# Shows recording without sound



## kdl (Feb 11, 2009)

I've never had this issue before. I googled and found people with the problem from 2010, 2013, 2015 and one post from Jan 2018 (without a resolution).

I've had 2 shows I tried to watch today that don't have sound. I first tried to watch them on my TV and found no sound, then I tried the iPad and also found no sound.

I am located in Texas. The 2 shows are on different networks.
ABC - 2/1/18
TNT - 12/19/17

These are 2 shows out of many that record. I've never had an audio issue with live TV so I don't know if there was an issue during these times or not.

As mentioned, this has never happened before on any of my Tivo boxes (currently Roamio).

Thank you in advance if you have any idea how to get the sound restored or if you know it's a lost cause and I just need to buy the episodes missing sound.


----------



## UCLABB (May 29, 2012)

I have one cable channel, Velocity, that off and on I get no sound, live or recorded. I can change channels a couple of times and it will come back. Since I record a fair amount of programs on this channel, I try to leave it active on one of my tuners because once it’s tuned with sound, it’s fine. I have no idea what causes this issue.


----------



## Sptrader (Oct 7, 2017)

I have a similar problem, if I turned on the Tivo, then the TV, I wouldn't have sound or the sound was garbled but if I turn on the TV first(Samsung56"), wait a few seconds, then turn on the Tivo, the sound was perfect every time. (using HDMI cable between Tivo and TV).


----------



## V7Goose (May 28, 2005)

Sptrader said:


> then turn on the Tivo


Turn on the TiVo? How do you manage that, since TiVos do not how any on/off switch? Perhaps you really mean "wake up" the TiVo?

The first thing I suggest you do is replace that HDMI cable. And if it is an issue with waking up the box, just turning off the power saving feature is also an option (testing has shown that only makes a very minor change in power consumption anyway).


----------



## rdrrepair (Nov 24, 2006)

I had this issue once. I deleted a bunch of recordings thinking it was as issue with the channel. I kept having this problem so I pulled the plug, waited a minute, plugged it back in and recovered all my recently deleted shows. No problem on playback after that.


----------



## Sptrader (Oct 7, 2017)

V7Goose said:


> Turn on the TiVo? How do you manage that, since TiVos do not how any on/off switch? Perhaps you really mean "wake up" the TiVo?
> 
> The first thing I suggest you do is replace that HDMI cable. And if it is an issue with waking up the box, just turning off the power saving feature is also an option (testing has shown that only makes a very minor change in power consumption anyway).


Yes, awaken the Tivo is what I meant. I do have max energy saving turned on, so that could be the problem. I used max energy saving hoping that it would put the hard drive to sleep(stop) when not used, to extend its lifespan. (not sure if it does put the drive to sleep).


----------



## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

TiVo tunes and records more than one sound track. You can select which one is being used by pressing the Info button and scrolling down. I had a recent recording that appeared to have no audio. It was using the default audio track, called "English -- Dolby Audio", which normally works fine. However by selecting the other available track, called "SAP (AD or Spanish -- Dolby Audio)" I got normal sounding English audio. This doesn't make sense to me. I suspect somewhere along the line from original source to my cable feed, an error was made. This happens so seldom, and the 'fix' is so easy, that it isn't worth the trouble to try to get someone to fix it. I've spent too much of my life already dealing with support people, especially on problems like this that provide plenty of opportunities for "finger pointing". (It's your TiVo; It's the cable co; it's the network feed, etc.)


----------



## schatham (Mar 17, 2007)

I had one show a few weeks ago with no sound. Has not happened before or since.


----------



## dfreybur (Jan 27, 2006)

I have had an issue of sound falling away. The show just goes silent. I hit pause and play, the sound resumes for a while. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It happened with season 10 Doctor Who on Amazon Prime on a lot of episodes. Not other streaming show I have noticed.

Last night it happened with an NCIS episode we started playing live on some local channel. Pressing pause/play never got us as far back as a commercial break.

It's pretty clearly an issue on our local Roamio OTA. We have more than one Tivo boxes and it doesn't happen on the other one. Thinking of activating a box that's currently powered off to replace that particular Roamio OTA to see if it's unique to that box.


----------



## choco (Nov 3, 2000)

I have the same problem with CBS shows, and it's been happening for an entire year. I know exactly what actions cause the problem to occur, which I described in detail in my post here:

Odd Audio Dropouts

I reported the bug to Tivo a year ago, but they never responded or fixed the problem. Because of this, my workaround is similar to UCLABB's. On days I know that CBS shows will record, I try to make sure one tuner is set to CBS, and the rest of the tuners are set to "good" channels (explained in my old post). It's painful, and sometimes I forget and get no audio on a CBS show, but what can you do when bugs like this are never fixed...


