# Premiere randomly loses ability to swap tuners



## Gary Stevens (Dec 2, 2002)

Got a Premiere about two months ago and after some Comcast headaches everything seemed to be fine except for one thing.

Randomly and regularly, the Live/Swap remote button will not cause the Tivo to swap tuners. The first press brings up the program guide. A second press brings up the channel info overlay. Repeated presses just cycle between these two overlays.

I have checked the DVR Diagnostics info to verify that the two tuners are indeed on different channels. I have tried multiple remotes and the Tivo behavior does not change. A trip through Tivo Central will sometimes appear to fix the problem and restore the swap function, but not always.

I've been working with Tivo tech support and they sent me a new Premiere. Unfortunately, it has exactly the same behavior! The only thing in common between the original and the replacement is the cablecard.

Has anyone heard of this behavior? One Tivo technician said he had handled maybe three calls over the last two years for this problem.

Could it be cablecard related? I don't see how, since the cablecard has to support two output streams concurrently so presumably the stream selected for display is handled by the Tivo hardware.

On the channel info overlay, I just noticed that the mini menu on the right edge has a "swap tuners" button. (Was that there in the last rev?) Using this method reliably swaps tuners and heals things so that the remote Swap/Live button works again. Ironically, cursoring to the menu "swap" button brings up a helpful suggestion that a faster way to swap tuners is to use the Swap/Live button on the remote.

Thanks for any suggestions.

-Gary


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## Krellion (May 17, 2002)

What kind of remote are you using? Some programmable remotes use an older code for the TiVo or Live TV buttons that tells your TiVo to bring up the program guide instead of switching tuners when the Live TV button is pressed. Usually going into the main TiVo menu with a proper remote will fix the issue.


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## Gary Stevens (Dec 2, 2002)

I have two new genuine Premiere remotes, two universal remotes, and an old Series 1 remote. The Tivo behavior is the same no matter which remote is used.

-Gary


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## 241705 (Mar 9, 2010)

I don't recall the LiveTV button ever bringing up the program guide...


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## Gary Stevens (Dec 2, 2002)

blackngold75 said:


> I don't recall the LiveTV button ever bringing up the program guide...


Quite correct - it shouldn't. But mine does, or rather, both the ones I have do it. Quite weird.

-Gary


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

Gary Stevens said:


> Randomly and regularly, the Live/Swap remote button will not cause the Tivo to swap tuners


i had this happen once on a new tivo premiere xl, and either a cold boot or the software upgrade fixed, i don't know which (they happened in succession).

try a cold boot:

first, unplug all cables (ethernet, cable coax, power, hdmi & fiber optic), and remove the card.

next, reconnect the hdmi and the fiber optic, plug power into tivo, but wait for tivo to ask for the cable card after it has finished the boot.

then, insert the cable card, wait for tivo to recognize it, and connect the coax cable and wait for channels to appear. verify the channel setup (should be unchanged).

finally, connect the ethernet cable and verify network connectivity.

you can also request the spring software update if you haven't already received it by going to:

http://www.tivo.com/mytivo/software-priority-request/index.html?WT.z_links=priority_vanity​
hope this helps clear it up.


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## Ed_Hunt (Jan 2, 2004)

I had this same thing and tried to fix it with multiple remotes and reboots et al. It fixed itself after about a month so I am assuming a software update fixed it. All my remotes, Tivo and otherwise, work now


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## Gary Stevens (Dec 2, 2002)

Thanks, NorthAlabama. I've actually done the cold restart-the-world sequence and that didn't cure it, unfortunately. I'll look into the SW revision and check against the new release. Thanks for the direct link!

Did more troubleshooting last night with Tivo tech support via chat. Still no confirmed solution, but level two tech support is suspecting the CableCARD, which I will swap out today. That is the only thing in common between my original Premiere and the replacement I just swapped in. Well, that and the AC cord. Current thinking is that the CableCARD is mis-communicating with the Tivo and saying only a single tuner is available.

Quick recap: Can't swap tuners with remote Live/Swap button. Problem is intermittent, but present ~80% of the time now (has been showing up more often). Using the swap icon on the mini menu in the channel info overlay ALWAYS works, though.

