now it's as if the signal is 'blown' off the air.

If I were a conspiracy theorist  I might think that the cable companies have introduced something that interferes with the Tivo operation but does not interfere with their more expensively priced DVRs.....hummn!

J


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## Cainebj (Nov 11, 2006)

On average, I am now getting about one partial recording A DAY.

Anyone have any new updates on this issue?

Last night I was watching MEDIUM and recording the new Day Break and just on a whim I went to live TV to check the Day Break recording and it had stopped recording.

I stopped the scheduled recording and went back to live TV and the show was playing fine and I just manually hit the record button. Kindof annoying.


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## Leo_N (Nov 13, 2003)

jlarmore said:


> You guys are talking about your cable cards and multiple tuners but I have an old Series ! Phillips that has just started doing these partial recordings and playbacks and then cutting out and rebooting. This all started as Time Warner Cable was changing the lineups from the old Adelphia ones. At that point channels would stutter and cut out much more "explosively" than ever before. My Tivo used to chug along with blank screen or a little static when a signal was lost but now it's as if the signal is 'blown' off the air.
> 
> If I were a conspiracy theorist  I might think that the cable companies have introduced something that interferes with the Tivo operation but does not interfere with their more expensively priced DVRs.....hummn!
> 
> J


Wouldn't surprise me, but I don't think they do it. The only reason I say that is pre-S3 I was using a Moxi and getting partial recordings regularly. Now, I am using two S3s and have 0 partials. I think those were all due to the Moxi losing channels from its lineup (which it did about 3 - 4 times a month) during the recording of a program. Also missed many recordings entirely due to the same reason. Was easy to fix, a quick call through Charter's automated system let me reset the box and like 20 - 60 minutes later, everything was back to normal.

These intermittent issues are a b**ch to work out  Just glad I am a lucky one with no problems.


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## Cainebj (Nov 11, 2006)

Just out of curiousity, did all you guys just STOP getting partial recordings?

Last night Survivor got a partial while Ugly Betty recorded fine.
I caught the Survivor partial live.
Then Supernatural got a partial while Grey's Anatomy recorded fine.

I called Customer Service today and was almost shocked when the rep said he had never heard of this problem. 
I told him he should come to this forum since it's been reported all over the country since the S3 rolled out. 
He did open a ticket and reported it to engineering.


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## SCSIRAID (Feb 2, 2003)

Cainebj said:


> Just out of curiousity, did all you guys just STOP getting partial recordings?
> 
> Last night Survivor got a partial while Ugly Betty recorded fine.
> I caught the Survivor partial live.
> ...


Nope... I got another one Sunday... Cold Case stopped after 13 mins.


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## r11roadster (Oct 24, 2006)

Cainebj said:


> I called Customer Service today and was almost shocked when the rep said he had never heard of this problem.
> I told him he should come to this forum since it's been reported all over the country since the S3 rolled out.


Do they have a high turnover rate there? I have called several times about the missing analog stations on one tuner and the last time I talked to tier2 they had the audacity to say they had never heard of it. Starting to wonder what kind of crap they are trying to pull.


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## rodalpho (Sep 12, 2006)

Happened to me this week. My s3 was recording that new show "day break". I happened to check it out and noticed a black screen on that tuner. Going through the diagnostics, it said that cablecard 0 was not tuned to anything at all, but the cablecard menu said it was working normally and fully authorized. When the recording finished I could tune to the channel just fine with both tuners.

Seems to me that if a stream is interrupted for a certain period of time (related to the audio cutouts and pixellations maybe?), the tivo can't recover properly and "gives up", losing the rest of the recording. One more bug to add to the list, I guess.


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## jchapman (Mar 29, 2005)

Cainebj said:


> Just out of curiousity, did all you guys just STOP getting partial recordings?


Not at all, it's still happening to me at least once a week, but there's no sense in reporting here every time it happens. The two biggest problems I'm having with the Series 3 are partial recordings and stuttering video and audio that goes away after a restart (with 95+ signal strength). I've explicitly told friends to avoid the series 3 until both of these problems are fixed; the Series 3 simply can't be relied upon. Stick with a Series 2 if you want a reliable PVR, and hopefully 8.1 for Series 3 will fix these problems.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Cainebj said:


> I called Customer Service today and was almost shocked when the rep said he had never heard of this problem.


I mentioned in another thread that these problems havew been reported so much that I would have a hard time at this point resisting the temptation to accuse a CSR saying that of outright lying.


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## JimPa (Oct 25, 2006)

bicker said:


> I mentioned in another thread that these problems havew been reported so much that I would have a hard time at this point resisting the temptation to accuse a CSR saying that of outright lying.


Really, all they do is make people mad when they say that they haven't heard of that problem before. They could just leave that out of the converstion and be better off.


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## mportuesi (Nov 11, 2002)

I just got my first partial recording in a show recorded off cable. (I had gotten one a while back from a program recorded OTA, but the signal was very weak so I wasn't surprised by that).

I recorded a movie off one of the cable HD channels (INHD) and it only got the first hour of a two and a half hour movie. I was forced to delete it, since half the movie was missing.

The movie is showing one more time, so I've scheduled a re-recording. It will be interesting to see if the second attempt succeeds.


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## jrock (Aug 27, 2002)

I purchased my S3 when it first came out in September. I had no partial recording problems until after the update in October. Then about once or twice a week I would get partial recordings.

Finally one week at the very end of October I got mad one two shows I really like where partial so I called TiVo. They said they never heard of the problem and had me unplug it for 15 seconds and plug it back in. That was about all they did.

Surprisingly that fixed it for about 3 weeks until this week Greys Anatomy was a partial recording 

I only record Cable, no OTA and I record most network shows all in HD primetime Sunday - Friday. Usually its always recording two shows at a time during prime time so I know its not my cable going out.

I really hope they can fix this with a software update. I really love my S3 besides this one problem.

-Joe


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## Scrith (Apr 6, 2003)

I had this problem for the first time last Thursday, with an interesting twist.

I was recording both The Office and Survivor at the same time (both in HD) and both stopped recording with about 10 minutes left (around 8:50pm).

This might indicate a problem with the TiVo itself (recording using both tuners stopped), not a particular cable card or tuner.


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## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

Scrith said:


> I had this problem for the first time last Thursday


Are you talking about 11/9 or 11/16? The problem on 11/9 was caused by Amber Alert.


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## Scrith (Apr 6, 2003)

c3 said:


> Are you talking about 11/9 or 11/16? The problem on 11/9 was caused by Amber Alert.


Hmm, it was 11/9. An Amber Alert causes the TiVo to stop recording? I remember asking friends about what happened during the last ten minutes of The Office at work the next day and they told me all about it without mentioning an Amber Alert.


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## jrock (Aug 27, 2002)

Ugg, my S3 was doing good for a whole month with no partial recordings and tonight it had 3 of them!

Smallville 5 minutes
Greys Anatomy 25 minutes
Shark 19 Minutes

But Ugly Betty and CSI recorded fine. All are HD from Comcast in CT. It seems like all the shows on Tuner 1 tonight had problems. I rebooted it and I really hope this holds it over a while longer and this next update will fix the problem. This is really annoying.

-Joe


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## Cainebj (Nov 11, 2006)

well, i am just keeping my fingers crossed, i was getting 2 or 3 a day last week and now they have all just stopped and i have had no partial recordings in about a week. hope this doesn't jinx it


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## Kelster72 (Oct 25, 2006)

Scrith said:


> I had this problem for the first time last Thursday, with an interesting twist.
> 
> I was recording both The Office and Survivor at the same time (both in HD) and both stopped recording with about 10 minutes left (around 8:50pm).
> 
> This might indicate a problem with the TiVo itself (recording using both tuners stopped), not a particular cable card or tuner.


 Let me add my 2 cents worth on this topic. I've been having problems with my cablecards from the get go on my TiVo 3. Periodically I will lose my premium Time Warner channels (not standard HD). Depending if I'm watching my "good" tuner, if there is a scheduled recording it will then attempt to record on the other tuner and I wind up with a 0h:00min recording. This leads me to believe that this is a TW problem and not TiVo's.

It's really a shame that TiVo isn't being more proactive in solving our problems. It's a typical result when you have two vendors involved and neither has overall authority nor incentive to get things working.


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## johnner1999 (Oct 26, 2002)

Has anyone had any luck in returning a S3 to BB after the 30 days? As Our S3 is doing both partial and zero minute recordings almost once a day now. And well as many of you have stated its very un-Tivo like LOL. 


Our old SA8300HD has less recording issues - if it wasn't for teh crappy menu I'd switch back. that and I have an $800 anchor thats almost "useless"


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## 80sGuy (Oct 18, 2003)

First, I will try to keep my cool here. But I am pissed about this ... I was out of town for a week and looked forward to coming back and watching my season passes on my new Tivo that just got cable cards installed. But ... you guessed it. a bunch of 0:00 recordings. 

Now, before we all go to defend Tivo, there is so much evidence of a problem here. I can not beieve it. I was not even recording digital channels. Tonight, I took a glance at what it was doing. Recording Lost, or so I thought. I looked at live mode at about 40 mins in. It was doing its job (or so I would think). 

Then when it was over, and I wanted to watch it. GONE !!!

I have had a Tivo since 2001, a very loyal series 1 owner. But, I don't know if I can take this buggy series 3. I can not even trust it to record a program.

Do you think they will switch my lifetime back and take this series 3 back ??

Oh yeah, its not a Tivo problem ...


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

80sGuy said:


> Now, before we all go to defend Tivo, there is so much evidence of a problem here. I can not beieve it. I was not even recording digital channels. Tonight, I took a glance at what it was doing. Recording Lost, or so I thought. I looked at live mode at about 40 mins in. It was doing its job (or so I would think).
> 
> Then when it was over, and I wanted to watch it. GONE !!!


I've seen a lot of S3 problem reports, but this new - an actively recording problem was deleted without any intervention on your part?


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## slimoli (Jul 30, 2005)

Just got my first partial last Sunday with Dexter. 18 minutes only. Interesting that I had recorded Dexter before and had several reboots during playback, exactly when the "Sleeper Cell" banner came up. At this point have to say that the S3 is pretty buggy. I lose analog channels, have no audio on 7 channels, reboot during playback and now my first partial recording. Not even the 8300 POS can match it!

Sergio


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## TJBChris (Jul 15, 2004)

I've been having this problem - partial recordings, blank screen on live TV (analog or digital channels), etc. TiVo finally had me send the old unit back and replaced it with a new one. Had the new one for two days, and it's doing it too. When my original S3 started doing it, TiVo blamed the CableCARDs. So, Comcast replaced the cards. Now both the CCs and the S3 have been replaced...

I really hope the software update fixes it. Right now I've got to duplicate Season Passes I care about on the S2 or risk missing them. 

:down: :down: :down: 

-Chris


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## hybucket (Nov 26, 2004)

I know this is a series 3 forum, but I (and others) are having the same shortened recording problem on the HR-10 with D*, so this is not just a Series 3 problem. In fact, between all the other problems with the HR-10, I was considering dropping D* and going with Comcast and Series 3, but it looks like I'd be getting the same problems. Maybe it's just time to give up on the TiVO and go with whatever Comcast is using for their DVR.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

jimbojim said:


> It seems to me that there are 2 seperate "partial" record issues.
> 
> 1) 0:00 partials: These seem to be related to bad cable cards that can never tune the channel in the first place due to either faulty equipment or invalid configuration on the cable company side.


