# Partial recording -- total head-scratcher



## kmkoch (Jul 25, 2007)

So... tonight our S3, which was recording the 2-hour episode of 24 for the full 2 hours, according to the front display, apparently only "kept" the first 26 minutes of the recording. I am at a complete loss.

24 was recording from 7-9 PM on FOX, and we started watching it while it was still recording (I happened to notice that the Duration showed "1:53 (in progress)" in the Now Playing info when we started watching). However, we noticed once we started watching that the green of the progress meter made it look like the show had stopped recording quite a bit earlier than that. Indeed, we got to the end of the 26-minute mark and we were "out of show" (and at this point the Now Playing info showed Duration of "0:26 (partial)".

How I Met Your Mother recorded fine from 7:30-8, and Heroes recorded fine from 8-9.

We have NEVER had a problem remotely like this... anyone know what might be going on?


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## ryanrk (Oct 13, 2006)

kmkoch said:


> So... tonight our S3, which was recording the 2-hour episode of 24 for the full 2 hours, according to the front display, apparently only "kept" the first 26 minutes of the recording. I am at a complete loss.
> 
> 24 was recording from 7-9 PM on FOX, and we started watching it while it was still recording (I happened to notice that the Duration showed "1:53 (in progress)" in the Now Playing info when we started watching). However, we noticed once we started watching that the green of the progress meter made it look like the show had stopped recording quite a bit earlier than that. Indeed, we got to the end of the 26-minute mark and we were "out of show" (and at this point the Now Playing info showed Duration of "0:26 (partial)".
> 
> ...


I had the exact same problem the other day. I have a manual season pass that records both Daily Show and Stephen Colbert every night. Last Thursday (2/26) it only recorded the first like 20 minutes or so. May have been 26minutes, I didn't pay that close attention. All i know is it wasn't on an hour or half past like it had to change stations or something.

I was pretty Puzzled myself. Jon Stewart show wasn't even completely over 

Ryan


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## RustySTL (Feb 27, 2007)

I'm having similar issues since the latest update, but only on one of HD TiVo's. Sometimes it will work fine and record the entire show, but most of the time I'm lucky if it records 15 minutes of the shows.

I've been on the phone with TiVo, and like most phone support, they didn't know what the problem is and never heard of this happening before.

Unfortunately it's on the TiVo that has a lifetime subscription on it.


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## stoneyb (Sep 20, 2006)

kmkoch said:


> So... tonight our S3, which was recording the 2-hour episode of 24 for the full 2 hours, according to the front display, apparently only "kept" the first 26 minutes of the recording. I am at a complete loss. ...


This was the first symptom I experienced due to my external drive slowly dying. Eventually it got to the point where nothing I recorded on one channel would complete. Other channels were nearly always fine. That made me think it was the cable card or signal level.

After much folderol, I determined that it was the external drive. I ended up tossing it and replacing the internal drive with a 1TB. All is good now.


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## kmkoch (Jul 25, 2007)

stoneyb said:


> This was the first symptom I experienced due to my external drive slowly dying. Eventually it got to the point where nothing I recorded on one channel would complete. Other channels were nearly always fine. That made me think it was the cable card or signal level.
> 
> After much folderol, I determined that it was the external drive. I ended up tossing it and replacing the internal drive with a 1TB. All is good now.


Well, I did a kickstart 54 (basically a chkdisk, from what I can tell) last night and all of the tests passed. We have not even upgraded the hard drive -- have never cracked the case open on this Tivo S3. And we have no external drive.

*sigh*

The mystery continues.

Since the front display light indicated it was recording the full 2 hours (and we did see the Duration of "1:53 (in progress)" in Now Playing), I suspect the full program is on the hard drive. How frustrating to not be able to get to it!


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## gibbens (Jun 15, 2005)

Oddly enough, I had almost the exact same scenario going on. My Series 3 recorded Heroes and How I Met Your Mother just fine last night, but when I went to watch the 2 hour 24 ep, it only picked up an hour and 15 minutes. This also happened with an episode of Terminator Sarah Connor Chronicles a couple of weeks ago. It stopped recording after 45 minutes (or lost the last 15) for no apparent reason. Guess I'll have to go to Hulu to catch what I missed.


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## dolfer (Nov 3, 2000)

If you guys recently connected a Tuning Adapter that might be your problem... My unit periodically "reboots" and the reboot will cause recordings to fail. 

After the reboot dust has settled, your unit would be able to record the next scheduled program. But it won't resume recording the program that was being recorded at the time of the reboot.


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## gibbens (Jun 15, 2005)

No Tuning Adapter on mine. And I watched Heroes "live" as it recorded (this would have been during the 2nd hour of the 2 hour 24 ep), and it never restarted.


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## DeWitt (Jun 30, 2004)

After an upgrade if something flaky like this happens, you might consider deleting and recreating the season pass.


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## abeagler (Sep 21, 2006)

Lost two recordings in the last week, partials for zero duration. Both on NBC. Very annoying.


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## kmkoch (Jul 25, 2007)

dolfer said:


> If you guys recently connected a Tuning Adapter that might be your problem... My unit periodically "reboots" and the reboot will cause recordings to fail.
> 
> After the reboot dust has settled, your unit would be able to record the next scheduled program. But it won't resume recording the program that was being recorded at the time of the reboot.


Yeah, no tuning adapter on mine either. No recent changes, except (from what I read here) probably a software update (to 11b) from Tivo.


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## BrightestBear (Mar 4, 2009)

This happened to me, too! Twice with _24_, and once with _Dollhouse_. I have a year-old external hard drive from Western Digital but no tuning adapter.

I have to tell you, it's embarrassing to call my friend with a cable company DVR to see if he'll save _24_ for me since my TiVo screwed up (especially in light of all the bragging I do on my TiVo).


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## jagz27 (Mar 21, 2007)

stoneyb said:


> This was the first symptom I experienced due to my external drive slowly dying. Eventually it got to the point where nothing I recorded on one channel would complete. Other channels were nearly always fine. That made me think it was the cable card or signal level.
> 
> After much folderol, I determined that it was the external drive. I ended up tossing it and replacing the internal drive with a 1TB. All is good now.


I was experiencing the same exact partial recording problems and I came to a similar conclusion with my WD DVR expander.
What solved it for me was to disconnect the expander. Reformat my TiVo to operate without it. Then re-add the WD DVR expander back on. (Essentially reformatting it).
This seems to have solved the problem for me. (Yes, it did involve losing all my recordings. Luckily i didn't have much.)


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## RustySTL (Feb 27, 2007)

jagz27 said:


> I was experiencing the same exact partial recording problems and I came to a similar conclusion with my WD DVR expander.
> What solved it for me was to disconnect the expander. Reformat my TiVo to operate without it. Then re-add the WD DVR expander back on. (Essentially reformatting it).
> This seems to have solved the problem for me. (Yes, it did involve losing all my recordings. Luckily i didn't have much.)


That's a thought I had, but I'm holding that as a last resort for now.


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## reneg (Jun 19, 2002)

I'm having a partial recording problem with Crossing Jordan reruns on AETVHD. It is the only series for me that is having problems, so I am doubtful that it is a hard drive problem. It seems that about one episode a week is getting a partial recording, sometimes 1 minute, sometimes 9, it varies. Nothing shows up in the recording history until I delete the recording and then it just tells me I deleted it (duh). I had this set up to record as a wish list, "Crossing Jordan * HD", but I just changed it today to record as a season pass. We'll see if it makes a difference.


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## kmkoch (Jul 25, 2007)

So, today I called Tivo customer support to describe my problem. The customer support rep quickly (and entirely incorrectly, to my mind) diagnosed this as an out-of-hard-drive-space error. She told me to:

1) turn off Tivo suggestions;
2) change the recording quality from Best to Medium or Basic;
3) delete some of my Season Passes (I have 18);
4) delete some of the shows from my Now Playing List.

I pointed out that I have other shows in the Now Playing List that would have been lower priority that had not been deleted (Tivo suggestions, older shows with the notation "This recording may be deleted in order to make space for other recordings")... and I pointed out that the entire show HADN'T been deleted, just part of it.

I felt very much as if I was talking to a wall.

Am I crazy? It seems abundantly clear to me that it was NOT a hard drive space issue...


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## reneg (Jun 19, 2002)

No idea if you are crazy or not, but it's not a hard drive space issue.

So I tried to record the same episode of Crossing Jordan twice today at different times (7AM & 1PM CST) and got a partial recording (45ish seconds) on both recordings. Makes me think that Tivo is barfing on something in the program stream. Going to set up recording both episodes each day it's on for both of my Tivo HDs is see what happens next.

My money is on bug in the TiVo software.


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## RustySTL (Feb 27, 2007)

I doubt that it is a space issue also, but whatever it is, it started with the latest update. My drives came back without any errors after running the SMART test.

I've seen a few posts about signals being too strong, so last night I completely disconnected my cable and tried to make some OTA recordings. Same issues as before. Either it records part of the show, or it will freeze up and go blank when watching a live show. If I change channels, it will work again for a few minutes and then it's right back where it was.

I even have issues with the menus at times where they freeze up and it will sit for a few minutes before it does what I just asked it to do.

I do have a DVR Expander, which tonight I will resort to removing and setting up without it. I can find most of my recordings online to watch later. If it's still doing it, I'll just move the Expander to my other TiVo HD and make it my main one. At least that won't give TiVo support any more excuses.

Right now this TiVo is useless to me so I'll try anything.


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## gibbens (Jun 15, 2005)

Just some additional info given all of the expander talk -- in my case, I have no expander. Just the Series3 box without any external storage. I did restart it yesterday, though. We'll see if that is of any help in the short term.


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## reneg (Jun 19, 2002)

Another data point. I had one partial recording happen today. I was recording the same show on two different Tivos. We had a power glitch and the lights flickered. The UPS on my computer triggered on the power glitch. I don't have UPSes on my TiVos (yet). I didn't think anything of it at time. Later on when I checked the recordings, one recorded just fine and the other had a partial recording. I checked the time of the failure on the UPS and it matched the ending point of the partial recording. Neither TiVo rebooted because I still have the time in the lower right corner from S-P-S-9-S backdoor. Now I'm wondering if my partial recordings problem may be the result of power glitches. I have a spare UPS that I can put on one of the TiVos to see if that helps any.


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## jonginear (May 30, 2003)

I've been having partial recording issues for about a month now and can't say for sure if it is related to any software revisions. The symptoms are that while watching a show that is recording there are frequent (every minute or more than 1 per minute) audio drop outs and then some pixilation as well. It makes watching the show very difficult. This problem escalates to the point that the picture freezes. When not attended, the TiVo can show that it is recording a show (red light is on) and it is in fact recording a black screen which equals no recording. I've caught this in the act and found that stopping the recording and then trying to watch live shows a very stuttery, unwatchable picture. 

Here's the catch. I have 2) S2 Tivo's, 2) S3 TiVo's, and a TiVo HD. Only the S3's have cable cards and they both have 2) S cards each. No cards in the HD. The HD never screws up and it only records basic cable and off air HD. 

My trouble shooting from trolling other threads led me to look at the following:
Go to-- Messages and settings,settings, cable card devices, configure 1 or 2 (doesn't matter you need to do both anyway), DVR Diagnostics:
Check the following-- RS corrected, RS uncorrected, and Time since tune start. 
From what I've read the RS corrected is the number of times a special algorithm was engaged to correct a bad data byte or packet of data. The RS uncorrected is the number of times the algorithm failed to make the correction. This is significant in relation to the time since the last tune (or the tuner locked onto that particular channel). A very high uncorrected count in relation to time since tune shows that you are getting a poor signal which in my case is evidenced by the drop outs, pixilation and failed recordings. 
I have 1 S3 that records mostly ABC and CBS. The other S3 records NBC and FOX. This eliminates a lot of supersized and overrun show conflicts, but it also means that the tuners stay locked on a particular channel for a long time. 
I have been able to successfully resolve every partial recording episode and poor quality watching event live by changing the tuner to a different channel and then changing back to the original channel. Basicaly just reseting the tuner, flushing out the crap or whatever fixes the problem. This can't solve your unattended recording failures but it may shed some light on what may be causing the issue. 
I've got a Cox guy coming out tomorrow to check signal levels but I don't think that's the issue. All channels seem to run between 85 and 95 on the level test. I'll post back if there's something of note after the visit.

