# Live streaming some channels on Tivo Mini keep freezing



## Interpol

Has anyone else experienced this?

Have a TiVo Mini connected via MoCA to a Roamio Pro and Time Warner digital cable. Watching recorded content works fine, but when I try to watch Live TV, certain channels will play for 2-3 seconds followed by some kind of error message that flashes on the screen for less than 0.1 seconds (so quickly I can't read what it says), and the picture freezes. It only happens on specific channels, which obviously makes viewing live content on those channels impossible.

Any suggestions on how to fix this?


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## lgnad

Reboot both the mini and the ROAMio?

Have you looked in the networking info to see how healthy the Moca network is?

Edit to add: have you looked at dvr diagnostics?

Do you have a tuning adapter? If so, are the channels that it accesses the ones giving you the trouble?


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## Interpol

lgnad said:


> Reboot both the mini and the ROAMio?


Thanks for this suggestion, I will try this.



> Have you looked in the networking info to see how healthy the Moca network is?
> 
> Edit to add: have you looked at dvr diagnostics?


No, but I should...will do this as well.



> Do you have a tuning adapter? If so, are the channels that it accesses the ones giving you the trouble?


I do have a Cisco tuning adapter connected to the Roamio, but I get this issue on both switched and non-switched digital channels.


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## curiousgeorge

We have a Premiere 4 and a mini, hardwired and the mini locks up at least twice a week. Hate it.


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## wco81

It's not happening every week but it's happened to me a few times.

Recorded programs from the Tivo Roamio Plus play okay but go back to live TV and sometimes it's freezing, other times it's not.

Rebooting (unplugging and plugging the power back in) usually clears it but last night, had to do it twice.

Then it works for a few weeks.

Has anyone reported to Tivo?


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## dotorg

wco81 said:


> It's not happening every week but it's happened to me a few times.
> 
> Recorded programs from the Tivo Roamio Plus play okay but go back to live TV and sometimes it's freezing, other times it's not.
> 
> Rebooting (unplugging and plugging the power back in) usually clears it but last night, had to do it twice.
> 
> Then it works for a few weeks.
> 
> Has anyone reported to Tivo?


I'm getting this same issue fairly regularly on three different Minis. And I've burned through pretty much all the tolerance the family's got for the "new TiVos"... I've explained that hitting record and watching the recording will fix it, but work-arounds aren't family-approved. Because its happening on all my Minis, I'm guessing its actually a Roamio problem, not the Mini.


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## web1b

I haven't got a Mini yet.
They have been out for a long time now and I thought I had waited long enough for them to get the bugs worked out before I purchase, but apparently I need to wait longer.


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## sheshechic

It happened repeatedly on my mini tonight while trying to watch the Auburn game. I can't tell you how made it made me. We were trying to mount a new flat screen in the den and listening to the game. I rebooted and it happened less often but still continued. 

My husband didn't tell me that it happens often until tonight, he also said that it happens on some channels more than others. I'm not sure what to do about this, I'm so tired of fighting with tivos. We just replaced our Premieres with Roamios and minis and I'm not very impressed.


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## MisterTWo

I've had a Mini tied to a Premiere 4 since the initial Mini launch and never had any issues. I just upgraded my Premiere with a Roamio Pro and ran into this issue for the first time last night. I rebooted the Roamio and it started working again, but hopefully Tivo can find this bug and fix it asap!


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## wco81

I haven't had to reboot the Roamio to clear this problem.

Only the Mini.


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## MisterTWo

wco81 said:


> I haven't had to reboot the Roamio to clear this problem.
> 
> Only the Mini.


My issue was the other way around, rebooting the Mini didn't resolve the issue so I rebooted the Roamio Pro and the issue went away.


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## DeltaOne

MisterTWo said:


> My issue was the other way around, rebooting the Mini didn't resolve the issue so I rebooted the Roamio Pro and the issue went away.


Same here, rebooting the Roamio Plus fixed the problem. We've owned TiVo equipment for about four months and this is the first time this has happened.

My first freeze on the Mini was yesterday, in my kitchen. I would change channels and the video would freeze after about 6 to 8 seconds. I left it for a bit and after about ten minutes it started functioning normally.