----------



## jluvs2ride (Oct 29, 2012)

Occasionally I have this problem, a show gets recorded and the audio doesn't play. Been going on for a while. Usually, the fix is to change the audio track, usually to Spanish - Dolby Audio.

Tonight I sat down to watch an episode of Vikings and no sound. I switched audio tracks to Spanish - Dolby Audio and bingo sound is restored. However this track has the expected English dialogue but also has a most annoying narration.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

jluvs2ride said:


> Occasionally I have this problem, a show gets recorded and the audio doesn't play. Been going on for a while. Usually, the fix is to change the audio track, usually to Spanish - Dolby Audio.
> 
> Tonight I sat down to watch an episode of Vikings and no sound. I switched audio tracks to Spanish - Dolby Audio and bingo sound is restored. However this track has the expected English dialogue but also has a most annoying narration.


I wonder if you switch back to the original audio track, if everything will be ok now.

I assume that the track you now are on is the alternate track with audio descriptions, especially for use by those with vision impairments.


----------



## choco (Nov 3, 2000)

I'm still having the same problem with CBS, going on 2 years now. I'm now using a more automatic workaround though. I have 4 repeating manual recordings set to record every day from 7:30-7:35pm (right before our primetime) on 4 of the "good" channels. The manual recordings are set at lowest priority in the season pass list. This puts all 4 tuners on good channels (assuming no real shows are recording), which greatly lessens the chance that a CBS show will record without audio.

This clutters the recorded shows list with 4 junk recordings, but the manual recordings are keep at most 1 episode, so it's not too terrible. It's better than having to manually manage the tuners, but I just wish they could fix this bug...

Maybe this bug is fixed on Hydra? I'm not on it, so can't test.


----------



## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

choco said:


> I'm still having the same problem with CBS, going on 2 years now.Maybe this bug is fixed on Hydra? I'm not on it, so can't test.


I guess you are not using power saving or Standby? Two years! You have patience. I have three basic Roamio. On one, it records CBS, NBC and 99% Comedy Central. All recording is on the same tuners. In five years I have never had any audio problems. Ever.

If I was having a CBS issue, first thing I would do is record the SD mirror channel. If that is also bad then it is my cable company. Another thought. Tune to CBS. Restart the box. All tuners will be on that CBS channel. I wonder if all your manual recordings are silent.

What does your diagnostics show on that channel for Available and Selected Audio PID? I get AC3 since my CBS channel is DD 5.1, the SD version is also AC3 since it is DD 2.0.


----------



## choco (Nov 3, 2000)

JoeKustra said:


> I guess you are not using power saving or Standby? Two years! You have patience. I have three basic Roamio. On one, it records CBS, NBC and 99% Comedy Central. All recording is on the same tuners. In five years I have never had any audio problems. Ever.
> 
> If I was having a CBS issue, first thing I would do is record the SD mirror channel. If that is also bad then it is my cable company. Another thought. Tune to CBS. Restart the box. All tuners will be on that CBS channel. I wonder if all your manual recordings are silent.
> 
> What does your diagnostics show on that channel for Available and Selected Audio PID? I get AC3 since my CBS channel is DD 5.1, the SD version is also AC3 since it is DD 2.0.


I'm not using power saving or standby.

The bug only occurs when switching between particular channels and CBS, and it's pretty much avoidable with the manual recording workaround, so I just deal with it. Yes, 2 years is a very long time, but what can you do if Tivo won't fix it?

I tested just now, and the problem does *not* occur with the SD CBS channel. It only occurs with the HD CBS channel. I didn't do the other restart the box test.

Available and Selected Audio PID is AC3 for both my SD and HD CBS channels. Not sure what that means though.

My guess is the bug is probably related to a combination of our cable broadcast and the Tivo software. The bug didn't occur in older versions of the Tivo software; it started happening after an update. It's completely reproducible, so it could be debugged if Tivo was willing, but obviously, they're not. They probably don't care much either because it's not the latest (Hydra).


----------



## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

choco said:


> I'm not using power saving or standby.
> Available and Selected Audio PID is AC3 for both my SD and HD CBS channels. Not sure what that means though.


AC3 just means it's Dolby. Please don't jump into TE4/Hydra/Mira without some research. There's no easy way to rollback.