Jon


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## RustySTL (Feb 27, 2007)

RustySTL said:


> I doubt that it is a space issue also, but whatever it is, it started with the latest update. My drives came back without any errors after running the SMART test.
> 
> I've seen a few posts about signals being too strong, so last night I completely disconnected my cable and tried to make some OTA recordings. Same issues as before. Either it records part of the show, or it will freeze up and go blank when watching a live show. If I change channels, it will work again for a few minutes and then it's right back where it was.
> 
> ...


An update:

I removed the DVR Expander and set up the TiVo HD to run without it on Friday and so far it's been recording everything.

Previously I had partial recordings and sometimes when watching live TV, the screen would go black.

I'll end up reinstalling the DVR Expander and see if it still works, but I want to give a few days without it to make sure it's going to keep working.


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## kmkoch (Jul 25, 2007)

Last night I deleted the 0:26 partial recording of 24. Then I went into the Recently Deleted Items folder and looked at it -- now it was showing Duration 2:00. (Recovering the program just restored it to the Now Playing List as a 0:26 partial recording.)

Anyone know if this is "normal" S3 behavior?


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## rickws3 (Jun 17, 2007)

Funny, I had a partial recording of 24 also, approx 1:15 (I don't recall exactly). I've never had this happen before. 24 is a popular recording of course, but I wonder if there is something about particular shows triggering this?


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

I'm also having this issue. I have an expander and TA but otherwise my TivoHD is stock. For those of you who have divorced your expander and reported no problems, can you please comment on if you've continued to have no issues? I don't mind divorcing but I am hoping to get a bit more confidence that it might help first.

Thanks!


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## RustySTL (Feb 27, 2007)

BrianAZ said:


> I'm also having this issue. I have an expander and TA but otherwise my TivoHD is stock. For those of you who have divorced your expander and reported no problems, can you please comment on if you've continued to have no issues? I don't mind divorcing but I am hoping to get a bit more confidence that it might help first.
> 
> Thanks!


I removed my expander and now my TiVo works fine.

Today I reconnected the DVR expander and I started having the same issues again, partial recordings, TiVO freezing up.

So I removed it again, and the TiVo is fine again.

So I guess there is an issue with the expander (still strange it came up only after the 11.b update). I'm not sure how to fix it without buying a new expander or hope that it was a bug in the tivo update and it gets fixed someday.


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## stark (Dec 31, 2003)

I also had a partial recording of 24 that was about 1:15 in length. It's the only issue I've seen so far.

I have a S3 with a DVR Expander.


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

RustySTL said:


> I removed my expander and now my TiVo works fine.
> 
> Today I reconnected the DVR expander and I started having the same issues again, partial recordings, TiVO freezing up.
> 
> ...


Thanks Rusty! I will go ahead with the expander removal tomorrow and see what happens. Certainly sounds like 11.b broke something related to expanders.


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## EVizzle (Feb 13, 2005)

gibbens said:


> Oddly enough, I had almost the exact same scenario going on. My Series 3 recorded Heroes and How I Met Your Mother just fine last night, but when I went to watch the 2 hour 24 ep, it only picked up an hour and 15 minutes. This also happened with an episode of Terminator Sarah Connor Chronicles a couple of weeks ago. It stopped recording after 45 minutes (or lost the last 15) for no apparent reason. Guess I'll have to go to Hulu to catch what I missed.


Identical problem for me, 1:15 minutes in! No tuning adapter, no issues ever before. I do have the MyDVR Expander attached.


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## RustySTL (Feb 27, 2007)

BrianAZ said:


> Thanks Rusty! I will go ahead with the expander removal tomorrow and see what happens. Certainly sounds like 11.b broke something related to expanders.


Let me know if that helps.

I was going to hook my expander up to my computer to see if there were any problems with it, but I don't have an easy way to hook up an esata drive to it. I just want to rule out that the expander is bad.


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

Tivo support indicated to me that their call volume on this issue indicates it is expander-related. They recommended a divorce to me as well. I prepped my wife last night for the loss of her shows. I should be able to do it this evening. I also asked Tivo Support if there is an investigation into the software as I can't imagine everyone's expanders all decided to up and break at the same time. Will keep you posted on that.


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## Tkilmer (Dec 25, 2003)

This sounds like my issue too. Ever since the recent updates, my TiVo HD has been having lots of trouble. I only record OTA and I have a WD Expander. Right now I am trying a delete of program information, but it sounds like this won't work. Last week I tried just deleting thumb ratings and suggestions to no avail. My wife is going to be pissed losing all her shows if I need to divorce the Expander. 

Sounds like one person had success bringing the Expander back in after a format. This sounds like the software update screwed up how Expander's are managed. Which explains why my problems seem to be getting worse over time.

Has anyone tried a clear and delete anything with the Expander attached?


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

BrianAZ said:


> Tivo support indicated to me that their call volume on this issue indicates it is expander-related. They recommended a divorce to me as well. I prepped my wife last night for the loss of her shows. I should be able to do it this evening. I also asked Tivo Support if there is an investigation into the software as I can't imagine everyone's expanders all decided to up and break at the same time. Will keep you posted on that.


Ok, I did the divorce. So far so good but it's only been a couple hours. Will need to give it a few days to be sure.


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## Tkilmer (Dec 25, 2003)

I did the divorce last night and my problems so far have gone away.


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## BrightestBear (Mar 4, 2009)

Any updates from those who divorced and remarried their expanders? Is everything still working smoothly? I don't want to lose all my saved programs if the problems start up again afterward, so I'd love to hear how that solution is still working for everyone.


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## RustySTL (Feb 27, 2007)

BrightestBear said:


> Any updates from those who divorced and remarried their expanders? Is everything still working smoothly? I don't want to lose all my saved programs if the problems start up again afterward, so I'd love to hear how that solution is still working for everyone.


I divorced the expander, let it go for a couple of days and everything was fine. I then remarried the expander and it started almost immediately with partial recordings and black screens, so I divorced it again.

Right now I'm not using my expander at all. I'll probably wait it out until they come up with an update.


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## BrightestBear (Mar 4, 2009)

RustySTL said:


> I divorced the expander, let it go for a couple of days and everything was fine. I then remarried the expander and it started almost immediately with partial recordings and black screens, so I divorced it again.
> 
> Right now I'm not using my expander at all. I'll probably wait it out until they come up with an update.


Well, I'm glad I asked! I would've been pretty pissed if I dumped everything and had the same problems pop back up.

Have others had the same experience?


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## jagz27 (Mar 21, 2007)

I divorced + re-married my expander about 2 weeks ago. I've had no problems since.
(Though I did not wait to re-marry my expander after divorcing it.)


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

BrightestBear said:


> Any updates from those who divorced and remarried their expanders? Is everything still working smoothly? I don't want to lose all my saved programs if the problems start up again afterward, so I'd love to hear how that solution is still working for everyone.


My divorce has fixed my problems 100%. This is definitely a code issue impacting expander communication. Now, I'm thinking that if I re-attach my expander, my problems will resurface. I think I'll wait to see if some other folks try this. I think I've seen one example where the problems came back and one where they have not.


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## BrightestBear (Mar 4, 2009)

Well, I finally called TiVo about this. The CSR said the update probably pushed a failing hard drive over the edge, so he didn't predict that a software fix would be forthcoming. His only recommendation was to divorce the expander and see if the TiVo works without it. If it does, he said it's the expander hard drive that's failed.


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## blueharmony (Nov 18, 2008)

BrightestBear said:


> Well, I finally called TiVo about this. The CSR said the update probably pushed a failing hard drive over the edge, so he didn't predict that a software fix would be forthcoming. His only recommendation was to divorce the expander and see if the TiVo works without it. If it does, he said it's the expander hard drive that's failed.


This is an incredibly bogus answers from Tivo. As another poster pointed out earlier in this thread, how could all of these expanders go bad at the same time. Ridiculous.


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## BrightestBear (Mar 4, 2009)

blueharmony said:


> This is an incredibly bogus answers from Tivo. As another poster pointed out earlier in this thread, how could all of these expanders go bad at the same time. Ridiculous.


I know. I tried to point that out, but you know how it goes. I asked if the update had possibly changed how the TiVo and the expander communicate, and he said no way, that was programmed in a different blah-blah-blah-explanation-I-didn't-really-follow. He said there was no way that was the problem.

Frustrating.


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## RustySTL (Feb 27, 2007)

BrightestBear said:


> Well, I finally called TiVo about this. The CSR said the update probably pushed a failing hard drive over the edge, so he didn't predict that a software fix would be forthcoming. His only recommendation was to divorce the expander and see if the TiVo works without it. If it does, he said it's the expander hard drive that's failed.


Did you run any of the SMART tests on the drive when it was connected to the TiVo? I did and it passd all of the tests, so I don't see how the update pushed a failing drive over the edge. If so, isn't that due to the software, not the drive?

If the drives have this high of a failing rate, I won't get another expander, if I want to upgrade, I'll add a larger internal drive.

I don't care for TiVo's support. I always get the feeling that they are just reading off a computer screen and really don't know what's wrong or how to really fix it.


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## BrightestBear (Mar 4, 2009)

RustySTL said:


> Did you run any of the SMART tests on the drive when it was connected to the TiVo? I did and it passd all of the tests, so I don't see how the update pushed a failing drive over the edge. If so, isn't that due to the software, not the drive?
> 
> If the drives have this high of a failing rate, I won't get another expander, if I want to upgrade, I'll add a larger internal drive.
> 
> I don't care for TiVo's support. I always get the feeling that they are just reading off a computer screen and really don't know what's wrong or how to really fix it.


Oh, I haven't disconnected the expander. I have way too much stuff on there I haven't watched yet that I'm just putting up with the partial recordings and thanking the Internet Gods for Hulu so I can pick up where my TiVo left off. Once we've finished the "must watch" shows, then we'll consider monkeying with it.

I haven't done a SMART test, but I'll definitely do so before my next call to TiVo support.


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## BrightestBear (Mar 4, 2009)

All right, I have literally tried to run the Kickstart 54/SMART test a dozen times, and I can't get my TiVo to go into that mode.

I swear, I'm entering "54" before the amber light blinks off. What am I doing wrong? I keep ending up back at TiVo Central, even though I'm following the instructions to a T: http://www.tivo.com/setupandsupport/technicalsupport/compatibilityhelp/DVR_Expander_Troubleshooting_Generic.html


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

BrightestBear said:


> All right, I have literally tried to run the Kickstart 54/SMART test a dozen times, and I can't get my TiVo to go into that mode.
> 
> I swear, I'm entering "54" before the amber light blinks off. What am I doing wrong? I keep ending up back at TiVo Central, even though I'm following the instructions to a T: http://www.tivo.com/setupandsupport/technicalsupport/compatibilityhelp/DVR_Expander_Troubleshooting_Generic.html


Just to confirm since you don't mention it, you're seeing both an amber *AND *a red light right? After holding down Pause for 2 min as soon as it powers on?


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

blueharmony said:


> This is an incredibly bogus answers from Tivo. As another poster pointed out earlier in this thread, how could all of these expanders go bad at the same time. Ridiculous.