Today the Mini in the bedroom was freezing. And sometimes I'd change channels and get a black screen. I rebooted the Roamio and the bedroom Mini started functioning normally.


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## jntc

this is very typical and frequent with my roamio and minis as well - they are all going back today for refund

I spoke to another Tivo support rep just a while ago who asked me to put another splitter between the cable feed and Roamio to try and reduce the SNR and PWR (said might be too 'hot')

The splitter reduced the SNR to around 35 and the power to around 88% - so we'll see what happens now.


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## jntc

jntc said:


> this is very typical and frequent with my roamio and minis as well - they are all going back today for refund
> 
> I spoke to another Tivo support rep just a while ago who asked me to put another splitter between the cable feed and Roamio to try and reduce the SNR and PWR (said might be too 'hot')
> 
> The splitter reduced the SNR to around 35 and the power to around 88% - so we'll see what happens now.


Update: Now getting this on many more channels, and a lot of them pixelated out badly. So now maybe my signals are too 'cold'?


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## sldozier

New to the Tivo world, just picked up the Roamio Plus on New Years day, fell in love and purchased a Mini over the weekend. All was well over the weekend, but of course now I'm seeing the freeze about 3 -5 seconds after tuning to a channel. Rebooted the mini, and the issue is still there. I just happen to be recording a couple of programs right now, so I don't want to reboot the Roamio Plus as I'm assuming that rebooting it in the middle of a scheduled recording is probably not a good idea, if I expect to capture the entire scheduled program. But as soon as I get an opportunity, I'll reboot the Roamio Plus and see if that solves the problem. Glad I found this thread.


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## jntc

sldozier said:


> New to the Tivo world, just picked up the Roamio Plus on New Years day, fell in love and purchased a Mini over the weekend. All was well over the weekend, but of course now I'm seeing the freeze about 3 -5 seconds after tuning to a channel. Rebooted the mini, and the issue is still there. I just happen to be recording a couple of programs right now, so I don't want to reboot the Roamio Plus as I'm assuming that rebooting it in the middle of a scheduled recording is probably not a good idea, if I expect to capture the entire scheduled program. But as soon as I get an opportunity, I'll reboot the Roamio Plus and see if that solves the problem. Glad I found this thread.


Let us know how it works out. I still encounter the freezes rather frequently on all three of my mini's. I've rebooted everything about 293,142,471 (+/- 4) times this last month.


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## sldozier

Well it appears that the Roamio Plus reboot cured the ills of the Mini freezing, atleast for the moment. Rebooted it this morning, and then watched about an half hour of TV via the Mini as I got ready for work, no freezes. Checked multiple channels, all was well. Put the Mini in standby until I came home from work. She's been running all evening and so far (crossing fingers) no freezes.


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## mjcxp

I just had this issue for the first time. Every channel would freeze after about 5 seconds. I rebooted my roamio pro and all was well. Is Tivo aware of this issue?


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## blacknoi

So the first day of having my tivo mini (hooked up to a Roamio pro) and something similar happened to me twice.

I was recording the olympics on the roamio and started watching on the mini. Had about 30 minutes of buffer but eventually caught up to live. Once I was at live, maybe 10 minutes later the screen went BLANK / black. I could hit rewind to see the buffer of what was recorded but nothing forward of the freeze (note that the roamio is still successfully recording, just that the mini can't seem to stream any more new content from it).

So pressing the TIVO button, going back to my shows and starting the playback again fixed the issue. Then it cropped up again and had to go through the same process.

This was within the first 5 hours of using the mini so its not giving me a good confidence level.

I'll try rebooting the roamio today to see if it fixes it.

FYI I'm hooked up through ethernet, not moca.


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## mjcxp

blacknoi said:


> So the first day of having my tivo mini (hooked up to a Roamio pro) and something similar happened to me twice.
> 
> I was recording the olympics on the roamio and started watching on the mini. Had about 30 minutes of buffer but eventually caught up to live. Once I was at live, maybe 10 minutes later the screen went BLANK / black. I could hit rewind to see the buffer of what was recorded but nothing forward of the freeze (note that the roamio is still successfully recording, just that the mini can't seem to stream any more new content from it).
> 
> So pressing the TIVO button, going back to my shows and starting the playback again fixed the issue. Then it cropped up again and had to go through the same process.
> 
> This was within the first 5 hours of using the mini so its not giving me a good confidence level.
> 
> I'll try rebooting the roamio today to see if it fixes it.
> 
> FYI I'm hooked up through ethernet, not moca.