-Gary


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

On some older remotes (ones designed for single tuner models) there were no separate Live TV and Guide buttons, they were combined into one button. Pressing it once would go to Live TV and pressing it again would bring up the guide.

The Premiere still has the capability to work with these older remotes and it determines what remote is being used by the remote code that is sent when the TiVo button is pressed.

Try this. Using one of the official Premiere remotes, press the TiVo button. Then see if the Live TV button works. If that doesn't work, try switching to the SDUI (if you are using HDUI) and press the TiVo button again. That should tell the Premiere that there are separate Live TV and Guide buttons. Once (if) it works, don't use the Series 1 remote and make sure your universal remotes are programmed based off of Series 3 aor Premiere remote codes, not the Series 1 or Series 2 ones.


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## dvnext (Jan 1, 2012)

I recently got a new Denon receiver which came with a remote that has a DVR mode. In this mode, if I hit the Menu button on the Denon remote, it will triggers the Tivo menu to open. My guess is that when this happens it will cause this Guide-instead-of-tuner-switch problem.

The trick for me, and the main reason for my post, is that I have a Tivo Slide remote and the Tivo-botton-followed-by-Live-button fix did NOT work for me. Instead, I had to use the remote that came with my S3 to do it. After that, both remotes worked as expected.

So a heads-up for Slide owners with this issue. Use your original remote to fix the issue, not the Slide remote.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

TiVo might not have coded the software to handle the detection via bluetooth. My guess is that if you switched the Slide remote to IR instead of bluetooth (i.e. pulled the bluetooth dongle), the fix would work.


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## randywalters (Oct 21, 2003)

morac said:


> On some older remotes (ones designed for single tuner models) there were no separate Live TV and Guide buttons, they were combined into one button. Pressing it once would go to Live TV and pressing it again would bring up the guide.
> 
> The Premiere still has the capability to work with these older remotes and it determines what remote is being used by the remote code that is sent when the TiVo button is pressed.
> 
> Try this. Using one of the official Premiere remotes, press the TiVo button. Then see if the Live TV button works. If that doesn't work, try switching to the SDUI (if you are using HDUI) and press the TiVo button again. That should tell the Premiere that there are separate Live TV and Guide buttons. Once (if) it works, don't use the Series 1 remote and make sure your universal remotes are programmed based off of Series 3 aor Premiere remote codes, not the Series 1 or Series 2 ones.


I know this is an old thread, but this morning i discovered my Premiere had suddenly lost the ability to Swap Tuners when i press the Swap/Live TV button (which had always worked fine on my five different Universal Remotes as well as the Premiere's Peanut remote until this morning). Now when i press Swap/Live TV, it just goes to Live TV but does not Swap. Swap was working fine when i last used it yesterday afternoon (i watch two news channels at the same time and swap back and forth), so i thought maybe the software had gotten corrupted overnight so i rebooted it - but the Swap Tuner function still would not work with any of my various remotes so i knew it had to be a problem with the Premiere, but what? So i searched TCF which led me to this thread.

Late last night i was setting up an old and long-discontinued Nevo C2 Color Universal Remote Control for the first time (using their online setup wizard), and one of the "tests" for the Tivo Device is to press the Nevo's Power button which unexpectedly put my Premiere into Standby mode. So i pressed the Tivo button to wake it back up, then the remote prompted me to try other buttons to see if the other commands work, and sure enough one of the commands on the remote's screen is LIVE TV (not Swap) and i remember pressing that when i was trying the additional buttons after bringing it out of Standby mode. That explains why the Swap buttons on all of my various remotes are suddenly no longer Swapping tuners - by me pressing Tivo then Live TV my Premiere now thinks i'm using an older Tivo remote; one that does not send the Swap command.

I had no idea the Premiere would change it's Swap Tuner/Live TV/Guide behavior if an older remote is used until i found this thread, so i used Morac's suggestion and used the Premiere's Peanut Remote and Pressed Tivo, then pressed Swap/Live TV and that immediately restored the ability to swap tuners, and now my Swap function works again on all of my various remotes.


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## kenramp (Mar 17, 2015)

I recently purchased a Bose entertainment system and this suggestion restored my swap tuner capability. Thanks!!!

Sent from my SM-T710 using Tapatalk


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