I just may try to RMA my drive. What the heck right? It's not as if I'm using it right now. If I RMA it, and the new one does the same thing.. then what's Tivo going to say?


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## BrightestBear (Mar 4, 2009)

BrianAZ said:


> Just to confirm since you don't mention it, you're seeing both an amber *AND *a red light right? After holding down Pause for 2 min as soon as it powers on?


Actually, no. I restart it, hold down the pause button, all four lights come on, then they turn off, then the amber light turns on and I quickly release the pause button and enter 54 before the amber light goes out. No love.


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

So Tivo has gotten back to me and indicated that for those customers who reported this issue, divorced their expander (and no longer had the issue) and then replaced the expander, they have indicated that their issues have not returned. I'm going to look into RMA'ing my expander and will post my results.


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## DeWitt (Jun 30, 2004)

BrightestBear said:


> Actually, no. I restart it, hold down the pause button, all four lights come on, then they turn off, then the amber light turns on and I quickly release the pause button and enter 54 before the amber light goes out. No love.


Here is the page on the Tivo support site that details the exact procedure. It is different for Tivo HD and the S3.

http://www.tivo.com/setupandsupport...elp/DVR_Expander_Troubleshooting_Generic.html


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## BrightestBear (Mar 4, 2009)

DeWitt said:


> Here is the page on the Tivo support site that details the exact procedure. It is different for Tivo HD and the S3.
> 
> http://www.tivo.com/setupandsupport...elp/DVR_Expander_Troubleshooting_Generic.html


Believe me, I know. I've followed it exactly literally two dozen times, and I cannot. Get it. To work.

It's OK. I'm assuming it's the expander and not the TiVo that's giving me trouble. I'm going to divorce the expander as soon as we finish the "must watches" on it. Hopefully, that'll work.


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

BrianAZ said:


> So Tivo has gotten back to me and indicated that for those customers who reported this issue, divorced their expander (and no longer had the issue) and then replaced the expander, they have indicated that their issues have not returned. I'm going to look into RMA'ing my expander and will post my results.


My warranty expired in January . Really need to put some thought into whether this is worth the $120 for a new drive or not. May pick one up at Best Buy, run it for a week to see if the problems return or not. At least I'd be able to return it if the issues do return.


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## RustySTL (Feb 27, 2007)

BrianAZ said:


> My warranty expired in January . Really need to put some thought into whether this is worth the $120 for a new drive or not. May pick one up at Best Buy, run it for a week to see if the problems return or not. At least I'd be able to return it if the issues do return.


Mine has already expired also, bought it the same time I bought my TiVo.

I was considering replacing the internal drive with a larger one since my TiVo is also out of warranty. But before I do, I'll wait for the next update to see if I still have any issues.


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## BrightestBear (Mar 4, 2009)

BrianAZ said:


> So Tivo has gotten back to me and indicated that for those customers who reported this issue, divorced their expander (and no longer had the issue) and then replaced the expander, they have indicated that their issues have not returned. I'm going to look into RMA'ing my expander and will post my results.


Just to clarify, when you say "replace the expander," do you mean replace it with a new one? Rather than replug the old one?


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

BrightestBear said:


> Just to clarify, when you say "replace the expander," do you mean replace it with a new one? Rather than replug the old one?


They said that after unplugging (which corrects the issue), you should buy a new one and it shouldn't have the same issue. This whole thing doesn't make much sense to me.. but since I can buy/return @ Best Buy, I may give that a try at some point down the road.


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## blueharmony (Nov 18, 2008)

I just ran the 54 test on my primary and secondary drives (expander).. here's the results:

Initial State Tivo passed | expander passed
Short Test Tivo passed | expander passed
Conveyance test Tivo passed | expander passed
extended test Tivo passed | expander *Fail 7*
off-line test Tivo Done | Expander Done

Anyone know what the *Fail 7* code means for the expander result?

According to the tivo website, the section about troubleshooting expanders, I need to get a new Expander. Is that accurate?


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## howgil (Oct 18, 2003)

I had expander problems, so I RMA'd mine. When I married the new expander, the EXACT same problems returned within a few hours. I have the new expander back in the box. Worse than useless.


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## Mr.Broncosfan (Sep 1, 2008)

BrianAZ said:


> My divorce has fixed my problems 100%. This is definitely a code issue impacting expander communication. Now, I'm thinking that if I re-attach my expander, my problems will resurface. I think I'll wait to see if some other folks try this. I think I've seen one example where the problems came back and one where they have not.


Any updates, Brian? I'm in AZ as well and having the same "freeze up" issues and partial recordings on my S3/My DVR Expander. Only difference is that it's only on the HD Channels. Hate to lose all my recordings, but if it helps, guess it's worth it.


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## BrightestBear (Mar 4, 2009)

Mr.Broncosfan said:


> Any updates, Brian? I'm in AZ as well and having the same "freeze up" issues and partial recordings on my S3/My DVR Expander. Only difference is that it's only on the HD Channels. Hate to lose all my recordings, but if it helps, guess it's worth it.


I'm not Brian, but I divorced my expander on Friday, and I've had absolutely no problems since then just using the TiVo. I'm planning to reattach it soon to see if the problems come back. And I, too, only had problems with the HD programs when the expander was attached.

Although it was tough to lose all our saved program, I have to admit to feeling a sense of lightness, of starting over with a clean slate.


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## Mr.Broncosfan (Sep 1, 2008)

BrightestBear said:


> I'm not Brian, but I divorced my expander on Friday, and I've had absolutely no problems since then just using the TiVo. I'm planning to reattach it soon to see if the problems come back. And I, too, only had problems with the HD programs when the expander was attached.
> 
> Although it was tough to lose all our saved program, I have to admit to feeling a sense of lightness, of starting over with a clean slate.


Yeah, losing all the saved programs is going to be bummer...I was testing it last night, and the skipping and freezing would only happen when both tuners were tuned to HD. If 1 was on analog and 1 was on HD, it would be fine...Really weird....As others have mentioned, this only started when the new software was pushed out about a month ago.


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## BrightestBear (Mar 4, 2009)

Mr.Broncosfan said:


> Yeah, losing all the saved programs is going to be bummer...I was testing it last night, and the skipping and freezing would only happen when both tuners were tuned to HD. If 1 was on analog and 1 was on HD, it would be fine...Really weird....As others have mentioned, this only started when the new software was pushed out about a month ago.


Interesting! Thinking back, I suspect that was the case with mine, too. Is that really the sign of a failing hard drive, or is it a software glitch?


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## WJB21 (Oct 4, 2006)

I have also been having this same problem with the partial recordings. but it is very consistently happening only on one channel - that being FOX (702 in my lineup). All the other channels have been recording fine. 

I do have the DVR expander but I fail to see why a possible hard drive failure would only affect one channel and not the others -- I basically only record 24 on FOX with several other programs (probably more than a dozen a week) on other channels and now for the third week in a row it has only been 24 with the partial recordings ... 

I also experience this problem watching FOX live as I typically watch the local news on FOX in the mornings ... and typically when i first turn the TV on and the tuner is already set to 702 -- it comes up frozen. Sometimes changing the channel to 703 and back to 702 fixes this -- other times I have to "record" the frozen 702 only to stop recording it and erase it from the program list -- that seems to reset the tuner and it works fine for a while. But eventually -- the audio will start dropping out and the video will get jerky to the point that it stops again .... maybe after 15-30 minutes ...

I have experimented by leaving the tuner on a different channel before I turn the TV off for the night. When I turn on the TV the next day there is no freezing since it wasn't on 702 when i turned the TV off from the night before.

Several earlier postings also indicated that partial recordings were on FOX as well and someone did mention that maybe there is a glitch in the transmission that the Tivo cannot handle. This seems more likely than hardware failure as I think hardware failure would not care what channel you were on but that I would see partial recordings across the board.

I would rather not go through the expander divorce process since there is a billion hours of unwatched shows I will get to some time and I saw postings that showed the same problem recording a FOX show with no expander (or when expander was replaced to no avail).

Any other thoughts or help appreciated. For now I use my PS3/media server software on PC/ and hulu to catch up on 24! (seems to work OK but the quality is better with Tivo!)


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## RustySTL (Feb 27, 2007)

BrightestBear said:


> Interesting! Thinking back, I suspect that was the case with mine, too. Is that really the sign of a failing hard drive, or is it a software glitch?


I think it's a glitch. Too much of a coincidence to be a failing drive for all of us.

I reinstalled my DVR Expander and ended up having the same problems again, so I disconnected it again. It now just sits in my entertainment center, collecting dust until the next software update. Hopefully they'll fix the issue.


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## BrightestBear (Mar 4, 2009)

RustySTL said:


> I think it's a glitch. Too much of a coincidence to be a failing drive for all of us.
> 
> I reinstalled my DVR Expander and ended up having the same problems again, so I disconnected it again. It now just sits in my entertainment center, collecting dust until the next software update. Hopefully they'll fix the issue.


Unfortunately, all the communication I've had with TiVo has resulted in the CSR telling me that the software update tipped failing hard drives over the edge, and it's all hardware. They said it happened to a small number of people, all of whom had failing drives. From what the CSRs said, there won't be a software fix. Now, I know the CSRs aren't the voice of God or anything, but that's pretty discouraging.

I guess the way to tell for sure would be to buy a new expander and see if the problems still happen. If that's the case, it's clearly a software issue. However, I don't want to lay out that kind of money for an experiment like that.


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## DeWitt (Jun 30, 2004)

I got frustrated with debugging and just ordered a 1TB WD10EVCS. Once I finish copying all of my content over to the PC, I'll divorce the expander and do the internal 1TB upgrade.


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## RustySTL (Feb 27, 2007)

DeWitt said:


> I got frustrated with debugging and just ordered a 1TB WD10EVCS. Once I finish copying all of my content over to the PC, I'll divorce the expander and do the internal 1TB upgrade.


That will be my option too, I won't spend the money on another expander.


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## kemajor (Jan 2, 2003)

Just thought I would throw my two cents in and say I've seen this behavior twice. I have an expander. I thought it was something I did, but now I'm thinking it is related tot he expander. Very annoying.

- Kelly


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## blueharmony (Nov 18, 2008)

I removed my Tivo Expander 3 days ago. No partial recordings since then. I'm going to RMA the expander and see what happens when I reconnect it.


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## mercurial (Oct 17, 2002)

Just bumped into this thread... I've been having this problem on on S3 with an expander (no TA attachd). We'll get the occasional partial recording (sometimes as little as 5 minutes out of an hour) and more often in the middle of a show, we'll get pixelation or completely color shift or video freeze (audio will continue) and eventually the video returns.

Signal level fine, doesn't happen on our other S3 or TiVo HD (no expander or TA there either). I may try the kickstart 54 test and see what it says later. I was wondering if anyone else was seeing the same issue.

I thought my primary drive was failing and my plan was to wait until re-runs kick in and then moving all the recordings I can to the other more lightly used boxes, drain down the rest, and then replacing the drive with a 1TB and going without the expander. Now I may try a divorce at that point. Pretty sure my expander is out-of-waranty.

Anyone else have the pixelation issue too?


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## blueharmony (Nov 18, 2008)

mercurial said:


> Anyone else have the pixelation issue too?


Yes...we got the pixelation issue a little in the middle of a show. However, we don't get it now that the Expander is removed.


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## DeWitt (Jun 30, 2004)

My issues started like many others after the software update. Kickstart 54 passes fine, including the Smart tests.


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

mercurial said:


> Just bumped into this thread... I've been having this problem on on S3 with an expander (no TA attachd). We'll get the occasional partial recording (sometimes as little as 5 minutes out of an hour) and more often in the middle of a show, we'll get pixelation or completely color shift or video freeze (audio will continue) and eventually the video returns.


