# tivo elite user experience log



## gteague

*2012_0119 0040ct*

*problem*: lost channels while recording. discovered at 0620ct.
*fallout*: lost approx 6 hours of potential recordings
*resolution*: reset cable card


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## gteague

*2012_0119 1600-1830ct*

*problem*: intermittent loss of cable card signal/sync
*attempted solution*: called time warner to pair up a new cable card. i had a working cable card when i called. removed working cable card and inserted new cable card. tw tech unable to pair new cable card. 45 minutes go by ... Finally he gets the 'V' in the 'Conditional' screen which, according to tivo, means the card paired successfully. but i have no channels. tw tech has me take the tuning adaptor out of the line. 30 minutes go by ... he has me take out the cable card and connect the coax directly from the wall to the tivo and try to receive channels. i advise him that since the elite won't do ota i doubt it will tune direct cable input either but he insists it should and declares that i have no cable signal even though i 'prove' to him there is signal because my internet is working and my tv can tune channels. 30 minutes go by during which he insists that i have no signal and need to call the local cable company to roll a truck. after having me do a guided setup which accomplishes nothing, he throws up his hands and quits. but when i hook everything back up the way it originally was, the cable card is now working.
*resolution/plan*: monitor new cable card for signal/sync loss to see if using a new/different cable card will solve the intermittent signal/sync loss i've been experiencing since i got this new elite about 3 weeks ago.


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## gteague

*problem*: lost channels while recording on two tuners
*fallout*: lost two recordings
*resolution*: reset cable card
*note*: so much for a new cable card. worked for less than two hours. and that means i've replaced all time-warner equip at least once and had tw techs out to verify signal integrity 3 times. problem is going back to tivo as soon as their support lines open tomorrow.


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## gteague

*problem*: watching live tv. experienced pixellation and channel disappeared
*fallout*: no recordings lost since i caught the loss of sync/signal right away
*resolution*: reset cable card & tuning adaptor

* are we enjoying our tivo experience yet? i sure am. but it's obvious already (to me at least) that this is not a cable signal issue since the first cable card would work for 24-48 hours before disappearing. this new cable card i put in has lost signal/sync 3 times in the last 6 hours. i'm pretty sure this means the problem is the cable card (but this is my 3rd one) or the tivo elite.


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## gteague

*problem*: went grocery shopping for one hour. lost channel sync.
*fallout*: ruined two recordings
*resolution*: reset cable card

this is bs, more bs and total bs. tivo needs to fix this or refund my money. i could troubleshoot cable cards forever until the damm box deigns to accept one.


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## gteague

*problem*: lost channel signal/sync
*fallout*: n/a
*resolution*: tried putting prior cable card in. bad mistake. very bad mistake. didn't work. put original cc back in and the data_id changed, so now i've lost several tiers including premium channels. what a clusterfsck!


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## gteague

*problem*: needed to revert to original cable card which is only losing sync about every 18-36 hours as opposed to the new one i installed last night which lost sync about every two hours
*fallout*: no fallout. called tivo cable card self-install center
*resolution*: after one hour got original cable card working again

* monitoring for sync loss. actually sleeping and when i wake up i'll check to see if the cable card is still working. it was a long night and i have a very bad cold. will call tivo when i wake up and complain that time-warner has done about all they are going to do and i (and tivo problems) have worn out our welcome with them.


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## turbobozz

This is almost certainly your cable co's fault or an issue with your coax wiring.
Get Tivo to do a three way call with TW.


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## aaronwt

Maybe there is an issue with the box. If was a typical problem, many people would be having this issue.


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## compnurd

I agree. You are blaming Tivo for something they have almost no control over here. The fact that you are able to swap cable cards for periods of time and have channels suggests that TW does not have something set up right in there system. I would have them send a tech out


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## rcobourn

One thing I've come to expect about cable cards... if your tech shows up with half a dozen, you have a reasonable chance of getting a good one.


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## gteague

*problem*: los while i was asleep
*fallout*: lost any sked recordings
*resolution*: reset cable card


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## gteague

the point i keep returning to again and again and what frustrates me so much is that i had two working cards in an s3 just before the elite purchase. that is the troubleshooting goal, to reduce the problem to one component and the only component i changed was the dvr.

and i've been on two 3-way calls with tivo/time-warner. i had a 4 hour troubleshooting call with tivo where we wrung out all four tuners and recorded hundreds of diagnostic points and tivo said they couldn't really see anything wrong, but i might try replacing the tuning adaptor. needless to say, that wasn't the problem.

every evening for the last month that i haven't had to work i've been on the phone with either tivo or time-warner trying to get this problem resolved. i work nights, so i've lost a considerable amount of sleep over this and now i'm sick. i don't understand how so much of the burden of making this purchase work falls upon me--it is not right.

/guy


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## gteague

just got off the phone with tivo and they agreed with me that they needed to ante up some 'skin' to the game in order to force time-warner to continue to troubleshoot, so they are sending me a replacement box and promise that if this box continues to fail they will negotiate with time-warner on my behalf--something i think they should have taken responsibility for weeks ago.

/guy


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## gteague

turbobozz said:


> This is almost certainly your cable co's fault or an issue with your coax wiring.
> Get Tivo to do a three way call with TW.


the signal level and snr at the catv wall jack (which i read personally from the tw tech laptop on two occasions), while not to tivo standards, are the same as the level and snr as reported in the elite dvr diagnostics screen, which would seem to rule out level loss or added noise in the connections from the wall jack to the tivo. to my mind, this eliminates the coax, coax connectors, and the splitter.

tivo wants a level of about 94 and a snr of 35. my readings are 92 and 37, but those readings are within tw specs, so tivo can complain and whinge all they want, tw is not going to tear things apart or give me gold-conductor coax to meet tivo specs.

/guy


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## gteague

aaronwt said:


> Maybe there is an issue with the box. If was a typical problem, many people would be having this issue.


tivo is sending out a replacement box next week.

/guy


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## gteague

*problem*: los while i at work
*fallout*: lost any sked recordings
*resolution*: reset cable card, but still missing about 1/3rd of my channels--seemingly at random.
further problems: lost tivo service. lost many channels. did tivo cancel my service for this box before i got the replacement in from them? that would be an idiotic move, for them to drop service on this box before i even got the replacement for it in place and notified them. if fending off the cable company idiots wasn't enough for one lifetime ...


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## larrs

gteague said:


> problem: los while i at work
> fallout: lost any sked recordings
> resolution: reset cable card, but still missing about 1/3rd of my channels--seemingly at random.
> further problems: lost tivo service. lost many channels. did tivo cancel my service for this box before i got the replacement in from them? that would be an idiotic move, for them to drop service on this box before i even got the replacement for it in place and notified them. if fending off the cable company idiots wasn't enough for one lifetime ...


I had an issue like this for about 6 months when I got my first S3. It would work fine for a while, then I would lose some channels and then others, then lose recordings, etc.

I had new cablecards installed 3 times. Finally, when I was frustrated enough to throw the Tivo and the cable out, I got ahold of a supervisor that found an issue in their software that was causing the cable card to not know what I was subscribed to. They changed that setting out and I have been basically fine for three years. You never know.


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## gteague

despite an email from someone high up in tivo who said that there were 60 days of temp service put on the box being replaced and the service contract transferred to the replacement (new) box, the cs rep i called at tivo said they routinely cancelled service on boxes that are being replaced without checking to see if the new box arrived or if the owner is even ready to do the replacement. so, even though i put a new cable card in yesterday and wanted to wait and see if my existing box worked with the new card, i am being forced to replace the old box with the new box even though the old box might work with the latest card. now i'll never know.

i had filled up the original box with 22% capacity of recordings, but not having any way to transfer these mean they are just lost. but i guess i should count my blessings--at least the original box worked enough of the time to record that many shows.

so i'll spend many hours after midnight tonight configuring the new box. and i'm sure the existing cable card won't work with it and will have to be re-paired yet again.


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## gteague

*problem*: lost internet connection while setting up new tivo
*fallout*: unable to connect to tivo to complete guided setup
*resolution*: bugged cable company until service restored at 0700.

the delights never end. while setting up the new tivo elite, my internet went out right at the step where it has to connect to tivo and get an update. the box is dead as a doornail until this step is done. but i guess i would have had to stay up this late anyway if i wanted to get the cable card paired since the tw self-install center doesn't open until now.


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## gteague

*problem*: needed to pair up cable card with new tivo
*fallout*: n/a
*resolution*: after two hour phone call, agent finally got cable card paired


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## gteague

*problem*: lost channels. reseating cable card didn't resolve issue.
*fallout*: no channels whatsoever
*resolution*: tw said this was because my new tivo was downloading guide data. called tivo who said this was bs, but in the middle of the call my channels came as suddenly as they went. but since reseating the cable card didn't resolve the issue as it usually does with my los (loss of signal/sync) issues, i can't really call this one a cable card fault.
*plan*: monitor new tivo for cable card issues.


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## gteague

*problem*: lost channels. pixellated while i was watching, and then went to blank screen
*fallout*: unfortunately, this means the tivo is most likely not the problem since this is the brand new tivo i installed early this morning
*resolution*: reseated cable card
*plan*: 'vendor meeting' conference call monday or tuesday arranged and coordinated at tivo exec level


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## compnurd

gteague said:


> *problem*: lost channels. pixellated while i was watching, and then went to blank screen
> *fallout*: unfortunately, this means the tivo is most likely not the problem since this is the brand new tivo i installed early this morning
> *resolution*: reseated cable card
> *plan*: 'vendor meeting' conference call monday or tuesday arranged and coordinated at tivo exec level


I think the "fallout" is something we have been trying to tell you for over a week now. You need to get a TWC tech at your house and not leave until it is fixed


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## gteague

*status check*: check of dvr diagnostics to see how the levels are looking
*parameters 0,1,2,3*:
sig strength: 93,92,87,94
snr: 37,36,34,37db
rs_uncorrected: 5079,4694,5132,5120
rs corrected: 32,537,59,21
cc uptime: 133112s / 2218m / 37h
*plan*: 'vendor meeting' conference call tuesday 1500ct coordinated at tivo exec level
*note:* the big surprise here is that the uncorrected errors have come down more than an order-of-magnitude from over 100k to what you see. corrected errors have come down from the thousands to the double digits. my guess as to why is that we had about an 18 hour spell of thunderstorms the last two days with cable and internet outages and perhaps the repair or the simple act of disconnecting and reconnecting things improved connections.

can someone check under the cable card menu, cable card pairing screen and see if, at the top of that screen, they have a notice that says to '... start cable service for this device, please contact your cable provider'? i currently have service or i wouldn't be getting any channels, but i'm curious as to whether that screen is a red herring or not.


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## rcobourn

gteague said:


> *status check*: check of dvr diagnostics to see how the levels are looking
> *parameters 0,1,2,3*:
> sig strength: 93,92,87,94
> snr: 37,36,34,37db
> rs_uncorrected: 5079,4694,5132,5120
> rs corrected: 32,537,59,21
> cc uptime: 133112s / 2218m / 37h
> *plan*: 'vendor meeting' conference call monday 1500ct coordinated at tivo exec level
> *note:* the big surprise here is that the uncorrected errors have come down more than an order-of-magnitude from over 100k to what you see. corrected errors have come down from the thousands to the double digits. my guess as to why is that we had about an 18 hour spell of thunderstorms the last two days with cable and internet outages and perhaps the repair or the simple act of disconnecting and reconnecting things improved connections.
> 
> can someone check under the cable card menu, cable card pairing screen and see if, at the top of that screen, they have a notice that says to '... start cable service for this device, please contact your cable provider'? i currently have service or i wouldn't be getting any channels, but i'm curious as to whether that screen is a red herring or not.


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## gteague

yep, bogus. thanks mucho!

/guy


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## gteague

*status check*: check of dvr diagnostics to see how the levels are looking
*parameters 0,1,2,3*:
channel: 740,766,004,104
sig strength: 85,92,95,94
snr: 34,36,38,37db
rs_uncorrected: 5836,5230,5179,5660
rs corrected: 24667,30,16,562
cc uptime: 220225s / 3670m / 61h
*plan*: 'vendor meeting' conference call tuesday 1500ct coordinated at tivo exec level
*note:* 61 hours is as much sync'd time as i've ever logged in the 6 weeks i've been tracking. one very odd thing is that, under the account_and_system_information | dvr_diagnostics it lists tuners 0,1,2,3 and then cable_card_1. all the times before on the original elite i had before this replacement one, when i've looked in the cable_card listing it has said 'oob_signal_lock: yes' and then given me an 'oob_snr' reading (which is usually 40). now it says 'no' in oob_signal_lock' and the 'oob_snr' field is blank. could i impose on someone to check this setting on their box and see what it says? i don't know if you have to be on time warner, have an elite, and have a tuning adaptor or not, is the only problem with interpreting comparisons.


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## gteague

*problem*: los (loss of signal/loss of sync with cc]
*resolution*: tried removing coax from cable signal input. didn't work. reseated cable card and channels were restored.
*status check*: check of dvr diagnostics to see how the levels are looking
*parameters 0,1,2,3*:
channel: 740,766,004,104
sig strength: 83,90,93,94
snr: 33,36,37,37db
rs_uncorrected: 6441,5251,5112,6210
rs corrected: 174162,27,51,26
oob signal lock: yes
oob snr: 40db
cc uptime: 768s / 10m / 00h
*plan*: 'vendor meeting' conference call tuesday 1500ct coordinated at tivo exec level
*note:* last 'run' was over 60 hours, but the problem has attacked again while i was asleep, as it tends to do for some reason. perhaps activity helps keep it synced although it has locked up while i was watching on at least a couple occasions. note that the 'oob signal lock' i was asking about is now 'yes' and there is an snr figure for the entire cable card, so i have no idea what that section of the dvr diagnostics is telling me since it seems to work either way.


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## gteague

*problem*: lost 95% of my cable channels. ph number to cable company is fast busy error. i sincerely hope it's their problem rather than my problem this time. i did all my normal reset ritual and it didn't bring back any of the missing channels. [later note] it was their problem--never heard the cause, but recovered all channels about an hour-and-a-half later.

*note*: conference call still set for tomorrow afternoon. i tried to get the cable company to get me some cable cards for that call, but they wouldn't/couldn't do it although they again promised to mail me a couple of brand new ones. they've promised that once before and never sent them.


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## gteague

just got off a call with tivo level2 and time-warner level3 support.

we mostly did data gathering on the call today with a detour to restore my channels when pulling and replacing a cable card (which is how i normally 'fix' a sync loss) resulted in a loss of service. we spoke with tw level 3 who got the cable card working again in short order. unlike the many other techs at the pairing center, one thing i noticed was that this tw level3 tech was able to send reset signals to both the cc and the ta that were solid and nearly immediate.

tw level3 tech suggested we replace all equipment (already done, except for needing more cable cards) and, if that doesn't work, then a return visit from time-warner field techs to (re)check signal levels and/or replace the 'drop' to my house. the problem i see with this is, again, my local cable company who, at the level i get to talk to them, would be unable to access level3's recommendations and act on them, but tivo thinks that they might be able to penetrate further than i [g] into their hierarchy if that becomes necessary.

our plan of action (given that i have service about 98% of the time) is to wait until the end of the week for two new cable cards (evidently the card i'm using falls between the cracks of date of manufacture and we (including tw level3) were unable to place it precisely in any fabrication timeline) my local office has promised to mail me. if the cards do arrive i will contact tivo who want to be on the call when we pair up a new one. once we get a new one paired we will monitor for drop outs as we are doing now.

if no cable cards arrive by monday, i am to call tivo back and he will assist me in calling the local cable company and hopefully get on the line someone who is aware of the fcc ruling that they must furnish me whatever new or replacement user-installable equipment that i request: <http://www.fcc.gov/guides/cablecard-know-your-rights>.

btw, tivo confirmed that an 'rs_uncorrected' reading around 5000 is normal and the 'rs_corrected' reading should be under 100, although better in the single digits. they get these reading even on their lab machines with perfect signals.


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## L David Matheny

gteague said:


> btw, tivo confirmed that an 'rs_uncorrected' reading around 5000 is normal and the 'rs_corrected' reading should be under 100, although better in the single digits. they get these reading even on their lab machines with perfect signals.


If TiVo does any testing on "lab machines with perfect signals" they should see no corrected or uncorrected errors at all, in theory anyway. Maybe they mean they see a few errors even when testing with a good, clean antenna or cable signal. Certainly in the real world, there will be occasional errors. Lots of corrected errors may indicate a noisy signal, but it's uncorrected errors that cause glitches in the video or audio.

But error counts are meaningful only when referenced to a time interval. I'm OTA only, and (depending on the station) I might average a corrected error every few seconds and several uncorrected errors during a typical show. OTOH, it isn't too unusual for me to record an hour-long show with no uncorrected errors at all, if reception conditions are really good.

Sometimes several (say 50 or so) uncorrected errors seem to occur right after the TiVo has changed channels, with no further uncorrected errors occurring during the rest of the show and no noticeable glitches when I view it. That sort of anomaly may indicate that the initial burst of errors is due to the TiVo software being too busy to properly tend some part of the hardware, thus causing some sort of brief buffer overrun or underrun condition. If nothing like that occurs during steady-state recording, I guess I shouldn't worry too much about it, although it really shouldn't occur. I've wondered sometimes if more cache memory on the hard drive helps.


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## aaronwt

With the Elite you always have some errors when you first tune to a channel. This was not typically the case with the two tuner Premieres.


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## gteague

the tivo tech confirmed my suspicion that the uncorrected errors were equivalent to crc (cyclic redundancy check) errors in the telecommunications field (where i've worked for decades).

any state change on a serial line will show crc errors on the csu/dsu or on the router 'sh interface' screen. we call these state change errors 'clumps' and they are of no concern unless they increment after the state change. typically i issue a 'clear counters' command to reset them to zero, then check again every hour if i have suspicions of a circuit taking errors. 

so the conclusion that i've reached is that tivo seems to be the same--these errors are of no concern unless they increment by a significant amount without any 'state change' such as tuning a new channel.

and if the analogy holds completely true, tivo is most likely right in saying they see these errors under lab conditions. in my lab, even a simulated 'perfect' t1 that is looped back to the source will show errors if there is a state change of any kind.