I have two Tivo minis. The one that is connected via MOCA has never frozen but I rarely use it. The one connected via ethernet has this problem about once a week. After about 5 seconds it will freeze until I change the channel and the problem occurs again in another 5 seconds. This only occurs when watching live TV... If I am watching a recorded show the Tivo does not freeze during playback. Yesterday the mini displayed a black display and would not respond to any remote inputs. Once i reboot it everything was back to normal.


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## blacknoi

To follow up on my earlier post, after the reboot i was good for about another week.

Then again yesterday, I was watching 'live' technically, but the roamio was recording more olympics, i had burned through all the delay I had and was watching live.

All of a sudden the picture froze again as if the stream just stopped. I could REW through the buffer I had already watched, but couldnt move forward.

Going back to the now playing list, and picking the same recording I was just watching fixed it for the rest of the night.

I'm at a loss as to whats happening.

No error on the mini, just a frozen picture at some point that was cured by starting the recording over and FF'ing back to live.

As my house is wired for ethernet I have no intention of using Moca... at least not yet.

But as someone else mentioned above, the wife has only so much tolerance. Normal tivo's "just work" all the time. Any deviation from this perfect track record has her asking me why I "upgraded" to a less stable solution.

I'm ready to consider getting a 2nd roamio and take the mini back at this rate. I need stability.


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## GoodHomer

Another data point: Just got a new Roamio Basic and (2) TV Minis on Ethernet here. Had the same problem as the OP (albeit I didn't notice the brief error message): all live TV channels froze within a few seconds. Power cycling the Mini seems to have fixed it for now, but this is concerning.

Did you end up replacing the Mini?


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## bparker

With all the mini issues, am I better off to get another Premiere? It's more expensive of course, but possibly more reliable?


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## CrispyCritter

bparker said:


> With all the mini issues, am I better off to get another Premiere? It's more expensive of course, but possibly more reliable?


Not a chance.

The Minis have had far fewer reported problems here than the Premieres. They are much simpler beasts. Many of the problems here are network problems, which will equally affect the two machines.

There are always a few hardware DOA and other hardware issues with any electronics, and I would guess that a large percentage of them get reported here (for all TiVo models). Don't get scared off by those Mini reports - they really are outnumbered heavily by those without problems (certainly hundreds are owned by TIVo community members, and possibly thousands.)


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## rrullo

This is complete speculation on my part but the "freezing" just started to occur when my Mini had a software update. When I manually power off and on the Mini after an update my problem seems to resolve itself. Again, pure speculation, but maybe someone else noticed it.


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## GoodHomer

Might be jinxing myself but I haven't seen this since consistently using a Logitech remote that puts the Mini into sleep mode when turning off the system (the Logitech database has the Power Toggle code for the TiVO Mini). I understand the Mini eventually goes to sleep anyways, so this may not be related but wanted to let others know they could try something similar if they are having freezing problems.


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## Caseman171

I'm not the best with networking and I was hoping that someone could assist me in assigning a static IP to my roamio Pro and two minis. I am having the same issue as listed but both my live TV and recorded is freezing every frame or will not connect. My Netflix and internet options work fine. I have been at this attempting to fix for 30+ days. 


So far I've been getting the V112 error and the "network too slow" error. I have Comcast for ISP, Motorola DOCSIS 3.0 modem 348mbps, netgear nighthawk router, POE filter entering house, 2ghz splitters, brand new coax lines, cat 5e or 6 Ethernet - my internet is 25mpbs down and 10mpbs up.. Seems to be healthy. But the TiVo network does not.

Right now I have to reset the roamio pro every 45 min to have the minis connect. The pro works perfectly. Any other suggestions would be welcomed.. Im committed to making this thing work!