I've been getting that (pixilation and the occasional partial show) on my TiVo HD no expander. I have double checked and I never see cablecard errors associated with either the pixilation or the partial recording.

I'm pretty sure it's my upgraded Seagate 1TB drive dying. The Western Digital I ordered to replace it should be getting here today, so hopefully my issues will stop.


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## jagz27 (Mar 21, 2007)

jagz27 said:


> I divorced + re-married my expander about 2 weeks ago. I've had no problems since.
> (Though I did not wait to re-marry my expander after divorcing it.)


Spoke too soon... the problem has come back...
going to remove the expander for good until this gets (hopefully) resolved...


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## Mr.Broncosfan (Sep 1, 2008)

For all of those having the partial recordings and freeze ups. Did you notice if it happens only when both tuners are on HD channels?


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## Mr.Broncosfan (Sep 1, 2008)

I'm convinced that my problem with freeze ups and partial recordings only happen when both tuners are tuned to HD channels. Just checked American Idol and Lost (both were recording at the same time on HD channels) and AI was a partial recording and Lost was freezing. I canceled AI and the other tuner that was recording Lost started working just fine.

Not sure if disconnecting the Expander will fix this, but it's worth a shot.


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

Jonathan_S said:


> I'm pretty sure it's my upgraded Seagate 1TB drive dying.


and Kickstart 54 confirmed it. I got a Fail 7 error on the short test.

(Then for apparently unrelated reasons my computer flaked out last night while backing up the drive. I restarted it and hopefully it'll be done when I get home tonight)


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## mercurial (Oct 17, 2002)

Jonathan_S said:


> I've been getting that (pixilation and the occasional partial show) on my TiVo HD no expander. I have double checked and I never see cablecard errors associated with either the pixilation or the partial recording.
> 
> I'm pretty sure it's my upgraded Seagate 1TB drive dying. The Western Digital I ordered to replace it should be getting here today, so hopefully my issues will stop.


Any links to a good drive 1TB drive to use as a replacement if the divorce doesn't fix it?


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

mercurial said:


> Any links to a good drive 1TB drive to use as a replacement if the divorce doesn't fix it?


I just grabbed a Western Digital WD10EVCS from buy.com. That seems to be a widely recommended drive for internal upgrades/replacement.


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## mercurial (Oct 17, 2002)

Jonathan_S said:


> I just grabbed a Western Digital WD10EVCS from buy.com. That seems to be a widely recommended drive for internal upgrades/replacement.


Another question (not being current on the tools), if I have one eSata port and a couple of eSATA/USB enclosures, can I put one drive in and attach via eSATA and the other via SATA -> USB and do the copy/expand? Or even both via SATA->USB? I'd rather boot a disk and do that than have to crack a case and put a drive in to make the copy.


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## cdp1276 (Mar 25, 2003)

Mr.Broncosfan said:


> For all of those having the partial recordings and freeze ups. Did you notice if it happens only when both tuners are on HD channels?


Yes, same for me as I mostly record all HD and when two HD channels are recording at one. Not one of my SD recordings has ever failed, and I do record SD at the same time I have HD going on the other tuner. Having lots of partial recordings and has happened on all networks. Also will add I have an S3 with eSata drive but not using the WD Expander on the S3 having all these problems.


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

mercurial said:


> Another question (not being current on the tools), if I have one eSata port and a couple of eSATA/USB enclosures, can I put one drive in and attach via eSATA and the other via SATA -> USB and do the copy/expand? Or even both via SATA->USB? I'd rather boot a disk and do that than have to crack a case and put a drive in to make the copy.


I'm not sure. I don't know any reason for WinMFS to baulk at a drive connected as SATA->USB but I've never tried it.

Since I didn't have eSata cables or a pair of SATA->USB adaptors I just ended up cracking the case.


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## mercurial (Oct 17, 2002)

Jonathan_S said:


> I'm not sure. I don't know any reason for WinMFS to baulk at a drive connected as SATA->USB but I've never tried it.
> 
> Since I didn't have eSata cables or a pair of SATA->USB adaptors I just ended up cracking the case.


WinMFS? I am behind. No more linux boot disk? I can do it from windows without fear of a corrupted drive from windows touching it?


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

mercurial said:


> WinMFS? I am behind. No more linux boot disk? I can do it from windows without fear of a corrupted drive from windows touching it?


As long as you have WinXP or newer (and don't open up the windows disk manager) windows won't stomp on the TiVo boot record anymore.

(And if it does get stomped on, WinMFS can fix that for you)

So yep, you can safely do drive replacement/expansion from windows.


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## mercurial (Oct 17, 2002)

Jonathan_S said:


> As long as you have WinXP or newer (and don't open up the windows disk manager) windows won't stomp on the TiVo boot record anymore.
> 
> (And if it does get stomped on, WinMFS can fix that for you)
> 
> So yep, you can safely do drive replacement/expansion from windows.


This is going to be a lot easier than I thought.


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## microbubba (Dec 31, 2006)

Mr.Broncosfan said:


> For all of those having the partial recordings and freeze ups. Did you notice if it happens only when both tuners are on HD channels?


Add another voice to this chorus.

We got our S3 not long after they were released. Added the official Expander when they were released, and all was good.

Only recently have we experienced the pixelating and partial recording issues. This is most notably if not 100% when *both* tuners are on HD channels. We can record SD & HD and SD & SD with no problem*. (been making it a habit to swap the _other _tuner to SD if watching while recording something else).

Have tried the attenuation, but even though signal was higher or lower, the RS Corrected/Uncorrected was usually 0.

Have not divorced the Expander (on principle). *Why does it record fine if HDD is suspect? Why does it record perfect right up to the point it fails?

I understand there was an SD bug in the latest release, but this has been the opposite of our issue.

We had a rash of reboots and GSOD-wait-for-3-hours, but those are not so often lately. (ran 5 minutes at most) Would expect that to exclude bad sectors.

We remain highly suspect of buggy code and perhaps forcing the system to do things it may have not been originally designed.

We'd rather just watch our recordings and DO NOT need to order a friggin' pizza!


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

Mr.Broncosfan said:


> Any updates, Brian? I'm in AZ as well and having the same "freeze up" issues and partial recordings on my S3/My DVR Expander. Only difference is that it's only on the HD Channels. Hate to lose all my recordings, but if it helps, guess it's worth it.


I still have had no problems since divorcing my drive. I'm expanding my unRAID setup to archive my DVD collection so I've decided not to replace my expander at this point. I'm relying more on my Media Center's 1TB drive in the meantime. Though I have to say I am tempted to swap the internal drive with a 1TB. Maybe if I run across a good deal.


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## Mr.Broncosfan (Sep 1, 2008)

BrianAZ said:


> I still have had no problems since divorcing my drive. I'm expanding my unRAID setup to archive my DVD collection so I've decided not to replace my expander at this point. I'm relying more on my Media Center's 1TB drive in the meantime. Though I have to say I am tempted to swap the internal drive with a 1TB. Maybe if I run across a good deal.


I divorced my Expander a few days ago. Problems are gone. Now I need a new Expander.


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## mercurial (Oct 17, 2002)

Well, since installing the TA, things have gotten worse. Menu freezes and sponaneous reboots... I think some of the SDV channels have lower signal strength and handling the extra errors that causes is somehow exacerbating the issue (not enough CPU to handle two drives?). <sigh>

We're burning through the episodes of things I can't move and got the rest auto transferring to the PC and a 1TB drive on the way. Hopefully we'll get it all the "cannot moves" watched and then do a divorce + drive swap and move back whatever was lost in the divorce....


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## DeWitt (Jun 30, 2004)

I had a little excitement when I was unable to divorce the expander, but since removing the expander and upgrading to a Western Digital W10EVCS 1 Terabyte internal, all is now well and rock steady. 

Before, If I tuned two HD channels and then attempted to transfer a program to the PC, it would always reboot somewhere before the transfer was complete. Now it handles the same situation without any problems.


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

Adding my voice to the chorus of afflicted people. I've got a TivoHD and the expander, and as of the last two weeks I've been having lots of partial recordings. Sometimes I get just the first few minutes of a show. Sometimes all but the last few minutes. It's not a padding issue or a season pass conflict or anything of that sort. I haven't tried divorcing the expander, because I'm loathe to lose all my recordings and because I don't have the money right now to sub in a large internal drive to replace the expander.

Last night I had a "no" recording, which I found especially odd. American Idol was recording on the Tivo HD, at about the 1:25 mark, I looked at the Now Playing list of the downstairs Tivo HD from within my upstairs S2. I could see it listed as recording and "in progress." (Actually, I checked because I wanted to make sure it hadn't terminated as a partial recording, so I was reassured to see it was still going). A few hours later I went downstairs to watch it, but couldn't find it anywhere on the HD's "Now Playing" list. I checked the recording history, and it said the program was not recorded due to "lost signal." Yet from what I can tell, my signal strength is good. And shouldn't it at least have been a partial recording, if it did lose the signal at some point? Why would it disappear entirely? It wasn't in the "deleted" folder, either. Just gone, as if it had never recorded at all.

Frustrated. I've lost track of the number of Tivo's that I've had crap out on me, but its a lot. Tonight I'll try running the kickstart tests.


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

danterner said:


> Frustrated. I've lost track of the number of Tivo's that I've had crap out on me, but its a lot. Tonight I'll try running the kickstart tests.


Just so you know... my setup passed the kickstart tests and the divorce still fixed the issue for me. In talking with Tivo support, they indicated that they saw some hdd related errors in my log at various times even though I passed the test.

Perhaps the newest code is just less tolerant of "minor" hdd hiccups, I don't know. My plan is to upgrade the internal drive to 1TB and add back the expander down the road if I read that people are no longer having issues. In the meantime, I'll just use it for some inconsequential temporary storage for DVD archiving or something.


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## microbubba (Dec 31, 2006)

danterner said:


> Adding my voice to the chorus of afflicted people. I've got a TivoHD and the expander, and as of the last two weeks I've been having lots of partial recordings. Sometimes I get just the first few minutes of a show. Sometimes all but the last few minutes. It's not a padding issue or a season pass conflict or anything of that sort. I haven't tried divorcing the expander, because I'm loathe to lose all my recordings and because I don't have the money right now to sub in a large internal drive to replace the expander.
> 
> Last night I had a "no" recording, which I found especially odd. American Idol was recording on the Tivo HD, at about the 1:25 mark, I looked at the Now Playing list of the downstairs Tivo HD from within my upstairs S2. I could see it listed as recording and "in progress." (Actually, I checked because I wanted to make sure it hadn't terminated as a partial recording, so I was reassured to see it was still going). A few hours later I went downstairs to watch it, but couldn't find it anywhere on the HD's "Now Playing" list. I checked the recording history, and it said the program was not recorded due to "lost signal." Yet from what I can tell, my signal strength is good. And shouldn't it at least have been a partial recording, if it did lose the signal at some point? Why would it disappear entirely? It wasn't in the "deleted" folder, either. Just gone, as if it had never recorded at all.
> 
> Frustrated. I've lost track of the number of Tivo's that I've had crap out on me, but its a lot. Tonight I'll try running the kickstart tests.


We have seen the "Not Recorded...No Signal" message before (even SD) However, if the Tivo is rebooted, the recordings will re-appear and play as normal.

Trying to get thru recorded content in prep for a divorce, of the Expander. (wanna keep the wife)

Perhaps time for an internal transplant.


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## msu-dawg (Jan 7, 2006)

Well, count another frustrated Tivo user experiencing these problems. It's been a while since I've logged onto this forum but I was hopeful I could find info on my problem and this thread pretty much covers it.