/guy


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## larrs

gteague said:


> ...can someone check under the cable card menu, cable card pairing screen and see if, at the top of that screen, they have a notice that says to '... start cable service for this device, please contact your cable provider'? i currently have service or i wouldn't be getting any channels, but i'm curious as to whether that screen is a red herring or not.


If you read my earlier post, this was the reading that kept popping up on my screen on the diagnsotics pages. It now looks like the copy and paste someone else posted. I really believe you have the same issue I did.


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## gteague

@larrs: i re-read your post and it didn't seem to make any mention of that '... start cable service ...' screen. regardless, i read everything pertaining to the issue and i took your info into serious consideration--every time i called to have a card paired i would ask them if there were any other fields they could look at that might have a bearing on the card signal dropping out. i've had at least 6 calls with two different centers now and you'd think that even with the ratio of incompetents to actual techs, if that were the case, someone would have noticed it by now.

but the conference call with tiro on tuesday was with a level3 tech. now, for all i know the call might have gone to the same center i've been calling, but both me and tiro asked that every aspect of the card settings be looked at considering the long history of problems i'd been experiencing.

the good news (so far) is that i haven't lost the cable card sync since that call 48 hours ago. but the cable company has 'gone down' with both full and partial outages since then and those outages might have 'reset the clock' on the cable card problem both times and i can't count the 48hrs uptime as significant.

also, despite the cable company promising to mail me cards, i haven't received them and am beginning to think i was an idiot for even considering for a second that they aren't, taken as a whole, a group of lying, incompetent idiots. one of the last things i can try is to drive to a tw location and try to talk them into giving me a cable card, but they have refused in the past and refused to let me speak to a supervisor even though i'm standing in their office.

/guy


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## Wolfowitz

I'm having the same problem as you are. I've got a Tivo Series 3 that works perfectly, but my Tivo Premier Elite is having the same problems as yours. I reboot it and it works for about 8-20 hours, then it starts getting heavy dropouts and eventually just turns to black screen and says "not authorized to get this channel". Even the recordings get the dropouts. I'm with Verizon Fios (no tuning adapter). I find myself manually rebooting the Elite right before important shows are about to record (just as insurance).


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## gteague

*problem*: tivo re-booted. first reaction was that i was running a kmttg job at the time and that can sometimes cause problems. but now it's telling me that my external storage is missing.
*resolution*: i've unplugged and replugged the ext drive on both ends and restarted the tivo by pulling the plug and i'm getting the same error again. going to shut everything down and try again. [note: came back up after 3 tries. very worrying. the cable card issues only cost me 12-24 hours of missed recordings, losing my external storage could deep-six all my recordings.]


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## MeInDallas

Wolfowitz said:


> I'm having the same problem as you are. I've got a Tivo Series 3 that works perfectly, but my Tivo Premier Elite is having the same problems as yours. I reboot it and it works for about 8-20 hours, then it starts getting heavy dropouts and eventually just turns to black screen and says "not authorized to get this channel". Even the recordings get the dropouts. I'm with Verizon Fios (no tuning adapter). I find myself manually rebooting the Elite right before important shows are about to record (just as insurance).


I'm doing this same thing on mine now. It'll go anywhere from 2 to 6 hours and then heavy pixelation, then everything goes black. I reboot and everything is back to normal again. I have 2 Tivo HD's and have switched the cards and tuning adapters all around and paired them all back up again. It doesnt matter what cable jack I move the Elite to in the house, the problems follow the Elite wherever it goes while the Tivo HD's never stutter, with no errors on the cable cards. The people at Tivo suggested getting an attenuator to bring my SNR down a bit, so I got several sizes to see which one might help. They were only a couple of bucks each. So far nothing is working. I get a few good recordings but the ones I really want to see that air once and never again, of course those are the ones that get screwed up.


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## Wolfowitz

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, I've tried swapping in multiple cablecards and various attenuators, nothing helped.


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## Wolfowitz

Is there some way to rename this thread to call out this exact problem. I almost didn't bother reading this thread because of the generic title. I'd like to attract more people to this thread to see how widespread this problem is.


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## MeInDallas

Wolfowitz said:


> Is there some way to rename this thread to call out this exact problem. I almost didn't bother reading this thread because of the generic title. I'd like to attract more people to this thread to see how widespread this problem is.


Yeah I'm curious how many Elite owners are having this issue also.


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## gteague

yeah, i just opened this thread so i could have a convenient place to enter a log of my experience with getting a new elite running and so that others could perhaps learn from my travails, but i've welcomed others' experiences as well since i'm not one of those 'off-topic-soupnazi' types. i suspect another reason besides the generic title that there's not more entries in here along the same lines as mine is that they might be over in the 'rebooting' threads.

/guy


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## larrs

gteague said:


> @larrs: i re-read your post and it didn't seem to make any mention of that '... start cable service ...' screen. <snipped content>
> /guy


Sorry about that. I did not remember that screen until I saw the screen scrape posted later. However, I did see that on the screen when the issue was ocurring.

Sorry it apparently is not as simple an issue as mine.


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## gteague

i'm terrified to post this. i can only hope that the tw level3 tech last tuesday hit my card with some hi-powered remote mojo that shocked it into better behavior. and i know it's been 6 days and my uptime is not near that, but there have been outages and reboots in-between. and i'm not about to declare an end to this until i've been up for 10-14 days straight.

and for those few here and in other threads who have castigated me at every opportunity for having the audacity to involve tivo, note that it wasn't just that the cable card was reset (it's the exact same cc that came out of my s3 and was giving me trouble in the first elite), a new elite was installed last monday before the 3-way tech support call on tuesday. and, if it fact a conclusion might be reached that it was the new elite that eliminated the problem, that would make perfect sense if one allows for quality control variations in random samples, buttressed further by the fact that this cable card was working perfectly for years in my old s3.

anyway, (drum roll):

*cc uptime*: (363112s / 60) / 60 = 100.864444hrs


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## MeInDallas

I just RMA'd mine yesterday. We will see if the new one does the same thing. Good luck to you. I hope yours works, I really want this to work for me too. When it actually did work it seems like a really great Tivo.


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## gteague

much as it pains me as a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist, i'm nearly starting to begin to be optimistic about this. i've consulted with tivo to update them of the status and we might never know if it was the expertise of level3 resetting my cable card or whether the replacement elite unit resolved (if it is resolved) the issue.

*uptime*: ((597 721 / 60) / 60) / 24 = 6.91806713​
the pity is all the hours wasted because all the signal levels and snr readings are exactly the same as when we started--thus all that effort and acrimony were completely wasted. also, it seems the replacement tuning adaptor wasn't needed either. but that's how troubleshooting goes with such intermittent problems.

/guy


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## gteague

*problem*: arrived home from work to find a grey screen with the following message: 'problem with the signal on this cable channel'. each tuner in the 'dvr' menu had 'prog lock: no' displayed.
*attempted fixes*: reset tuning adaptor. pulled cable signal coax for 1 minute. finally restarted the tivo from the menu and it came up with channels working again.
*note*: since this problem was resolved with a tivo restart and not by reseating the cable card, i'm not sure if it applies as a subset of the original problem. the uptime for the cable card was still incrementing and stood at *((881 297 / 60) / 60) / 24 = 10.2001968 days* when i restarted. considering the original problem recurred every 8-48 hours, one would have to say this is a vast improvement although i'd still be very upset to lose a full day of recording even 'only' every 10 days.

/guy


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## gteague

problem: woke up this afternoon to find 'problem with the signal ...' and gray screens where live tv should be.
resolution: restarted tivo from menu system
note: crap! well, i had 10 days of hoping that the problem was solved, but it's back with a vengeance. and i have a doctor's appointment, so i can't even try to drive to a cable office and try to talk them out of another cable card.


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## Dan203

I bought an Elite last week. It's only been active and recording for a few days but so far so good. When you test the signal levels are they all good? Or just marginal? If they're marginal you may want to consider a signal booster. I use one at my place and it works wonders. It could also be that the signal is too strong, or that there is a current running through it causing damage to the tuner. You may want to consider installing a DC Block in the line, or maybe just running the cable through a surge suppressor, to eliminate that possibility.

One more thing... What about MOCA. Could it be causing you any trouble? I haven't looked through the options but is there a way to turn MOCA support on/off? If so you may want to try turning it off to see if that helps at all.

Dan


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## gteague

Dan203 said:


> I bought an Elite last week. It's only been active and recording for a few days but so far so good. When you test the signal levels are they all good? Or just marginal? If they're marginal you may want to consider a signal booster. I use one at my place and it works wonders. It could also be that the signal is too strong, or that there is a current running through it causing damage to the tuner. You may want to consider installing a DC Block in the line, or maybe just running the cable through a surge suppressor, to eliminate that possibility.
> 
> One more thing... What about MOCA. Could it be causing you any trouble? I haven't looked through the options but is there a way to turn MOCA support on/off? If so you may want to try turning it off to see if that helps at all.
> 
> Dan


hi dan, thanks for the tips and suggestions.

tw has been out here 3 times to check levels and say that they are within their parameters and tivo seems to agree that they are close enough that the elite should not be having problems. my experience with (cheap) signal boosters is that they introduce too much noise in the signal, thus decreasing the snr significantly. of course, the more money you spend on such a unit, the better performance and lower noise introduced. i have the moca turned off and don't plan to use it and i do run everything through surge suppression.

i'm 95% sure at this point that the problem lies with the cable card. what frustrates me no end and where i put some fault on tivo is that i had an s3 with 2 working cards. nothing changed--all i did was replace the s3 with the elite and the elite won't work with either of the two cards that were working just fine in the s3. what is different about the elite that it won't run on the same cards the previous model had no problems with?

and, so far, in dozens of phone calls and truck rolls i've only managed to pry one cable card from time-warner and that was an old beat-up one that most likely had been on the truck for years and didn't work at all. since then they've promised on at least 3 occasions to send me cable cards, but they never arrive and i have no access to any sort of internal escalation at time-warner, which is where i think tivo should step in since their whole business model is predicated on the cable company able to provide service to their boxes.

it's frustrating beyond belief and this is my 3rd rodeo with this crap. i'm like the old bull rider who's so beat up he can hardly walk.

i plan to try to drive to one of the cable office locations tomorrow and try to get some more cable cards although i only have the one spare to trade in on a new one.

/guy


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## Dan203

Have you tried using the TiVo without the tuning adapter? I had an issue with my Elite at first and it turned out to be the tuning adapter. Without it installed the TiVo worked fine, expect I couldn't get the handful of channels that require the tuning adapter. (might be more important to you, depending on which channels are SDV) My point is the tuning adapter is not just a passive device, it has some effect on the operation of the TiVo and the CableCARD itself. So it's possible it could be the problem and you don't even know it.

Dan


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## gteague

well, we've replaced the tuning adaptor as well. and tivo and tw level3 support both say the new one seems to be working up to specs and has the signal levels it needs.

and, as you pointed out, tw has moved so many channels onto sdv that i wouldn't be able to get 80% of my premium channels without the tuning adaptor.

/guy


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## gteague

picked up 3 cable cards this morning from the local time-warner office. they wouldn't give me new ones, but these might be newer than the ones i have now and those i've tried so far although the serial numbers on these new ones are just barely above those former.

the plan is to wait until i have another outage and then pair up one of the new cards. tivo has promised to initiate another 3-way call with time-warner level3 tech support to pair up the next card.

/guy


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## Dan203

Good luck. Hopefully you get it figured out and get to the point where you can enjoy your TiVo without worry. 

Dan


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## gteague

*problem*: switched from watching a recording to live tv to discover a gray screen with the 'no signal' message.
*fix*: restarted tivo.
*note*: will be calling tivo and time-warner to pair one of the 3 new cable cards i got today.

/guy


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## Jimf1234

Why do you need tuning adapters? I thought that the cable cards were the tuning adapter. I use optimum for my cable and I get all the channels without an adapter. Are you able to get vod with an adapter?


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## atmuscarella

Jimf1234 said:


> Why do you need tuning adapters? I thought that the cable cards were the tuning adapter. I use optimum for my cable and I get all the channels without an adapter. Are you able to get vod with an adapter?


You need a tuning adaptor if your cable system uses Switched Digital Video (SDV), learn more here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched_video​
or here:

http://support.tivo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/307/kw/sdv/r_id/100041​


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## Jimf1234

Thanks


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## gteague

yeah, i can get a few banks of channels without a ta, but hardly any of the premium channels since they have moved them to sdv. it is a legitimate troubleshooting tool to remove it from the input string, however.

/guy


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## gteague

*problem*: watching live tv when it froze, then a gray screen, then a message of 'channel not authorized.
*fix*: called tivo and the tech i was working with was not available and the tech i spoke to said he didn't have access to time-warner level3. i called tw myself to pair one of the new cable cards. got one of the very first techs at the tw support that i'd spoken to nearly two months ago working on the same problem. he remembered me right away. very sad to be on first name basis with all these support folks.
*note*: very disappointing that new cable cards are as old are older than the ones i was using that weren't working.

this tech is struggling to get this new cable card working. actually, he seems unable to get my account connected up with the channels i'm supposed to receive. i'm getting the 2-99 basic channels and the local channels, just not my premium channels on the sdv which say 'not authorized'.

well, just when you think things can't get any worse ,they go downhill. the 'new' card we put in was older than the one i'm having problems with and we had to remove it. the other two 'new' ones i got from the cable company the other day turned out to be type-s cards despite their assurances that all 3 were type-m.

we ended up putting the original card back in and i've made no progress whatsoever and lost 2 more hours of recordings and a slice of my life i won't get back.


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## gteague

*problem*: just a couple of hours after i left for work i again lost signal and the tivo didn't recover. i know the exact time because i had 51 minutes of two recordings that started at 1900.
*fix*: soft reboot (via menu system). if i can fix the g__damm problem with a soft reboot, why can't the friggin' tivo recover on its own?
*note*: i can no longer count on this tivo to record anything at any time. my $900 has gone for nothing but frustration and a full time unpaid job for me as tivo tech support. what crap and bs this all is.


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## gteague

*problem*: yet again, just a couple of hours after i left for work my tivo stopped recording. but this time it had another diabolical trick up its sleeve. instead of just quitting recording shows when it had no signal, it would record for 10 minutes, then quit. then, evidently the signal returned and it would try again at the next scheduled recording. i think that this time i did not lose signal completely and never regain it, but that signal noise caused the tivo to think it was actually recording programming. it did this for 6-8 recordings between 1900-0100 and then didn't record the 4 recordings i had scheduled for after 0100.
*fix*: reseated cable card.
*note*: the situation has gone far downhill from the glory days when things would work for up to 48 hours before locking up. now i'm lucky if it lasts for 8 hours. i even set up a rube goldberg worthy system where i would login to my mac from work and use kmttg to check whether the tivo was recording. but the partial recordings tripped me up and i thought it was ok up until about 0100 when i checked it last. i even have a script written out for how i could reboot the tivo without being able to see it by using the kmttg remote tool and hitting each command in order, flying blind. i'm disgusted with everyone involved in this fiasco--not one person in either of two companies has been the least bit effective no matter their profuse and seemingly sincere desire to help and i'm fed up with it. they are powerless tools spouting their corporate customer service mantras which mean less than nothing.


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## gteague

*problem*: watching a recorder show and switched over to live tv to find a 'channel not authorized' message followed by a signal loss message.
*fix*: soft reboot via menu system. unsure if this is going to fix it because i'm going to bed and not waiting the 10 minutes it takes to reboot. i had just reseated the cable card less than 2 hours ago.
*note*: just about on my last nerve here. while the damm thing was working for 48 hours at a stretch i could afford to be a little patient. no mas.


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## gteague

*problem*: watching a show recorded around 2100 this evening and i noticed it was so pixellated it would barely play. i checked the following recordings and most of them were unusable due to noise. then i went to live tv and all i saw were gray screens with 'no signal' and 'channel not authorized'.

*fix*: soft reboot via menu system. but something i can't explain, originally when playing the recordings i was seeing noise so bad they were unwatchable. after the reboot the same recordings are now ok. how can this be? at first glance this would seem indicate something wrong in some layer of the tivo it seems to me. evidently the noise wasn't in the original recording and was being 'overlaid' (for lack of a better term) onto the recording. in other words, the fallout from the tivo losing track of my channels was permeating throughout the whole box on multiple layers. if my channels were degrading and going away while i was watching the recordings, the noise from the lossy signal was actually bleeding through to the pre-recorded shows. is this possible? have you ever heard of this happening? in all my problems with this situation over the last five years i can't ever remember noticing this phenomena.

*note*: cable company supposed to deliver more cable cards today. i'll believe it when i have them in my hands.


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## gteague

the date is *2012_0221 0630ct* [i can't edit the title]

problem: watching a show i again noticed pixallation. sure enough, i changed to livetv and 'no signal'.

*fix*: soft reboot via menu system. getting old.

*note*: why won't the tivo recover from this problem on its own?


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## L David Matheny

gteague said:


> *problem*: watching a show recorded around 2100 this evening and i noticed it was so pixellated it would barely play. i checked the following recordings and most of them were unusable due to noise. then i went to live tv and all i saw were gray screens with 'no signal' and 'channel not authorized'.
> 
> *fix*: soft reboot via menu system. but something i can't explain, originally when playing the recordings i was seeing noise so bad they were unwatchable. after the reboot the same recordings are now ok. how can this be? at first glance this would seem indicate something wrong in some layer of the tivo it seems to me. evidently the noise wasn't in the original recording and was being 'overlaid' (for lack of a better term) onto the recording. in other words, the fallout from the tivo losing track of my channels was permeating throughout the whole box on multiple layers. if my channels were degrading and going away while i was watching the recordings, the noise from the lossy signal was actually bleeding through to the pre-recorded shows. is this possible? have you ever heard of this happening? in all my problems with this situation over the last five years i can't ever remember noticing this phenomena.
> 
> *note*: cable company supposed to deliver more cable cards today. i'll believe it when i have them in my hands.