Thanks for your help


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## dhoward

Has there been any solution to this freezing problem? My mini does this occasionally and if I do nothing the next day it is fine. When it acts up I just watch a per-recorded show and then eventually it fixes itself.


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## GoodHomer

FWIW, I haven't seen the freeze issue since I changed my Logitech remote to "power off" both the DVR and the Mini when not in use (note the DVR can still record and stream shows/live TV in that state). May not be related at all, but my thinking is that "cycling" the DVR and/or not leaving the TiVO mini running for hours before it automatically goes into standby mode is enough to keep it out of this bad state.


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## Neilwltr

Have the same issue here is what I have been able to determine.
On the Roamio Plus if you watch a recorded show then the Mini will freeze, I only have one Mini so I can only talk about that.

If the Roamio is in TV mode, not playing a recorded show then the Mini doesn't freeze up....

TIVO - please address this issue course other folks out there that have multiple Mini's please post if this is true for all Minis in other words leave your Roamio on live TV and then try watching a taped show on multiple Mini's and see what happens.

thanks.


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## waynomo

Had this problem on a recently installed Mini. Any live TV channel that I tuned too would play for a second or two and then freeze. I did a cold restart and all seems well right now, but it's not like the Mini hadn't been restarted several times already for different reasons. (Keeping my fingers crossed that this will fix it because my wife won't tolerate this for very long as it's on the kitchen TV that she watches all the time.)

The mini is on a MOCA connection. I have Verizon FIOS with their standard Actiontec moden/Router.


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## soobaerodude

waynomo said:


> Had this problem on a recently installed Mini. Any live TV channel that I tuned too would play for a second or two and then freeze. I did a cold restart and all seems well right now, but it's not like the Mini hadn't been restarted several times already for different reasons. (Keeping my fingers crossed that this will fix it because my wife won't tolerate this for very long as it's on the kitchen TV that she watches all the time.)
> 
> The mini is on a MOCA connection. I have Verizon FIOS with their standard Actiontec moden/Router.


What revision of the Actiontec router do you have? You need at least a Rev. E or higher in order to have a MoCa 1.1 since the Mini is also MoCa 1.1


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## waynomo

soobaerodude said:


> What revision of the Actiontec router do you have? You need at least a Rev. E or higher in order to have a MoCa 1.1 since the Mini is also MoCa 1.1


Revision F. 
(I've been tempted to upgrade)


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## wco81

It's not the networking setup.

It's the **** firmware that Tivo still hasn't fixed.


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## wardo99

Taking with TIVO support it sounds like the main issue is because the only device that understand the TV signals is my DVR, the live signal has to go to the DVR, it then has to decoded and sent back to the Mini. So my networking is in the basement and my DVR and Mini are upstairs. The signal comes upstairs, go to my DVR, gets translated, it is sent back downstairs to the moca box, and sent back up to the Mini. All trying to take place real time. When watching a recorded show it has already been translated so the DVR only has to send the signal to the moca and back to the mini. It just doesn't seem that well designed and the Mini should have a tuner to handle this issue.
I have found that rather than reset my whole system I can go into the mini menu, select network stings and select talk to TIVO. That resets it for about as long and a full reset does. I also found that if I change my wide screen TV settings to only show a standard picture, the mini doesn't seem to have to take in as much data and it doesn't stall. Then we are back to watching a square image on a wide screen TV. 

No good solutions for this problem.


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## justinmiller621

Are people still experiencing this? I'm still seeing it. Not super often though. Usually a reboot of the Roamio fixes things, though once or twice recently, I've had the mini completely lock up. 

I went to take a look at a mini in another room and it's perfectly mine (live tv does not freeze). As a test, I swapped the problematic one with the working one and it played live TV without issue.

I almost hoped that it still froze up, at least that would point to a hardware problem with the mini which is cheaper to replace if necessary. But it didn't.

Any thoughts/updates on this issue?


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## krkaufman

justinmiller621 said:


> Are people still experiencing this?


Can you provide more information on your setup?

How are your TiVo devices networked?

Who is your TV provider? Do you have a tuning adapter?