I have TivoHD with Expander attached. When first getting TivoHD and Expander over year ago I had an issue and the Tivo crapped out. It was replaced under warranty and the replacement has since worked fine married to my Expander (both have been on a UPS since that initial problem). I have cable and use 2 cablecards.

I probably started noticing the problems a couple of weeks ago. I start watching a recorded HD show only to realize it's a partial. I know it has happened several times on NBC HD while watching NBC Nightly News. It also happened the other night while watching Idol on Fox HD. Not sure if I've seen this problem on any other channels, but if so they were HD. For the most part that's all I record.

The cut-off seems to be proceeded with some pixelation and jerky pausing in video and audio. Looking at NBC News from 3/26 right now, I see that it stopped after 26 minutes of the 30 minute record- do I remember seeing someone else mention stopping at that exact number of minutes? Coincidence maybe.

Another symptom I've noticed, which I also saw a mention of, further up in the thread, is that I turn the TV on to find a frozen picture, as if it were paused. I switch to the other tuner and it's working fine on whatever channel it's on. Switch back and now all I see is a blank gray screen, as if no signal. Just remembered that tonight that channel was Discovery HD Theater. Switched tuners just now and it's STILL showing a blank gray screen, and that was hours ago that I found it frozen. I changed channels up (to NATGEO HD) just now and that was working fine. Channel back down to HD Theater and now it's working fine. 

On a side note, while trying to watch L&O:SVU live last night, the HD channel was messing up. So I switched to SD channel (6 for me) and picture quality was horrid. Also noticed poor quality on surrounding SD channels. I think I had noticed this previously in the past week or so when I was having HD channel problems and tried switching to the SD version. So I slid the TV stand out to check the cable and discovered a problem with the cable at the wall plate. Seems that I shoved the tv stand back hard against it and must have broken the cable internally. Switched to a new co-ax between wall and UPS (I've been running my cable through the surge protector thing on the UPS ever since I installed everything). That fixed the poor signal problems on SD channels and I had high hopes that this was the source of my issues with my HD recordings but obviously not...

I'd hate to go through the hassle of an Expander separation and remarry, just to find the problem return. And if I have to shell out any $, to h$ll with the expander- I'm upgrading to a big internal drive since the Tivo is now out of warranty.

Stupid Expander.... and stupid Tivo support. I just see NO WAY that this is a failing hardware problem, rather than something directly related to a software update. BTW, my software version is listed as 11.0b-01-2-652.


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## msu-dawg (Jan 7, 2006)

DeWitt said:


> Here is the page on the Tivo support site that details the exact procedure. It is different for Tivo HD and the S3.
> 
> http://www.tivo.com/setupandsupport...elp/DVR_Expander_Troubleshooting_Generic.html


This link seems to no longer work. It now redirects me to the generic help page. Anyone happen to know where to find these instructions now?


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## msu-dawg (Jan 7, 2006)

msu-dawg said:


> Another symptom I've noticed, which I also saw a mention of, further up in the thread, is that I turn the TV on to find a frozen picture, as if it were paused. I switch to the other tuner and it's working fine on whatever channel it's on. Switch back and now all I see is a blank gray screen, as if no signal. Just remembered that tonight that channel was Discovery HD Theater. Switched tuners just now and it's STILL showing a blank gray screen, and that was hours ago that I found it frozen. I changed channels up (to NATGEO HD) just now and that was working fine. Channel back down to HD Theater and now it's working fine.


...and sitting here just now reading this thread with HD Theater working (see above) it all of a sudden started to pixelate and stutter for just a second, then froze again. Interestingly though, 5 minutes later, at 11:00, it started working again. I also noticed by the lights that both tuners are now recording. The one that was frozen is still on HD Theater (but started working) but the other one, which likely HAD BEEN on an HD channel, is now recording an SD channel (tivo suggestion). So maybe I'm experiencing what others have described- that the problem doesn't occur if I'm tuned to an SD channel on the opposite tuner???

TIVO!!!! You obviously caused this problem, please fix it!!!


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## Mr.Broncosfan (Sep 1, 2008)

I hate to say it, but divorcing the expander will probably help. Like you, I constantly had problems when both tuners were on HD. Since the divorce, I have no issues.


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

msu-dawg said:


> So maybe I'm experiencing what others have described- that the problem doesn't occur if I'm tuned to an SD channel on the opposite tuner???
> 
> TIVO!!!! You obviously caused this problem, please fix it!!!


Last night I had American Idol and Lost, both set to record at the same time, both set to record in HD. A few weeks ago, that wouldn't have been a problem. Now, it is. So I decided to test things out: I set Idol to record off the SD channel, and left Lost to record in HD.

AI recorded fine. 
Lost was an 11 minute partial recording.


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## RustySTL (Feb 27, 2007)

Someone posted in another thread that there was a new update out, 11.0c. I was wondering if anyone had it yet and maybe that will fix the issue?

Once I get the update, I'll try to install my DVR Expander again and see if it's fixed the issue.


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

msu-dawg said:


> This link seems to no longer work. It now redirects me to the generic help page. Anyone happen to know where to find these instructions now?


Try this one:
http://support.tivo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/308/session/L3NpZC9USkRUd2t1ag==#drives


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## seattlewendell (Jan 11, 2006)

microbubba said:


> We'd rather just watch our recordings and DO NOT need to order a friggin' pizza!


Amen.
This is the type of crap that makes me so mad at Tivo. Every issue they blame on a failed hard drive. It's never their fault. This is what drives people to the crappy cable boxes and other alternative methods. I guess they figured whatever number of people this effects do not matter in the long run. Collateral damage if you will. I do not even have a generic expander. I have the Tivo brand expander.
This is also one of the reasons Directv gave them the boot the first time around. Tivo would put out updates that would brake something and generate tons of CS calls. Directv looked at what they were spending on CS and they told Tivo they need to take over CS. Tivo said they were not getting enough money from Directv to handle CS so they parted ways.
Stop putting out software that breaks the normal operation of the DVR and you will not have these problems. 
I feel like a battered wife who stays with her husband. I am going to take a long hard look at the Moxie box.


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## seattlewendell (Jan 11, 2006)

RustySTL said:


> Someone posted in another thread that there was a new update out, 11.0c. I was wondering if anyone had it yet and maybe that will fix the issue?
> 
> Once I get the update, I'll try to install my DVR Expander again and see if it's fixed the issue.


I have the update it has not fixed the issue.


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

seattlewendell said:


> I have the update it has not fixed the issue.


I'm still trouble-shooting my partial recording issues. Before divorcing the Expander, I tried running the Kickstart 54 "SMART" test. It's still going, midway through the extended test. I noticed some weird behavior, though: I turned off the television and walked away from the test to let it run its course. I came back about 20 minutes later to see how far it had progressed. When I turned the TV back on, the background of the kickstart screen was a mauvy-pink color. (It started out as black). I've turned the TV off and on a few times, but the pink color remains. The text is still white, as it should be, and the "passed" sections are still green, as they should be. I switched inputs over to my 360, and colors there are all normal.

I'm going to let the kickstart finish, but I'm thinking (hoping) that my HDMI cable may be loose, and that this is the root of all my problems. Any thoughts on whether a loose HDMI cable could be the cause of the partial recordings? If the HDMI cable is loose, could that cause a recording to look fine but then cease at a random point without warning, due to a "lost signal"? Or is the pink screen just a coincidence, maybe caused if I jostled the cords while making sure the eSATA cable connecting the Expander to the Tivo was firmly seated? I've been having issues with partial recordings for the last two weeks or so, increasing in frequency, but this is the first time I've seen a pink background.


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## msu-dawg (Jan 7, 2006)

Mr.Broncosfan said:


> I hate to say it, but divorcing the expander will probably help. Like you, I constantly had problems when both tuners were on HD. Since the divorce, I have no issues.


If this keeps up I may have to divorce the expander. But that's only a temporary solution, seing as how I need the additional space. If I didn't, I wouldn't have bought the expander to start with. And if I have to shell out any money to actually fix this problem it sure won't be for another expander!


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## seattlewendell (Jan 11, 2006)

danterner said:


> I'm still trouble-shooting my partial recording issues. Before divorcing the Expander, I tried running the Kickstart 54 "SMART" test. It's still going, midway through the extended test. I noticed some weird behavior, though: I turned off the television and walked away from the test to let it run its course. I came back about 20 minutes later to see how far it had progressed. When I turned the TV back on, the background of the kickstart screen was a mauvy-pink color. (It started out as black). I've turned the TV off and on a few times, but the pink color remains. The text is still white, as it should be, and the "passed" sections are still green, as they should be. I switched inputs over to my 360, and colors there are all normal.
> 
> I'm going to let the kickstart finish, but I'm thinking (hoping) that my HDMI cable may be loose, and that this is the root of all my problems. Any thoughts on whether a loose HDMI cable could be the cause of the partial recordings? If the HDMI cable is loose, could that cause a recording to look fine but then cease at a random point without warning, due to a "lost signal"? Or is the pink screen just a coincidence, maybe caused if I jostled the cords while making sure the eSATA cable connecting the Expander to the Tivo was firmly seated? I've been having issues with partial recordings for the last two weeks or so, increasing in frequency, but this is the first time I've seen a pink background.


Nope. They pink background has nothing to do with loose HDMI cables.


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

seattlewendell said:


> danterner said:
> 
> 
> > I'm still trouble-shooting my partial recording issues. Before divorcing the Expander, I tried running the Kickstart 54 "SMART" test. It's still going, midway through the extended test. I noticed some weird behavior, though: I turned off the television and walked away from the test to let it run its course. I came back about 20 minutes later to see how far it had progressed. When I turned the TV back on, the background of the kickstart screen was a mauvy-pink color. (It started out as black). I've turned the TV off and on a few times, but the pink color remains. The text is still white, as it should be, and the "passed" sections are still green, as they should be. I switched inputs over to my 360, and colors there are all normal.
> ...


My color went weird too after a while. It's "normal".


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## seattlewendell (Jan 11, 2006)

Does anyone know what happens if I just unplug the extender? I know that if you "unmarry" the extender you lose all the records but what happens if you just unplug it?
I want to know if this is a possible solution. Example: unplug the extender and use the Tivo without it until Tivo fixes this issue. After Tivo fixes this issue (in about one million years) reattach extender and watch recordings.
Anyone?


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## Mr.Broncosfan (Sep 1, 2008)

That won't work. My understanding is the recorded content is split between both drives. Take out 1 drive, and lose the recordings. If you just unplug the Expander, I think your opening yourself to some potential problems.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

seattlewendell said:


> Does anyone know what happens if I just unplug the extender? I know that if you "unmarry" the extender you lose all the records but what happens if you just unplug it?


If you unplug the extender while the TiVo is running, the TiVo will reboot and will stop at the page asking you to divorce or plug the drive back in. You get the same page if the extender is unplugged before the TiVo is plugged in.

Basically there is no way to run the TiVo without the extender once it is married to the TiVo. The only way to run is to divorce the extender from the TiVo.


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## seattlewendell (Jan 11, 2006)

morac said:


> If you unplug the extender while the TiVo is running, the TiVo will reboot and will stop at the page asking you to divorce or plug the drive back in. You get the same page if the extender is unplugged before the TiVo is plugged in.
> 
> Basically there is no way to run the TiVo without the extender once it is married to the TiVo. The only way to run is to divorce the extender from the TiVo.


Thank you.


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## dude44 (Sep 20, 2007)

for the partial recordings. it must be the fox station. I had the sarah connor chronicles miss 10 mins about 1 month ago and dollhouse miss 15 minutes last week. most everyone who have this problem seem to have dvr expanders. I don't I have a 1tb Western Digital WD10EVCS external drive. but like someone said earlier the problems seem to focus on fox.