I recently started getting these. I unplugged and re-plugged power cord and it hasn't happened on the next few recordings (24hrs since)

These are the same CCs I had on my first S3 which was sent back, but never developed the 0:00 partials problem.

Any insights?


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## wackymann (Sep 22, 2006)

I've had my S3 since it first came out, and I've never had a partial recording. I use Comcast, and I subscribe to their platinum package (i.e. I get pretty much every channel they offer except for the foreign stuff), so I think I've stressed the S3 to the limits of recording digital cable. I recently upgraded to a 750 GB drive, and I record a LOT of stuff every day.

I'm guessing this problem is some sort of cable card issue, and I am just lucky enough to have a set of cable cards that play nice with the S3. I'm hoping it stays that way for me, and hopefully everybody currently having problems will get the issue fixed in the very near future.

Where is that November upgrade anyways??


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## JimPa (Oct 25, 2006)

Well, they never did which November.


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## hybucket (Nov 26, 2004)

wackymann said:


> I've had my S3 since it first came out, and I've never had a partial recording. I use Comcast, and I subscribe to their platinum package (i.e. I get pretty much every channel they offer except for the foreign stuff), so I think I've stressed the S3 to the limits of recording digital cable. I recently upgraded to a 750 GB drive, and I record a LOT of stuff every day.
> 
> I'm guessing this problem is some sort of cable card issue, and I am just lucky enough to have a set of cable cards that play nice with the S3. I'm hoping it stays that way for me, and hopefully everybody currently having problems will get the issue fixed in the very near future.
> 
> Where is that November upgrade anyways??


Wackyman-
I was trying to find a channel listing for BOston Comcast on line, and couldn't find it, let alone try to figure out their pricing/packages. Do they carry all the local HDs? Does the S3 take have an OTA connection? What is the upgrade supposed to do?


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

hybucket said:


> Wackyman-
> I was trying to find a channel listing for BOston Comcast on line, and couldn't find it, let alone try to figure out their pricing/packages. Do they carry all the local HDs?


Here's the page for line-ups:
http://www.comcast.com/Customers/clu/ChannelLineup.ashx

This is what they currently offer in terms of HD, including all tiers:

802 WGBH PBS 
804 WBZ CBS 
805 WCVB ABC 
807 WHDH NBC 
825 WFXT FOX 
828 MHD 
833 TNT HD 
838 WSBK HD 
839 Discovery HD 
846 Universal HD 
849 ESPN HD 
850 ESPN 2 HD 
851 NESN HD 
856 WLVI HD 
868 Cinemax HD 
870 HBO HD 
875 STARZ! HD 
877 Showtime HD 
881 INHD1 
882 INHD2/NESN HD


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## wackymann (Sep 22, 2006)

to answer hybucket's questions:

1. Yep - I get that list of HD channels in the post above, plus 809 (a New Hampshire ABC affiliate).
2. Yes - the S3 has an OTA input as well as a cable input. Although there have been some reports of STRONG OTA channels interfering with cable channels on the same frequency when both are hooked up. This would probably only be an issue if you live close to the transmitting towers.
3. The next Tivo software update will hopefully address some of the major and minor bugs that people are having with the S3. I am only experiencing a couple of very minor issues myself.


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

Heroes missing, yet again. This time Studio 60 was gone, too. When I tuned in to NBC live after the recording was over, I had the grey screen. Turned channel down one, instantly a picture. Turned it back up one, there was NBC. Come on TiVo, fix this damn problem already.


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## JimPa (Oct 25, 2006)

PPC1

Do you also find that when you are tuned into your NBC live, then you can't enter the cable numbers for one or more of the other local affiliates? You have to do the up/down channel thing to get those to tune in and then the first one won't tune in again?


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

JimPa said:


> PPC1
> 
> Do you also find that when you are tuned into your NBC live, then you can't enter the cable numbers for one or more of the other local affiliates?


Sorry, I don't understand what you are asking. Are you asking me whether I can enter channel numbers to change the tuner to another station when I have the grey screen and thus no live video? If that is what you are asking, then I have a vauge recollection that I have done so successfully on at least one occasion, but I don't specifically recall doing so.



JimPa said:


> PPC1
> 
> You have to do the up/down channel thing to get those to tune in and then the first one won't tune in again?


Again, I am not sure what you mean, but when I manually cause the TiVo to re-tune the station when I have a grey screen, I can pretty much alway get the TiVo to re-tune the station so that the picture plays nice and clear. At the same time I have the grey screen, I have a video signal on the other tuner, and on the other T.V. in my home. Thus, I know the signal has not gone out. TiVo simply failed to either 1) tune in the signal when it first switched to the channel, resulting in a completely lost program, or 2) loses lock on the signal sometime after intitially successfully tuning in the chanel, resulting in a partial recording. Again, whenever I manually re-tune, the channel comes in just fine.


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## monkeydust (Dec 12, 2004)

Well, I got bitten by the partial recording bug last night. I got the first 7 minutes or so of Smallville and the first 47 minutes of Supernatural!


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## hybucket (Nov 26, 2004)

monkeydust said:


> Well, I got bitten by the partial recording bug last night. I got the first 7 minutes or so of Smallville and the first 47 minutes of Supernatural!


Hopefully, the fix being reported on another thread will deal with this as well as with the audio problem.


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## sclifton (Dec 13, 2006)

In reading many posts, I can confirm I have also been having the audio and partial recording issues as well. I have the HR10 HD DVR on satellite. I too have been a Tivo owner for years and have multiple units. All have been exhibiting this issue for the last month or so. 

I have also been seeing quick flashes of signal loss, but it comes and goes so quickly, I can't tell what it says precisely. I do know that it isn't the receiver I am watching, so I have to assume it's the other tuner, but I don't have any evidence that it lost the signal. Ironically enough, during storms over the summer I have not seen it stop recording when it really does lose the satellite or local OTA signal.

I am also seeing occasional sluggishness waiting on remote commands and long periods of time to start manual recordings. These issues are getting more frequent, especially the loss of audio followed by the pixelated video upon its restoration. The fact that many of us are having these same issues only leads to one source, TIVO. It's likely just the software, as I have not had these issues for very long and I have owned multiple models for years without these issues.

TIVO, FIX THE PROBLEM! REVERT US TO THE PREVIOUS VERSION UNTIL THE BUGS ARE WORKED OUT!!!


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

What does that have to do with the Series 3?


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## ewilts (Feb 26, 2002)

johnner1999 said:


> Has anyone had any luck in returning a S3 to BB after the 30 days? As Our S3 is doing both partial and zero minute recordings almost once a day now.


This sure sounds like you have a bad configuration on one of your CableCards. Go into the CableCard menus and test the channels on both of them. I'm guessing that you will find that one of them isn't authorized properly.

.../Ed


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## SCSIRAID (Feb 2, 2003)

ewilts said:


> This sure sounds like you have a bad configuration on one of your CableCards. Go into the CableCard menus and test the channels on both of them. I'm guessing that you will find that one of them isn't authorized properly.
> 
> .../Ed


Did you report it to Tivo? If you report it and they tell you to wait for firmware... it stops the 30 day clock (or at least it did for me).


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## jchapman (Mar 29, 2005)

ewilts said:


> This sure sounds like you have a bad configuration on one of your CableCards. Go into the CableCard menus and test the channels on both of them. I'm guessing that you will find that one of them isn't authorized properly.


While this may be related to CableCards in some way, I don't think it's as simple as a misconfiguration at the headend or a damaged card. Last week one of my CableCards died (it went into a continual 'upgrading firmware' loop), so I had Comcast come out and replace *both* cards with new ones. I had been getting partial recordings at least once a week and I was hoping that new cards might stop the problem. There were no problems with the card replacement, and both new cards receive all channels. Unfortunately, I still had a partial recording last night.


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## monkeydust (Dec 12, 2004)

Dammit! Got only the first 38 minutes of The Lost Room last night. What the heck is going on here?


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## hybucket (Nov 26, 2004)

monkeydust said:


> Dammit! Got only the first 38 minutes of The Lost Room last night. What the heck is going on here?


This is also a big problem with the HD TiVO w/DirecTV - check that thread for more info. D* is supposedly sending down an update for that unit that may (hopefully) solve that problem along with the audio dropouts.


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## monkeydust (Dec 12, 2004)

hybucket said:


> This is also a big problem with the HD TiVO w/DirecTV - check that thread for more info. D* is supposedly sending down an update for that unit that may (hopefully) solve that problem along with the audio dropouts.


Yeah, hopefully... That makes 3 shows in the last week that only recorded partially.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

SCSIRAID said:


> Did you report it to Tivo? If you report it and they tell you to wait for firmware... it stops the 30 day clock (or at least it did for me).


I'm sure you got that in writing, right?

Right?


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## SCSIRAID (Feb 2, 2003)

bicker said:


> I'm sure you got that in writing, right?
> 
> Right?


of course.... NOT....

Im a trusting soul.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Doveryai no Proveryai.


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## Cainebj (Nov 11, 2006)

Hey monkeydust - consider yourself lucky - the 3rd part of The Lost Room my Tivo only recorded the first 2 minutes.

Thank God Sci-Fi is re-running it just about every 2 hours


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## monkeydust (Dec 12, 2004)

Yeah, I got the second again on a rerun. haven't watched the third episode yet (I suppose I should check to see if its all there).

But, I do have my PC connected to my HDTV via DVI->HDMI so I could always download it if I needed to.


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## painkiller (Jun 23, 2005)

I don't mean to be a buttinski - but this problem is not relagated to only the Series 3.

I have been experiencing this same problem with my Series 2.

And it almost seems as though we may be experiencing this around the same timeframes.

I tried recording "The Lost Room" and got nothing but partials for the third movie.

Go figure.


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## IzzyB68 (Dec 8, 2006)

painkiller said:


> I don't mean to be a buttinski - but this problem is not relagated to only the Series 3.
> 
> I have been experiencing this same problem with my Series 2.
> 
> ...


Hey, you know you are right. My one S2 used to do this sometimes. We would reboot and then it was fine. But that is the Box on a cable box, the other S2 never had this issue and it is plugged directly into cable. This kind of tells me it has something to do with Digital and HD channels. MIght have to do something with the signal? Who knows. I know it got bad once, everything was cut off and then we rebooted and we haven't had it since (knowck on wood). But I had completly forgotten about that!!!!


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## PaulRuby (Jul 27, 2005)

SCSIRAID said:


> Interesting.... so the recording didnt 'terminate' early... it was just not getting a data stream so it wasnt recording anything so 'time' wasnt increasing in the buffer or recording... ie no data from ATSC/QAM tuner doesnt 'advance time'.
> 
> Are your HD Locals encrypted? probably not. If not... this seems to exclude cablecard issue since it isnt involved with nonencrypted channels. Could be that tivo tuner lost its mind or didnt know how to recover from a stream glitch.
> 
> This is a valuable clue IMHO.


Sorry if this is old news. I'm just now stumbling into this thread. I had a bad cable card during the setup phase and I could only get analog stations with the bad card. So, I think the cable card can indeed cause issues on any digital station.