Silly suggestion: rent one of the basic cable boxes for a month. If it also fails, you have a problem with your feed. If not, I'm lost.

Not so silly suggestion: change the audio to PCM. It won't sound as good, but it may point to something wrong with the DD decoder in your (what plays your sound).


----------



## choco (Nov 3, 2000)

JoeKustra said:


> AC3 just means it's Dolby. Please don't jump into TE4/Hydra/Mira without some research. There's no easy way to rollback.
> 
> Silly suggestion: rent one of the basic cable boxes for a month. If it also fails, you have a problem with your feed. If not, I'm lost.


Yes, I'm not planning to switch to Hydra anytime soon.

Not sure what you mean by getting a basic cable box. Somehow use a cable box with Tivo instead of a cable card? Anyways, I'm not willing to spend so much effort to troubleshoot for Tivo, and I don't think this is fixable on the user end.

What's happening isn't an isolated occurrence. Searching online shows it happens to various people on various channels. Most people probably just ignore it and think it's a random glitch because it's rare. It only happens if your Tivo happens to switch between a bad channel and CBS (or whatever channel it happens to for others). It's only because I did more detailed testing that I found exactly what situations cause it.


----------



## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

Not so silly suggestion: change the audio to PCM. It won't sound as good, but it may point to something wrong with the DD decoder in your (what plays your sound).


----------



## choco (Nov 3, 2000)

Changing to PCM doesn't help. I didn't remember testing that 2 years ago, but re-reading my old post (Odd Audio Dropouts) says I did, lol.


----------



## jluvs2ride (Oct 29, 2012)

Mikeguy said:


> I wonder if you switch back to the original audio track, if everything will be ok now.
> 
> I assume that the track you now are on is the alternate track with audio descriptions, especially for use by those with vision impairments.


No, I originally thought so but I made sure that feature was turned off.


----------



## imagexpo (Apr 16, 2015)

I recently began experiencing this problem on one channel (Lifetime) and one specific show 'Project Runway All Stars'. No matter how many different times I recorded any episode the Tivo Roamio would only record video and NO audio. I did try pretuning to that channel but it did no good.

Thanks to this thread last night I tried selecting Spanish Dolby on a previously recorded show - and IT WORKED!
I went back and was able to listen to all the old episodes using that method and despite selecting Spanish, the show is in English.

How stupid is this?


----------



## tampa8 (Jan 26, 2016)

That seems like a lifetime or provider coding issue not a TIVO problem....


----------



## lprimak (Jun 30, 2019)

Tivo seems to be responding to tweets lately. Please comment on this tweet thread maybe it'll prompt them to fix this issues!
Thank you!


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1145425706341588994


choco said:


> I'm still having the same problem with CBS, going on 2 years now. I'm now using a more automatic workaround though. I have 4 repeating manual recordings set to record every day from 7:30-7:35pm (right before our primetime) on 4 of the "good" channels. The manual recordings are set at lowest priority in the season pass list. This puts all 4 tuners on good channels (assuming no real shows are recording), which greatly lessens the chance that a CBS show will record without audio.
> 
> This clutters the recorded shows list with 4 junk recordings, but the manual recordings are keep at most 1 episode, so it's not too terrible. It's better than having to manually manage the tuners, but I just wish they could fix this bug...
> 
> Maybe this bug is fixed on Hydra? I'm not on it, so can't test.


----------



## lprimak (Jun 30, 2019)

Tivo is not aware of this bug thus is not fixing it. Could you please twiit @tivo @tivosupport or comment on my tweet please so they know it's not just me?
thank you!



lprimak said:


> Tivo seems to be responding to tweets lately. Please comment on this tweet thread maybe it'll prompt them to fix this issues!
> Thank you!
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1145425706341588994


----------



## NCZap (Oct 30, 2019)

I just started having this same problem about a month ago on a Roamio Pro. No matter what I try, I still get random recordings with no audio. It also sometimes happens when switching channels. It's mostly CBS that I have the problem with. Nothing has changed in my setup for about 5 years. Any resolutions that you've found? Did you ever wipe your box and restart from defaults?



choco said:


> I'm still having the same problem with CBS, going on 2 years now. I'm now using a more automatic workaround though. I have 4 repeating manual recordings set to record every day from 7:30-7:35pm (right before our primetime) on 4 of the "good" channels. The manual recordings are set at lowest priority in the season pass list. This puts all 4 tuners on good channels (assuming no real shows are recording), which greatly lessens the chance that a CBS show will record without audio.
> 
> This clutters the recorded shows list with 4 junk recordings, but the manual recordings are keep at most 1 episode, so it's not too terrible. It's better than having to manually manage the tuners, but I just wish they could fix this bug...
> 
> Maybe this bug is fixed on Hydra? I'm not on it, so can't test.