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## justinmiller621

All boxes used to be MoCa, though I recently switched the one problematic mini over to ethernet. One note though -- I was seeing these problems with both moca and ethernet, so it wasn't that change that was the culprit.

So to be clear:

Roamio -- moca
Mini with issues -- ethernet
Mini without issues -- moca

Again, I want to stress that that change to ethernet was recent -- I was seeing problems long before that with moca.

I'm with Verizon Fios. No tuning adapter.


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## krkaufman

justinmiller621 said:


> Roamio -- moca
> Mini with issues -- ethernet
> Mini without issues -- moca


If you're up for it, you'll probably want to give a full debrief on how your devices are interconnected. See the following post for the sort of information needed: http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=10733254


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## krkaufman

I'm a bit confused. If you switch both Minis, and switch their network connection methods, as needed, does the freezing problem continue? If so, on which Mini or at which location?


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## justinmiller621

I'll post more information about my network later on when I have some time.

One of the minis has had the freezing problem. The other has not, but I would caveat that by saying that the one we use 99% of the time is the one where we've seen problems. So statistically, that makes sense. While I've never experienced issues with the other one, it doesn't mean that it would't have problems if we used it more.

So the problematic scenario is

Mini1 in the family room has had issues.
Mini2 in the sun room has NOT had issues.

I swapped the two. Since the swap (only been a couple days), Mini2 in the family room has been fine. I haven't tested Mini1 in the new location for more than 10-15 minutes since, as I mention above, we're rarely in that room.

This is all without a reboot of the Roamio, oddly enough.

So I'm wondering if there aren't two different issues here. I used to experience the channel freezing issue others in this thread have experienced and a reboot of the Roamio fixes.

Past week or two, I've experienced a couple complete freezes of the mini that require a reboot of the mini itself.

It's this latter problem that's making me wonder if I'm having a hardware failure.


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## shaunbrodie

Stubborn Mini Lock-up this morning.

I too have had sporadic lock-ups of one of my Mini's and I can not quite catch a fault scenario which triggers it although I do recall a few times it occurring if I was watching small segments of several different recorded programs sequentially and then switched back to Live TV.

As others have reported, once the lock-up occurs, I can typically still navigate to the TiVo menu and watch recorded programming but not live TV. The only way to restore Live TV functionality is to pull the power plug, wait a few seconds for the TiVo mini to loose any residual power storage and then plug the power back in.

This morning, I had turned on my entertainment system which was playing a music channel from the Mini and switched to the local news channel when the Mini suddenly froze-up. I tried the usual power reset procedure but this time, it locked up again as soon as live TV became visible. Tried the procedure again but this time, the HDMI video feed disappeared after the normal "TiVo is booting up screen" - I had a gray speckled screen which is sometimes observed if you have a bad HDMI cable. I rebooted the Mini two more times an then finally rebooted my Yamaha AV receiver and then the video was finally back to normal. (just what I wanted to do while trying to get out the door to go to work!)

TiVo recently sent out an email describing new features which are apart of a software update so I don't know if the Roamio Plus perhaps experienced an update last night; I could definitely discern network problems if the Roamio re-booted and the Minis did not register correctly on the local MoCa network. 

I have three Minis and one Roamio Plus; the Mini which is experiencing the problem is the unit which gets the most family interaction which means it will switch from Live TV to Recorded Programs and sometimes Streaming content as well but mostly, it is used for watching Live TV and Recorded programming on a daily basis. I have not experienced the lock-up on the other two Minis but they experience sporadic use throughout any given week.

Its amazing that this problem has been occurring for so long; I hope with enough feedback from various TiVo users we can catch what is causing this problem. I wish I had the resources in place to use something like Wireshark computer software and sniff the Network connection once the fault scenario occurs.

Love my TiVo system but blast, this problem is annoying and always appears to occur at the most un-opportunistic time.


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## thyname

I am having the same issue with the Mini I just purchased last weekend. First time I had this was yesterday. Everything is fine playing recorded content.

Tivo Bolt downstairs is connected via MoCA.

Tivo Mini upstairs is directly connected to the Verizon FIOS Quantum Gateway router, who provides the MoCA capability for the Bolt.

Anybody found a solution to this?


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