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## PaulRuby (Jul 27, 2005)

Although it's been said before, the first thing to check is that both tuners are able to pick up all channels. After my initial cable card setup seemed to be OK, I was getting empty 0:00 recordings because one of the two cable cards was not getting all the channels. In my case, it was because the comcast billing system did not know how to deal with two dual-card boxes in one account. Once that was fixed and all 4 cable cards were getting all stations, I have not had partial recordings. Yes, I know the problems others are having are real. Just wanted to point this out to those having the 0:00 issue.


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## tclynx (Jan 3, 2007)

We get this problem when we try to record certain channels: Comedy, Lifetime, Bravo, Animal Planet, and, for some odd reason, STARZHD. It has never had a problem with the major networks. We taped two shows in a row on Lifetime. It missed the first one and was able to get the second one, so we suspected that it was not changing channels fast enough. However, we had tried this on the Comedy channel and it still didn't work. 

We called TIVO and they were not helpful. They suggested a few things (plugging and unplugging the box) which didn't help.

What is the latest on what we should do next. If we hang in there until we reach an engineer, will this person be able to solve the problem? Should we bug Comcast to keep replacing our cablecards (both of which seem to be working fine). Should we keep replacing the unit? Or should we try rebooting every night? Has anyone found something that works? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.


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## mackie (Jan 11, 2004)

I am a recent owner of a TiVO Series 3 and I really like it.

I was pretty stumped when I received a 25 minute partial recording of Brother's and Sisters on 1/7. I have a dual CableCard setup and I have had no issues up until that point. Brother's and Sisters was being recorded at the same time as The Apprentice but a prior dual recording had no issue.

I have been skimming this thread but unless I miss my guess no one seems to have a definitive idea of what the problem could be although there are plenty of theories.

I will be attempting more dual recordings this month so I guess that I will soon see how prevalent the problem is.


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## wackymann (Sep 22, 2006)

Have you checked the status of both cable cards, and have you gone through the channel check procedure for both cards? It's very possible that one of them is not being authorized properly.



tclynx said:


> We get this problem when we try to record certain channels: Comedy, Lifetime, Bravo, Animal Planet, and, for some odd reason, STARZHD. It has never had a problem with the major networks. We taped two shows in a row on Lifetime. It missed the first one and was able to get the second one, so we suspected that it was not changing channels fast enough. However, we had tried this on the Comedy channel and it still didn't work.
> 
> We called TIVO and they were not helpful. They suggested a few things (plugging and unplugging the box) which didn't help.
> 
> What is the latest on what we should do next. If we hang in there until we reach an engineer, will this person be able to solve the problem? Should we bug Comcast to keep replacing our cablecards (both of which seem to be working fine). Should we keep replacing the unit? Or should we try rebooting every night? Has anyone found something that works? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

wackymann said:


> Have you checked the status of both cable cards, and have you gone through the channel check procedure for both cards? It's very possible that one of them is not being authorized properly.


Its also possible that both are authorized properly-- like mine are-- and you still get partial recordings-- like I occasionally do.


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## hybucket (Nov 26, 2004)

PPC1 said:


> Its also possible that both are authorized properly-- like mine are-- and you still get partial recordings-- like I occasionally do.


THis is a problem with ALL TiVO units. It probably has NOTHING to do with the cable cards. Check other threads.


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

hybucket said:


> THis is a problem with ALL TiVO units. It probably has NOTHING to do with the cable cards. Check other threads.


Not only do I agree, but that was the exact point of my post.


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## hybucket (Nov 26, 2004)

PPC1 said:


> Not only do I agree, but that was the exact point of my post.


Sorry - I misread.


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## tclynx (Jan 3, 2007)

We realized that we could get rid of the 'Duration 0:00 (partial)' problem temporarily if we did a re-boot. So we were doing this often, and we noticed that while it was re-booting the screen flashed 'incompatible video signal' so fast we had missed it previously. Yesterday the TIVO just started rebooting and wouldn't stop. We called TIVO and they said it was the cablecards. Comcast is coming out Sunday with new cablecards. We don't know if we have a lot of hope that this will solve the problem since we've only had the old cablecards about a month, and we were not having any problems getting to any of the stations when we had the partial recording problem.

With our Comcast package we get a free HD DVR but it is a Scientific Atlanta which makes the TIVO look good on its worst days. Comcast says that they have a better DVR which they will bring out as well. If it is actually better, I guess we will use it and keep our fingers crossed that TIVO either downloads a fix, or works out a deal with the cable companies so that they are forced to supply decent cablecards. We understand at this point that we are working with a Beta TIVO product. By the way, is there a way for us to get our own cablecards that we can count on to work?


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## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

When you're in a reboot loop, take out the CableCards. After the S3 has booted up, insert #1 and let it acquire the channels. Then insert #2. That solved my reboot loop problem once before.


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## tclynx (Jan 3, 2007)

Thanks. That worked. You obviously know more than the technical folks at TIVO. Some questions: If we reboot again, do you think it will go back into the loop? Does the fact that it worked mean it is definitely an S3 problem and therefore we don't need new cable cards? And lastly, do you happen to know how to get rid of our original problem ''Duration 0:00 (partial)'.


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## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

I have rebooted again without going into a loop, but that doesn't mean it won't happen again. I think the S3's timeout routine is too short, so if the card takes longer to give TiVo the data, TiVo thinks something is wrong. I would not get new cards at this time.

I have not encountered any partial recording problem (knock on wood) other than the time when I had severe signal problems from Comcast. Can't help you there.


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## tclynx (Jan 3, 2007)

Last night we noticed that the S3 had been recording from its own suggestion list all day. Since we didn't put the cablecards back in the unit until last night, how is it able to record without the cable cards? We even had the screen that said there were no cablecards.
Thanks.


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## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

CableCard maps QAM channels and decrypts the content. TiVo can record unencrypted programs without CableCard.


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## tclynx (Jan 3, 2007)

So the cablecards slow down the channel switching, and only apply to the encrypted channels. Too bad we can't tell the S3 to use the cablecards only for the encrypted channels. Thanks for all your help.


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## PeterDC (Dec 21, 2006)

I've just installed my new S3 and within a week have already had two partial recordings. My cablecards have not yet arrived, so this is simply recording analog cable, just like my S2 did. Some of you have replaced your S3's with the partial recording issue. Did this solve the problem?

Thanks,
Peter


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## tclynx (Jan 3, 2007)

The new TIVO is being shipped now. We will let you know if it helped.


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## zkg (Jan 21, 2007)

This thread has been active for 3 months it seems, and yet the problem persists. I've had my S3 for about 2 weeks and have already experienced this issue on 6 occasions. Does anyone have any sort of update from tivo on a solution yet?


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## monkeydust (Dec 12, 2004)

I haven't had a partial recording in couple of months now.


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## zkg (Jan 21, 2007)

Happens to me about once a week.


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## philinny (Jan 11, 2004)

Okay, I've had my S3 for a couple of weeks and just had my first Partial Recording - The SAG Awards on TBS at 1:43 into the broadcast. (Annyone else?) I walked up about 10 min later to see if the show was going to go over, and add padding if needed, and it was recording a grey screen -- cut out in the middle of Hugh Laurie's speech. I checked the CC status and it was authorized but the EMM count was at zero. 

So --I read this thread and others. What's the consesus? Is it because the S3 is unable to recover from a momentary interruption in the transmission? Will 8.1 help? 

Otherwise love my S3 -- can't wait for my new big screen to arrive (Samsung 46 DLP - coming soon...)

thanks for any insights,
Phil


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## gwsat (Sep 14, 2006)

I tried to record Jaws on Universal HD over the weekend but the first 30 minutes produced only a black picture, then the movie showed up. I suspect that this is a CableCARD issue because I have noticed that some upper tier channels wont show up when I first tune to them. Its possible to get the problem channels to tune by turning to a different channel and then changing back to the problem channel. That usually solves the problem but the S3 doesnt know that, of course.


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## mackie (Jan 11, 2004)

The Partial recording issue has happened to me on 4 occasions. On the first 2 occasions, the cutoff times were 25 and 38 minutes respectively. The 3rd time it was 57 minutes and the 4th time it was 52 minutes. At least the cutoff's are getting extended. 

On the flip side, I have a friend of mine who's had his TiVO Series 3 for about the same length of time and has never experienced the problem. Go figure.

I am more inclined to believe that it's an issue with the CableCards and not the TiVO series 3 but it's purely a hunch. The problem is that the behavior is not predictable so I am not sure how easy it will be for people to solve the problem.

The best we can do is report it I guess?

It's really a shame because in every other way, the Series 3 is flawless.


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## getgray (Mar 2, 2006)

Knock on wood, I haven't ever inserted either of my 2 CC's. And I have never had it miss a recording. I expect it is the CC that are teh problem.


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## Cainebj (Nov 11, 2006)

I still get about one every other day.

As far as I can tell, the Cable Card loses signal and the result is the partial recording.

If you catch it while it is happening - the moment you stop the recording the Cable Card will generally get the signal back, or, you may have to change the channel and then change back to the channel you were recording.

It kind of defeats the purpose, but I have now gotten into the habit of checking recordings while they are happening - if I am home...

This past Monday night I was out and I came home praying that both 24 and Heroes recorded successfully without getting the partial recording. Luckily it did - otherwise, if I am home during primetime - I check all my favorite shows every once in a while.

It seems like it is always something - before the S3, I used to have my cable box turn off and I would lose recordings!


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## mackie (Jan 11, 2004)

I am just glad it doesn't happen to me daily!!! Also, the truth of the matter is with the exception of shows like 60 minutes, I can usually find another way of catching up on partially recorded shows. The magic of the 21st century.

Still it sucks rocks.


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## pmiranda (Feb 12, 2003)

What I don't understand is why the S3 just gives up on trying to record a channel if it wavers for a moment. I can understand losing signal for a moment, but why doesn't it try to re-tune the channel? If you manually change the channel it will pick back up, but the S3 doesn't try


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## Cloud (Oct 16, 2003)

pmiranda said:


> What I don't understand is why the S3 just gives up on trying to record a channel if it wavers for a moment. I can understand losing signal for a moment, but why doesn't it try to re-tune the channel? If you manually change the channel it will pick back up, but the S3 doesn't try


Bingo! Happens to me once in a while too. If TiVo doesn't tune in immediately after a channel change it doesn't try again and I get 10 to 15 minutes of black or blank at the beginning of some recordings. This is getting old. If I catch it, I can simply press the channel up and down buttons to try again and then it comes in just fine.


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## yanasina (Jan 12, 2007)

This happened to me for the first time last night. Having to make a back up recording is ludicrous. None of us paid $800+ for an unreliable product. I love Tivo, but if it won't do what it's supposed to do, it's an $800+ piece of junk. This has only happened once for me, and I can deal with the occasional glitch, but I haven't had the unit long. From what I've read here, I can expect to be disappointed again. Four months with no definitive answers is unacceptable.


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## rdrrepair (Nov 24, 2006)

2 hours of 24, only recorded 15 minutes ~ Bummer!

Just set up my other TiVo's to record 24 and several other shows as a backup! I'll be going over a friends house tonight to see 24 so all is not too bad in the Grand Scheme of things!