----------



## lprimak (Jun 30, 2019)

Unfortunately, no resolutions thus far. Wiping the box, changing the box, changing tuning adapter, cable cards, USB, outdoor cables,
even signal boosting doesn't make any difference. My "newest" guess that there is some coding issue that the cable companies are changing / doing that is causing some channels not to "lock in" sound correctly. Tivo support has been utterly useless to diagnose / fix / isolate this problem.
This has been going on for 5+ years with no resolution. So frustrating!


----------



## kpeters59 (Jun 19, 2007)

If you 'pull' the show off the TiVo, maybe with KMTTG or similar, is there no audio when playing back the file on your PC?

-KP


----------



## lprimak (Jun 30, 2019)

No, doesn't help. The only "clue" is that the English track is available on the "Spanish" SAP program. However, it doesn't work for all shows that record without sound.
This has been mentioned in past posts.
The issue is that somehow the cablecard doesn't lock on the sound channel on some channels sometimes only if you tune that channel.
Retuning the channel fixes the problem. However, when Tivo records shows by tuning the channel, obviously that's not happening 



kpeters59 said:


> If you 'pull' the show off the TiVo, maybe with KMTTG or similar, is there no audio when playing back the file on your PC?
> 
> -KP


----------



## kpeters59 (Jun 19, 2007)

Hmmm...Makes me wonder if it's specific to a particular tuner.

-KP


----------



## lprimak (Jun 30, 2019)

No, I've checked that, multiple tuners have this issue


----------



## lprimak (Jun 30, 2019)

Success! Looks like the latest Bolt update 21.9.7.v7-USC-11-849 has resolved the issue as of today!
Finally after 3 years!


----------



## 84lion (Jan 23, 2009)

Argh. My wife had this problem the other night with our Roamio Pro. It was the local ABC affiliate (WSB, Atlanta) with a couple primetime shows, as well as the NBC affiliate (WXIA) with Jeopardy. No sound on either the primary or secondary audio. Our provider is Xfinity/Comcast. First time I can recall this ever happening.


----------



## austinsho (Oct 21, 2001)

I don't guess there's an update available for the Roamio that will make this go away as well? MOST of my recordings off the local NBC affiliate have audio that resides on the Spanish SAP channel.


----------



## myklbear (Jan 12, 2015)

Have you tried to go back to the show and watch it later and found that the audio is there?
I have periodic problems on mostly CNN MSNBC and CNBC but sometimes others where while a program is recording I lose either video or audio or both and/or control entirely. Later it may work or not but eventually it does. Curious doings. 
Roameo Plus T4.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk


----------



## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

84lion said:


> Argh. My wife had this problem the other night with our Roamio Pro. It was the local ABC affiliate (WSB, Atlanta) with a couple primetime shows, as well as the NBC affiliate (WXIA) with Jeopardy. No sound on either the primary or secondary audio. Our provider is Xfinity/Comcast. First time I can recall this ever happening.


I've had the same problem, posted a thread in the coffee house section. The only fix is to reboot and then sound comes back. I'm pretty sure this is a bug introduced in the latest couple of TE3 updates.


----------



## myklbear (Jan 12, 2015)

I have a timer plug that reboots my TiVo plus at 3:00 a.m. for 10 minutes everyday and it has solved about 80% of my failure of video and/or audio and/or control. But not all. Being under 85% full also seems to help. Got to get to work to transfer more files to my OTA. 

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk


----------



## mobouser (Sep 14, 2005)

If I reboot the sound comes back for me. Hope that helps.


----------



## AntiPC (Jul 22, 2005)

I've started having this issue with the local ABC affiliate on a Roamo OTA. There's no sound on the recording. There's no sound on live TV. Tuning a second tuner to ABC gives no sound. All other stations have live and recorded sound. The only thing I've found that fixes it is rebooting.

When there's *no sound*, the audio description is:



> The current audio track is: Unknown - Dolby Audio™
> 
> There are no alternative audio tracks available.


When the *sound is working*, the audio description is:



> The current audio track is English - Dolby Audio™
> 
> There are alternative audio tracks available, Including a Dolby
> Audio™ track: English - Dolby Audio™, Spanish - Dolby Audio™.
> ...


Any thoughts on a fix other than a corrective or preventive rebooting workaround?


----------