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## msu-dawg (Jan 7, 2006)

dude44 said:


> for the partial recordings. it must be the fox station. I had the sarah connor chronicles miss 10 mins about 1 month ago and dollhouse miss 15 minutes last week. most everyone who have this problem seem to have dvr expanders. I don't I have a 1tb Western Digital WD10EVCS external drive. but like someone said earlier the problems seem to focus on fox.


This is a bit subjective as I haven't exactly kept statistics and done an analysis, but...... Most of my problems have been on NBC. Have also had issues on FOX and, more recently, 1 episode of 1 show on Food Network.

I also had my TivoHD spontaneously reboot a few days ago, although it came back up with no issues. Then, last night, we were watching a Netflix movie on TivoHD when our power blips off, then back on, then off then on again, etc. Just as I was about to go outside and throw all the breakers to prevent everything in the house from continuing to see this madness the power came on and stayed. 
I turned the TV back on expecting to find the Tivo still on, maybe telling me it was trying to receive data (since my internet connection would have dropped during the power blink) since I have my Tivo and expander on UPS. It has always stayed up before during power blinks. But all I got was a blank screen- initially I was concerned maybe my TV got zapped. But then I noticed when trying to make the Tivo do something, it wasn't lighting the yellow light that normally comes on when you press any button on the remote.

So.... I rebooted Tivo and expander and it hung forever on the "few minutes more" screen (but thank goodness the TV was OK). Rebooted again and it came up, seeming to be normal. But just about the time I got to the Netflix movie and tried to fast-forward back to where we were, it auto-rebooted again. This time I got GSOD with the message "the dvr has detected a serious problem...". I turned the TV off and let Tivo do its thing. After and hour or less it rebooted and came up with no apparent issues.

However, I took that opportunity to order a WD10EVCS and will be putting an end to these recent problems.....


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

msu-dawg said:


> Then, last night, we were *watching a Netflix movie on TivoHD* when our power blips off, then back on, then off then on again, etc. Just as I was about to go outside and throw all the breakers to prevent everything in the house from continuing to see this madness the power came on and stayed.
> I turned the TV back on expecting to find the Tivo still on, maybe telling me it was trying to receive data (since my *internet connection would have dropped* during the power blink) since I have my Tivo and expander on UPS.


The GSOD on boot up not withstanding, the fact that your TiVo locked up when you lost your Internet connection while streaming Netflix is "normal". I wish it wasn't, but it is.

If you want to prevent that in the future, you should also put your modem, router, etc on a UPS.


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## reneg (Jun 19, 2002)

I haven't had any partial recording problems since I put my Tivo on a UPS a month ago. I'm not saying that a UPS will help anyone else, but it seems to have helped my situation so far.


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## msu-dawg (Jan 7, 2006)

morac said:


> The GSOD on boot up not withstanding, the fact that your TiVo locked up when you lost your Internet connection while streaming Netflix is "normal". I wish it wasn't, but it is.
> 
> If you want to prevent that in the future, you should also put your modem, router, etc on a UPS.


Interesting. Wouldn't have guessed that but good info to know! Thanks :up:
May have to invest in another UPS it seems.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

msu-dawg said:


> Interesting. Wouldn't have guessed that but good info to know! Thanks :up:
> May have to invest in another UPS it seems.


Personally I put my modem and wireless router on a UPS so I can surf the Internet on my laptop during a power failure. 

My cable modem actually has a built in battery since the cable modem also does phone, but I put it on a UPS any way.

Fortunately I haven't really had any power failures as of late.


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## msu-dawg (Jan 7, 2006)

BrianAZ said:


> My color went weird too after a while. It's "normal".


Just now did Kickstart 54 and my background color also changed to pink after a TV power cycle.

Seems these wonderful devices have a lot of oddball "normal" behaviors!


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

msu-dawg said:


> Just now did Kickstart 54 and my background color also changed to pink after a TV power cycle.
> 
> Seems these wonderful devices have a lot of oddball "normal" behaviors!


Yes indeed. And the oddball normal behaviors are making troubleshooting really challenging for me. At first I was suspecting my problems (partial recordings) were software/expander-related. Now I'm suspecting my expander (or maybe my Tivo itself) is failing. In addition to the partial recordings, I've noticed sporadic sound cutouts, occasions where the remote seems unresponsive despite the amber light on the tivo showing it is receiving the remote's signal, picture stuttering, and last night a complete picture freeze, the screen turning pink, and then a spontaneous reboot. I've had tivo drives fail before, and I think that's what I'm seeing now. But when I ran Kickstart 54 the other day, everything tested out fine.

Is the "overnight" test in the root menu of Kickstart 54 different than the "extended" test that's part of the suite of S.M.A.R.T. tests? Maybe I'll try running that one, since my tivo and expander passed the S.M.A.R.T tests without issue. My next step is divorcing the expander to see if behavior returns to normal, but I dread losing all my recorded shows. Most of them I can't transfer off the tivo due to copy protection issues.


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## RustySTL (Feb 27, 2007)

danterner said:


> In addition to the partial recordings, I've noticed sporadic sound cutouts, occasions where the remote seems unresponsive despite the amber light on the tivo showing it is receiving the remote's signal, picture stuttering, and last night a complete picture freeze, the screen turning pink, and then a spontaneous reboot. I've had tivo drives fail before, and I think that's what I'm seeing now. But when I ran Kickstart 54 the other day, everything tested out fine.


I was having the same problems and the Kickstart 54 came back clean on all tests. My last resort was to divorce the DVR Expander, and all my troubles went away. Except I lost all of my extra recording capacity.


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## msu-dawg (Jan 7, 2006)

danterner said:


> At first I was suspecting my problems (partial recordings) were software/expander-related. Now I'm suspecting my expander (or maybe my Tivo itself) is failing. In addition to the partial recordings, I've noticed sporadic sound cutouts, occasions where the remote seems unresponsive despite the amber light on the tivo showing it is receiving the remote's signal, picture stuttering, and last night a complete picture freeze, the screen turning pink, and then a spontaneous reboot. I've had tivo drives fail before, and I think that's what I'm seeing now. But when I ran Kickstart 54 the other day, everything tested out fine.


Sounds like we're in about the same boat. Last night's version of NBC Nightly News actually recorded the entire 30 minutes,which is extremely rare these days. However, at the very end of the recording there was some pixelation and then the screen froze. The amber light was responding to the remote but the tivo hung for a minute or two before finally bringing up the "delete or keep recording" screen at the end of the show.

I ran Kickstart 54 SMART test overnight last night and also got pass results for internal and external drives.



danterner said:


> Is the "overnight" test in the root menu of Kickstart 54 different than the "extended" test that's part of the suite of S.M.A.R.T. tests? Maybe I'll try running that one, since my tivo and expander passed the S.M.A.R.T tests without issue.


Was wondering this myself.



danterner said:


> My next step is divorcing the expander to see if behavior returns to normal


Same here.

However, I've also had a failing HDD in a tivo before and that's certainly what some of these symptoms are beginning to look like. As mentioned above, I did go ahead and order a WD10EVCS drive from buy.com. I don't have a lot of stuff that I can't bare to lose so I'm going to just do an upgrade this weekend and (hopefully) be done with it. I'll be glad to be having only one HDD to rely on rather than 2.

But I still think Tivo's software update had something to do with all of this...


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

RustySTL said:


> I was having the same problems and the Kickstart 54 came back clean on all tests. My last resort was to divorce the DVR Expander, and all my troubles went away. Except I lost all of my extra recording capacity.


Ditto


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## microbubba (Dec 31, 2006)

I guess it would help to know more about how this thing works. Been having all the same issues (see post in this thread). One thing I find interesting is that the sound on HD channel will first start cutting out, then after a couple minutes, you rewind and play again and the recording is just fine. The data IS there. Eventual the HD channel will start pixelating bad. Same thing if you swap channel and return, it's fine. Also, if my drives are failing, why does SD record 100&#37; fine every time? If we didn't record HD, I believe we'd have no problems. The wife is transferring all her season passes back to SD.
I remain highly suspect of software, encoding, or something that pushes the buffer/live performance over the brink.


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

I divorced the expander, and now it is asking for alimony. Is this normal?


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## BrightestBear (Mar 4, 2009)

danterner said:


> I divorced the expander, and now it is asking for alimony. Is this normal?


Mine keeps arguing with me about how often it gets to see the kids.


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## Tkilmer (Dec 25, 2003)

Sad to see TiVo's stand on this, I purchased the expander because I thought TiVo officially supported it. I have not had any issues since removing the Expander, I will need to see if I can RMA, I think I am right about a year right now.

Thing is, I might as well just upgrade the internal drive like I did with my old DirecTivo, at least I get to upgrade cheaply and manage the failures myself. I would get 2 to 3 years out of cheap drives at least.


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## mooneb75 (Aug 5, 2008)

Well, I really do not have much to add... I am having the same issues as everyone posting up in here...

I can say that in my case, it does not seem to discriminate on channel number and I am unable to correlate any link on frequency, but it IS only HD that gets screwy and freezes - I just seem to have trouble with all of them at one time or another.

I am also in the boat that changing channels will unfreeze the channel (of note - do not think I have seen any mention of it yet - is that if you are recording a show and it freezes, I am able to unfreeze it by pressing hte record button, stopping recording and then re-pressing the record button and starting the record again. This is faster than changing the channel if you are recording and want to minimize the lost bit of teh show...)

Also of note is that I seem to have more problems at night. I was SURE that the signal was too hot and that that was the issue here, but I am attenuated and have tried a lot of values from -3dB to signal loss at -26dB. I am attenuating both the FIOS signal and the OTA antennae signal with no real change...

My next step was going to be to try a LPF with a value of 850MHHz, but now I am thinking I will try the following:

1) Kickstart 54 tests
2) Divorce
3) upgrade internal drive to 1TB and get rid of the damned expander (I am really leaning to that being hte root of the issue at this point.

I do recall many years ago when I had a DirecTV TiVo box, we started seeing bizarre behavior and support told me the drive was failing. I simply did not believe that they were correct since I could watch recorded content with no problem, but these symptoms sure do compare to that situation...

I too do not think that the HW is actually bad, but that there must be some messy code that makes the system less tolerant of HDD issues that before were just fine.

Nuff said - just wanted to chime in and share my grief with all you guys in here and I wanted to note that this has been the most helpful thread I have come across with this issue. Way to stay on topic 

Also, I have read a LOT of other threads on this issue and learned more than I ever wanted to know about CATV Systems and the engineering that goes into them. This one simply hits the nail on the head without getting overly technical. While I really like the learning and the process of troubleshooting, this is our TV we're messing with and we NEED that in this house, so the cut to the chase in this thread is greatly appreciated. I can understand AFTER it's all better...

I'll bve sure to post up if anything of note happens.


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## mercurial (Oct 17, 2002)

Well, I just divorced the expander and replaced the drive with a 1TB today. So far things are snappier. I'm "TiVo To-Go-Backing" my recordings back to the box and so far it hasn't spontaneously re-started, that's a good sign. We'll see in about 15 minutes when it starts recording two HD streams at the same time if it really worked... 

Oddly, the only recording that survived the divorce was one movie that I recorded off HBO-HD probably before the expander was added. But that's confusing. I thought only shows that resided on the expander (or split over the expander and the internal drive if it does that) were lost. So EVERY show was on the expander (or split)? Or does it drop EVERY show recorded after the expander was added?


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

mercurial said:


> Oddly, the only recording that survived the divorce was one movie that I recorded off HBO-HD probably before the expander was added. But that's confusing. I thought only shows that resided on the expander (or split over the expander and the internal drive if it does that) were lost. So EVERY show was on the expander (or split)? Or does it drop EVERY show recorded after the expander was added?