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## bsd (Sep 30, 2002)

Does anyone know if the partial recording problems will be fixed with the new firmware upgrade? My biggest problem is the partial recording problems. The pixelization and audio drops come a close second, but its very hard explaining to the wife why we spent $1000 for an S3 that is losing recordings that our S2 recorded fine.

-Brett


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## MPeter (Jun 4, 2002)

I sure hope the new software addresses this problem. I'm getting partial recordings at least 4-5 times a week. Doesn't make the wife happy when it happens to one of her recordings!


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## George Cifranci (Jan 30, 2003)

MPeter said:


> I sure hope the new software addresses this problem. I'm getting partial recordings at least 4-5 times a week. Doesn't make the wife happy when it happens to one of her recordings!


I had 1 or 2 partial recordings back in December when I was running 8.0.1b or 8.0.1c, but none since and I have been recording tons of shows (I have a 750GB HD). I got 8.1.1 a few days ago and still the recordings seem fine so I don't know if it will help you or not. Are you sure it isn't a signal issue with your cable connection?


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## miller890 (Feb 15, 2002)

MPeter said:


> I sure hope the new software addresses this problem. I'm getting partial recordings at least 4-5 times a week. Doesn't make the wife happy when it happens to one of her recordings!


I still get a few partials each week, I really hope that 8.1 addresses the partial recording problem. 39 minute partial for Survivor Fiji this past Thursday.


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## yanasina (Jan 12, 2007)

Partial recordings are the number one scary thing to me, since recording is the point as far as I am concerned. I think one of the things that is causing so much frustration for this issue and most of the others posted here is that we who don't know much about electronics except how to enjoy them are in this constant state of worrying about what's causing what. We have to rely on others who have a last resort of blaming it on the other guy (Tivo and cable). I really think that in most cases both sides are trying to help, but when they run out of answers, we are still left with a problem and no one who can give a solution beyond to call the other guy. The problem with being patient is that we will soon lose the option to cancel and return the lifetime service to our Series 2, or return the unit and get a refund, or any of the other scenarios that apply. 

This sounds like complaining, but really it's just the facts of life here. I made the decision to buy a Series 3 because the service is worth it. I still feel like things are going to get smoothed out and I'll be back to Tivo heaven, but after investing so much money, it's still worrisome in the meantime.


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## Cainebj (Nov 11, 2006)

I think the thing that bothers me the most is that this issue has been reported since the S3 rolled out - this thread alone was started last October and still no one has said anything official about it...

You are right - the fact that I have gotten used to being at home and checking that all primetime shows every 15 to 30 minutes are still recording does kind of defeat the purpose of TiVo.

Just last Monday I discovered 24 had stopped recording 7 minutes into the episode and it was almost with glee that I re-tuned it and kept recording. I just shouldn't have to do that should I?


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## MPeter (Jun 4, 2002)

George Cifranci said:


> Are you sure it isn't a signal issue with your cable connection?


Signal seems pretty clean. We did have it checked when the CableCard install took place. I do think it's the S3. For example, last night there we were watching something live on tuner 1 without any signal problem. At the same time tuner 2 was telling us it was recording a show. But, when we went to play the recorded show later we discovered it was only 6 minutes long.

Also had Tonight Show cut off about 10 minutes into it last night. Grrrr... This is frustrating.


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## MPeter (Jun 4, 2002)

yanasina said:


> We have to rely on others who have a last resort of blaming it on the other guy (Tivo and cable). I really think that in most cases both sides are trying to help, but when they run out of answers, we are still left with a problem and no one who can give a solution beyond to call the other guy.


Totally agree. I knew of the risk of buying a 1st generation product (yes, it's a SERIES 3 but really it's entirely new technology with the CableCards). But, the thing that bugs me is TiVo's tech support seems completely unwilling to acknowledge the problem or help me when I contact them. It was my decision to shell out the $$$ for a new product, but I would expect them to support their products. Up to this point, I've seen nothing I would consider "support".


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## Cloud (Oct 16, 2003)

So does 8.1 fix this? Anyone?


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## yanasina (Jan 12, 2007)

I am really concerned about this still. I had a tech out here yesterday who fixed my cable signal. He says the readings are now in the normal range, and I can confirm my modem has a signal range that shows good signal. Yet, when I turned on the tv this afternoon I had a grey screen on the sci fi channel. Tivo had recorded off that channel this morning. Changing the channel brought it right back. If the channel is losing signal, shouldn' there be some way for the Tivo to keep checking for signal and reacquire it? Surely this is something that could be addressed. I have tried to get in the habit of always leaving the tuners on a music station when I turn off the tv so the channel has to be changed for any recording coming up, but that isn't always going to be possible and doesn't protect against mid show loss.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Still no official word from TiVo on this?


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## PaulS (Sep 16, 2002)

Problem is still here with 8.1. I've got very good signal quality and just had an occurrence over the weekend of a zero-length recording from an analog (or digital simulcast) channel.


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## tclynx (Jan 3, 2007)

It has been over a month since we've written, but that's been because it has taken this long to get the new TIVO. The first one that was sent out was lost by DHL. The amazing thing is that, whereas DHL couldn't find the package for us, they were able to return it quickly to TIVO. So TIVO sent out another box. While we were reading the e-mail TIVO sent us we noticed that it said the new box was refurbished. Well, this was not acceptable, but we had to wait until we received the new TIVO to send it back. Then we had to wait again for the next box. We finally received it about a week ago, and then we had to wait for Comcast to come out and reset the cablecards to the new TIVO. They tried to give us new cablecards but they couldn't find any that worked so they stuck with the old ones. Anyway, we have had our new TIVO working since Saturday and haven't had a partial recording yet, but it has been only 2 days. By the way, we have also learned to keep checking to see if the TIVO is actually recording something we want it to. We've also learned to watch youtube to pick up episodes of shows we missed.


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## Roderigo (Mar 12, 2002)

PaulS said:


> Problem is still here with 8.1. I've got very good signal quality and just had an occurrence over the weekend of a zero-length recording from an analog (or digital simulcast) channel.


I don't think this is the same bug... Most people were reporting recordings less than their full length, not completely empty.

A zero length recording usually means there wasn't any signal (could happen on digital or analog), or the cablecard didn't decrypt the channel (just digital). Though, I thought the tivo automatically deleted recordings with no signal.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

I don't believe TiVo has announced definitively that they're not the same problem.


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## yanasina (Jan 12, 2007)

It seems like a zero length recording could be the same problem if the tuner had already been on that channel and lost signal before it started recording. That's why I am trying to remember to tune to a music channel when I turn off the tv, to force a channel change before it starts recording, but still that only helps at the start, not during progress. FWIW, I haven't had any partial recordings since Comcast had to fix my HD channels and work on my signal strength, but it has only been a few days. I am still on pins and needles over this.


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## pmiranda (Feb 12, 2003)

I'm pretty sure TiVo re-tunes a channel at the beginning or end of a recording. I know I've seen my S1 doing this to an external cable box via IR blaster. Hard to tell if it happens with cablecards, but I know I've caught a channel being all-black mid-day on my S3, and later recordings work fine, as does live TV if I tune to another channel and then come back to the first.


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## TiVolunteer (Jul 10, 2001)

pmiranda said:


> I'm pretty sure TiVo re-tunes a channel at the beginning or end of a recording. I know I've seen my S1 doing this to an external cable box via IR blaster. Hard to tell if it happens with cablecards, but I know I've caught a channel being all-black mid-day on my S3, and later recordings work fine, as does live TV if I tune to another channel and then come back to the first.


I agree that it must retune the channel for the next recording. I have witnessed it live going from a "missing channel" to fixed just by retuning the same channel when it went to record a show at the tope of the hour. See Item (d) under "What Happened"

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=4883540#post4883540

However, I believe that there are two different "flavors" of the missing channel problem -- one in which a "retune" or channel change would fix it and one which required a reboot. I had one whole evening of prime time shows on one channel end up as zero length recordings when I had the second flavor. Other shows recorded on the other tuner recorded just fine.

Luckily, I've had ZERO missing channels/partial recordings since 8.1 rolled out (knock on wood). All my observations above are pre-8.1.


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## tclynx (Jan 3, 2007)

You might all find this interesting. We hadn't sent back our old TIVO yet so that we can finish watching the programs it had already recorded, but we programed the new TIVO for the shows we watch. Last night both TIVO's attempted to record the same program on Comedy Central. Whereas the new TIVO (which, as you might remember, uses the cablecards that were on the old TIVO) picked the show up just fine (still no problems with this box). The old TIVO, however, was not able to record it (duration 0). They are both getting the same Comcast signal so we don't think its the cable, and it can't be the cablecards since the new box using the old cablecards got the signal just fine, so we're thinking it's actually a bum TIVO box. What do you think?


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## Teeps (Aug 16, 2001)

bsd said:


> Does anyone know if the partial recording problems will be fixed with the new firmware upgrade? My biggest problem is the partial recording problems. The pixelization and audio drops come a close second, but its very hard explaining to the wife why we spent $1000 for an S3 that is losing recordings that our S2 recorded fine.
> 
> -Brett


No. I have experienced both since 8.1 was pushed.


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## bmgoodman (Dec 20, 2000)

I'll admit that I haven't read this entire thread, so this may duplicate what someone else has said. I don't have HDTV yet, nor even digital cable. I record everything on my S3 directly from analog channels (no cable cards or cable boxl). I have connected a set of cheap rabbit ears so that I can pick up the local digital OTA broadcasts. (I have done a few test recordings from OTA digital channels, but I have nothing scheduled to record from OTA).

Last night, I found that the S3 had recorded Monday's episode of 24 from the OTA digital Fox channel. When I went to watch it, I found it was a 0:00 "Partial" recording. So I don't know that the issue is with the cable cards or even the cable.

Of course, this is just one data point, but I wanted to throw it in in case it may help some of you. I hope Tivo can work this out before I actually start recording in HD. Kinda defeats the purpose of having an S3 if it's no more reliable than the cable company's box. 

BTW, I have just gotten some form of 8.1, but I'm not at home to give the full version.


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

tclynx said:


> You might all find this interesting. We hadn't sent back our old TIVO yet so that we can finish watching the programs it had already recorded, but we programed the new TIVO for the shows we watch. Last night both TIVO's attempted to record the same program on Comedy Central. Whereas the new TIVO (which, as you might remember, uses the cablecards that were on the old TIVO) picked the show up just fine (still no problems with this box). The old TIVO, however, was not able to record it (duration 0). They are both getting the same Comcast signal so we don't think its the cable, and it can't be the cablecards since the new box using the old cablecards got the signal just fine, so we're thinking it's actually a bum TIVO box. What do you think?


I think this proves what I have suspected all along-- its not a cable signal issue, and its not a cable card issue.


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## PaulS (Sep 16, 2002)

PPC1 said:


> I think this proves what I have suspected all along-- its not a cable signal issue, and its not a cable card issue.


Well, just because he was recording OTA doesn't necessarily mean that he didn't have signal issues. On the contrary, I believe that OTA is a far less stable signal than cable would be. Far more variables to contend with in dealing with OTA, such as weather, multipath, geography, etc.


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## bmgoodman (Dec 20, 2000)

PaulS said:


> Well, just because he was recording OTA doesn't necessarily mean that he didn't have signal issues. On the contrary, I believe that OTA is a far less stable signal than cable would be. Far more variables to contend with in dealing with OTA, such as weather, multipath, geography, etc.