It sounds like either something is broken in the TiVo playback circuitry or (more likely) something is overwhelming the TiVo processor so that it can't service the playback hardware in a timely manner. I suspect that the second option could be caused by the cable card (or maybe the tuning adapter?) requiring constant attention for some reason, but I'm only guessing. It's too bad we can't see a task manager list of processes running to see if some process is hogging all the CPU cycles. Maybe TiVo techs could test that idea in-house.


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## gteague

the tivo tech they've sort of 'assigned' to this problem said that the current problem (which of course they only phrase as a cable card problem) could have caused this, although he and another tech said it was extremely rare for this to happen.

on the hopeful side of this issue is that tivo has finally deigned to try to intercede with time-warner with me at an advanced level if we get no satisfaction from the dispatch later this afternoon.

i'm so tired of popping out of every recorded show every 15 minutes to check if i've still got a livetv signal. and when i go to work, if it crashes early i'll lose a whole night of recordings. i've even been remotely logging into my mac from work and using kmttg to see if things are locked up and, if they are, using the kmttg remote facility to try to blindly step through a soft reset.

fun days, fun days ... [g]

/guy


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## gteague

well, tw has again stiffed me. the tech showed up without any new cards, claiming that 'they' told him my service wasn't working because i hadn't 'registered' the cable cards i had. evidently not a single one of the notes for the work order that mike from level2 cable card self-install placed into it seem to have made it down to grunt level.

the tech was a very nice guy named godfrey who had worked there for 12 years, and after i related my ongoing problems to him he went to his truck and returned with a single cable card. it is an older serial number than the one i have in there now, but at least it's of the same vintage--which means most likely at least 3 years old.

of course, i have no way of knowing whether mike (who i've worked with 3 times now on pairing issues) actually put in the work order what he said he put in there. it's very bad when it comes to pass you don't trust a single person in the whole company. i think he did put in the work order correctly and my local company is just full of incompetent books from wall to wall and completely ignored him. the tech wouldn't show me the exact text of the work order.

/guy


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## gteague

more tw madness. i went to the cable office to return the 3 useless cards they gave me last week and found out that the cable card i got from the truck roll yesterday had not been entered into their system. worse, the lady flat refused to enter it for me despite me having the serial number. then she claimed there was no supervisor or manager anywhere in the building and refused me access to their offices to go look for one. she also refused to issue me any more cable cards. she did give me a card with a manager's info but, surprise surprise, the manager did not respond at all to my (very polite) voice mail or email.

/guy


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## gteague

called the number of the installation supervisor who had left me his card over 3 years ago when i had to involve tw mgmt to fix a problem they caused with a premature tuning adaptor rollout. he checked and said he found a couple of account 'discrepancies' which he said he corrected and then i asked him to register the cable card the last truck tech brought me that never got entered into their system and he called back and said he'd done that as well. reported this to tivo who thought this deserved optimism. personally, i'm all out of optimism by this late in the game.


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## gteague

*problem*: arrived home from work and found livetv showing a pixellated screen and the '... channel not authorized' message. i changed the channel and all the channels seemed to recover. but over the next 10 minutes the tivo slowed to a crawl, sometimes taking 2 or 3 clicks to recognize a command. then the screen went to gray and the tivo stopped responding to commands and wouldn't respond to kmttg as well.

*fix/B]: pulled ethernet, hdmi, and then the coax input cables and plugged them back in. after this i discovered the tivo had rebooted itself.

note: as this is not exactly the problem scenario and symptoms i've been documenting up to now, i'm going to try to remain optimistic that this event was an anomaly. but perhaps i just caught the problem in the earliest stages and it would have exhibited the same behavior (losing all channels) eventually if i hadn't intervened.*


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## gteague

*problem*: same problem has recurred again after the account discrepancy corrections performed a few days ago by the installation supervisor. arrived home from work and found livetv showing a grey screen and there were no channels available.

*fix*: restarted from menu

*note*: will have to pair my last remaining cable card and if it doesn't work i'll have to scrounge up yet more cable cards.


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## bertram4711

Hey,

sounds all familiar to me! Im having also an elite box and having
exactly the same problems as you are describing.

I changed cables, cablecard and even the elite box was replaced by TiVo,
but still no success. Im having also a tivo premiere box with two tuners
and there everything is working fine. I even switched locations to make 
sure its not the signal/cable etc. BUT always the elite box is having problems
and not the premiere box.

So i think TiVo messed something up with the software or the box in general
has problems with some cablecards.

I also made sure my cable provider is only transmitting digital channels as i know analog channel could mess up the elite.

I will again try to exchange my cablecard again to see if that helps otherwise
there is only one solution: Get rid of this damn box.



FYi: Im not having TW, im having MarcoCable (local provider)

Greetings...


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## dinglehart

Wolfowitz said:


> I'm having the same problem as you are. I've got a Tivo Series 3 that works perfectly, but my Tivo Premier Elite is having the same problems as yours. I reboot it and it works for about 8-20 hours, then it starts getting heavy dropouts and eventually just turns to black screen and says "not authorized to get this channel". Even the recordings get the dropouts. I'm with Verizon Fios (no tuning adapter). I find myself manually rebooting the Elite right before important shows are about to record (just as insurance).


I am also seeing the same issue with my Elite with TW. My other two premieres in the house have been working flawlessly. I'm on my 3rd cableCARD and 2nd tuning adapter. I still have to reboot every few days. The TW Tech has checked the levels every time they've been out and the levels are always in acceptable range..


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## gteague

*Problem*: sometime while i was asleep today the box lost all channels again. not sure when because i'm not sure if any recording were scheduled for the time period.

*Fix*: my usual fix of removing ethernet, hdmi, and coax did not break it free, so i did a menu reset.

*Note*: since the time-warner supervisor found and (supposedly) corrected some anomalies on my account last week i've gone down at least 4 times. two of those times didn't seem quite like the same as my ongoing symptoms, but two of these times (including this one) fit the symptoms exactly. i do have the one cable card on deck and if i don't call and pair it up this evening, i'll try to do it early monday morning when i get off work. i sort of don't want to do it this evening because i'm going to be gone fri/sat/sun and if this new card is worse than the existing one i might miss the whole weekend of recording. at least this card is working for 24-48 hours at a time.


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## wingfat

This is the saddest story I have ever read..You need to let this go..

Clearly the "Elite" is not ready for prime time. Whatever the cause.


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## Richard Cranium

Really... Why don't you just give them a thousand bucks, let them kick you in the nuts and then go get yourself an HR34?


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## gteague

*Problem*: sometime while i was asleep today the box lost all channels again. not sure when because i'm not sure if any recording were scheduled for the time period.

*Fix*: i was running for work, so all i had time to do was reset. channels recovered after reset.

*Note*: will definitely pair up my one remaining untried cable card early monday morning when i get off work.


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## angel35

Boy no Elite for me untill they have the real fix When ever that is??? ILL wait


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## gteague

Problem: while i was at work, lost signal/sync and came home to gray screen and 'no signal' messages. also lost some recordings the previous evening with the message 'channel not active'.

Fix: reseated cable card

Note: this gave me a good excuse to call and pair up my sole remaining cable card. the tech (carlos) had the least trouble of any of the nearly a dozen techs i've talked to since i started this nonsense back in december. hope this bodes well for the success of this card, the latest of nearly 10 i've tried over the months since i got the elite. cross your fingers and let the monitoring begin ...


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## gteague

*Problem*: went to bed this morning with an optimistic attitude and a new cable card which i had gotten paired up in less that 15 minutes. woke up to 'channel not authorized' and no channels working.

*Fix*: reseated cable card

*Note*: i have asked tivo to contact the time warner install supervisor and come up with a troubleshooting plan different than just me spending hours per day trying to acquire and pair cable cards. i have little optimism left at this point, this is about the 8th cable card that's been paired up. and even when the card is working i get no enjoyment from watching the tivo since i'm having to bounce out of recordings every 15 minutes to check whether i still have livetv.

/guy


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## gteague

i'm again beginning to be cautiously optimistic and perhaps the previous entry was an outlier. it was a '... not authorized' msg and not an '... unavailable' msg as the bulk of the others have been.

*((867 324 / 60) / 60) / 24 = 10.0384722 [days]​*
that's tied or broken the record for the previous card which would normally work for 1-3 days but once did hold for 10 days. i notified tivo to stand by on contacting time warner for now, but it must be said that time warner did ignore my last request for cable cards back when i thought this card was going to follow the pattern of all the others yet again.

i actually watched a full movie recording all the way through without bouncing back out to livetv to make sure i still had channels, so that's the first 'normal' viewing and use of this elite in 3 months.

and even if my temporary problem is finally solved, there are still problems that are waiting to hit others. first, that the tivo elite would not work under exactly the same conditions that a tivo series3 was working under and, second, that time-warner north texas absolutely will not work with their customers to satisfy tivo's requirements.

/guy


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## gteague

perhaps the last entry in the log? i sent the following to the tivo personnel i've been working with over the last 3 months:​
_my 'root cause analysis' of this 'incident' would be that a subset of the overall problem has been solved by finding a specific sample (cable card) that would mate up to a specific tivo elite. still unresolved is whether the sample and quality variation in cable cards is the problem (and based on anecdotal evidence over the years i do consider this a huge, perhaps the only, factor) or whether the tivo does not have the flexibility to accept cards that are slightly or moderately or largely out of parameters and don't meet industry or agreed on specifications. the case against the elite cannot be dismissed because, as my particular situation showed, two of the elites would not work under the exact same environment and conditions and with the same cards as a series3 tivo. but against this is the undeniable fact that the cable company, as far as i can tell, never pulls any cable cards from their system unless they are physically damaged and seem to have no testing process of their own for them.

but, based on no specific knowledge, i think that possibly those problems could be solved on your end by you guys via a hardware/manufacturing change or perhaps even a firmware patch. whether the expense of fixing it on that end or the pain of dealing with customers like me who are affected is worse, i guess the accountants get to decide. and usually, in my experience, they leave the customer service department to deal with such problems rather than re-tool or patch.

but the real problem you guys have is having to depend on sales based on cooperation and compliance to agreed on standards from the idiots at the cable company. i hate to malign normal folks who are just trying to do their job, but the ones here at my cable company seem to have absolutely no training or resources whatsoever--i'm sure i've met many of them in a previous life passing a hamburger over a counter. worse, they have no escalation path to provide to the customer. i've worked on variations of help desks for many years and this is just beyond my comprehension--i've never worked for an organization that would leave the customer at a complete dead end like i was stonewalled for over 3 months. but, as i told you, this isn't even an anomaly as about 3 years ago when they rolled out tuning adaptors i was left hanging and had to contact the time-warner ceo to get anything done--that's how i had robert's (tw install supvr) info to begin with. as far as i can tell, short of a ceo summit, i doubt there's a thing you can do about this problem other than what you've done with me--tried to provide me as much support as you could and talk me down from putting nails in all the tires in their parking lot!_


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## jrtroo

Have you ever considered sending this record to the parties that be over at the FCC and whatever local authority (Commission or even AGs office) you have?

This could be fun on their facebook page as well.

This is the best documentation I have seen, and demonstrates the slow burn that these issues have while TW notes there are "no issues" to authorities.


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## gteague

tksk @jrtroo. and i didn't even start this log until 1 month into the problem.

i have been corresponding with an individual on the managerial team at tivo who is going to make sure this info gets to the appropriate party or parties.

/guy


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## Teeps

gteague,
I feel your pain... 
I've had continuous problems with my S3 since having to install a tuning adapter last July. The problem goes unresolved, save for a band aide countermeasure discovered over in the S3 forum.

I was just about to buy an Elite until I read this thread. 
I refuse to spend 500 bucks on a new machine and run the risk of having more grief.

I do commend your tenacity with regard to pursuing this problem. Not me, I would have demanded my money back.


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## rogmatic

I love the Elite, but I have now had the exact same problem 2 nights in a row. Around 7 pm central (critical TV watching time) I have lost signal and the channels are recording in a scrambled form. If I reboot the tivo, the signal is perfect. This is not happening to my normal Premiere and never happened to my HD. No clue what is going on or how to address it.


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## MeInDallas

rogmatic said:


> I love the Elite, but I have now had the exact same problem 2 nights in a row. Around 7 pm central (critical TV watching time) I have lost signal and the channels are recording in a scrambled form. If I reboot the tivo, the signal is perfect. This is not happening to my normal Premiere and never happened to my HD. No clue what is going on or how to address it.


Just curious, what cable system are you on? I'm on TWC. Thats pretty much the same time it happens to my Elite as well. Always during prime time hours when I record most my of shows. I try to manually reboot mine around 6:30pm or a little bit after that so its coming off a fresh reboot going into prime time. Also I'm on my 3rd Elite now as of this week. If I cant get this one to work soon I'm just going to cancel it for awhile until they get the bugs worked out.


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## gteague

isn't it strange that 7pm (at least here in dfw) seems to be the most problematical time? the very start of 'prime time', i think.

as you've read in my other thread, i've finally got a cable card that works for days instead of hours, but back when i was having to check for signal every half-hour i always breathed a little easier when i made it past 7:30 or 8pm every day. i lost half of a good many half-hour shows due to having to reboot.

/guy


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## MeInDallas

That's why I usually do a manual reboot about 20-30 minutes before 7pm to get it all set up. I can make it thru the prime time shows and sure enough about the time the local news goes off I expect it to mess up and poof it does. I'd love to be able to schedule stuff while I'm gone or asleep, but forget that it never works out. I've gotten in the habit of when I get up in the morning the first thing I do is turn on the TV and reboot the Tivo so I can watch the morning news, all before I start the coffee goin. I would really love to get mine going for a few days at least, but my other 3 Tivos work great and I have no issues with them, so I've just been recording everything on them while I'm gone and then stream everything or transfer. It's sad I have to do that though, and here I got this $450 "gorilla in the room" just sitting there.


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## L David Matheny

MeInDallas said:


> That's why I usually do a manual reboot about 20-30 minutes before 7pm to get it all set up. I can make it thru the prime time shows and sure enough about the time the local news goes off I expect it to mess up and poof it does. I'd love to be able to schedule stuff while I'm gone or asleep, but forget that it never works out. I've gotten in the habit of when I get up in the morning the first thing I do is turn on the TV and reboot the Tivo so I can watch the morning news, all before I start the coffee goin. I would really love to get mine going for a few days at least, but my other 3 Tivos work great and I have no issues with them, so I've just been recording everything on them while I'm gone and then stream everything or transfer. It's sad I have to do that though, and here I got this $450 "gorilla in the room" just sitting there.


Since the unit is always on and always recording, I assume it's not a heat issue, although I suppose some activities do generate a bit more heat than others. Failing (rebooting, scrambled video, whatever) after a certain amount of operating time could be a symptom of a memory management problem. Maybe some table overflows and steps on something. TiVo should have someone read through the code with that sort of thing in mind.


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## MeInDallas

See thats the thing, it doesnt reboot on its own, I have to manually reboot it to get the channels back. I've never had those random reboots like other people talk about. If I leave it on then it'll stay on forever that way, just no picture on the channels. My take on it is there is some conflict with the cable cards and tuning adapter models that TWC uses here. I had read somewhere else in another thread that the Elite uses a different type or brand of tuners than the other "2 tuner" Tivos. I dont know that for sure, but thats what I read here. Then theres all those RS corrected and uncorrected errors in the diagnostic screen, and everyone says thats normal, but none of my other Tivos have that on them. They are all at 0 errors. So I dont know what to make of it, but I'm on Elite #3 at this point and its getting old.


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## L David Matheny

MeInDallas said:


> See thats the thing, it doesnt reboot on its own, I have to manually reboot it to get the channels back. I've never had those random reboots like other people talk about. If I leave it on then it'll stay on forever that way, just no picture on the channels. My take on it is there is some conflict with the cable cards and tuning adapter models that TWC uses here. I had read somewhere else in another thread that the Elite uses a different type or brand of tuners than the other "2 tuner" Tivos. I dont know that for sure, but thats what I read here. Then theres all those RS corrected and uncorrected errors in the diagnostic screen, and everyone says thats normal, but none of my other Tivos have that on them. They are all at 0 errors. So I dont know what to make of it, but I'm on Elite #3 at this point and its getting old.


I realized you hadn't mentioned rebooting and edited my post, but you got there before I saved it. Your symptoms could still be caused by a memory management problem, but if nobody who's OTA sees the same symptoms then I'm inclined to agree with you that the problem is related to cable cards or tuning adapters. And since the new quad cable-only tuners in the Elite are presumably serviced by different code from that used in other Premieres, that may be where a bug was introduced. The greater number of errors seen by an Elite's tuner/demodulator circuitry actually worries me more, because that may require code optimization that could be a lot more difficult than just finding a bug causing the other symptoms.


----------



## MeInDallas

Yeah I saw you edited it, no worries 

But I agree with you, I think its got to be something in the software, maybe a conflict of some kind that doesnt get along well with these tuners, then add these tuning adapters to it and it goes crazy. I can put one of my 2 tuner Tivos on the same line and the signal is perfect and after days of being on there theres not one error, but I'll go look at the Elite wherever I put it on the house and they just follow whatever jack I hook it to. The last one I sent back they said there were logs on it they can look at so I guess we will see. I'm just glad more and more people are buying them so maybe they can get out there and if enough people speak loud enough they will try to figure it out.