I too lost all but one show following the divorce. It was a recently-recorded suggestion that survived intact.

It's been about 24 hours, and so far no partial recordings, pink screens, freezes, restarts, or other bizarre behavior.


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## seattlewendell (Jan 11, 2006)

mercurial said:


> Well, I just divorced the expander and replaced the drive with a 1TB today. So far things are snappier. I'm "TiVo To-Go-Backing" my recordings back to the box and so far it hasn't spontaneously re-started, that's a good sign. We'll see in about 15 minutes when it starts recording two HD streams at the same time if it really worked...
> 
> Oddly, the only recording that survived the divorce was one movie that I recorded off HBO-HD probably before the expander was added. But that's confusing. I thought only shows that resided on the expander (or split over the expander and the internal drive if it does that) were lost. So EVERY show was on the expander (or split)? Or does it drop EVERY show recorded after the expander was added?


Yes it does. The reason is, once you add the expander EVERY new recording is split even if there is plenty of room on the internal drive.


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## seattlewendell (Jan 11, 2006)

Has anyone had any luck with Tivo. And by luck, I mean Tivo admitting there is a problem and pledging a fix is on the way?


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## mercurial (Oct 17, 2002)

seattlewendell said:


> Yes it does. The reason is, once you add the expander EVERY new recording is split even if there is plenty of room on the internal drive.


I guess I never caught that detail originally, but it that is one silly design. I doubt they're stripping across the drives so that seems like just away to ensure a single drive failure looses everything for you every time. At least the only thing I really lost were some old Iron Chef Americas that I hadn't gotten around to watching in a while.


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

mercurial said:


> I guess I never caught that detail originally, but it that is one silly design. I doubt they're stripping across the drives so that seems like just away to ensure a single drive failure looses everything for you every time. At least the only thing I really lost were some old Iron Chef Americas that I hadn't gotten around to watching in a while.


It's probably a design decision to make sure that the expanders aren't usable as portable storage, allowing you to take shows recorded from one Tivo and carry them over to watch them on another. Or maybe not.

As for the one recent show that was still on my Now Playing list after I divorced the expander, it was probably the first thing recorded immediately after the divorce. I deleted it right away and I don't recall seeing its date.

Since the divorce, everything has been glitch-free. But I'm already hurting for space.


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## mercurial (Oct 17, 2002)

danterner said:


> It's probably a design decision to make sure that the expanders aren't usable as portable storage, allowing you to take shows recorded from one Tivo and carry them over to watch them on another. Or maybe not.
> 
> As for the one recent show that was still on my Now Playing list after I divorced the expander, it was probably the first thing recorded immediately after the divorce. I deleted it right away and I don't recall seeing its date.
> 
> Since the divorce, everything has been glitch-free. But I'm already hurting for space.


Yes, but they could just key the recording to the TiVo and that would do the samething (I'm sure someone could break it but then again, if I REALLY wanted to I could probably break THIS system). Just annoying.

I've been glitch free since the divorce too but since I did a divorce then a internal drive upgrade to 1TB drive, I can't be 100% certain if was an expander issue, an internal drive failing issue, or a little of both. I lean towards the latter.


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## BrightestBear (Mar 4, 2009)

seattlewendell said:


> Has anyone had any luck with Tivo. And by luck, I mean Tivo admitting there is a problem and pledging a fix is on the way?


I never did. The party line was that either my TiVo or my expander was going bad.

So I gave up and ordered a TiVo HD XL to back up my S3. Without the expander, I didn't have enough storage capacity, and I didn't want to crack open my S3 and void the warranty. You win, TiVo! Here's more of my money!


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## seattlewendell (Jan 11, 2006)

BrightestBear said:


> You win, TiVo! Here's more of my money!


They always do....they always do.


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## seattlewendell (Jan 11, 2006)

danterner said:


> It's probably a design decision to make sure that the expanders aren't usable as portable storage, allowing you to take shows recorded from one Tivo and carry them over to watch them on another. Or maybe not.
> 
> As for the one recent show that was still on my Now Playing list after I divorced the expander, it was probably the first thing recorded immediately after the divorce. I deleted it right away and I don't recall seeing its date.
> 
> Since the divorce, everything has been glitch-free. But I'm already hurting for space.


Exactly. Tivo even said this was the reason when they first announced the expander. They wanted to show content companies that they are making some effort to not let Tivo be part of the piracy problem. Even if it's pretty weak.


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## seattlewendell (Jan 11, 2006)

I wonder if this is a firmware issue. I purchased my expander when it was first released mid 2008. Anyone having this problem with any of the new expanders?


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## toolkit (Jan 10, 2002)

Seattlewendell, I guess you mean the firmware inside the DVR expander, right?

That's an interesting observation. I'm having the same problem others have been having. I've been trying to understand why so many people had their expanders "go bad" at the same time, right after a software upgrade in the TiVo. Furthermore, some people have even reported having the problem even though their drives (both internal and external) fully pass the Kickstart-54 tests. Even in that case, if they divorce the external drive, the problems seem to go away.

Historically, a lot of people detect problems with their hard drives right after a software update. But I generally think that is because when a software update happens, the entire update gets downloaded into a new partition (while the old software is still in use on an old partition), and then when the machine reboots, it starts using the new partition and stops using the old one. So the software update causes the machine to start using a part of the disk it wasn't using before. However, none of the software should be stored on the external drive, so the partition(s) on the external drive shouldn't change when one gets a software update, so the usual mechanism that uncovers a failing drive doesn't seem to fit in this case.

I have been _assuming_ the issue has something to do with the eSATA driver, which may have been updated as part of the recent software releases. If that theory is true, then I was trying to understand why *everybody* with DVR expanders aren't seeing this issue. Maybe a change to the eSATA driver causes problems only on certain external drives with certain firmware.

As an aside, I wonder what percentage of people with external drives have been experiencing problems. Maybe everybody is. Probably not, but I can't say for sure. I for one have been experiencing problems, but I didn't bother to post here about it (until now), and I haven't called TiVo either.

Maybe I'll post a poll to try to estimate how many people have external drives, but have NOT had any problems.


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## seattlewendell (Jan 11, 2006)

toolkit said:


> Seattlewendell, I guess you mean the firmware inside the DVR expander, right?
> I have been _assuming_ the issue has something to do with the eSATA driver, which may have been updated as part of the recent software releases. If that theory is true, then I was trying to understand why *everybody* with DVR expanders aren't seeing this issue. Maybe a change to the eSATA driver causes problems only on certain external drives with certain firmware.


Exactly. Manufacturers makes small changes to firmware even though they don't change the model number of the device. I am thinking that those of us who purchased the extender early on (last year when it was first available) might not have the new firmware that's compatible with the new eSATA drivers. I sent an email to Western Digital about this. No response yet. If they say it's the esata firmware that would be good and bad news for me. Good news because I will finally know what on earth is happening. Bad news because I do not have any way of updating the firmware (no eSATA port on my Mac).


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## varley (Apr 11, 2009)

I've been having partial recording problems for the past few weeks also and assume it's a hard drive issue. I have a 500 gb external attached. I'm currently running the 54 diagnostics on the TiVo, but after reading the comments, I've decided to unplug the external drive and replace the internal with a 750 gb drive I just ordered from WeaKnees. 

I hope that the single large drive will solve the problems. On a side note, whenever I had a brief power outage, the TiVo HD would restart, but wouldn't recognize the external drive until I unplugged the TiVo and let it restart after the external drive was already powered on. I would always dread leaving town and there being a power outage because nothing would get recorded. Now with a single drive, that should fix it.


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## msu-dawg (Jan 7, 2006)

While I still believe the number of people reporting this problem seems rather high to simply be coincidental to the software upgrade, I knew that even if Tivo might eventually be able to fix the problem that I think they created, the fact is that I had no control over my own destiny if I sat back and did nothing (aside from the divorce which put me with unacceptably low recording time).

So my shiny new WD10EVCS came in earlier this week and last night I ran diagnostics on it (full write 0's to the disk). Got up this AM and the WD DataLifeguard software said everything was fine with the disk. So I did the swap in the Tivo using the WinMFS software. Piece of cake! That was so much easier than the old method of command line promps in Linux booted from CD! Now reporting 157 Hours HD capacity and I don't have to worry about not jiggling the eSATA cable. Sweet!


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## mercurial (Oct 17, 2002)

So far so good. Gone almost a week now with the DVR Expander removed and the 1TB installed, no more reboots or slow menus. Still see some pixelation and occasional freezes/audio drops on some of the SDV channels (mostly it seems). I wonder if that could be too much signal or a bad coax patch cable from the TA to the TiVo. Only seems to happen on this one S3 though.


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## danterner (Mar 4, 2005)

mercurial said:


> So far so good. Gone almost a week now with the DVR Expander removed and the 1TB installed, no more reboots or slow menus.


I haven't had a single partial recording in the week or two since I bit the bullet and removed the expander. No other oddities, either. So now I'm considering installing a larger internal drive and saying goodbye to the expander. It pains me to do so, as I feel like I'm throwing away the money I spent on the expander. Could have put that toward the internal drive in the first place.

If I install a new internal drive, I know I'll have to do guided setup, reprogram all season passes, etc, correct? But what about my cable cards? Am I going to have to ask for a truck roll from the cable company to re-pair them, or will installing the new drive not affect them?


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## mercurial (Oct 17, 2002)

danterner said:


> If I install a new internal drive, I know I'll have to do guided setup, reprogram all season passes, etc, correct? But what about my cable cards? Am I going to have to ask for a truck roll from the cable company to re-pair them, or will installing the new drive not affect them?


Get yourself a couple of external enclosures that support sata and can connect to your PC via USB or eSATA. Then download and use WinMFS. It will clone your existing drive to the new drive, no need for guided setup, SPs will be there, recordings will remain, etc.


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## msu-dawg (Jan 7, 2006)

Assuming you have a PC with an open SATA port to use, just buy a new 1TB blank drive and use the WinMFS software to do the upgrade, following the instructions in post one of the Upgrade FAQ http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784

That will maintain all your setup info, including cablecards I believe. I just did this and it was really easy- much more so than the old method of using a linux based boot disk and having to know all the right commands and appropriate switches.

Only problem I had was that when I hooked the Tivo SATA drive up to my PC my BIOS wanted to make it the boot drive, instead of my existing PATA drive with windows. That was simple enough to fix in the BIOS and once Windows was up and running the WinMFS software was very easy to use using the instructions in the FAQ.


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## razordullwit (Feb 6, 2008)

Just ducking in over here -- I had the same problem every one else seems to be having, but I thought it might have been related to the "FiOS pixelation" issue. My thread is over here: http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7213405&posted=1

To sum up, I did EVERYTHING I possibly could have before divorcing the WD Expander, and nothing worked, but divorcing the expander did. Putting it back on re-caused the problems. Replaced it with a brand new one, no more problems. And no eSATA port on my computer to diagnose drive problems...

So...it's a really big coincidence that so many of us had our drives fail right after 11b hit...and also after the warranty expired on the drives, yes?


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## mercurial (Oct 17, 2002)

msu-dawg said:


> Assuming you have a PC with an open SATA port to use, just buy a new 1TB blank drive and use the WinMFS software to do the upgrade, following the instructions in post one of the Upgrade FAQ http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784
> 
> That will maintain all your setup info, including cablecards I believe. I just did this and it was really easy- much more so than the old method of using a linux based boot disk and having to know all the right commands and appropriate switches.
> 
> Only problem I had was that when I hooked the Tivo SATA drive up to my PC my BIOS wanted to make it the boot drive, instead of my existing PATA drive with windows. That was simple enough to fix in the BIOS and once Windows was up and running the WinMFS software was very easy to use using the instructions in the FAQ.