I might grant that what you say about OTA is true. But, should the whole recording abort if the signal is interrupted for 1 second? Two seconds? 1 minute? Should it continue recording for the remainder of the recording period and not care if the signal ever returns?

I'd probably vote for continuing no matter what. I'm sure others would prefer an "abort" after some time with no signal. Whatever the case, I cannot imagine that I would want even a 1 minute interruption to abort the entire recording.

I will add that in my case, the little I have watched the OTA broadcasts, I have seen periods of 1-2 seconds of dropouts on occasion. Certainly nothing long enough that recording should abort.


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## pl1 (Jan 18, 2007)

bmgoodman said:


> I'd probably vote for continuing no matter what.


Me too. Including the ability to go back to recording if something like the Emergency Alert System knocks it out. Since moving most of my recording from cable to OTA, this has been somewhat resolved, but I should be able to use my S3 as intended. OTOH, speaking with other Comcast users, they have to live the with same thing on their Comcast DVR's.


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## Roderigo (Mar 12, 2002)

pl1 said:


> Me too. Including the ability to go back to recording if something like the Emergency Alert System knocks it out. Since moving most of my recording from cable to OTA, this has been somewhat resolved, but I should be able to use my S3 as intended. OTOH, speaking with other Comcast users, they have to live the with same thing on their Comcast DVR's.


How does moving your recordings to OTA help the Emergency Alert problem? If you have cablecards, this message is coming out of band from them - so it doesn't matter what the tuner is recording.


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## Roderigo (Mar 12, 2002)

bmgoodman said:


> I might grant that what you say about OTA is true. But, should the whole recording abort if the signal is interrupted for 1 second? Two seconds? 1 minute? Should it continue recording for the remainder of the recording period and not care if the signal ever returns?


I'm pretty sure if you lose the signal, it will keep recording for the fully scheduled time. So, if you got a 0 length recording, either the signal was out for the full hour, or there's some other bug in play.

Certainly easy to test my theory - detach the cable while recording something, and then reattach it. See what the S3 does in response.


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## pl1 (Jan 18, 2007)

Roderigo said:


> How does moving your recordings to OTA help the Emergency Alert problem? If you have cablecards, this message is coming out of band from them - so it doesn't matter what the tuner is recording.


Second S3 with no cableCARDS! 

But, I didn't actually know that it was the case that the cableCARD was interrupting everything including OTA if the signal comes. Is that a fact? I guess I was assuming that it did not interrupt OTA on the same unit.


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## yanasina (Jan 12, 2007)

If the power is out when the S2 is supposed to start recording, and then it comes on, the recording will start. I assume the S3 is supposed to do this too. On the S3, if the signal is lost and changing the channel brings it back, then the S3 should be able to reacquire the signal, but it isn't doing that; the rest of the program is lost since nothing changes the channel to reacquire the signal. It seems like if changing the channel gets the signal back, that the S3 ought to be able to reacquire the signal without human intervention, somehow, some way. Signal loss is one thing, and a cable company issue, but if the signal is actually there, then it's a Tivo issue, isn't it?


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## PaulS (Sep 16, 2002)

bmgoodman said:


> I might grant that what you say about OTA is true. But, should the whole recording abort if the signal is interrupted for 1 second? Two seconds? 1 minute? Should it continue recording for the remainder of the recording period and not care if the signal ever returns?
> 
> I'd probably vote for continuing no matter what. I'm sure others would prefer an "abort" after some time with no signal. Whatever the case, I cannot imagine that I would want even a 1 minute interruption to abort the entire recording.
> 
> I will add that in my case, the little I have watched the OTA broadcasts, I have seen periods of 1-2 seconds of dropouts on occasion. Certainly nothing long enough that recording should abort.


100% agreed.

Might not be the best solution, from a certain point of view, though. Say you have a signal that's borderline. Comes in and out. You might end up with a recording that's very patchwork, with periods of video and periods of black intermixed. At some point, that becomes simply unwatchable. It's commendable to try to record everything you can, but you might have to draw a line at some point.


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

PaulS said:


> Well, just because he was recording OTA doesn't necessarily mean that he didn't have signal issues. On the contrary, I believe that OTA is a far less stable signal than cable would be. Far more variables to contend with in dealing with OTA, such as weather, multipath, geography, etc.


He specifically stated that both S3s were getting the same Comcast signal. Specfically, he was recording Comedy Central, a cable only channel. Thus your assumption that he was recording OTA is false.

I think you might be confusing the post I quoted with some other post.


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## PaulS (Sep 16, 2002)

PPC1 said:


> He specifically stated that both S3s were getting the same Comcast signal. Specfically, he was recording Comedy Central, a cable only channel. Thus your assumption that he was recording OTA is false.
> 
> I think you might be confusing the post I quoted with some other post.


Unless we're talking about two seperate posts, you might wanna re-read the original post yourself. I'm referring to bmgoodman's post, where he specifically stated that his *OTA digital Fox channel* recording was a 0:00 partial. Yes, he was connected to cable without CableCARDs, but he specifically stated the recording was OTA. If you're referring to something else, than accept my apology, otherwise, please re-read the post.

My issue came with your blanket statement in the post immediately after bmgoodmans's that since the recording was OTA, the partial recording bug couldn't be a "cable signal issue or a CableCARD issue". Especially after one anecdotal piece of evidence (OTA partial) that seems to contradict the majority (cable partial) of evidence. It may be a generic signal quality issue, but to draw a conclusion so broad from one piece of evidence is extremely short-sighted IMHO.

So far, since receiving 8.1 last week, I've had a total of three 0:00 recordings. All three were on a 256QAM digital simulcast of an analog channel (2xSciFi, 1xE!). I have pristine signal quality, and my CC's seem to be working perfectly. I'd love nothing better than to get to the bottom of this and have it fixed...


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## rdrrepair (Nov 24, 2006)

Well, just got my second partial recording problem.

My first was the two hour 24 show on FOX 705 HD NY a few weeks ago. I recorded 15min of a 2 hour program. Pre 8.1.

Tuesday night I recorded 1/2 hour of NCIS CBS channel 702 HD NY. Luckily I had a backup on one of my Series 2 TiVo. Post 8.1

While viewing the S2 recording of NCIS I saw that there was an EBS broadcast 40 minutes into the show. 

I remember turning on my TV and seeing the TiVo recording NCIS on the S3 and it was about 10 minutes behind live. I flipped the input to the S2 and stated to watch another program that was recorded. My viewing of the recorded program on the S2 was not interrupted. I had no idea that there was an EBS.

It seems odd that I lost the recording at 30 minutes when the EBS went off about 40 minutes after the start of the program. With the 10 minute live buffer this might make sense. I don't know - just throwing it out there.

I have noticed better stability in my channels since the 8.1 update. Before 8.1 I had a hard time keeping channels locked. After the 8.1 I have had ZERO instances of loosing tuner function.


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

PaulS said:


> If you're referring to something else, than accept my apology, otherwise, please re-read the post.


I would accept your apology, if any were really needed. (Which I don't think is necessary.) My prior post referred to a completely seperate post. My post quoted tclynx. Please re-read my post, particularly the quoted portion. I think its a simple misunderstanding.



PaulS said:


> My issue came with your blanket statement in the post immediately after bmgoodmans's that since the recording was OTA, the partial recording bug couldn't be a "cable signal issue or a CableCARD issue".


This is where you went astray. You assumed my post refered to the immediately preceding post by bybmgoodmans. My post set forth a quote attributed to tclynx's post. Perhaps, does your display edits out the quotes?

At any rate, take a look tclnyx's post. I think that it is quite informative-- two S3s recording the same cable source, the one with cable cards recorded the entire program, the one without cable cards had a zero duration recording.


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## PaulS (Sep 16, 2002)

PPC1 said:


> I would accept your apology, if any were really needed. (Which I don't think is necessary.) My prior post referred to a completely seperate post. My post quoted tclynx. Please re-read my post, particularly the quoted portion. I think its a simple misunderstanding.
> 
> This is where you went astray. You assumed my post refered to the immediately preceding post by bybmgoodmans. My post set forth a quote attributed to tclynx's post. Perhaps, does your display edits out the quotes?
> 
> At any rate, take a look tclnyx's post. I think that it is quite informative-- two S3s recording the same cable source, the one with cable cards recorded the entire program, the one without cable cards had a zero duration recording.


My bad. Sorry for the confusion. It was your post coming immediately after bmgoodman's post that threw me off. 

In any event, it is indeed very interesting that a CableCARD-equipped S3 recorded the Comedy Central program just fine, and a vanilla analog-only S3 ended up with a 0:00. Bad hardware, bad signal quality, or a TiVo bug. Those can be the only alternatives that I see at this point based upon this evidence.


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## Roderigo (Mar 12, 2002)

PaulS said:


> In any event, it is indeed very interesting that a CableCARD-equipped S3 recorded the Comedy Central program just fine, and a vanilla analog-only S3 ended up with a 0:00. Bad hardware, bad signal quality, or a TiVo bug. Those can be the only alternatives that I see at this point based upon this evidence.


Well a cablecard equipped S3 and a non-cablecard equipped S3, the two can be receiving two different channels for the same channel number.

The card may be providing a digital simulcast, and the one without the card would have to use analog.


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## PaulS (Sep 16, 2002)

Roderigo said:


> Well a cablecard equipped S3 and a non-cablecard equipped S3, the two can be receiving two different channels for the same channel number.
> 
> The card may be providing a digital simulcast, and the one without the card would have to use analog.


Right. The OP would have to go into the Diagnostics screen to tell us if his cableco digitally simulcasts Comedy Central, or leaves it analog. If analog, then we have an apples to apples comparison between the CC S3 and the analog-only S3.

For the analog-only to fail, when the CC succeeded, definitely narrows down the possible factors in the 0:00 recordings.


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## tclynx (Jan 3, 2007)

When we decided to get the new TIVO to see if it solved the partial recording problem we had a choice. Send back the old S3 and wait for the new one. Or pay another $800 for a new TIVO, and then get our money back when we returned the old one. We decided to do the latter. So we had a unique opportunity to have $1600 worth of TIVO boxes running at the same time. 

The old and new TIVO's were both S3's with the most recent upgrade; they were coming off the same cable line, recording the same program, and the new TIVO was using the cablecards that used to be in the old TIVO. The old TIVO box couldn't record the show but the new TIVO box worked, and still works, fine. We have had no partial recordings. Since, we believe, most people would return their old TIVO and wait for a new one, we don't think this type of comparison would be made very often.

We were one of the first folks to buy the new TIVO S3. They just might be making them better now.


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## tclynx (Jan 3, 2007)

I wrote that response quickly and just re-read what you had written. Unfortunately, the old box is on its way back to TIVO, so we have no way, anymore, to determine whether the signal going to the old box was analog. I wonder if comcast would tell us.


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## PaulS (Sep 16, 2002)

tclynx said:


> I wrote that response quickly and just re-read what you had written. Unfortunately, the old box is on its way back to TIVO, so we have no way, anymore, to determine whether the signal going to the old box was analog. I wonder if comcast would tell us.


It's possible that they might tell you. It's more likely they have no idea what's going on. 