----------



## MeInDallas

I was going to say, it seems like people on FIOS dont have any problems, and I think they dont use tuning adapters? I dont know, but I've never seen anyone say they had an issue and then say they were on FIOS.


----------



## Teeps

MeInDallas said:


> That's why I usually do a manual reboot about 20-30 minutes before 7pm to get it all set up.


This is solution is nearly the same mickymouse bs I have to do with my S3. The difference is the tuning adapter has to be powered down (I use a $10 lamp timer from Ace Hardware) for 4 hours daily so the GC can complete. If GC does not complete, in a couple of weeks you start getting running out of guide data messages.



MeInDallas said:


> I was going to say, it seems like people on FIOS dont have any problems, and I think they dont use tuning adapters? I dont know, but I've never seen anyone say they had an issue and then say they were on FIOS.


From what I understand FIOS does not use SDV. They have big enough pipes so they can provide all channels 24/7.

The tuning adapter is pure evil.


----------



## MeInDallas

Teeps said:


> The tuning adapter is pure evil.


Amen! 

I NEVER had an one issue with Tivo's until TWC went to SDV.


----------



## moyekj

MeInDallas said:


> I was going to say, it seems like people on FIOS dont have any problems, and I think they dont use tuning adapters? I dont know, but I've never seen anyone say they had an issue and then say they were on FIOS.


 I've seen several, here's 1 long thread about it where OP is with FIOS:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=483987&highlight=fios+elite
I've seen enough posts about tuning issues with Elite that it put me off buying one. The fact that they switched to new Maxlinear-based tuners means there is a learning curve ahead to fix any issues.
What's more worrisome is in these threads people say if they use same coax and connections for a Series 3 in place of the Elite there are no issues which points the finger squarely at the Elite.


----------



## Teeps

MeInDallas said:


> Amen!
> 
> I NEVER had an one issue with Tivo's until TWC went to SDV.


And, TiVo has yet to admit a problem exists.


----------



## rogmatic

MeInDallas said:


> Just curious, what cable system are you on? I'm on TWC. Thats pretty much the same time it happens to my Elite as well. Always during prime time hours when I record most my of shows. I try to manually reboot mine around 6:30pm or a little bit after that so its coming off a fresh reboot going into prime time. Also I'm on my 3rd Elite now as of this week. If I cant get this one to work soon I'm just going to cancel it for awhile until they get the bugs worked out.


Yeah, I am in Dallas as well (Lakewood) with TWC. I have an older Scientific Atlanta cable card that I switched from my S3. I am thinking of trying to switch it out for the Motorola cable card to see if that works. I never had any issues with the S3 at all.


----------



## gteague

moyekj said:


> What's more worrisome is in these threads people say if they use same coax and connections for a Series 3 in place of the Elite there are no issues which points the finger squarely at the Elite.


my s3 had been working 2-3 years after i got all the issues from the tuning adaptor rollout sorted out. then it died (hard drive, most likely) and i purchased the elite and here's the damming phrase: _under the *exact same environment and conditions and with the exact same class 'm' cards* that were in the s3, the elite has given me 3 months of nightmares_, hence this thread.

and, like @meindallas, i have no issue with random reboots, just losing all the channels, usually with a 'signal not found' error message. a reboot or reseating the card brings back the channels 99% of the time, power cycling the tuning adaptor does nothing.

/guy


----------



## rogmatic

I am having the exact same problem. No reboots but it loses signal often - particularly around prime time. Exact same set up as my series 3 and my normal premiere in the other room has no issues. My signal strength is over 80. If I reboot, everything works fine.


----------



## CoxInPHX

rogmatic said:


> Yeah, I am in Dallas as well (Lakewood) with TWC. I have an older Scientific Atlanta cable card that I switched from my S3. I am thinking of trying to switch it out for the Motorola cable card to see if that works. I never had any issues with the S3 at all.


You can't swap Scientific Atlanta (Cisco) with Motorola. The system is either one or the other. The CableCARDs are not compatible. Your provider if using SA/Cisco will not have any Motorola CCs.


----------



## CybrFyre

Aren't these things supposed to be using some sort of standatds?


----------



## MeInDallas

CoxInPHX said:


> You can't swap Scientific Atlanta (Cisco) with Motorola. The system is either one or the other. The CableCARDs are not compatible. Your provider if using SA/Cisco will not have any Motorola CCs.


If he's in Dallas and I'm in Dallas and both on the TWC system then how come he has a different type of Cablecard than I do? I have 4 Motorola Cablecards and 4 Motorola Tuning Adapters.


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## rogmatic

TWC told me today they carry both models. The guy I talked to said the Motorola is easier to pair. They have no idea what they are doing but it is nice they at least have a cable card call center.


----------



## CoxInPHX

MeInDallas said:


> If he's in Dallas and I'm in Dallas and both on the TWC system then how come he has a different type of Cablecard than I do? I have 4 Motorola Cablecards and 4 Motorola Tuning Adapters.


Dallas is a big place, 2 different headends, serving 2 distinct systems with 2 different hardware vendors, Motorola and SA/Cisco. TWC most likely purchased the 2 systems from other providers and never consolidated the systems into one vendor protocol. Whatever the headend is Motorola or SA/Cisco will determine the CC vendor also.

EDIT: Also
Motorola Tuning Adapters only work with Motorola CableCARDS and headends
Cisco Tuning Adapters will work with SA and NDS CableCARDS and headends


----------



## gteague

*Problem*: no channels
*Fix*: reseated cc
*Note*: i am getting concerned that i have lost channels several times in the last two weeks after a 3 week string of proper operation.

anyone else on twc in dfw lose channels this afternoon?

/guy


----------



## L David Matheny

gteague said:


> *Problem*: no channels
> *Fix*: reseated cc


Does reseating the cable card involve unplugging it or disconnecting or power cycling anything? Or do you mean that just moving it slightly in its socket actually fixes something?


----------



## MeInDallas

gteague said:


> *Problem*: no channels
> *Fix*: reseated cc
> *Note*: i am getting concerned that i have lost channels several times in the last two weeks after a 3 week string of proper operation.
> 
> anyone else on twc in dfw lose channels this afternoon?
> 
> /guy


I've been seeing a new problem. I'll have something set to record, and if I'm sitting there and tuned to that channel when it stops, then an error pops up saying the channel is not authorized and I have to switch the channel to another one and back again to get that channel back. Joy!


----------



## rogmatic

Dang it. Missed more recordings today. Normal Premiere works great but Elite has missed shows at least 4 times in the last two weeks. I am going to try to replace the cable card this weekend. I love the Elite but I can't handle missed recordings.


----------



## gteague

*Problem*: no channels -- 'problem with signals on this channel' on every screen.
*Fix*: reseated cc


----------



## Jackamus

Problem: TWC
Fallout: TWC Sucks
Resolution: Get FiOS!! n 

Just saying!!

Dear FiOS... I loves you long time!! Will never leave you


----------



## gteague

i would kill to have fios. i called verizon the other night to ask if it was coming to my area and what surrounding areas had it now. clueless is the most kind term i can apply to the person who answered the phone. she claimed that since my address would not show up in her computer that meant she could not tell me where fios was offered--not down to a city not even down to the state. what does my address have to do with whether they offer it in any given city? idiots reading from a script ...

i later found a map and fios is very scattered around north texas, mainly in the 'high-dollar' communities. alas, my neighborhood is old and has seen better days and i doubt fios will ever make it here. if i could splice fiber i'd drive 40 miles and hijack a switch port.

i also bought a roku and an apple tv. the apple tv was more for the airplay so i could mirror my iphone and ipad to my mac and hd tv--the content is pretty restricted. the roku is more open, but i already had access to my netflix and amazon streaming video accounts via a panasonic blu-ray dvd player and my tivo, so there's not much new there either. and i'll be dammed if i'll pay hulu for streaming content _and_ watch ads on it (although i already do that with a lot of cable content, damm their eyes).

and i heard that direct tv got tivo now, but you can't pick your tivo box and the one they offer seems like very bare bones. and it doesn't matter anyway because i have no view of the satellites.

the outlook for the consumer seems very dismal and the content providers and the carriers are losing billions of dollars because they are locked in their dinosaur-era thinking and marketing models and worshiping at the altar of drm. damm all their eyes. i no longer fault anyone who pirates content that they will not offer for sale or rent to consumers.

/guy


----------



## Teeps

gteague,

I called Verizon, several months ago, to ask when FIOS would be available in my area (make that neighborhood.) I was told Verizon would not spend the $$$ for infrastructure, in my area. Because we already had TimeWarner cable and ATT Uverse.

WELL NUTS!


----------



## brianfuchs

gteague said:


> i would kill to have fios.
> /guy


Guy,

I have Fios, and the Elite did not perform a heck of a lot better.

I purchased an Elite + 3 XLs on the same day. The XLs all perform admirably - zero (or near zero) RS corrected/uncorrected, and no pixelation. I also have never had a recording lost to a dropped signal.

The Elite, on the other hand.... Within my 30-day return window, I had most shows recorded with pixelization whenever there was sudden movement on the screen. I had programs that were unwatchable because the channels would drop out and come back. The signal strength for these channels on the Elite were in the high 80's and would still drop off.

I tried everything suggested on this board - swapping CC, swapping the Elite with a Premiere in a different room, adding attenuators. It didn't work for me. I was not using the internal MOca adapter; I had a direct coax and a direct Ethernet.

BTW, that Elite was my SECOND one. The first one was DOA out of the box.

The final straw was when the Elite rebooted twice in one day (on the 29th day of ownership). I had not had a spontaneous reboot prior to that, and I certainly didn't want to venture down that road. On the 30th day, I returned it and exchanged it for another XL. That XL is using the same cable and same CC, and is working flawlessly.

What amazes me is that you have been banging your head against a wall for three months, posting almost hourly for the first 30 days, and never once considered returning it like I did. Now it's too late for you. *Heck, even now I have to ask - why don't you sell the damned thing on E-bay, take a $200 loss, and buy a Premiere?* Seriously, it will lower your blood pressure by 50 points. Pass the curse to someone else.

I have no doubt that the Elite issues will be eventually addressed by some SW update; I just didn't want to wait around for that magical day.


----------



## rogmatic

Ugh. I got a new cable card today. Worked for all of 6 hours before it lost a signal. The frustrating thing is that is loses all channels - even the ones you get without a cable card. It must be the elite. My premiere and HD always work.


----------



## MeInDallas

I'm on my 3rd Elite. Next week I'm going to get a regular Premiere and put the Elite in the closet for awhile until they get this issue worked out. I'm sick of dealing with it.


----------



## gteague

brianfuchs said:


> Guy,
> 
> What amazes me is that you have been banging your head against a wall for three months, posting almost hourly for the first 30 days, and never once considered returning it like I did. Now it's too late for you. *Heck, even now I have to ask - why don't you sell the damned thing on E-bay, take a $200 loss, and buy a Premiere?* Seriously, it will lower your blood pressure by 50 points. Pass the curse to someone else.


this is my 2nd elite and there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two i've tried. also, aside from banging my head against the wall hourly [g], i've been working with an 'executive level' team at tivo up until a few days ago when we closed the ticket thinking the latest cable card had, if not solved the 'problem', but at least made the symptoms bearable. at this point i could live with 'only' one signal loss per 3-4 weeks and i had a run of nearly 24 days.

up until we closed the ticket i would have said that all my options were still open, but now i suspect tivo will not be as willing to listen if i wanted to re-open the issue. tivo did try to help, but in reality they did very little except to log the symptoms. they (eventually, when i couldn't get more cable cards) indicated they were willing to contact time-warner in my behalf because tw was completely stonewalling me, but it never came to that because we got my last card (about the 7th or 8th) to work, at least for that one long string. and even then, i provided them with the info of a tw supervisor which i had left over from the clusterfsck tuning adaptor fiasco 3 years ago. if i hadn't had that number, i have no idea who they would have called left to their own devices.

at one point they did conference me in to a tw group they called 'time-warner level3 support', but all we did was pair up a cable card--something i've done nearly 2 dozen times using the two time warner centers set aside for that purpose and the level3 tech did not seem that much more competent that the other techs i worked with and he said he was unable to open a ticket to time-warner on my behalf, so he was pretty well useless and the card we paired up only lasted a day or two.

as i've said before, the damming portion of all this is that two elites would not work under the _exact_ same environment and conditions that a s3 tivo box was working under. is it possible to get a cable card that the elite will work with? obviously it is, because there are only a handful of us complaining. so the problem is limited to certain cable vendors and environments, it seems.

my conclusion is that the 'problem' is poor hardware, firmware, or programming in the elites. it does have the completely new tuning system where we went from two class 'm' cards supporting two tuners to one class 'm' card supporting 4 tuners, and if i was troubleshooting the issue i'd look at the firmware/software that supports the point where the cable cards feed those tuners.

as far as going to a premier, what i should have done, knowing what i know now, was to slap a new hd in my s3.

/guy


----------



## rogmatic

I really don't think it is TWC this time. I have no issues with my other Tivos. I think it is a problem with the elite itself. If it were just a cable card issue why would it lose the network channels that come over basic cable?


----------



## Jackamus

rogmatic said:


> I really don't think it is TWC this time. I have no issues with my other Tivos. I think it is a problem with the elite itself. If it were just a cable card issue why would it lose the network channels that come over basic cable?


When I had BrightHouse, the digital tuner adapter was always the issue for my TiVo's. When I went to FiOS. Not one issues. Not one. (Knock on circuit board.)


----------



## moyekj

Jackamus said:


> When I had BrightHouse, the digital tuner adapter was always the issue for my TiVo's. When I went to FiOS. Not one issues. Not one. (Knock on circuit board.)


 The evidence is overwhelming in this thread that the issue is the Elite. Other TiVos using same CC, cables, TA, etc. have no problem where the Elite is failing. Plus there are some threads with tuning issues for Elites using FiOS as well which further implicates the Elite.


----------



## rogmatic

What kind of cable cards do you have? I have Motorola with a Motorola tuning adapter.


----------



## rogmatic

TiVo help desk today said my SNR of 35-36 is too high so I should try an attenuator. Will let you know if this works.


----------



## MeInDallas

rogmatic said:


> TiVo help desk today said my SNR of 35-36 is too high so I should try an attenuator. Will let you know if this works.


Been there, done that, didnt work.


----------



## gteague

snr, _by definition_ cannot be 'too low'. unless they are using some definition they made up. it is signal-to-noise-ratio. common sense would tell you that you cannot have too high a ratio of signal as compared to noise.

you can, however, have too high a signal _level_. nearly any receiver will go into an overload condition with too high a signal level. but snr is an entirely different measurement and i'm not sure that all the techs at tivo understand this distinction.

/guy


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## rogmatic

Well, I am going to try it. The signal loses are terrible. Otherwise I love the elite.


----------



## Teeps

gteague said:


> but snr is an entirely different measurement and i'm not sure that all the techs at tivo understand this distinction.
> 
> /guy


Reading from a script, no doubt.



rogmatic said:


> TiVo help desk today said my SNR of 35-36 is too high so I should try an attenuator. Will let you know if this works.


Did they give a target value?


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## rogmatic

He said low 30s. The website troubleshooting says 29-35. I am not optimistic that this is the problem. It works great for 2 days, drops all signals, and once I reboot is fine for another couple of days.


----------



## MeInDallas

I deactivated my Elite yesterday, put it in the box, and put it away in the closet for now. I put one of my $49 Premieres in it's place and I can actually watch TV now in my living room! I wish I had just went this route in the first place, but live and learn I guess.


----------



## gteague

*Problem*: had just gotten home from work and turned on the tv and was watching live tv when the image froze and i get 'problem with the signal on this cable channel' on all channels.
*Fix*: re-seated cable card. all channels restored. i sure hope it lasts through the weekend because if i miss game of thrones, tivo might get this one back with a flaming bag of dog poop thrown in.
*Note*: Same ole', same ole'

after experiencing 4 tuners and 3tb of storage, i don't think i could go back to a premiere with 2 tuners and 0.250tb storage although perhaps 2tb externals are available--i pounced on a 1tb refurb over christmas that was very cheap considering the hd shortage at the time. even if tivo gave me 4 premieres to replace this one elite, i wouldn't have room to install it.

/guy


----------



## GoEagles

gteague said:


> *Problem*: had just gotten home from work and turned on the tv and was watching live tv when the image froze and i get 'problem with the signal on this cable channel' on all channels.
> *Fix*: re-seated cable card. all channels restored. i sure hope it lasts through the weekend because if i miss game of thrones, tivo might get this one back with a flaming bag of dog poop thrown in.
> *Note*: Same ole', same ole'
> 
> after experiencing 4 tuners and 3tb of storage, i don't think i could go back to a premiere with 2 tuners and 0.250tb storage although perhaps 2tb externals are available--i pounced on a 1tb refurb over christmas that was very cheap considering the hd shortage at the time. even if tivo gave me 4 premieres to replace this one elite, i wouldn't have room to install it.
> 
> /guy


How did you add another TB of storage to the Elite? I thought all Tivo were stuck at 2.2TB?


----------



## rogmatic

I am having the same problems as well but don't want to go back to the normal premiere. Right now I am recording every show on my Premiere and HD as backup and then transferring them to my elite when there are issues. I know I should give up on the elite but I just can't.


----------



## GoEagles

I'll add my experience to this if it helps:

Just setup a Premiere Elite last night and for whatever reason, it didn't want to show guide data correctly, or not enough of it. Finally after 7-8 reboots and clearing and deleting everything including my season passes that I transferred over, it finally showed more than 24-48 hours of guide data.

Also, sometimes I have to look under the guide data for my second Premiere box that is monthly and then switch the option to record to the Elite box if I want to schedule a Season Pass. 

My device has PLS, but for some odd reason, I can't switch to the HD menu, and there isn't even an option to do so. It should be there right under "Displays on the Front of the DVR", but it isn't. 

I had to be the first call this morning, apparently there is some issue with activations with the Elite boxes (some AP setting I think he said) and they are taking about 3 days to get this resolved. 