I think for the average person, a couple of SATA->USB external enclosures makes it the easiest. May take a little longer but no worries about opening your case or having to adjust bios.


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## microbubba (Dec 31, 2006)

All I had to do was change ALL my Season Passes to the Standard Def cable channels and avoid HD altogether.

My supposedly failing hard drive and faulty Official WD Expander are working together like a champ and Tivo operates like it originally did.

I remain highly suspect of new code in 11b and how the eSata, Expander, I/O, are trying to deal with the overhead of HD content.


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## WJB21 (Oct 4, 2006)

I have basically the same experience as microbubba -- Using Comcast cable in Sunnyvale, CA.

After the 11.0b update I had severe freezing and audio drops out along with partial recordings on certain HD channels - mostly the major network FOX/NBC/ABC. 

I ended up adding 13 dB of attenuation and noticed that the freezing/audio dropouts went away (my SNR went from 37 dB to 32 dB and sig strength from 100 pegged to 85/90).

However, I noticed that right at the time I added attenuation - it just so happened my the 11.0c software updated was pushed to my unit. So I am not sure if it was the attenuation or the software update that reduced the freezing ... 

Things were going well for 1 week -- no freezing ... no drop outs ... recordings on HD were ok ... until this week when I noticed that 24 was partial with 58 minutes and last night Lost only made it for 7 minutes =/ Both of these on HD channels. The other HD and SD channels are recording OK --- but I noticed some audio drop outs this morning -- and checking the signal errors noticed RS corrected/uncorrected were both at zero ....

I have had the Series 3 a little after it was released and the expander WD drive a little after it was released with no problems at all except for a "reboot when turning on TV power" issue (which I think I corrected by locating the eSATA cable away from the TV cables). 

I am not convinced yet that I might have a HDD problem ... just doesn't compute that other HD/SD channels record fine and I see the freezing/pausing on a select few. Unless certain channels are given the same HDD space before being moved to another location on the drive after recording is done ... 

But it all seems very suspicious that all these people have these problems as soon as 11.0b is released ... so maybe the software did something that made certain things like high signal strength and having an expander more prone to freezes? And odd that my problems improved when 11.0c was released (or maybe that and the attenuation helped).... Can't what be broke by software be fixed by software?


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## greggt007 (Dec 9, 2005)

another victim here, recording mainly in sd, but record hd and sd version when nothing else is taping on other tuner. but i will bite the bullet and get an sata-usb enclosure to upgrade to a 1tb drive. 

as someone else mentioned, i was hopefully the problem would go away when only 1 hd channel was recording or tuned, but that is not the case. i regularly record attack of the show on g4 sd, and kudlow reports on cnbchd at the same time and kudlow is often partial.

i am also an original expander'er. so that argument might have weight. i talked my buddy into an expander last thanksgiving and he isnt having any issues..


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## geoelectric (Apr 7, 2009)

Ditto here. Been having partials since mid-Jan (11 original). Went through four or five support calls with Tivo, swapped cablecards, eSATA cables, put on attenuators, kickstarts, etc. For months I've been using To Do to remap all recordings to SD because all HD recordings fail. In addition, have had frequent reboots.

11.b and 11.c have both come down, neither fixed the problem, though reboots lessened a bit with 11.b.

Yesterday finally pulled the Expander (was putting it off because I didn't want to lose the tens of hours of recorded shows I still hadn't watched) and now all works perfectly. I just don't buy a hardware problem, what with the large number of people with the same issue.

I'm really beyond angry. I'm stuck with this solution now--it's cheaper to upgrade the internal drive than go Moxi, since I've already paid lifetime. However, I'm going to have a hard time recommending Tivo ever again. If they're not doing adequate QC on pushed software releases, they aren't trustworthy.


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## RustySTL (Feb 27, 2007)

I pulled my expander a few weeks ago and haven't had any problems yet.

I have a second TiVo HD that did not have a DVR Expander and I decided yesterday that maybe I'll try to install it on that TiVo. As of today, not one issue.

The only difference between the two TiVo HD's is the one I had the problems with is about a year older. This second one I just purchased before Christmas.


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## alissaaa (Apr 21, 2009)

I'm on the phone with TiVo as we speak and currently reformatting my TivoHD after unplugging the DVR Expander. The TiVo rep I am speaking with said that this is the first time he's had someone call with this issue.

I've been having pixelation issues, turning on the tv to a black screen, a bunch of partial recordings (Mostly on Monday nights, oddly enough, but always on HD channels).

Hopefully this fixes the problem. But I won't be happy to have to pay to buy a new DVR expander!


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## cdp1276 (Mar 25, 2003)

I have to say I have 11.0c software version and got it early than the normal deployment that happened a few days ago, and for 3 weeks now I've not had any issues. Mine was so bad before this, lots of partial recordings, couldn't fast forward as it would skip huge chunks rather than the normal speed, and constant loss of audio/video during watching (macro blocking). I don't have the WD Expander drive but rather a Maxter Quickview Expander external drive on this S3. So not sure what has happened but for now, I'm so happy it is working as it should again. This to me also proves this is likely more of a code or driver issue than the constant divorce or bad drives.


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## RustySTL (Feb 27, 2007)

RustySTL said:


> I pulled my expander a few weeks ago and haven't had any problems yet.
> 
> I have a second TiVo HD that did not have a DVR Expander and I decided yesterday that maybe I'll try to install it on that TiVo. As of today, not one issue.
> 
> The only difference between the two TiVo HD's is the one I had the problems with is about a year older. This second one I just purchased before Christmas.


It's been one week now and I haven't had any issues when I moved my DVR expander to my other TiVo HD. Both of them work fine....strange.


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## kyoung2112 (Apr 25, 2009)

This past week, I noticed that a bunch of of HD recordings since around the beginning of April were partial recordings with audio/video blocking when viewed. I'm not sure if they were recorded that way, or corrupted at some point after recording. I have an HD TiVo with a Western Digital 500GB expander. Both the TiVo and the expander were purchased around the beginning of this year, and things have worked great up until now. I ran the Kickstart 54 on the drives and they showed up with no errors. Note that I just received the 11.0c-01-2-652 software version yesterday afternoon, so we'll see if new recordings come in any better from this point on. Several HD shows recorded last night came in fine. I also deleted all the existing partial recordings.


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## tootal2 (Oct 14, 2005)

I got a partial recording last night. The cable went out for a few hours last night. On my s2 hooked to a cable box I get "this channel will be back shortly". On my hd it just stops recording.

Im on charter cable and there having money problems I hope the 30.00 price increase will help them


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## kohai (Apr 25, 2009)

Tivo support has me looking into my SNR level being too low.

See post other post about it (forum won't let me link to it).

I think I'm having the exact same issues as everybody else in this thread! I guess I get to try divorce my expander next before my wife divorces me for partial recordings....

C.


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## seattlewendell (Jan 11, 2006)

Pulled the expander and the problems went away. Thinking of trying a different expander. Anyone else using a different expander (problem free) besides the Western Digital?


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## Buddy-series3 (May 17, 2009)

Another with the same problem. I have had the Tivo HD for a year with the WD 500 expander. Mostly been all good until the last month - lots of partials, pixalation and some freezing. Last straw tonight - partial recording of final episode of 24. Ouch. I have tried kickstart 54 and both drives checked out fine - but beginning to think of trying the expander disconnect. I hate to lose those recordings but can't live with this performance.

Can someone explain what a good RS corrected and RS uncorrected number would be?
Also, signal strength is 80-85 on one card and 35-60 on the other. Is this normal? Is it ok?


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## kohai (Apr 25, 2009)

kohai said:


> Tivo support has me looking into my SNR level being too low.
> 
> See post other post about it (forum won't let me link to it).
> 
> ...


I never posted the results of my disconnect. It worked. It solved the problem. So, I upgraded my internal drive to a 1TB drive with winmfs.

Tivo really needs to address this and acknowledge they busted things.


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## BarryD99 (Mar 30, 2002)

Have had my Tivo HD DVR and WD 500 gb Expander since 8/16/08. No problems until a month ago, then pixelization and finally frozen screens resulting in partial recordings. Had Comcast out 6 times. Ran Tivo disk tests. Indicated no problems. Yesterday I disconnected the external drive and have been running fine for 24 hours.
Am returning the drive to WD. Interested in seeing if the replacement will solve the problem.


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## Buddy-series3 (May 17, 2009)

> Am returning the drive to WD. Interested in seeing if the replacement will solve the problem


Barry, have you spoken to WD or confirmed their warranty program? I did exactly what you did and, like you, the Tivo is now working fine. I connected the eSATA to the computer and ran the WD extended scan and it showed no problems, even thought it wasn't working with my Tivo....so.... I am not sure if I have a legit WD warranty opportunityh or just a Tivo interface problem.

Buddy


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## SC0TLANDF0REVER (Dec 9, 2001)

I think my TiVo's HDD (S3 + WD 500GB Expander) is on it's way out. Today I turned on the TV - One buffer is fine with the show that is on @ 2PM. The other had the news from 11AM 'stuck' and I was able to rewind and watch the entire 30 min buffer. At the end of the buffer, the image froze. If I change the channel, it will unfreeze.

A couple of weeks ago I missed the season finale of Lost as the TiVo only grabbed 42 mins of the show (Thank God ABC puts their show on the Web). Again last Thursday with another 2 hr finale... except it started recording the show again after what looks like a random reboot - about 7 mins missing from the show.

I think I'll run the Kickstarts - and looking at replacing my drive with a 1TB Internal.

Edit: Software = 11.0c-01-2-648
WD Expander *just* over a yr old


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## Tkilmer (Dec 25, 2003)

Well after having the expander divorced since April and no issues, I decided to format it and try to add it back last night. It has been two software updates since, and I think this might be related to the Fios problem which the latest update tries to address.

So far...no issues. But it has only been a day. If the problem surfaces again I will just upgrade the internal and use the My Expander with my media center.


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## Tkilmer (Dec 25, 2003)

Well after a week, no issues. So I am pretty confident it was a problem with the 11 software. But seeing as others have still having issues with the Expander, I wonder if it is just a matter of time before the drives get out of sync and will require a complete format again.

Oh well, if I get a few more months out of it I will be satisfied and then just swap the internal drive.


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## cholly (Mar 27, 2009)

I've had 500 GB expanders fail on both my S3 and My TiVo HD. I ran the kickstart programs on my HD and no failures. I wound up divorcing both drives. After the failure on my HD, I bought a 1 TB expander, and so far I've had no problem with it. In another threat here, I've seen the suggestion that the problem may be with the eSATA cable provided by WD, and a suggetion that you get a SIIG 3.28 ft. eSATA to eSATA Cable Model CB-SA0111-S1 to replace it. I'd like to run the WD diagnostics on the drives, but in order to do so, I'll have to get a USB2 to eSATA cable adapter.
As with others, I've tried contacting WD about the problems (both drives were naturally out of warranty) and they are no help whatever.
I'm also of the opinion that there is no problem when recording SD programs, only HD. If to it certainly looks as though it could be a software problem. I can't understand why TiVo engineering isn't looking into the matter, given the number of failures.


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## RoadHazard (Aug 2, 2002)

Is it possible these problems with the expansion hard drive are actually related to RF interference in the eSATA cable, and not the hard drive itself?

In another thread, the user discovered that his TiVo was glitching and rebooting because it was picking up RF noise through the TV cable. Moving the TiVo box farther away from the TV solved it.

Remember, Neither TiVo nor the expansion drive is grounded. They both float with respect to the local ground, so they're prime candidates for RF noise from local AV cables, AC power lines, network cables, over-the-air RF, etc. Perhaps a shorter and/or shielded eSATA cable might solve some of these problems without the messy divorce. Just an idea.


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