# My Tivo got hacked - Tivo support useless



## brianric (Aug 29, 2002)

I was watching Good Morning Joe 30 minutes delayed (I was recording the show) when right in the middle of a conversation the TV screen went black with no audio, then switches to some infomercial. I hit the Tivo button, no response. I hit Live TV, no response. The only button that worked on the Tivo remote was the TV Power button. This lasted for about 30 seconds before I regained control of my Tivo. 

I tried reporting to Tivo, first by phone. Told five-minute backlog, five minutes later a 10-minute backlog, 10 minutes later a 15-minute backlog. At that point, I hung up. Tivo support and service are becoming useless. All I'm trying to do is just to report the problem so Tivo is aware of a potential problem.


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## tatergator1 (Mar 27, 2008)

Honestly, this sounds like a bad EAS test instance from your cable provider. They screwed something up with the EAS alert, the Tivo tuned to the wrong channel, so instead of seeing the EAS alert or test message, you saw the broadcast for the channel where the Tivo was told to look for the EAS meesage. You got back control when the EAS message terminated.


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

Yah, that sounds a lot like a EAS misfire. If so, the Tivo did exactly what it was supposed to do (annoying though it is). The cable company is likely to blame here.


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## brianric (Aug 29, 2002)

kdmorse said:


> Yah, that sounds a lot like a EAS misfire. If so, the Tivo did exactly what it was supposed to do (annoying though it is). The cable company is likely to blame here.





tatergator1 said:


> Honestly, this sounds like a bad EAS test instance from your cable provider. They screwed something up with the EAS alert, the Tivo tuned to the wrong channel, so instead of seeing the EAS alert or test message, you saw the broadcast for the channel where the Tivo was told to look for the EAS meesage. You got back control when the EAS message terminated.


If it was an EAS misfire wouldn't part of Good Morning Joe, not record.


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

Depends on how many tuners you have, what the other tuners were doing, which type of EAS was sent, what generation Tivo you have, and what software it's running.

We've see them use a spare tuner, and force you to watch it. We've seen them use the current tuner even when there was a spare. We've seen them force all tuners to the EAS channel. And we've seen them snap reboot the box on every EAS just for giggles. Predicting how a specific Tivo will respond to an EAS is a lot like predicting the roll at a craps table... sure, some results are more common than others, but it's gonna do what it's gonna do.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

I get an EAS test weekly, monthly and yearly. On my Roamio boxes it takes all tuners to my Message Channel, stops any playback and wakes up any Mini not in Standby. It doesn't affect a recording in-progress. They usually happened during the day, especially Saturday and Sunday, so Morning Joe isn't affected. When it's done, all tuners are returned to their previous channel.

Emergency Alert System - Wikipedia

BTW, my sister lives in an RV park that has a free, open wireless system. She turned on her TV one morning and there was a porn movie playing. She was hacked. She has DTV, so it was internet.


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## jonw747 (Aug 2, 2015)

JoeKustra said:


> I get an EAS test weekly, monthly and yearly. On my Roamio boxes it takes all tuners to my Message Channel, stops any playback and wakes up any Mini not in Standby. It doesn't affect a recording in-progress. They usually happened during the day, especially Saturday and Sunday, so Morning Joe isn't affected. When it's done, all tuners are returned to their previous channel.
> 
> Emergency Alert System - Wikipedia
> 
> BTW, my sister lives in an RV park that has a free, open wireless system. She turned on her TV one morning and there was a porn movie playing. She was hacked. She has DTV, so it was internet.


Yes, could be the free open wireless ... or it could be someone else with DTV and an RF remote on the same channel nearby.

If she can switch the units to IR mode, the later would be easy to eliminate.


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## Chuck_IV (Jan 1, 2002)

I had something similar happen a week or so ago(was on a TE4 Roamio at the time). Was watching AHC and it went to a legit commercial break(program had the black screen for a commercial). After about 3 minutes I was wondering why the program hadn’t come back one and it was an infomercial that just kept going and going.

When I check the info I was still on AHC but the infomercial wouldn’t end. Even changing tuners didn’t change things. Finally so just went down one channel and back up and the infomercial was gone and it was back to AHC. 

I have absolutely no idea what was going on but to be honest, I would not be surprised if this were a TiVo test of inserting their own ads into people’s programming. 

As an FYI, I have Spectrum cable. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## brianric (Aug 29, 2002)

Interesting discussion with Comcast. Comcast was telling me the problem was an obsolete modem. I found that argument hard to believe as the modem I had was capable of handling my present service, which was 300Mbps, Anyways I updated my modem to 1000Mbps and updated my Internet service to 600Mbps. I got 30 days to decide if it's worth going to 600Mbps. I do a lot of uploading pictures to my site, as I'm a volunteer photographer for five major charities and volunteer sports and events photographer to a Christian grammar school.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

brianric said:


> Interesting discussion with Comcast. Comcast was telling me the problem was an obsolete modem. I found that argument hard to believe as the modem I had was capable of handling my present service, which was 300Mbps, Anyways I updated my modem to 1000Mbps and updated my Internet service to 600Mbps. I got 30 days to decide if it's worth going to 600Mbps. I do a lot of uploading pictures to my site, as I'm a volunteer photographer for five major charities and volunteer sports and events photographer to a Christian grammar school.


A modem or router has absolutely nothing to do with your TV signal or how the Tivo's deal with it.


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## spiderpumpkin (Dec 1, 2017)

So it wasn't hacked.


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