I am running 20.20a-01-2-758


----------



## MeInDallas

GoEagles said:


> How did you add another TB of storage to the Elite? I thought all Tivo were stuck at 2.2TB?


On the Elite you can add the 1TB WD Expander, or you can send your Elite to Weaknees and they will add a 2TB expander for a total of 4TB.

http://www.weaknees.com/tivo-premiere-elite-series4.php


----------



## gteague

*Problem*: before going to work i thought i'd better check to see if my channels were gone again and sure enough they were. same scenario--grey screens with 'problem with signal' error messages. i had just reset the card at around 0630ct and sometime in the hours i was asleep it went out again.
*Fix*: re-seated cable card.


----------



## rogmatic

Anyone think it would help to hook up a signal booster? It boosts it to 100 signal with 36 SNR (I am guessing based on what it did to my HD). I think there is a glitch in the tuning adapter software but I am willing to try anything. I haven't gotten it to work for longer than 2 days yet.


----------



## gteague

signal boosters usually introduce noise, but they're (relatively) cheap and easy to install. as are attenuators. anything is worth trying, although neither made the least difference in my particular case. nothing changes the amount of time the tivo will hold a signal except cable cards and my cable company will no longer give me any.

it would be far preferable if tivo would give us a clue as to where to start rather than blaming everything on the cable company. it's pretty evident the elites sometimes won't work under the exact same conditions some of their other boxes thrive in. the exact same cable card i took out of my series 3 will only work 8-36 hours at a time in the elite, for example, and i'm sure tivo knows why, but doesn't want to risk a lawsuit or a recall.

/guy


----------



## MeInDallas

rogmatic said:


> Anyone think it would help to hook up a signal booster? It boosts it to 100 signal with 36 SNR (I am guessing based on what it did to my HD). I think there is a glitch in the tuning adapter software but I am willing to try anything. I haven't gotten it to work for longer than 2 days yet.


Tried that also. Didnt work. After 3 Elites in 2 months I've given up 

I just think its some glitch in the Tivo software and one day they will fix it, hopefully. Until then it can sit in the box in my closet.


----------



## gteague

you probably didn't have lifetime on the elite since you had trouble with it from day one, right? so you just cancelled your service on that box?

unfortunately, i paid up front for lifetime for mine, so even if i did get a premiere, i don't know if they'd transfer my lifetime to it. but maybe they would if i raised a stink since i have had long-running tickets with them.

/guy


----------



## MeInDallas

Yeah I just got the month to month and was going to sell my 2 HD's that have lifetime on them, and then get the lifetime on the Elite and one of my new Premiere's with that money. I just wanted to see how the Elite worked out before I made any commitments on it. I had been reading a lot about the issues the Premiere's had here for awhile so thats why I had held off on buying, but from what I had read it seemed a lot of them had been worked out with the recent software updates. I really didnt think adding 2 more tuners to a Premiere would be that big a deal, but guess I was wrong. Come to find out everything is different, motherboard, power supply, tuners. So I guess that created a whole set of new problems and glitches.


----------



## Welshdog

I was considering getting an Elite, but after reading this - no way. I'm in Austin on TWC and while Austin has a reputation of being better at the whole SDV/TA/CableCard process . . . I still don't want to try it. Right now we have analog cable with OTA digital on a Series 3 and and HD. I might consider a Premiere XL, but then I'd worry about changing to digital cable with a cable card and TA. Too many people seem to have problems with this whole setup. 

Why can't we have a national cable technology standard like we do for broadcasting over the air? Things would be so much easier.


----------



## MeInDallas

I have 2 regular Premiere's and 2 HD's with cable cards and tuning adapters on TWC digital and theres never any problems. All shows get recorded, no reboots or anything. It's just the Elite doesnt get along with TWC here. I thought with the other ones working so well, why not try an Elite and sell the HD's. Didnt work out that way.

When Dallas first got SDV back in 2008 it was a complete nightmare. Once they started the self install I went back to the cable cards on Tivo and its been like a dream. I was pleasantly surprised how well they work now. Maybe once a month or every 6 weeks I've had to pull the plug on the tuning adapters and let them reboot, but thats not bad at all to me.


----------



## Welshdog

MeInDallas said:


> I have 2 regular Premiere's and 2 HD's with cable cards and tuning adapters on TWC digital and theres never any problems. All shows get recorded, no reboots or anything. It's just the Elite doesnt get along with TWC here. I thought with the other ones working so well, why not try an Elite and sell the HD's. Didnt work out that way.


Yeah that is really unfortunate for Tivo. I have had some experience with a regular Premiere on analog cable and it was good. Also good to know you have had success with your Premieres and the TA. I had hoped to use an Elite to not only gain tuners and convenience, but save some electricity and shelf space by selling one of the older units.

I guess I can still wait a while longer to see if Tivo can get the Elite sorted out.


----------



## rysand

This is a re-post of mine from a different thread, but feel it's relevant enough to be shared here:



> Just bought my first TiVo box since DirecTV had them the first time. Last year moved to a wooded lot, so forced to go comcast. Their DVR is pretty lame. I purchased a premier elite and plan on upgrading the rest of the house in the future.
> 
> Anyways on Wednesday I hooked it up, purchased lifetime, got the cable card paired and a bunch of shows in the season pass. Then discovered it would not record at all. Support said I got a lemon and needed to go get another one. I did have access to VOD but never noticed the choice for an HD menu.
> 
> Brought home the replacement on Thursday. They switched it over, helped me pair the card and I can record. Now I dont have VOD or the option to change tivo central to HD. Support said I was missing 'categories' and that the engineers are on it. For putting down nearly $1,000 out of pocket to get started, I am off to a pretty rocky start.
> 
> It is nice to know it's not just me. I just wish that support would post something either via twitter or Facebook keeping us updated.


----------



## rogmatic

I don't suppose there is a way of forcing a reboot automatically before primetime. Maybe with an advanced surge protector I could kill power and flip it back. I am so frustrated.


----------



## MeInDallas

rogmatic said:


> I don't suppose there is a way of forcing a reboot automatically before primetime. Maybe with an advanced surge protector I could kill power and flip it back. I am so frustrated.


Get one of those $5 lamp timers from Walmart and set it to go off and come right back on before the prime time hour.


----------



## L David Matheny

MeInDallas said:


> Get one of those $5 lamp timers from Walmart and set it to go off and come right back on before the prime time hour.


Putting a TiVo on a timer would be an act of desperation. It might help avoid certain specific problems, but it surely wouldn't be good for the longevity of your TiVo or its hard drive.


----------



## MeInDallas

I dont think the constant rebooting and other problems some of the Elite owners are going thru helps with the longevity of the Tivo as well. Thursday night the night before I deactivated my Elite, I had to reboot mine 12 times within a 3 hour period. I'm thinking desperation is what a lot of us feel at this point.


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## gteague

if you are having the loss of channels that i have been having, then just re-seating the cable card brings back the channels for me nearly 100% of the time. this is much, much better than power-cycling, but of course can't be automated. i am very reluctant to reboot because sometimes my external drive doesn't get recognized and it takes 3 or 4 more reboots to get them back in sync.

/guy


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## rhettf

I just ordered a Tivo Elite to replace my Tivo Premier - can't wait to have all that storage! (already have the WD expansions 400Hours! yay baby) I was waiting till the Xfinity onDemand was announced and its for sure coming to my area. 

Now I just have to decide if I should just pony up for the lifetime.


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## GoEagles

GoEagles said:


> I'll add my experience to this if it helps:
> 
> Just setup a Premiere Elite last night and for whatever reason, it didn't want to show guide data correctly, or not enough of it. Finally after 7-8 reboots and clearing and deleting everything including my season passes that I transferred over, it finally showed more than 24-48 hours of guide data.
> 
> Also, sometimes I have to look under the guide data for my second Premiere box that is monthly and then switch the option to record to the Elite box if I want to schedule a Season Pass.
> 
> My device has PLS, but for some odd reason, I can't switch to the HD menu, and there isn't even an option to do so. It should be there right under "Displays on the Front of the DVR", but it isn't.
> 
> I had to be the first call this morning, apparently there is some issue with activations with the Elite boxes (some AP setting I think he said) and they are taking about 3 days to get this resolved.
> 
> I am running 20.20a-01-2-758


Part of my problem with my Elite has been fixed. I can now turn on the HD interface, but everything else is still wacky.

For instance, I can play a recording from the Premiere on the Elite but I can't transfer the recording to the Elite at all. On the Premiere, it gives me an error staying that the Elite is not on the network, or the recording is not available.


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## christoman

Is there a prevailing opinion in terms of the pervasiveness of the problems (% of Elite owners that have problems)? I just got my wife to approve buying one but seem like I should hold off given that all of my Tivos are at least working OK right now.


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## MeInDallas

christoman said:


> Is there a prevailing opinion in terms of the pervasiveness of the problems (% of Elite owners that have problems)? I just got my wife to approve buying one but seem like I should hold off given that all of my Tivos are at least working OK right now.


What cable system are you on? If you're on FIOS I'd give it a thumbs up :up: I'm on TWC and it was a nightmare.


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## oregonman

christoman said:


> Is there a prevailing opinion in terms of the pervasiveness of the problems (% of Elite owners that have problems)? I just got my wife to approve buying one but seem like I should hold off given that all of my Tivos are at least working OK right now.


I haven't chimed in to this thread yet, so I'll do it now My Elite is 3 weeks old and virtually trouble free. I have FIOS and I use the SDUI and I don't use a bluetooth remote, so I may not be using the stuff some people have had trouble with. The biggest problem I have seen is the Elite becoming non-reponsive to the remote, but I also had that problem with my regular Premiere, so it is not specific to the Elite. It only happened once for an annoying amount of time so far.

I love it so far - four tuners is great. One benefit of four tuners that i had not anticipated is that it grabs a lot more suggestions. There is almost always a tuner or two free to record a suggestion, so it is picking up programs that would have been missed with two tuners.

I don't discount the problems some are having, but remember that people are quicker to post problems than they are to post no problems. That includes me - I would have posted here sooner if I had problems.


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## rogmatic

I think the problems are pretty limited. Seem to be a bunch of issues with TWC in Dallas. Mine had been working for three days now. Debating whether to try attenuator.


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## rogmatic

Installed the attenuator. -6 db. Can't tell any difference but SNR did go down to 31. Hopefully this will do the trick.


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## gteague

*Problem*: recording one channel and flipping through live-tv on the other 3 tuners when screen turned grey. no error message.
*Fix*: re-seated cable card.
*Note*: prime time curse strikes nearly exactly on the minute*.*


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## gteague

*Problem*: lost all channels again while recording one show and watching live tv just 25 minutes after the last loss
*Fix*: removed catv coax, reseated ethernet, hdmi, and cable card.
*Note*: totally random and no way to tell whether the cable company signal is at fault. i never lose my internet during these tivo problems, so i have to blame tivo for losing the signal at the card.

i just noticed yesterday that tw now has a 'primetime on demand' channel. useless of course because tivo doesn't support on-demand, but if they did and if tw offered all of their channels on-demand, there would be no need for 4 tuners--i could get by on a premiere instead.


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## rogmatic

The attenuator didn't work. I am having lots of pixilation right before it goes out. I could use a stronger attenuator or a booster. Not sure which to try. I do seem to have a lot of RS errors. Maybe it is the signal and the elite is just more sensitive. But once I reboot it is fine for a while.


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## MeInDallas

rogmatic said:


> The attenuator didn't work. I am having lots of pixilation right before it goes out. I could use a stronger attenuator or a booster. Not sure which to try. I do seem to have a lot of RS errors. Maybe it is the signal and the elite is just more sensitive. But once I reboot it is fine for a while.


I feel your pain, and I went thru the same thing. Spending money on things I thought would fix it. I tell you its been really nice not dealing with that issue the last 6 days. I hope one day they get the issue resolved on the Elite, I'm sure they will, just how long will it take is what I'd like to know.


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## Elryzor

I'm having many of the same problems as other posters with losing channels on my new Elite. I'm on COMCAST without a SDV tuner. Straight cable to the Elite except for a splitter.

I didn't have any trouble with the initial installation or cable card pairing. Local Comcast office finally allows customers to pick up a card at the office.

I did have issues for the first week or 10 days with the Elite sometimes not responding to remote commands. Waiting for several minutes (up to 10 or so) would let us watch the elite try to execute all the things the remote signaled while it was stalled! Funny if not such a bother.This has gone away in the last couple of weeks.

I do have a continuing problem with losing channel authorizations. Comcast couldn't get the original cable card to correct this for a week so I swapped cable cards. The new card was perfect for 4 or 5 days then I noticed one channel was missing, then two and now almost a dozen. I haven't tried reseating the current card yet. I will tonight although that never helped the original card.

One thing I'm seeing that I haven't seen in other threads is the Elite will record a show but the playback has long periods of black screen and no sound. You can FF or RW through it. The Elite acts like the show is there in ever way except there is no video or sound. This goes for a few minutes and the picture and sound will come back for a while. Then it goes away again.

Sometimes getting out of the show and then playing it again will make this better as in you have less black screen time. Sometimes going to live TV and then back to the recorded show also makes it better. Early on, rebooting the Elite would correct the issue and let you see the entire show. Now even that isn't always working. 

I haven't noticed any correlation between the number or type (HD/SD) of shows being recorded during the playback.

So far this has always happened on SD shows, never on HD shows.

This never happens while watching live TV.

I haven't talked to TiVo about this yet. I plan to soon.

For a while I had the Elite, a Premier and a Series 3 all hooked up to the same TV with a Comcast DVR so we could get VOD. They all shared the same splitter. The Elite either didn't have trouble losing channels until recently or I just didn't notice it since it was a backup rather than the main DVR. The signals are all 86+ when I check them using the Elite menus, even on channels that it says are not authorized. The Premier I had there has been moved and the empty splitter connection has been capped.


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## rogmatic

I took off the attenuator and put on the booster. Now I have signal strength of 92 and SNR of 36. Not much different than I had initially. Will keep you posted to see of of works.


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## gteague

that's nearly exactly what i have with tw in dfw. based on my experience, i doubt that sig strength of +/- 10db from that figure or +/- 5db from your snr figure will have any perceptible difference except that a very cheap booster could introduce enough noise to cause problems for the receiver in the elite.

strangely enough, even though it's inevitable that noise is introduced with cheap boosters or power amps, i've never seen anyone report a decrease in their s/n ratio which should be the result. this leads me to speculate that tivo either has not implemented the module they use to monitor the snr correctly or that they are misrepresenting what that figure actually represents.

of course, if you only get a 3db boost, that small an increase will not necessarily show up in the snr figure. it'd be an interesting experiment to keep adding in boosters until you do note a decrease in the snr, and then note how much db increase in signal level that drop corresponded to. interesting experiment, but i still suspect this is a tivo elite hardware or firmware problem, else why do their other boxes work with the exact same catv specs?

/guy


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## gteague

*Problem*: while watching recorded shows, channels disappeared.
*Fix*: reseated cable card
*Note*: that this is irritating goes without saying. and the fact that it's so random makes it worse as you can never watch any of your recordings without wondering whether the live tv channels have gone out.


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## gteague

*Problem*: tivo lost channels while i ran out to the grocery store after just having lost them 30 minutes earlier and re-seating the cable card.
*Fix*: reseated cable card
*Note*: again, totally random. although a 30 minute uptime is uncharacteristic of this problem.


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## rogmatic

Do you have a lot of RS uncorrected errors? I compares my boxes and the Elite certainly has more than the Premiere and HD. Maybe the Elite is not correcting errors that the other boxes do.


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## moyekj

gteague have you tried reaching out to Margret or someone beyond 1st few levels of CSRs at TiVo? At bare minimum you should have your system being logged for close monitoring by TiVo if they care at all about trying to resolve the problem. It's pretty obvious that without some kind of software/firmware change things are not going to get better for you so I would be pushing as hard as possible to get TiVo on the case in a serious manner.


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## gteague

i've been working with an 'executive level' team at tivo for 2-4 months thanks to marget's response to an email i sent her. but when i had about 25 days uptime in march they closed the ticket and i'm sure they don't want to re-open it. if you work back a couple of pages in this thread you should find a long-ish entry from me about the experience. bottom line is they were exceedingly friendly and wanted to be helpful, but all they could recommend was throwing more cable cards at the problem and when time-warner would give me no more cable cards, they offered to try to help, but my last cable card seemed to work, so they closed the ticket and i've lost my contact with them. we are all exhausted and by myself i could find no such help within time warner and tivo pleads that they have no influence with them which i find hard to believe since their business model depends on the cable companies. i suspect they have some high level contacts, but didn't want to engage them.

i could try to get more cable cards on that endless easter egg hunt, but i work nights and it kills me to stay up during the daytime making multi-hour calls or getting callbacks while i'm trying to sleep.

i guess i could buy a premiere and try to talk tivo into transferring my lifetime service to it. but i'm just assuming a premiere will work where the elite will not--i don't know for sure. i do know my s3 worked for 5 years with the exact same setup i have today.

this has been one of the absolute worst consumer experiences i've ever had. not only am i out $900+ dollars on the elite and lifetime service (yeah, i know. but my s3 worked for 5 years and i trusted tivo), but i have sleep disorder which has been aggravated the last 6 months i've had to put countless hours into working with the cable company--at least tivo has evening hours. even if i only valued my time at $10/hour, you could probably add at least a hundred (perhaps 150) hours to the total amount i've lost.