I'd wager that they have both an analog and a digital-simulcast of Comedy Central. At that point, it's up to the CableCARD to decide which one it's going to tune. My guess would be the digital version, but I have nothing to really back up that guess other than it's easier to record the digital bitstream than to encode and record the analog channel.


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## tclynx (Jan 3, 2007)

I'm not sure how to read the diagnostics on the new box but here's the information for comedy central: 
Channel: 58 Frequency: 633000 KHz Modulation: QAM 256 Connector type: RF2 Signal Source: Cable Channel bits: 30746 Signal Strength: 92 ... CCI byte: 0x2 ... PCR PID: 85 ... Video PID: 85


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## TexasAg (Apr 2, 2006)

tclynx said:


> I'm not sure how to read the diagnostics on the new box but here's the information for comedy central:
> Channel: 58 Frequency: 633000 KHz Modulation: QAM 256 Connector type: RF2 Signal Source: Cable Channel bits: 30746 Signal Strength: 92 ... CCI byte: 0x2 ... PCR PID: 85 ... Video PID: 85


"QAM 256" tells you that it's digital.


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## PaulS (Sep 16, 2002)

tclynx said:


> I'm not sure how to read the diagnostics on the new box but here's the information for comedy central:
> Channel: 58 Frequency: 633000 KHz Modulation: QAM 256 Connector type: RF2 Signal Source: Cable Channel bits: 30746 Signal Strength: 92 ... CCI byte: 0x2 ... PCR PID: 85 ... Video PID: 85


Yup, it's digital. You've also got a nice 92 signal strength there as well.


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## tclynx (Jan 3, 2007)

Do you still think it's possible that the old box was picking up the signal in analog and that's why it had a problem recording?


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## tclynx (Jan 3, 2007)

Let me re-phrase the question. Are you suggesting that the new TIVO box somehow always exclusively picks up the digital signal, and that's the fix. The only way to know if your theory is true is if someone can say whether or not they have ever had a 0 duration recording on a digital only channel (such as an HD channel).


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## Roderigo (Mar 12, 2002)

tclynx said:


> Let me re-phrase the question. Are you suggesting that the new TIVO box somehow always exclusively picks up the digital signal, and that's the fix. The only way to know if your theory is true is if someone can say whether or not they have ever had a 0 duration recording on a digital only channel (such as an HD channel).


With cablecards, the box doesn't pick the channel - the cablecard tells the box how to tune to the channel. So, in your case, with the cablecards, the tivo is tuning to a digital channel. The box without the cards has to be tuning to the analog version of the channel. Thus, your test wasn't conclusive, as the two boxes were recording two separate channels.


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## tclynx (Jan 3, 2007)

But the old box lost channels both with and without cablecards. So, as we said earlier, the problem is with the old TIVO box itself, or the old box sometimes tried to pick up the channel in analog even with the cablecards and that was the problem.


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## oldnacl (Mar 23, 2007)

I've had my series 3 for a couple weeks now and have had incomplete recordings at least 2 times, most recently yesterday when Meet the press stopped right in the middle of the show. I had messages about new software so I asume I have the update. I have another week to decide whether to keep the TiVo or get a refund and with these problems and the scent of higher service prices in the future, I'm becoming inclined to bail out while I can.


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## tclynx (Jan 3, 2007)

Don't bail. We have had absolutely no partial recordings on the new box and it's been over a month. We are still convinced the problem was in the TIVO box. We suggest you just return the TIVO for another one. Using TIVO is wonderful when it works.


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## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

Will a new box make it so my S3 won't stop recording on BOTH tuners when there is an emergency broadcast alert? Or is that a "feature"?


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## wierdo (Apr 7, 2002)

That's a required "feature." The bug is that it doesn't restart the recording after the alert is over.


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## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

Well, knock on wood, I have not experienced any partials in some time. No changes at all to my system, except the regular TiVo software upgrades.

Hopefully, the reliability will continue.


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## bloozeman (Feb 14, 2003)

All,

I have an original Series 3 I purchased directly from TiVo last year when they were first released. I only have OTA and up until this weekend it has operated pretty much as expected and I have been completely happy with the purchase. The weirdest thing happened on Saturday afternoon. I had just finished watching and deleting a show, which of course sent me back to the "now playing" screen, so I selected a new program. The odd thing is it sent me into a "group" screen and of course the group was blank because there was only one episode of the program I chose. Well, the Series 3 totally froze at this point so the only way I could get it function again was to pull the power cord!

After the reboot I thought all was well because it allowed me to watch stored shows, etc. Little did I know it started going crazy on me.... Tonight I was shocked to see I had 37 HD shows and 72 suggestions recorded. Yep you guessed it... since Saturday afternoon everything is recording as a partial with zero running time, i.e., they are all 0:00 in length!!!!! This is seriously pissing me off. So of course after deleting all the partials I went into the system screens to see if I could see anything awry. I was tempted to do a soft reset but decided to run the diagnostics prior to doing so. Guess what? It has been stuck on diagnostics with a "please wait" menu for about 30 mins now. Great.... time to pull the ol' plug again.


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## cotton168 (Aug 8, 2006)

I decided to check out the forum because I ended up getting a partial last night (my very first time) when I was trying to check out the results show to Dancing with the Stars (the 9:02 showing). It was recording fine until 2 minutes into the show when it just went blank on me. My other tuner was fine as it was recording House. I got the grey screen on ABC HD (I have Charter cable) and looking on these posts, I took *bloozeman's* course and unplugged my TiVo. ABC HD is now back on, but it made me think could the previous 'hiccups' of pixelation and some audio drop outs have been just the beginning? It seems to me that only ABC HD had this problem because all my other channels are fine.

Does everyone have just a problem with one channel or a lot of different channels? I haven't had time to look over this whole thread, but I will do when I get more time.  BTW, my software is at 8.1.1. Does anyone know if TiVo is going to have a fix for this issue or are we going to have to return our TiVos for the newer versions? Lots of questions and I thank you for your patience.


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## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

Is there a web site I can read which will describe the exact regulatory/contractual requirements that relate to tuning to a certain channel during an emergency alert? I would like to see the wording there, because right now it is tuning to the home shopping network and I'd like to see if that is something I have any legal right to complain about (versus merely as an annoyed customer). You would think that any requirement about tuning to emergency alert info should state that the cable company must tune to a channel that actually relates to emergencies... aside from the emergency of needing a stainless steel toothpick collection.


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## hybucket (Nov 26, 2004)

I can name you several who would consider that an emergency, altho most of them would be watching Home And Garden.
I would think that, since you're a paying customer, you can complain about anything you like. If it was happening to me, I certainly would.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Complaining to a company about that company complying with legal regulations is a little like complaining to a toll booth collector about having to pay the toll. Complaints should be directed to your Members of Congress or to the FCC.


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## pl1 (Jan 18, 2007)

bicker said:


> Complaining to a company about that company complying with legal regulations is a little like complaining to a toll booth collector about having to pay the toll. Complaints should be directed to your Members of Congress or to the FCC.


Of course, since the real issue for us (TiVo users) is for the DVR to keep recording where it left off after an interruption, complaining to TiVo is a good option as well. The more complaints, the higher the priority (I would imagine.)

But, since the cableco's own DVR does the same thing, and does not keep recording (according to a friend who has a comcast moto box), it may be that's how it has to be.


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## TAsunder (Aug 6, 2003)

bicker said:


> Complaining to a company about that company complying with legal regulations is a little like complaining to a toll booth collector about having to pay the toll. Complaints should be directed to your Members of Congress or to the FCC.


I don't know if this was meant for me or not, but the reason I would complain is because it is tuning to home shopping network instead of a weather info channel. I don't think congress mandated that people watch the home shopping network during inclement weather.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

pl1 said:


> Of course, since the real issue for us (TiVo users) is for the DVR to keep recording where it left off after an interruption, complaining to TiVo is a good option as well. The more complaints, the higher the priority (I would imagine.)


Agreed... I was referring about the interruption, itself, only. Not what the box does after the alert is over.


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## dissident186 (Jun 25, 2008)

S3, recording 9 hours of Wimbledon, and only got 2:12. This thread seems to have died out in 2007 and I'm not sure why. Anyone have any recommendations here? Was there a concensus drawn as to what the cause of the problem could be? It happened at 9:12AM eastern time (US) this morning, no idea if there was an emergency or amber alert at that time. Any guidance would be appreciated. I have not called Tivo yet...
Thanks


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## tclynx (Jan 3, 2007)

It has now been over a year and we have had no partial recordings. Returning the old Tivo box for a new one was the right choice. Good luck.


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## sfm (Oct 3, 2006)

I started this thread... I was an early adopter of the S3 and had many partial recordings for the first 3 months or so (Comcast in Denver, only using cablecards)... too many to be caused by EAC/Amber alerts... never contacted Comcast on this as the same recording on the 6412 was always fine (I was duplicating recordings for a couple of months once the partials started on the Tivo to track the problem).

As of around December of 2006 or so they stopped and I haven't had one since... knock on wood... (this is the same S3... almost 2 years old and going strong! Also have had a Tivo HD for about 6 months now with no partial recordings).

Never did identify what the fix was... AFAIK Comcast did nothing and the resolution of the problem didn't seem to correspond with one of the official software updates from Tivo... seemed to clear up by itself (in between two of the official updates). Perhaps Comcast did a configuration change/tweak on their end or maybe Tivo snuck a fix onto the box outside of the normal software upgrade protocol


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Yeah, we seem to have traded partial recordings for skips.


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## Lobito (Jan 21, 2003)

We just bought 2 Tivo HD units. Both were initially set up without cable cards (i.e., basic cable, no-HD, feeds via coax directly to Tivo units). One of the units has been fine. The other has been subject to partial recordings. The working unit now has a cable card, and no problems. A cable card will be installed in the near future on the problematic one. I'm a little concerned, however, that the unit may be defective in some way. Any thoughts?


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## fkong777 (Mar 8, 2005)

Just setup my Tivo HD. I got a refub. Using OTA antenna. MY HD shows gets partial recording. It will always cut of my show at 18min into the show then it will record the remainder 28 mins. So I miss over 10min of the show! 

Source:
OTA antenna
Analog Cable - No cable cards

No network connection just Phone line connection. 

Component cable output and yellow red white cable connected. 

Pretty basic hook up. 

Do I need to return it and go back to my Series 2?


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

I haven't heard anyone else's doing that to them, so you probably want to have your unit fixed (or replaced) so it works like most everyone else's.


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## bmgoodman (Dec 20, 2000)

fkong777 said:


> Just setup my Tivo HD. I got a refub. Using OTA antenna. MY HD shows gets partial recording. It will always cut of my show at 18min into the show then it will record the remainder 28 mins. So I miss over 10min of the show!
> 
> Source:
> OTA antenna
> ...


What version Tivo SW do you have right now? I was getting the partial recordings at times when I had earlier SW (either 7.x or 8.x), but since I've been on 9.x it seems this has almost completely gone away. Be sure your TivoHD has updated to the newest 9.x available and see if your problems persist.


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## captkirk685 (Nov 23, 2006)

I have 3 tivo hd's and I have never had one partial recording, Knock on wood..


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## fkong777 (Mar 8, 2005)

bmgoodman said:


> What version Tivo SW do you have right now? I was getting the partial recordings at times when I had earlier SW (either 7.x or 8.x), but since I've been on 9.x it seems this has almost completely gone away. Be sure your TivoHD has updated to the newest 9.x available and see if your problems persist.