/guy


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## gteague

rogmatic said:


> Do you have a lot of RS uncorrected errors? I compares my boxes and the Elite certainly has more than the Premiere and HD. Maybe the Elite is not correcting errors that the other boxes do.


a tech at tivo whom i trust in such matters explained that the errors are normal when you change channels, but they shouldn't increment (esp the uncorrected ones) while you stay on that channel. this is exactly how things work with serial interfaces on cisco routers where they are called 'crc' (cyclic redundancy check) errors. if something happens to the circuit, you will get a 'clump' or errors all at once, but this is usually of no coincidence unless the errors are incrementing.

here's an example for a t1 ckt out of a router in puerto rico



Code:


[I][INDENT]1103 input errors, 1103 CRC, 507 frame, 63 overrun, 0 ignored, 298 abort[/INDENT][/I]

although these errors look bad on the face of it, they represent a short event that happened at some indeterminate time (perhaps a storm knocked the line down for a second or two) and are of no consequence unless i check back in two hours and they have increased. usually what we do if we suspect a problem is to clear the error counters (reset all to zero), and then monitor for errors. you can also get a condition called 'dribbling errors' where you might only get 1-5 crc errors every 4-8 hours, for example, and while these need to be watched carefully, they usually yield no customer impact.

/guy


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## Teeps

So gteague,
Are you throwing in the towel?
Seems to me that TiVo, by this time, should have offered you a full refund on your Elite purchase.
And, if not it would make a good "Judge Judy" case...

I feel your pain gteague, my S3 worked as expected up until July of last year. 
TimeWarner Torrance turned SDV on requiring a Tuning Adapter at that time and, soon after began the "running out of guide data" bug.

Neither tivo nor time warner will OWN this problem.
Fortunately a work around was discovered (in the S3 forum) and it is relatively painless.

TIVO ARE YOU READING THIS THREAD? 
I would really like to own an Elite. But unresolved problems reported in this forum are preventing me (and others) from purchase.


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## rick123

My Elite is about 3 weeks old. Working perfectly since initial power on. I think the issues described are more to do with the service provider and signal quality than the TiVo hardware or software.


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## moyekj

rick123 said:


> My Elite is about 3 weeks old. Working perfectly since initial power on. I think the issues described are more to do with the service provider and signal quality than the TiVo hardware or software.


 So how do you explain fact that a Premiere or Series 3 unit connected to exactly same outlet and using same cablecard works fine where a Elite unit does not? I wouldn't be so quick to call this a non TiVo problem. Obviously for some and perhaps even most people it works fine but clearly tuning is not as robust as previous units.


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## Teeps

rick123 said:


> My Elite is about 3 weeks old. Working perfectly since initial power on.


Good to hear; I would expect nothing less. 
But, that clearly is not everyones experience.

My S3 worked perfectly too, up to the point of SDV activation by time warner Torrance. 
I will not pay $500 for an Elite and experience more unresolved problems.

Statistically, for every post on an internet user group a number, that is many times the number of posts, for a particular problem can be extrapolated.
There are more people with this problem that do not post here...

Only TiVo knows the true extent of this problem. And, their relative silence "speaks" volumes.


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## atmuscarella

Teeps said:


> Only TiVo knows the true extent of this problem. And, their relative silence "speaks" volumes.


You are correct only TiVo knows the number of people having problems with the Elite. However I wouldn't read anything into "their relative silence", TiVo does not provide support through this forum and silence is fairly normal for TiVo. There is a major software update schedule for sometime this spring hopefully it will fix some of the various outstanding problems of the Elite and the Premiere.


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## gwsat

I got a new TiVo Premiere Elite setup and configured last Monday and got all of Cox OKC's HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax Plus Package Channels:

812 HBO Signature
814 HBO Comedy
814 HBO Zone
823 Thriller MAX
826 5 Star MAX
834 Showtime Extreme
848 The Movie Channel eXtra

That was Monday. Then, on Tuesday, I discovered that all of the Plus Package channels had disappeared and I received a black screen and the following error message on each from TiVo:


> This channel is not authorized.
> Contact your cable provider for more information.


Cox OKC kept reassuring me that those channels were authorized and even sent out a tech but nothing worked. After I asked Cox tech support to take up my issue with a person senior enough to have a thorough understanding of CableCARD configuration and how they work with the Plus Package, they said they would do it and get back to me.

Cox called yesterday and told me that the problem arose because Cox had "changed the frequency" on its Plus Package channels. The Cox rep told that they had contacted TiVo and learned that TiVo was developing a software update to handle the Plus Package. Unfortunately, Cox told me that TiVo had said the software update would not be rolled out until late April or early May.

The most puzzling aspect of all of this is why my TiVo Premiere Elite was receiving the Plus Pack channels at first but lost them less the 24 hours later. Go figure.

I don't want to act paranoid but the foregoing tap dance sounds suspiciously like the kind of thing I saw years ago when one of my PCs would stop working normally and a software company would point the finger at the computer manufacturer and the computer manufacturer would point the finger at the software company. Has anyone heard anything about Cox having changed the frequency on its MPEG-4 channels so recently that it would explain my first having them and then not?

I have now learned that the Plus Package channels are MPEG-4 and apparently 1GHz. Anyway, thought I would report what Cox said. I guess the next step is to contact TiVo and see what they say.


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## aaronwt

There was a thread about this somewhere. A TiVo rep had mentioned there being an update coming out to deal with the MPEG4 channels from Cox.


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## compnurd

Doesnt make much sense because the S4 can do MPEG-4


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## aaronwt

compnurd said:


> Doesnt make much sense because the S4 can do MPEG-4


So can an S3. But the software needs to be there to deal with the linear MPEG4 channels. The S3 boxes work in New Zealand with MPEG4 channels becasue the software they use was designed to work with the linear MPEG4 channels.


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## CoxInPHX

aaronwt said:


> There was a thread about this somewhere. A TiVo rep had mentioned there being an update coming out to deal with the MPEG4 channels from Cox.


http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=9009560#post9009560

Margret told me I should have the update by April 26th, and if I didn't to send her an email.


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## gteague

'channel not authorized' is usually a different situation than 'channel not found' or 'searching for signal'. 'not authorized', in my experience, is usually a cable vendor misconfiguration if it persists and you can eventually find someone to fix it.

/guy


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## Elryzor

Well, I tried reseating the CableCARD to no avail. I did not get any channels back on my Elite. I also did not lose any channels.

I've tried running the coax straight to the Elite without the splitter. That didn't help either. I have noticed that SOME of the channels that are giving me the "channel not authorized" error have a zero signal strength on the Elite only.

If I swap the coax from my S3 and connect it to my Elite that doesn't help the Elite nor harm the S3.The Elite still shows zero signal on some "not authorized" channels although this isn't consistent. The S3 still has good signals on all channels I check.

With this 2nd cableCARD in the Elite the problem isn't getting worse over time (yet) like it was with the last card. The missing channels are not the same list as before. There is some overlap but there are differences between which channels are not authorized too. National Geographic channels are out now and were out before but Palladia works this time and didn't before. Most of the SD music channels (MTV, GAC, etc) are out with both cards.

<sigh> I loathe being on the phone with customer support. That's thanks to another TV service that used to waste my time literally for hours at a stretch and sometimes would hang up on me. I guess I have no choice this time. Calling TiVo tonight...


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## rogmatic

It has now been 4 days since I installed a booster and I have had no signal problems. This may not seem like much, but it is the longest streak I have had. I did have to reboot once when it froze on a menu - it would surprise me if the Bluetooth remote is to blame for that. Hopefully this good fortune will continue.


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## GoEagles

They finally fixed the problem where I couldn't transfer shows from my Premiere to my Elite. I thought I had The Movie Channel and TiVo recorded a show and popped up a message saying the channel wasn't authorized, but that could be thinking I have the channel and I don't.


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## Teeps

rogmatic said:


> It has now been 4 days since I installed a booster and I have had no signal problems. This may not seem like much, but it is the longest streak I have had.


Have you had the cable home run from the "pole" to your house checked/replaced?

I had a terrible problem with my S3 after time warner torrance turned on SDV.
Turns out a squirrel had chewed the wire out at the pole...
A new home run from the pole fixed the signal strength problem.


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## rogmatic

My premiere and HD work great. I think the Elite is just more sensitive. So far the booster has done the trick but I have still had issues with the Bluetooth remote.


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## gteague

*Problem*: lost channels sometime during the day when i was asleep
*Fix*: re-seated cable card
*Note*: Unrelated but strange, elite completely skipped recording a season pass for 'modern family' at 2000 this evening. also, even though it's now 2300, the to-do list still shows the entry for 2000. not normal behavior at all. unsure what happened. i might need a reboot of the elite just in case.


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## rogmatic

As another update, I have not had any issues since installing the booster more than a week ago. I am cautiously optimistic that my issue has been resolved (hopefully).


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## rogmatic

Just when I thought the coast was clear I lost signals again. TiVo is basically saying the cable line has too many issues.


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## MeInDallas

rogmatic said:


> Just when I thought the coast was clear I lost signals again. TiVo is basically saying the cable line has too many issues.


Next they are going to ask you to go outside and pull the wire off the side of the house and fish it thru the window and connect it directly to the Tivo. They did me. Tivo will always blame the cable and everything but themselves, they will never take any responsibility for it.


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## moyekj

rogmatic said:


> Just when I thought the coast was clear I lost signals again. TiVo is basically saying the cable line has too many issues.


 So they are also ignoring the fact that Premieres and Series 3 units connected to that same cable line have no issues. Ridiculous. Any design that expects perfect/ideal conditions to operate is flawed from the outset.


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## MeInDallas

moyekj said:


> So they are also ignoring the fact that Premieres and Series 3 units connected to that same cable line have no issues. Ridiculous. Any design that expects perfect/ideal conditions to operate is flawed from the outset.


Yes they completely ignore it and make excuse after excuse and blame everything but the Tivo itself. Where my Elite once sat I split the cable line, added another tuning adapter and cable card and now have 2 regular Premieres, one on top of the other. Since hooking them up there have been no lost channels or anything, and they have operated just like the Elite should have from the beginning.


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## gteague

yeah, i was unable to convince tivo that the problem seemed to be with the two elites i tried rather than my cable connection. of course, the situation is most likely out of their control and they are trying to make the most of a bad situation and all they can offer is cable card roulette. if i was any sort of optimist i might hope that the problem could be solved in firmware or software, but first tivo has to acknowledge the problem.

/guy


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## rogmatic

I am certainly not technologically savy, but it seems like the elites are not as good at correcting signal errors as the other Tivos. My HD has zero RD uncorrected errors on the sam line as my elite, which has several thousand.


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## gteague

*Problem*: lost channels while i was asleep
*Fix*: re-seated cable card
*Note*: had power outage overnight two nights ago while i was at work which over-ran the ups capacity, so machine was powered off for an indeterminate length of time and then re-booted day-before-yesterday


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## gteague

rogmatic said:


> I am certainly not technologically savy, but it seems like the elites are not as good at correcting signal errors as the other Tivos. My HD has zero RD uncorrected errors on the sam line as my elite, which has several thousand.


if someone tasked me to come up with a workaround i'd reason something like this. the elite knows when it can't access a channel because you get an error message. surely the newest newbie programmer could set up a periodic test (poll something akin to a channel acquired and active flag?) to see if this error was present.

the next stage, action, might be more complicated and i am the first to admit i don't even know what the block diagram of signal flow looks like on a tivo. but, if the channel loss error was present _on multiple or all channels_ , then why can't the software or firmware do the equivalent of re-seating the cable card? or even a soft-reboot?

this trap would have to be on some sort of timer of course so that you wouldn't create an endless loop of resets, but a user switch could be provided to opt out of resets in cases where the problem doesn't exist or if you were doing some sort of configuration on the box where it looked like your channels were missing. or an option in the global configuration for the user to opt out.

this wouldn't be elegant at all, but at least it would keep us from losing hours and days of recordings while we're away and unable to 'fix' the problem. and it sure sounds to me like it should be easily possible with just a few dozen programming hours devoted to it by tivo.

but first, _*tivo has to acknowledge the problem*_ and i don't think there are enough of us for them to care

/guy


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## maddigital

NJ FIOS user - 3 Premier Tivos - 1 Elite - No issues with the 3 Premiers (2 upgraded HDDs , one stock HDD)
Problem: 3 weeks after getting my elite, I started to get "Channel not authorized" on all non-basic channels with FIOS - Does not happen with any of my 3 other Premiere Boxes. Now it happens daily. I also occasionally will get a premium channel freeze, over the picture I will see the "channel not authorized" message then 20 seconds later the channel starts working. if I change the channel during the freeze, i will loose all other premium channels. If I leave it there and let it recover, I will be able to change channels fine. Additionally, if I try watching a stream or transfer from another tivo, when that show ends and I go back to live tv, most of the time I will return to "channel not authorized"

Fix: re-seated cable card always works. sometimes will last 15 mins, at most 24 hours.. 

Note: I never lose basic channels (fox, cbs,nbc, etc) One or two random premium channels will work occasionally when all other say "channel not authorized". I tried re-pairing with Verizon while seeing the "channel not authorized" and left it there for an hour and a half and didn't get channels back until i re-seated the cablecard. I have tried all of my 4 cable cards and the only one that has this issue is the elite. Moving it to every tv in a round robin session, the issue travels with the box. Opened a Tivo support ticket, explained my issue and they swapping out the box.. I do not have tuner adapters with my system. Lets see how that goes..


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## gteague

*Problem*: no channels, but different error message from normal, this one said something about 'network not available' instead of 'searching for signal'. none of my first-line fixes worked such as pulling the cable connector and re-seating the cable card. a re-boot didn't work either. just when i was concluding that there was an actual cable outage, i reset my tuning adaptor and all my channels came back.
*Fix*: power-cycled tuning adaptor.
*Note*: suspect a problem at the cable head end with their sdv perhaps. this was not the typical problem i'm having.


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## mulscully

I have 2 TiVo hds and am getting ready to pull the trigger in a premiere. Now I am just nervous about getting the XL4 (elite) cause of the problems I am reading about in this thread. I am in the Philadelphia area and have FIOS. Has anyone in my area with FIOS reported theses issues? 

Thanks


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## gteague

*Problem*: turned on tv after waking up to find no channels. no error messages. outage time determined from a recording during the afternoon.
*Fix*: re-seated cable card
*Note*: three days in a row with channels going out during the day


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## maddigital

update: As I wait for the replacement Tivo is sending me, I reset and reformatted like back to the way it came. I re-paired the cablecard with Verizon last night after and all went well. All channels worked all day until just now. I was watching TBS and wanted to check the Yankees Game score.. quickly saw the that the inning was over and pressed the "last" button on the remote to go back to TBS.. basically tuned to the Yankees game for 10 seconds and tuned back to TBS and BAM "Channel not Authorized" all cable channels gone, couldnt even go back to the yankees game.. CBS, NBC, and FOX all worked. Rebooted and all channels back. Then I repeated what I did. Tuned to TBS.. went to Yankees on YES for 10 seconds, went back to TBS with the Last Button.. BAM "Channel not Authorized" There is no doubt that its a software bug in my mind. checked and all tuners were on TBS. I have no recordings, no season passes, nothing on the box as it has been less than 24 hours since wiping back to original system. I am a FIOS customer in Central Jersey (Near Princeton). I would ask anyone to try to see if their box does the same.. Tune to a channel keep it there for a min.. change to another premium channel and hit the last button on the remote 10-20 seconds after the tune to see if your box stops tuning..


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## aaronwt

maddigital said:


> update: As I wait for the replacement Tivo is sending me, I reset and reformatted like back to the way it came. I re-paired the cablecard with Verizon last night after and all went well. All channels worked all day until just now. I was watching TBS and wanted to check the Yankees Game score.. quickly saw the that the inning was over and pressed the "last" button on the remote to go back to TBS.. basically tuned to the Yankees game for 10 seconds and tuned back to TBS and BAM "Channel not Authorized" all cable channels gone, couldnt even go back to the yankees game.. CBS, NBC, and FOX all worked. Rebooted and all channels back. Then I repeated what I did. Tuned to TBS.. went to Yankees on YES for 10 seconds, went back to TBS with the Last Button.. BAM "Channel not Authorized" There is no doubt that its a software bug in my mind. checked and all tuners were on TBS. I have no recordings, no season passes, nothing on the box as it has been less than 24 hours since wiping back to original system. I am a FIOS customer in Central Jersey (Near Princeton). I would ask anyone to try to see if their box does the same.. Tune to a channel keep it there for a min.. change to another premium channel and hit the last button on the remote 10-20 seconds after the tune to see if your box stops tuning..


This doesn't cause an issue with either of my ELites on FiOS. Some days I'll use the last channel button alot and it has never caused a problem switching between Premium or non Premium channels.

Although I have a two tuner Premiere that has lost it's channels a couple of times in the two years I've owned it. I have no idea what caused it when it happened. But it has never happened to any of my other boxes. The only difference in use with this box is that sometimes I will go weeks without using it, while my other boxes are used regularly.


----------



## gteague

*Problem*: all channels working at 1845 when i left to run some errands. upon return 45 minutes later all my channels had disappeared and tivo was locked up. missed all 7pm recordings.
*Fix*: re-seated cable card
*Note*: really getting old. my tivo will hardly run a full day. i usually try to make sure all channels are there at 7pm for the beginning of the bulk days recordings, but today i left 15 minutes early and it bit me.


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## moyekj

Your patience amazes me. I would have thrown the Elite out of a window months ago with such problems... Or at least as others have done unplug the unit and put it away and use Premieres in its place with the very faint hope the problems will some day be fixed. Even a VCR would be more useful than your current situation. I guess if nothing else you could use your Elite to MRS/MRV shows recorded much more reliably on other units. Talk about a waste of tuners though.


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## gteague

i may end up having to do just that. throw good money after bad. the reason i bought the elite was for the 4 tuners, otherwise i could have just had my s3 repaired. i understand you can get a 1tb premiere (correct?) and i have a 1tb external, so i could live with that i guess. and unless tivo would let me transfer my service from the elite i just could not afford to pay two service contracts. and even given all that, i'm still missing the two tuners i needed in the first place.

/guy


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## ghostrider45

I set up my new Elite on Saturday 4-21 on Cox Cable in New Orleans (Motorola M card and tuning adapter). Everything went smoothly. I left my two existing original Series 3s on line as backups while the Elite settled in. It connected to Tivo service and downloaded a new os and guide data, and by early evening I was able to schedule and record programs. I used the Season Pass manager to copy my season passes from both Series 3s to the Elite and re-arranged their priorities. 

All went well Sunday, and I was enjoying the Elite. I was even able to change its remote code to 3 so it didn't interfere with the Series 3s and program it into my Harmony 1 remote.

I was busy with other things until Wednesday. I used the Tivo web site to check the shows recorded on the 3 dvrs. The Series 3s were as expected but the Elite showed nothing past Monday night. 

When I got home I checked the Elite and found it showing a "Cablecard Configuration Succeeded" screen and waiting for an OK, which I gave. I clicked the Elite to do list and found that it had no tuners available for the missed recordings. Apparently it was waiting for days for me to ok that stupid prompt screen. In the mean time the tuners were unavailable. I don't understand why it was configuring the cable card days after initial setup.

It seems to be working fine now, but I'll continue to shadow with the Series 3s for a while longer. I'm still suspicious.


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## maddigital

Replacement just arrived... in the box.. a brand new retail xl4. I will report back after setting up.


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## gteague

*Problem*: Channels disappeared sometime after 7pm as all the shows it tried to record up until about 2300 were aborted after a few minutes. i didn't discover it until i arrived home at 7am from work although i had checked it before i left for work at 1700.
*Fix*: the usual
*Note*: really getting old and getting worse and worse. the days of having a working system for 3 days are long gone. i got an offer from at&t for their u-verse service and it says their dvr has 4 tuners, so perhaps it's time to kiss tivo and tw goodbye--that's a match made in the depths of hell as far as i'm concerned.


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## maddigital

*My Saga Update:* Setup replacement XL4.. Manufactured in Jan 2012 compared to my Elite Sept 2011. IMO The XL4 badge is nicer than the Elite as its raised lettering instead of flush.

Within 3 hours of setting up the XL4 and getting it paired with my CC.. I got the "Channel not authorized" message.. I actually caught it while recording.. Show was playing fine.. then overtop of the video the "Channel not authorized" banner popped up and video continued to play.. then it went to black after about 20 seconds.

I am now shifting my focus to the Cable cards.. I have 3 other Premieres that work flawlessly and have those to compare to. I swapped between 2 of the others but now checking the firmware and serial numbers, the one that I didn't try seems to be a newer serial and different firmware. I'm testing swapping that one as it has different screens in the Cablecard settings menu than the other 3 cards.. I will report back with my findings if I have different results with a newer firmware/version of the card..

Also I found that the card shows "Auth:S" when working correctly and "Auth:?" when it looses channels.. Card always shows as paired and taking with Verizon.. Haven't found out what the ? status means but its not a typical status for the Auth flag..

Mad


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## compnurd

gteague said:


> *Problem*: Channels disappeared sometime after 7pm as all the shows it tried to record up until about 2300 were aborted after a few minutes. i didn't discover it until i arrived home at 7am from work although i had checked it before i left for work at 1700.
> *Fix*: the usual
> *Note*: really getting old and getting worse and worse. the days of having a working system for 3 days are long gone. i got an offer from at&t for their u-verse service and it says their dvr has 4 tuners, so perhaps it's time to kiss tivo and tw goodbye--that's a match made in the depths of hell as far as i'm concerned.


or you could switch to uverse and keep your tivo...


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## rogmatic

I have been experimenting with the attenuator and have been solid for a week now. I think I may eventually be able to resolve the issue.


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## Teeps

compnurd said:


> or you could switch to uverse and keep your tivo...


TiVo does not work (at this time-and probably will never) with ATT Uverse.


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## Teeps

gteague,

Thank you for the effort put forth and patience, with trying to resolve this problem.

Because of the random reboot and this thread; I am holding off purchasing an Elite or xl4 unit. 

I am also considering Uverse, too.
I would switch to FIOS, in a flash, if the service was available in my area.


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## rogmatic

Once again, just as I started to regain confidence I lost the signal. This time it was a little different - it stopped working while I was using you tube. Maybe that internet connection is somehow related.


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## gteague

tks @teeps!

@rogmatic: as much as i'd like to find a pattern to this channel loss, i can't seem to. it seems like i lose channels much more when i'm not actively watching--they usually go out when i'm at work or asleep. and if i'm not actively watching around 7pm that seems the most likely circumstances and time. but i've had instances when i was actively tuning around at 7pm and had the screen just freeze up. also note that the only difference when not actively watching is that i turn the tv off--the tivo should not even know if the tv is on or off.

i started this log to assist tivo with my ticket and to try to find a pattern in these outages and i can't say there is one. it just seems like the problem is internal to tivo, in the hardware or the firmware or the software and occurs for no reason that is apparent to me.

/guy


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## rogmatic

I agree it is most likely to go out around primetime. That is why I think it must be related to bandwidth. When lots of people are tuned it the signal goes out. The one part I just don't understand is why the signal stays out until a reboot. It never just fixes itself.


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## gteague

you could be on to something there. i am completely nocturnal and it is very rare for my signal to go out between 2300-0800, but these are the times when i'm up and watching. and i have lost my signal between 2100-2400 a few times, very rarely if at all between 0100-0600.

my signal seems to go out much more during the day when i'm asleep. perhaps there are more people watching tv than i think--my inclination is to think they're working, but perhaps there's more unemployment than i realize. (sorry!). and although they might not be connected, the daytime (and especially the early evening) would stress the internet connections which come through our same cable and possibly reducing the ?bandwidth? (don't know if that's a correct term when applied to catv or not) or signal level of the catv portion over the physical coax cable.

unfortunately, there's really no way to monitor the signal level in real time since, by the time it's dropped it's too late. and i doubt seriously the cable company would loan you a meter to capture data. there might be a meter you could buy and put inline, but i'd bet even if it exists, it would be expensive.

and also, bear in mind that every time this has happened to me, re-seating the cable card has fixed it. so that argues against any signal level dropping for more than a few seconds. you'd have to conclude that just a few seconds of signal dropout freezes up the tivo.

and i strongly agree that there is something tivo could do to reset things if they would acknowledge the problem and escalate a workaround or solution. the tivo definitely knows when any particular channel is gone and i think any competent programmer could have it perform a search and if it found multiple channels missing, could do the software equivalent of me resetting the cable card.

/guy


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## MeInDallas

When it happens, go in and look at the cable card pairing screen, the grey and black one. You will notice that all the info is missing and it will have some kind of error there. I think it has something to do with the cable card and tuning adapter and then the Tivo software communicating, but really thats just speculation on my part. When it happened to me I started going and looking at all the info screens I could to see what was different after an occurance. This is really the only screen I could find that had changed. Plus the RS Corrected and Uncorrected Errors had went up a lot in the Diagnostic screen as well.


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## mulscully

So it seems that most of the issues are cable (not FIOS) with a tuning adapter.. Are cable subscribers without tuning adapters having the same issue?


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## gteague

i think i've seen a couple of accounts of similar prob w/o tuner, but not sure.

/guy


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## mulscully

I am not too familiar with the tuning adapter so please forgive me.. but do you need the tuning adapter for all your channels? can you get some of your channels without it? I am wondering if you remove the tuning adapter if the problem would stop.


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## MeInDallas

The tuning adapter works with SDV (Switched Digital Video) and thats what we have here in the North Texas area. You have to have it to get the SDV channels. I'm sure if we could use it without the tuning adapter we wouldnt have that problem. From what I have heard FIOS doesnt use SDV because they have the bandwidth to just pipe everything in, TWC does not so we're stuck with SDV. Most all of the HD channels here are on SDV so without the tuning adapter you cant get them, and thats all I watch, with the exception of the local HD channels that are not on SDV.


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## MeInDallas

Here's how SDV works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched_video


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## mulscully

just as a test, I was wondering if the tuning adapter came out, I understand you would get less channels, but does the problem really go away? I see alot of info about constantly switching cable cards, but has anyone tried switching the tuning adapter? I don't have an elite (XL4) but am on the fence about it cause one thing my family wants is stability and this rebooting/channel lost issue would drive them nuts...


----------



## MeInDallas

mulscully said:


> just as a test, I was wondering if the tuning adapter came out, I understand you would get less channels, but does the problem really go away? I see alot of info about constantly switching cable cards, but has anyone tried switching the tuning adapter? I don't have an elite (XL4) but am on the fence about it cause one thing my family wants is stability and this rebooting/channel lost issue would drive them nuts...


If you take the tuning adapter off you can only get channels FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS, and PBS and a few mixed local channels in between, at least here in the Dallas area. When I tried this "test" you are talking about without the tuning adapter I didnt seem to lose any channels and the problem never occured. The problem for me was that I cant watch local stations for a long period of time so I didnt test it over a matter of days to see how long it actually lasted without any loss of channels. I went thru 4 different tuning adapters, 4 different cable cards. My best guess and opinion about this situation is that the Tivo software conflicts with the tuning adapter and cable card somehow. I would get the "lost channels" a lot of times right after a scheduled recording. You know that little pause you get when a show stops recording, then it starts again after the red light on the front goes off the Tivo, thats when it would happen a lot of times. Then sometimes you could be doing other things like watching an already recorded show, and go back to the live TV and again you had the "lost channels". Sometimes you could just be watching live TV and a flood of pixelation comes and lost channels yet again. If you go in and look at the DVR Diagnostic screen you would see a ton of RS Corrected and Uncorrected Errors listed there, Tivo always told me this was normal for the Elite/XL4. On my HD's and Premiere's when hooked to the same connection there are always 0 (zero) Errors there 24/7 around the clock. So it's not the cable, and TWC has been to my house 3 times, the 3rd I had to pay for because they cant find any problems.

And YES it does drive you nuts!


----------



## GoEagles

Random reboot today between 7-9pm EST. I could it rebooted on it's on because I have a partial recording of one movie and another 7 min recording. The time it rebooted might have coincided when I set a request for a Season Pass, but that's a guess. First time this ever happened, luckily I am within 30 days to get a new box if need be.


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## mulscully

wow, now I am torn. I was going to get the 300 hr XL because of all these issues, but I have FIOS and no tuning adapter, so maybe a shot at the XL4? who knows.. the 4 tuners are appealing...


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## aaronwt

mulscully said:


> wow, now I am torn. I was going to get the 300 hr XL because of all these issues, but I have FIOS and no tuning adapter, so maybe a shot at the XL4? who knows.. the 4 tuners are appealing...


You might as well try it. I have two Elites on FiOS working very well.


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## compnurd

mulscully said:


> wow, now I am torn. I was going to get the 300 hr XL because of all these issues, but I have FIOS and no tuning adapter, so maybe a shot at the XL4? who knows.. the 4 tuners are appealing...


You have 30 days to try it.


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## mulscully

If I get it, should I buy from TiVo or best buy. I can go to delaware and get it with no tax. But as far as returning with 30 days


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## MeInDallas

mulscully said:


> If I get it, should I buy from TiVo or best buy. I can go to delaware and get it with no tax. But as far as returning with 30 days


I would go for it. From what I have heard people on FIOS have no problems. I got my first one off Amazon so I was able to return it, I wouldnt worry about that, and I didnt pay tax either.


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## ghostrider45

Update to my earlier post. It's been a week since the problem I reported occurred and all is well so far. Actually I'm quite pleased.


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## gteague

i had my tuning adaptor replaced twice with no effect. and i agree with @meindallas that there is an interaction between the tuning adaptor and the cable card which makes it nearly impossible to pinpoint where the channel loss problem originates. although i didn't have the patience to try it, i'm pretty sure that if you run the cable directly into the tivo catv connector sans card or adaptor the problem doesn't occur, but i'm not sure you can actually view the base channels this way. and i sure didn't have the patience to take the tuning adaptor offline since i sometimes have uptimes of a week or more without a problem and this one box is the only viewing option i have besides internet.

i've posted what a trusted tivo tech told me about the errors here before, but i'd just point out that even when things are running good there are an unsettling number of such errors. if you believe the tivo tech, these are usually of no consequence *if they're not incrementing*. the reason i tend to trust this explanation is that the situation is exactly the same with the cisco internet routers with serial lines (t1) that i work with on a daily basis. in a very simplified way, merely changing the channel generates a 'clump' of errors, but if the count remains stable while you're watching the same channel, there is no concern.

/guy


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## gteague

*Problem*: watching live tv when it froze. i checked other channels and some had grey screen and some were very badly pixellated, but it was apparent that some signal was trying to come through on some channels. no error messages, but i did not stick around on any channel long enough to see if eventually an error message would appear because i wanted to try to semi-save my ongoing recording by restoring service asap.
*Fix*: re-seated cable card. had channels back and recordings going again in less than 3 minutes. at least the cable card 'fix' beats the hell out of a tivo reboot which can take 8-minutes.
*Note*: again, totally random and just out of the blue and if i hadn't been watching would have ruined programming for the entire night until i noticed the outage


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## maddigital

Update: channels working on my replacement XL4 for 5 days now where I was loosing channels every hour prior. I now have a newer Motorola cable card with a SN starting in 114. Previously all my cards were SN 112 . The newer card has different firmware and has different diag screens than the previous card. I have been pounding out usage testing constantly recording 4 channels simultaneously and streaming from other TiVos. Crossing my fingers...


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## MeInDallas

All my Motorola cable cards start with serial # MA letters. I wonder if they are all old ones.


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## gteague

the two cards i now have at the end of a long parade of them have s/n's starting with 'NG3xxx' and have blue covers. i didn't keep a log of the ones i turned back in, but i think most of those did have s/n's starting with '112' and '114' which, for various reasons, i concluded were older due to the covers, fw versions, and remarks from the pairing techs at tw.

here's some of the specific data if anyone is interested:

current cable card. works for 1-3 days as a general rule:
s/n: NG3649NA1338
ua: 000-02991-81691-135
mac: 0019A67A98FA
FW Version: 02.65. 02.01, 03.25
HW Version: 0469927002
Blue Cover with M-Card in text 

cable card on standby &#8212; this one works for 8-48hrs at a time:
s/n: NG3707NA7434
ua: 000-02292-15080-099
mac: 
FW Version: 02.65. 02.01, 03.25
Blue Cover with M-Card in text

/guy


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## fven2ra

I have a Premier and was going to move it to another room and buy my wife the Elite. However this thread has convinced me not to. Sorry for all your troubles and thanks for educating us.


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## rogmatic

Since ditching the attenuator and going back to the booster (this time with booster connected directly to the TiVo instead of the tuning adapter) I have had about 10 days of good fortune. Hopefully it will keep it up.


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## rogmatic

And within 10 minutes of posting I had a spontaneous reboot. Doh!


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## gteague

sorry to hear that, but it fits the pattern.

i'm pumped that i made it through the whole weekend, i was sure i was going to miss game of thrones or sherlock. i thought about doing a reboot before i left for work, but it's just too random--it could lock up 10 minutes after a reboot or 10 days.

/guy


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## Ziggy86

I was curious if others have the same issue as I did this weekend with the Elite. I used amazon to download Mission impossible and I was seeing some pixelation throughout the film, not so bad as to make me want to stop but still a little annoying.

I never had pixelation issues while using my Tivo HD unit, with the same connection (ethernet)


----------



## atmuscarella

Ziggy86 said:


> I was curious if others have the same issue as I did this weekend with the Elite. I used amazon to download Mission impossible and I was seeing some pixelation throughout the film, not so bad as to make me want to stop but still a little annoying.
> 
> I never had pixelation issues while using my Tivo HD unit, with the same connection (ethernet)


I download same movie from Amazon 2 weekends ago on my regular Premiere - had the same issue with pixelation given that I could have rented the blu-ray from RedBox for 1/2 the cost sure seems like a problem Amazon/TiVo need to fix.


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## aaronwt

You should still check out the BD. It has superb video and 7.1 audio.


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## Ziggy86

atmuscarella said:


> I download same movie from Amazon 2 weekends ago on my regular Premiere - had the same issue with pixelation given that I could have rented the blu-ray from RedBox for 1/2 the cost sure seems like a problem Amazon/TiVo need to fix.


I contacted Amazon and they gave me credit for the movie and a free download because many of people have complained that there is a pixelation issue with the mission impossible HD download, you should do the same.


----------



## gteague

added a reply to the update thread: <http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=9088456#post9088456> regarding our plight.

/guy


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## MeInDallas

Did you get that new software update? Did it change anything for you? I thought about hooking mine back up and letting it update, but honestly after being ignored so much by Tivo regarding this issue I have a feeling it wasnt even addressed in the new update. I'm hoping some people will post some feedback about this before I go to all the trouble of hooking mine back up and getting my hopes up that Tivo did the right thing.


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## gteague

i haven't gotten the update. and i doubt seriously tivo would publish any 'fix' in any release notes. and i doubt seriously there will be a fix unless more people have the problem and complain. but perhaps they might be coaxed into some sort of workaround such as i describe, which is my only hope now.

/guy


----------



## MeInDallas

I forced a connection to the Mothership today and got the update on both my Premiere's. I dont use Netflix, Youtube, or parental controls so theres really nothing different I even noticed about this update. I was hoping some relief for the weary Elite users, but I guess I wont even bother with hooking it up and trying.


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## gteague

well, tivo margret promised to pass along my suggestion to the engineers, so, if it is possible, there might be some hope. i'll cross my fingers, but i won't hold my breath:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=9090383#post9090383

the update hadn't been presented to me as of work time this evening, but if i get it this weekend i'll post any results i notice the first of next week.

/guy


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## rogmatic

My elite has been working great for the last week or two with the booster. But after playing around with the new netflix app, I once again lost signal. This further reinforces my view that is somehow related to broadband or maybe even a RAM issue with the machine.