I have 9.x SW in the box. Tivo help forum just had me do the disk check "54" test and the disk passed all test. took an hour to do the test. I will be trying the "57" test tonight to fix logical issues. I scheduled another HD recording tonight and see if it break apart again. SD recording of cable channel did not break into partial recording.


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## pirategirl007 (May 26, 2008)

I have TIVO HD for about 6 months now and continually get partial recordings. Several times a day. This is now my 2nd HD box (took advice to do an exchange from here) and 3rd cable card. Tivo support is useless, if we even get someone that knows what we are talking about they tell us to contact cable company. Cable compaby (BVU a southeast regional comapny) at least knows more about cards now and contacted me within the last month to replace my card b/c they were receiving an error. They are sending me to Tivo stating problem is with them. We have reset, rebooted, tested, etc. Nothing seems to help the problem. Any suggestions? 

We have activated out old Series 2 Tivo in the bedroom and set up recordings in there as well as our main TV so we dont miss things we really want to see. Series 2 records no problem, but I'd at least like my programs in HD since i did pay for a HD TV and pay for HD cable. Tommorrow will be last call to TIVo, and we are done aft4er 5 years, going to take DVR eek: ) thru cable company.


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## sinanju (Jan 3, 2005)

Forget it.


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## perplexed (Dec 13, 2002)

I've just installed a new Tivo HD unit on Comcast, and think I may be experiencing the partial recording issue too....

I noticed that a couple of recordings today were shown as "partial" status, and I'm pretty sure I did nothing to cause this. One was a 7pm->7:30pm recording of House Hunters (HD), which was only 29 minutes long and partial (should have been 30 minutes long).

I'm keeping a close eye on it, but am worried that this could be a sign of things to come.

I'm getting all channels, and can record two HD channels in the 700 channel range at once... so it seems the M-Card (Motorola / Comcast) is able to access the programming.

One odd (possibly) thing I noticed is that under the Cablecard menu - "Conditional Access" - all I see right now are 2 or 3 lines of text, the last of which is something like (I can't get to the TV to be exact):

Encryption: DES
Con: Yes EBCP: Yes Val: 0x01

That's it... there's no other text, specifically nothing showing "Auth: S", etc. Shouldn't there be something else showing under the "Con: Yes..." line? I did see the extra information one time I checked it today, but the last time I looked there was nothing beyond that "Con: Yes..." line of text. However, as I mentioned, I'm able to record 2 HD channels at the same time without an issue. Could be nothing, but wondering if Comcast didn't activate/initialize the cablecard correctly on their end...

Oh, one other thing I noticed is that while watching a non-HD channel, the picture turned black (no sound either). I think the Tivo threw up a message and possibly the channel banner at the same time.

The Comcast DVR that the Tivo replaced didn't experience any dropout issues, so this is a puzzle.

---
EDIT: I'll be repeating the Conditional Access test... there's a chance the test HD channels I used are not encrypted, so ignore that data point for now. Thx.


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## perplexed (Dec 13, 2002)

I'll be checking for any more partial recordings this evening. I modified my record preferences to not "trim" lower-priority conflicting scheduled recordings to be sure that's not likely to throw any false positives into the test.

Meanwhile, Amazon have pretty pro-actively initiated a replacement unit for me... which will arrive on Monday. If I see any more issues I'll likely swap in the new unit and see if that addresses the problem (although I assume I'll need to call Comcast again to re-pair the cablecard, and call Tivo to swap out the unit assigned to my account). I hadn't expected Amazon to be quite this eager to initiate a replacement, having only contacted them with a question about how the process would work if it did turn out to be a possible hardware issue... but it'll give me a few options without the risk of taking any TV downtime.

Oh, on the Conditional Access screen output, sure enough... when tuned to a non-broadcast HD channel the screen reports all the good/expected output showing Authentication Subscribed status... so looks like the M-Card's likely set up OK.

When I was installing the M-Card, the first from Comcast was dead (Showed "Con: No" status on that screen), so they couldn't activate it.

This current card appears to have activated OK though, but what was odd is that the CS Rep told me she didn't need to know the "Data" value for the new card... told me their system didn't need it... that the number was only useful to me. I might call them again today to see if this is really the case, as I'd thought they needed the SN, Host ID, and Data values to set the card up on their end... and that only the Host ID was a constant between two different cards... Given that I appear to be getting all the non-encrypted and encrypted channels I've subscribed to... this may be a non issue though.

EDIT: Seems odd, found this description of the Data field using a Google search. Seems to me they'd need to know the Data field for the new card, but then surprised it's working if that's true.

---
Data ID &#8211; This number is sent back to our headend&#8212;not only for tracking purposes, but also for pairing purposes and is directly associated with the Cable Card and the TV. The Data ID number is comprised of 11 digits.
---

EDIT:
Called Comcast this evening, and found that they did indeed still have the older Data value associated with my previous/faulty cablecard. I had them update their system to reflect the Data value for my currently installed cablecard.

The odd thing is that things seemed to be working OK, even with the old Data ID. Still, I'm pleased they now have the correct Host ID and Data values associated with the card that's currently installed.


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## perplexed (Dec 13, 2002)

A replacement Tivo HD arrived yesterday, so I was able to swap out the original Tivo HD with this one.

Unfortnately, I got another partial recording last night (1:30am recording, only captured the first 21 minutes of a 1:30 recording).

So frustrating. I would think the chances of two units in a row with bad/marginal hardware are low... so I'm left with one of these:

1) Signal issue from Comcast (causing tivo/cablecards to lose the signal - although the Comcast DVR never had this issue and was connected to the same feed)
2) Bad cablecard (causing Tivo/cablecard to lose the signal)
3) Some sort of Comcast config issue (is the cablecard really activated end-to-end in the Comcast system, and if not could this contribute to this issue?)

I've a tech scheduled to come out tomorrow and will ask him to check the signal I'm getting where the Tivo's hooked in. I know the tech who installed the Comcast DVR that I've replaced mentioned that the signal was hot, so he'd installed a 3.5dB splitter and a tap between their feed and the house wiring... during testing I'd removed each and still had the issue, so perhaps it needs more attenuation? I've returned the splitter and tap into the feed, and currently most channel's show 100 strength, but a few do sit around 93+. DVR diagnostics show SNR of ~37dB for the channels, and ~23dB for the OOB signal.

I may head out and pick up another M-Card in advance of the tech's visit, activate this one on my Tivo, and see if this improves the situation any. At least that would remove another variable from the list of suspects if the problem remains.


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## chewy2314 (Sep 11, 2003)

Just want to chime in on our experiences with Partial recordings. Started after getting the 9.4 update and recording the Olympics. Since most were recording into the late night, I thought maybe issue with signal, etc. But, we were just watching America's Got Talent as it was being recorded and as my wife browsed to the our S2-DT, the recording stopped. I must say that we have never had any issues with our S1 for over 6 years.

Edit: forgot to mention that during this time, 2 HD channels were being recorded and the other program recorded fine. The S2-DT also recorded both programs correctly. 

We're using a M-card.


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## playivorys (Feb 7, 2003)

Need some advise guys. I just got the TIVO HD about a week ago. Was getting black screens (with no information msg) and partial recordings. Using MCard had the cable company check and replace card still got them. Called TIVO many times case# 9804547 (with the hold times being what they are either under-staffed or alot of problems). Still got the partial recordings after the Mcard replacement so I exchanged the TIVO still within my 30 days of buying. Still getting the partial recordinngs so called them back they suggest UPS and signal amp (but I have no power problems and Cable company is FIOS with great signal strength). 
Should I wait on the TIVO until later? I must admit I like the interface but need to trust my DVR to get our shows. TV is a Sony XBR2 and am running in native video output (seems I read a thread about this).

Any suggestions got a few more weeks and I must make a decision do not feel I can invest $250-300 Plus a monthly fee for imcomplete programs.

Thanks in advance


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

I would definitely return a TiVo within the 30 day return period, if TiVo cannot get it working perfectly for you within the first couple of weeks. You can try again later, if you wish, as long as TiVo is willing to honor the 30 day return period, but there is no reason to take a risk given that CableCARD technology is so intrinsically unreliable.


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## playivorys (Feb 7, 2003)

Bicker,
Thanks for the advise. Not being a constant reader of these forums does Tivo have a known issue with partial recording. I only got 18 minutes of the Amazing Race last night. I didn't buy my Tivo from TIVO but BBuy so returning it will be easy but want to make sure not to pass the return period. I have asked my cable company who has a TIVO HD unit to start doing alot of recordings and let me know. 
Thanks for the advice as much as I like the unit I need it reliable.


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## captkirk685 (Nov 23, 2006)

I just wanted to chime in with a problem also, I have 3 tivo HD's that use an M card and I record tons of stuff on each and I have never had one single partial recording, I upgraded all 3 with 1 tb drives. I bought a used tivo hd(got a good deal on it) upgraded the HD with a TB drive and sold it on ebay, the guy had nothing but problems with it, rebooting and getting partial recordings, so I let him return it for a refund, I thought maybe it was something easy to fix. Well I am getting the same reboots and partial recordings, I even put in the original hd and still the same thing, I even bought instant cake and put a fresh image on it thinking that maybe the original image was corrupt, still no go, still get partial recordings while my other 3 boxes work perfect, so I guess some boxes just might be bad no matter what we try.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

playivorys said:


> Not being a constant reader of these forums does Tivo have a known issue with partial recording.


It depends on who you ask. CableCARD technology, itself, is very unreliable, IMHO, and TiVo's implementation of CableCARD technology is very sensitive to imperfections -- that's not the same thing as a "known issue": If everything in the chain, from the service provider, through the coax, through splitters and such, are all within tight tolerances, then it will (almost surely) work. If something along the way is a bit off-center, then there is a chance that that will cause problems. TiVo would say that the service provider or you should fix the part of the chain that isn't perfect. The service provider and perhaps you would say that TiVo should make their implementation less sensitive to imperfections. It's a matter of perspective and opinion, not a matter of a "known issue".


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

captkirk685 said:


> Well I am getting the same reboots and partial recordings


Just for clarification: Is this with or without CableCARDs? If you can, I would test it just OTA.


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## captkirk685 (Nov 23, 2006)

bicker said:


> Just for clarification: Is this with or without CableCARDs? If you can, I would test it just OTA.


t.

it is with cable cards, I am lucky that our cable comp doesn't pair the cards to the tivos and I can move them around. I haven't tried it with just analog just yet


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## playivorys (Feb 7, 2003)

Called Tivo got hold of a good tech went through my setup and basically told me I had a cable card firmware issue (mine was old). Referred to an article they have iternallaly called 55-0509. Calling my cable provider tomorrow.
Thanks,


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## wrx555 (Oct 4, 2008)

Hey all,

I have just bought my TIVO DVR in Brisbane, Aust. TIVO has recently been launched here. I have having the rebooting problems all the time.

Has anyone figured a fix for these problems yet?

Thanks,

Dan


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## wrx555 (Oct 4, 2008)

wrx555 said:


> Hey all,
> 
> I have just bought my TIVO DVR in Brisbane, Aust. TIVO has recently been launched here. I have having the rebooting problems all the time.
> 
> ...


Can someone pls reply/help/offer some advice?


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## hfish1212 (Oct 15, 2008)

I believe I know what causes this. You should also notice an occasional gray/black screen with a Tivo banner message stating something like "no channel information available", or a stuck gray screen (if you change the channel the rest are fine). Also, both tuners will reset to the same channel (if tuner 0 was on channel 2 and tuner 1 was on channel 52, after a reset both tuners will be on channel 52). I believe a major cause for this is an incorrect firmware version in the cable company's m-card. I believe the Motorola M-card needs firmware version 2.65 and just version 2.01,--,3.25 will not work. 

Hal


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## playivorys (Feb 7, 2003)

Still waiting on my Firmware for SA M-Card. Anyone know what the correct one to get is? I am not a Cox Cable but a new startup company so don't know if they are the same for all companys using SA cards.

Thanks,
PlayIvorys


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## perplexed (Dec 13, 2002)

hfish1212 said:


> I believe I know what causes this. You'll should also notice an occasional gray/black screen with a Tivo banner message stating something like "no channel information available", or a stuck gray screen (if you change the channel the rest are fine). Also, both tuners will reset to the same channel (if tuner 0 was on channel 2 and tuner 1 was on channel 52, after a reset both tuners will be on channel 52). I believe a major cause for this is an incorrect firmware version in the cable company's m-card. I believe the Motorola M-card needs firmware version 2.65 and just version 2.01,--,3.25 will not work.
> 
> Hal


To second Hal's findings... this was exactly the issue I was running into with my partial recording issue. The Motorola M-Cards I'd received from my local Comcast office were:

FW Version: 02.01, -.-,03.25
HW Version: 0469927002

I tried all sorts of things to try to pinpoint the cause... exhanged the Tivo HD, exchanged M-Cards, had Comcast check my signal quality/drop (test results were excellent), tried in-line attenuators in case the issue was related to a signal that was too "hot". In all cases the problem (frequent partial recordings, and occasional short-term loss of video/audio... with a Tivo banner status indicating "no channel information" until the picture returned in < 60 seconds) the problem remained.

It wasn't until I stumbled on Hal's thread in the tivo.com forums that I realized someone else was seeing exactly the same symptoms I was. He had also noticed that, after the periodic loss of video/audio, the M-Card tuner's were both reset to the channel that Tuner 0 had been on.

My local Comcast office is unable to find me an M-Card with 02.65 firmware (all those issued... and I've tried 3 during this process) were 02.01. So, I've resorted to using two S-Cards. It's been 3+ days and my parial recording issues do seem to have been resolved.


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## Roderigo (Mar 12, 2002)

hfish1212 said:


> I believe a major cause for this is an incorrect firmware version in the cable company's m-card. I believe the Motorola M-card needs firmware version 2.65 and just version 2.01,--,3.25 will not work.


Do you have a source for this piece of advice? I haven't seen any reports here suggesting that there are any known problems w/ the various versions of the motorola firmware.


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## perplexed (Dec 13, 2002)

Roderigo said:


> Do you have a source for this piece of advice? I haven't seen any reports here suggesting that there are any known problems w/ the various versions of the motorola firmware.


In the process of troubleshooting this I'd called Tivo support, and their rep found a tech note indicating loss of authorization issues with 2.01 of the Motorola M-Card. The note indicated that the firmware should be updated to the "latest" version. The tech even mentioned 2.65 specifically.

I actually called Tivo support back this morning to see if I could get more specifics on the issue and the tech note... and to see if there would be some way they could publish the information to their site... If I'd known there were possible issues with 2.01 I might have been able to avoid some wasted time and money. To summarize the outcome of today's support call:

* Per the rep, Motorola 02.01 firmware M-Card's are known to have issues, and upgrading to the current version is the way to go if you can.

* The tech note isn't available, and they don't plan on publishing it due to concern that people might mis-interpret the information and jump to the wrong conclusion (incorrectly assume their issue is caused by this problem). The impression I got was that they would prefer to keep the published troubleshooting data very simple (without getting into specific firmware versions), and let phone support folks drill down to the right conclusion.

* The rep indicated that not all 2.01 M-Card users are experiencing this issue. The theory suggested was that there are actually sub-versions of the firmware that are not being exposed in the FW strings... The rep told me it was common for the industry to roll sub versions if a given numeric version number, but that these sub-versions were not reported in the version ID string I see. This sounds odd to me, but what do I know.

* The rep indicated that the number of people experiencing this particular set of 2.01 related issues was actually quite small.

What's actually the true root cause of this problem I don't know. Are there really variations of 2.01 out there... I don't know.

All I know is that I experienced the following issue across multiple Tivo HD units, and two locally issued Motorola 2.01 FW M-Cards:

1) Fairly frequent (daily typically) partial recordings where the a portion of the tail end of a show would not be recorded. The recorded show would be cut short.

2) While watching Live TV the video/audio would go black, the Tivo Channel banner would pop up telling me that there was no channel information, and about 60 seconds later the video/audio would return allong with an updated Tivo Channel banner with the program information refreshed. In the process both Tuners were re-tuned to the channel Tuner 0 had been on. Not a reboot... but the tuner's were being re-tuned/reset.

I concluded that this intermittent Tuner reset (2) was likely to be the cause of my partial recordings (1).

Replacing the M-Card with two Motorola S-Cards does appear to have fixed the issue. In 4+ days I've seen no sign of either 1 or 2.

Hope this helps.


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## spaceboytom (Jan 8, 2006)

I see this exact same problem at least a few times a month, but it appears that I have the "good" firmware version of the M-Card.

CableCARD Status
Manufacturer: Motorola
FW Version: 02.65, 02.01, 03.25
HW Version: 0469927002

Except when my channel goes out and the no channel info banner comes up, the channel is typically tuned back within 5-10 seconds. Both tuners are then tuned to the current channel and recordings stop (partial). It seems to have happened on both SD and HD channels.

So perhaps the problem is not so severe in my case, but it still exists with the firmware I have.

I have Comcast service in Houston, TX


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## perplexed (Dec 13, 2002)

spaceboytom said:


> I see this exact same problem at least a few times a month, but it appears that I have the "good" firmware version of the M-Card.
> 
> CableCARD Status
> Manufacturer: Motorola
> ...


Strange development.

I guess I'll just stick with the two Motorola S-Cards, and hope someone at Tivo gets to the bottom of this.

This is a real problem, but it seems that M-Card FW 2.65 may not be the solution.

I urge anyone having these specific symptoms to contact Tivo support and let them know about their setup.

Hopefully this will get some support/development attention if enough people call in the issue.


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## kberntsen (Jan 26, 2005)

I also have the 2.65 FW and am seeing the problem from time to time.


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## robpgreer (Aug 6, 2007)

So this thread has been running for almost 2 years and nobody has an answer? I'm running a TivoHD and recently switched from Charter to Time Warner. Two months after switching to TW I started having the "Partial" recording problem with shows cutting off at different times (some at only 0:06. Some at 0:20ish). It is VERY frustrating!

I'm running on a Tivo 500GB external HD. 

Does anyone have any fix other than to switch the cable cards?


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## cchan (Apr 17, 2005)

Just thought I'd bump this thread since I just started having this problem this morning and no solution was posted.

I have HD Tivo with Time Warner Cable. Everything was fine for almost 2 years, then this morning I lost every channel except for the unencrypted local channels. I have an M card identical to spaceboytom's:

CableCARD Status
Manufacturer: Motorola
FW Version: 02.65, 02.01, 03.25
HW Version: 0469927002

My encrypted channels show up as Auth:CAD

Does anyone know what CAD means here?


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## kberntsen (Jan 26, 2005)

My problems went away when Comcast moved off the Motorola cards to the Scientific Atlanta cards.


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## seggers (Oct 6, 2008)

cchan said:


> Just thought I'd bump this thread since I just started having this problem this morning and no solution was posted.
> 
> I have HD Tivo with Time Warner Cable. Everything was fine for almost 2 years, then this morning I lost every channel except for the unencrypted local channels. I have an M card identical to spaceboytom's:
> 
> ...


Time Warner Cable, come on down, the price is right....

I have a HD TiVo and 2 S cards from TWC (and what a joy they were to work with), along with a TA as they went SDV here in WNY.

Well, the wife has been moaning about how some of her shows are being cut off, on the HD channels, and that she had to try several times before it would work. I also went in and checked the sw level. We're at the 'D' level. I'm not at home, so I don't have the extact level to hand.

Carrying out a reboot, a power cable pull, resetting CCs and restarting the SDV box have not helped at all. What I have noticed is that both CC will be grey, with the 'no signal' message, along with both defaulting to the same channel once they have been 'tested'.

Looks like a call to TiVo is in order shortly..... Oh joy.

I wish FiOS would get its finger out and lay some fibre my way....

Seggers


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## OHSam2008 (Nov 5, 2008)

Okay...I'm late to the party as usual; however, this issue has NOTHING to do with cable cards. (As much as I'd love to blame Time Warner...LOL) I've had this happen TWICE in the past 7 days and I'm strictly OTA. Both times happened with CBS national feed programs...not local broadcasts. 

Has anyone found a solution to this yet? I love my TiVo and don't want to lose the little guy....


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## dca (Sep 26, 2009)

I have 2 TiVo Series3 DVRs, one with a single "M" cablecard and the other with no cablecard. My cable provider is Comcast. I use both to record programs (but only get HD on the cablecard equipped one, of course).

Both TiVos worked reliably for a long time, but a few months ago BOTH started having this "partial recording" problem. I see the same gray screen issue when I check live tv others have reported here.

Lately I've taken to purchasing complete versions of these partial recordings from Amazon Unbox, but feel pretty silly paying for cable and TiVo service at the same time.


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## dexterslabmi (Jan 24, 2010)

I have had a few new partial recordings and I dont use cable cards... so I believe this to be strictly a tivo issue.


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## juliekaye (Nov 11, 2007)

Just had this happen to me tonight. Time Warner analog cable (so no cable cards). Both tuners were recording as far as I noticed, wasn't paying much attention. Went to watch one of my hour long shows and got 19 minutes of it before it just ended, giving me the option to keep or delete. Info screen says partial recording. When I turned on live tv, completely gray screen and changing the channel up and down did nothing to fix it. Grey screen on every channel I tried. I tried about 10 different channels as well as just leaving it as is to see if it's come back on it's own. It didn't and eventually I just rebooted the Tivo.

The other tuner had recorded everything correctly and was working fine.

This is the first time I've noticed the partial recording but it's not the first time I've had nothing but a grey screen. A few times I've turned the tv on and had 1 tuner working but the other just grey. Doesn't give me the "searching for signal" message, just grey screen on all channels I try. The only way to fix it seems to be rebooting the Tivo.

Only had this Tivo for 2 months now and the grey screen issue has happened in some way or the other 4, maybe 5 times now. Never gone out while watching it but I rarely watch live tv. But tonight was the first time a show I've wanted to watch was affected.


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## RoyK (Oct 22, 2004)

This gray screen issue has been a known bug with the TiVo HD for over a year. TiVo is apparently ignoring it and hoping it will go away or at least the complaints will reduce in number as more cable systems go all digital. I have news for them - it will be years before some systems make the switch.

TiVo support - an oxymoron.


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