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## gteague

up until i had a power failure day-before-yesterday i had a 5-7 day string of uptime going. and although i've posted many times that there seems no pattern, i keep trying things to see if the situation changes in any way. and here's an example of such magickal thinking.

at the beginning of the weeklong uptime i had started experimenting with what channels i left active on each tuner when there were no recordings ongoing. i used to leave the tuners set to 104 (tvland), 740 (cnn), 741 (fox--hey, it's keep your enemies close thing!), and 766 (msnbc). and i had noted that 740 and 766 were two of the most problematical channels in that they tended to lose signal more than other channels i monitored. so i started setting my channels lower down, such as 2 (cspan), 37 (weather), 40 (cnn), and 104 just to see if it seemed to matter.

the thinking on that is that since we can't seem to pinpoint the problem, perhaps something on one of the channels is affecting a tuner and causes some software corruption or a glitch that the system overall can't recover from. and i do realize that i sometimes get lockups while recording or watching live tv and none of those problematical channels are even involved. and yes i know, that's the very definition of grasping at straws, but after more than half a year of this [email protected], that's exactly what i'm reduced to.

/guy


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## jaybert

rogmatic said:


> And within 10 minutes of posting I had a spontaneous reboot. Doh!


i hadnt had any reboots on 14.9.x (the version it came when) since I got the box on Friday. Woke up this morning to see that I had the latest spring update. played with it for about 2 or 3 minutes (read the message and looked at the shows recorded overnight), and it rebooted on me!


----------



## sldavis1952

gteague said:


> well, tivo margret promised to pass along my suggestion to the engineers, so, if it is possible, there might be some hope. i'll cross my fingers, but i won't hold my breath:
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=9090383#post9090383
> 
> the update hadn't been presented to me as of work time this evening, but if i get it this weekend i'll post any results i notice the first of next week.
> 
> /guy


Here is my thread on the problem of losing channels on my Premiere.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=476691


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## gteague

[i posted virtually the same thing over in the thread @sldavis1952 refs in his post]

it will be hard to keep up with the uptime for the next few months with the stormy season coming to the area which nearly guarantees power failures at least once a week. i haven't had the channel loss problem for about 3 weeks now, but i've had a power failure at least once a week. if i thought a reboot every week would keep me running i'd happily do that, but alas, the problem is just too random or unexplained to respond to that proactive treatment.

one thing i've been trying (out of desperation comes magickal thinking), on the theory that there might be signal corruption on certain channels and knowing that for some reason a handful of channels give me the most problems, i've been keeping my tuners set on 4 of the lower or baseband channels whenever i can and they're idle. i have had virtually no problems in the last 3 weeks and usually i have an outage every 2-4 days, but then again, as i said, i've had at least one restart due to power failure per week.

i haven't checked the errors on these lower-tier channels vs the upper-tier channels because i'm not completely convinced the errors are the cause of the problem and 'clumps' of them are generated when you change to the channel, thus you have to watch to see if they're incrementing or not and how fast.

/guy


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## rogmatic

I haven't totally lost signal in a while but my tuning adapter is no longer reliable at all. It doesn't work 70 percent of the time.


----------



## rogmatic

I am back to having constant problems. TWC won't do anything becausey signal strength is great and other Tivos work. They just say the elite is busted.


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## Welshdog

We had a problem years ago with our TivoHD where the screen would go to an unrecoverable black screen during the night or during the day while we were at work. It was related to what channel it was tuned. I built a couple of manual record setups that would move the tuners to digital OTA channels. They only recorded for a minute, but the channel change was all I was after. This fixed the problem. I deleted them only recently in a fit of Tivo house cleaning. I guess Tivo must have fixed the problem in an update because we have not seen any black screens.

You could set up the same thing to keep your box tuned to "safe" channels. You have to do it for all tuners.


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## gteague

rogmatic said:


> I am back to having constant problems. TWC won't do anything becausey signal strength is great and other Tivos work. They just say the elite is busted.


i disagree with nearly anything tw tells me, but in this particular case i can't argue with them. the logic is against tivo in the cable card roulette game with the elite.

/guy


----------



## gteague

Welshdog said:


> We had a problem years ago with our TivoHD where the screen would go to an unrecoverable black screen during the night or during the day while we were at work. It was related to what channel it was tuned. I built a couple of manual record setups that would move the tuners to digital OTA channels. They only recorded for a minute, but the channel change was all I was after. This fixed the problem. I deleted them only recently in a fit of Tivo house cleaning. I guess Tivo must have fixed the problem in an update because we have not seen any black screens.
> 
> You could set up the same thing to keep your box tuned to "safe" channels. You have to do it for all tuners.


that is a good idea, i hadn't thought of setting a manual recording to do this for me. i've had good luck so far keeping all the tuners on a certain set of channels, but it is a pain to keep that set established. thanks for the suggestion!

/guy


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## GoEagles

I had a random reboot the other day, they are rare, every few weeks. This far outweighs being able to record 4 shows at one time. I am so happy with this thing. The MRS streaming is now flawless using a 802.11n adapter instead of the TiVo Wireless G adapter.

This thing really comes in handy on Sunday nights.


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## gteague

i set up 4 manual recordings for 0600-0605 in the morning for channels 40, 41, 42, & 66. we'll see how that goes. a better time for me might be at 1800 since i lose my channels the most often around 1900 after i've left for work.

/guy


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## Welshdog

gteague said:


> i set up 4 manual recordings for 0600-0605 in the morning for channels 40, 41, 42, & 66. we'll see how that goes. a better time for me might be at 1800 since i lose my channels the most often around 1900 after i've left for work.
> 
> /guy


Cool, I hope this works for you. You've been very dedicated to documenting this problem.


----------



## rogmatic

My Elite has been working great lately except the SDV channels are losing signal (i.e. the tuning adapter stops working). I tried switching the tuning adapter with another one, but this made the problem worse because I started losing all signals (not just the SDV). So right now, I am using the Elite to record non SDV channels and my other Tivos for SDV. I guess I am happy I at least get non-SDV channels - which is probably 80% of what I watch overall (but I watch more SDV in the summer).


----------



## Teeps

rogmatic said:


> My Elite has been working great lately except the SDV channels are losing signal (i.e. the tuning adapter stops working). I tried switching the tuning adapter with another one, but this made the problem worse because I started losing all signals (not just the SDV). So right now, I am using the Elite to record non SDV channels and my other Tivos for SDV. I guess I am happy I at least get non-SDV channels - which is probably 80% of what I watch overall (but I watch more SDV in the summer).


Has the cable company checked the line-in to the tuning adapter?
A year ago this month, shortly after SDV was crammed down our throats in Torrance, I had problems with SDV channels, too.
In my case TiVo could not tune Speed or Versus channels. Message, if I recall, channel not available, contact your cable co.

Short story, a squirrel had chewed the cable at the pole causing a problem with the signal. The tech never did say specifically "what" was wrong with the signal. At the same time he installed the new pole drop, a ground path to the electrical service box was added.

Been working fine (98%) since then.


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## CoxInPHX

gteague said:


> i set up 4 manual recordings for 0600-0605 in the morning for channels 40, 41, 42, & 66. we'll see how that goes. a better time for me might be at 1800 since i lose my channels the most often around 1900 after i've left for work.
> 
> /guy


Did this bandaid, help with your issues,


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## gteague

CoxInPHX said:


> Did this bandaid, help with your issues,


i was going to post a positive update in a few days. i had another ?spontaneous? reboot a few days ago and those seem to reset things and push the original problem (losing all channels) back at least a couple of days. i don't know what caused this reboot--it wasn't a power issue this time. and if all i got was a reboot each week or i knew that rebooting once a week would solve my channel loss issues, i'd do it gladly because i'd sure rather have a 15 minute outage than to lose 12-36 hours worth of recordings while i'm away and don't know my channels have gone south.

but it appears that i haven't had a full-blown, random channel loss in 3-6 weeks now, for whatever reasons. i did have one incident, but we were having thunderstorms in the area at the time and thus can't be sure it wasn't a natural explanation for that outage. i am doing the manual channel recordings at 1600-1605 every day since that's right before i leave for work and i can check that at least things are working before i leave.

i guess you could say i'm sort of cautiously optimistic for now. whatever the reason(s), it's a no-brainer to say that the current situation is miles better than the random channel loss problem every 12-60 hours.

/guy


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## moyekj

So could it be that the recent software update actually helped?


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## gteague

moyekj said:


> So could it be that the recent software update actually helped?


my initial reaction was that the update didn't help based on a few events i had that followed the update. but at least a couple of those events didn't involve all the channels, which is a departure from the original problem i'm tracking although the temporary workaround was the same--to re-seat the cable card.

but with this sort of (seemingly) random and intermittent problem you need quite a few data points before trying to form a conclusion. just a few upstream thunderstorms which play havoc with your cable signal can play hob with your data collection efforts.

/guy


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## jhjones75

In Denver, on Comcast. 

Experienced these exact same issues witht the gray screen almost immediatley. Noticed that if it happened when we were watching it that it would always happen at the top of the hour or half past, which made me realize that it was something to do with Tivo suggestions and something it was doing. 

I went thru each channel in my guide one by one and found about 29 that would produce the gray screen when i opened them. These channels work fine on my other tivos, just not the elite. 

None of them were channels i cared for so i removed them from the lineup and turned off tivo suggestions and that problem went away. My *guess* is that the CC or the tuner didn't like something with the signal and those channels and it would brick the box. 

I still have a problem with random pixelation on HD network channels (cbs,abc,fox) but pulling the power cord fixes it for a few weeks. No idea what the problem is on that one. Its annoying when it happens but its easy enough to yank the cord and hope we dont miss much. 

Not that impressed witth the elite and its issues, but hard to argue with the drive space and 4 tuners.


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## gteague

i don't have suggestions turned on, but as you might be able to tell with my experiment of keeping the elite tuned to baseband, sd channels when not recording, one of my theories is excessive noise or a 'spike' on one or more channels. on the very few occasions when i've been watching live-tv when it happened, there was some excessive pixellation on the channel i was watching (right before it went to gray and gave me the 'no signal' popup) and perhaps on some other channels on the other tuners as well.

a painful problem for me was that one of those channels was cnn (on my lineup hd ch740) and that was a channel that i watched the most when i was on live-tv. now i just use the sd version at location sd ch40 instead. another problematic channel is history hd which is ch732 i think and others are ch766 msn and a couple of others in that range between 700-800 i can't remember at the moment. i'm pretty sure ch780 is a problem for some because both tivo and time warner tell you to tune to that channel when troubleshooting. it is hd espn on my system, but i only watch it when there's golf on and rarely live.

/guy


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## gteague

i turned on my lcd screen to check on the tivo before i left for work a couple of hours ago and found the screen seemingly frozen--no movement detected. i said some carefully selected, usnavy-approved choice words for about 30 seconds before i realized i was watching the most exciting golf tournament of the year--the us open! gotta love that golf--the only sport with less movement per minute than darts or billiards. [g]

/guy


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## jdaniels1982

I have had similiar issues up here on Long Island....so I don't think its necessarily a Time Warner Cable issue, I have cablevision.

I purchased the Elite XL4 about 2 weeks ago and have had consistent issues with heavy pixelation(mostly on upper HD channels such as Bravo and SYFI. The HD broadcast nets(cbs,nbc,abc etc) have come in crystal clear.

I replaced the XL4 box once already and the cablecard twice with no change to the problem. I do not use a tuning adapter with cablevision.

I have noticed the problem is definately worse at night around primetime, which I have noticed other people on this thread have stated as well.

Cablevision has been responsive to the issue and has come to the house twice, the second time running a brand new cable from the pole into my bedroom. While the signal strength is strong(consistently above 90).

Cablevision came back to the house today and ran an hour's worth of tests on both the line coming into the house and the frequencies of the channels I am having the most issues with. All of them were exceptionally clean with strong signal. Besides tightening some fittings, there was nothing else they could do...they have already run new wires and checked all signals.

I spoke with TIVO and they are insistent that the XL4 is just more sensitive to signal errors then previous models or Cablevision cable boxes because it splits the signal 4 ways. I asked the Tivo rep if the bar is unrealistically high in terms of the signal that is required for the XL4 to work properly. I mean if I have another premier and 2 cable boxes that work flawlessly, and tivo is telling me that the signal is the problem, i think this is incorrect thinking on their part.

I mean how clear does this signal need to be, do I need to be plugged directly into the headend? I mean come on this is silly.
Im frustrated now and am considering just downgrading the the Premier XL with 1TB hardrive.

Joe.


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## gteague

yes, it's pretty clear to me that with the elite, tivo has under-engineered and over-promised.

/guy


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## Teeps

gteague said:


> yes, it's pretty clear to me that with the elite, tivo has under-engineered and over-promised.
> 
> /guy


So are you throwing in the towel?
Or
Is it now a matter of principle?

Cheers,
Tom


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## gteague

well, for whatever reason(s), matters have improved ... somewhat. the original problem was that my channels disappeared every 18-48 hour sand the elite wouldn't recover and i would lose all recordings until i noticed all the channels screens were grey. there were exceptions to this and, with some cable cards i had random strings of 'uptime' of up to 21 days, but those were the exception. and a string that long might be followed by 3 outages within 4 days.

for the last 3-6 weeks i have only had one recurrence of the original problem and the other problems i've had (reboots, power outages, loss of random single channels or grouped channels) don't seem to fit the pattern of the root problem. as i've always said--i'd be more than happy to reboot every 3-7 days if it guaranteed uptime until time for the next reboot. i mean, who wouldn't sacrifice 15 minutes in the hopes of not losing 12-36 hours worth of recording?

so yes, i'm hanging in there for now. there are many changes going on in catv and internet streaming (apple is coming in with a contender soon, i hear), and i'm just waiting for something comparable to tivo recording to come along. if someone would come out with an internet on-demand streaming service where i could get comparable content at comparable cost, then i would be tempted to abandon tivo or other recording methods.

/guy


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## Teeps

gteague said:


> well, for whatever reason(s), matters have improved ... somewhat. the original problem was that my channels disappeared every 18-48 hour sand the elite wouldn't recover and i would lose all recordings until i noticed all the channels screens were grey. there were exceptions to this and, with some cable cards i had random strings of 'uptime' of up to 21 days, but those were the exception. and a string that long might be followed by 3 outages within 4 days.
> 
> for the last 3-6 weeks i have only had one recurrence of the original problem and the other problems i've had (reboots, power outages, loss of random single channels or grouped channels) don't seem to fit the pattern of the root problem. as i've always said--i'd be more than happy to reboot every 3-7 days if it guaranteed uptime until time for the next reboot.
> 
> i mean, who wouldn't sacrifice 15 minutes in the hopes of not losing 12-36 hours worth of recording?/guy


<in red> Agreed...
As I may have mentioned before; I have to switch the power off to the tuning adapter(time warner) for 3 hours a night, so my S3OLED TiVo can complete the GC (garbage collection) operation. So as to prevent the "running out of guide data" bug; that started, curiously, after SDV was implemented in Torrance in June 2011.
This problem is not being addressed by TiVo at all.
So yes, I grudgingly work around the 3 hour daily darkness to prevent a total breakdown.



gteague said:


> so yes, i'm hanging in there for now.
> 
> there are many changes going on in catv and internet streaming (apple is coming in with a contender soon, i hear), and i'm just waiting for something comparable to tivo recording to come along. if someone would come out with an internet on-demand streaming service where i could get comparable content at comparable cost, then i would be tempted to abandon tivo or other recording methods.


Internet streaming is an intoxicating option, for sure. 
The Live Streaming Option at this time, appears to be "too good to be true", when it works smoothly.

The problem with streaming is eventually the internet providers will either throttle back the connect speed. To make live streaming impossible or they will apply surcharges for high data consumption. This is already happening to the telephone users of data.

So yes, streaming is an answer, until it cost more to stream than the cable tv service.


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## gteague

Teeps said:


> to prevent the "running out of guide data" bug; that started, curiously, after SDV was implemented in Torrance in June 2011.
> This problem is not being addressed by TiVo at all.
> So yes, I grudgingly work around the 3 hour daily darkness to prevent a total breakdown.
> 
> So yes, streaming is an answer, until it cost more to stream than the cable tv service.


yes, back a few years ago when i had the s3 and time-warner brought in the tuning adaptors, announcing them prematurely and passing them out before they had the infrastructure to support them i ended up having to contact the ceo of time-warner to straighten things out. this level of service impressed me so much that i've most likely stayed with tw longer than i should have--god knows they haven't helped me near that much during this problem, but then again it's not a total failure like i had with the tuning adaptor so i haven't felt justified in rattling that cage again this time.

and i agree that the data limits being imposed are the worst thing to happen to consumers in quite some time. witness at&t and me paying for 'unlimited' data service for my iphone and finding out that at&t's definition of 'unlimited' is about 2gb which they've later bumped to 3gb, but only because of general outcry and lawsuits.

but at least i've heard there are anti-trust suits being readied against the cable companies as they are obviously trying to shut out netflix etal who are poaching their customers. instead of competing head-to-head they always take the low road.

/guy


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## moyekj

I got myself an Elite due to the Woot $300 special. Not surprisingly (due to this thread and others) only 2 out of 4 tuners could tune any channels at all when I hook it up to coax that was working fine with a 2 tuner Premiere. Rebooting the box etc. did not fix the issue - always only 2 tuners worked. The particular cable drop in question is coming through a couple of splitters so it looks like the Elite when internally splitting 4 ways just degrades the signals too much. So I moved the Elite down to living room where I know I have the most direct coax drop without extra splits and managed to get all 4 tuners going in that location. Will have to see if it reliably records from all tuners over next few weeks.

In any case the point of the post is to confirm from my experience that the Elite tuners are not very robust and expect seemingly almost perfect signal to function properly.


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## gteague

did you happen to note the difference in level and s/n reading between the two locations? just as a data point, that is. the numbers themselves seem to not mean much as i've seen posts from folks with a 80/30 which work fine and those with 94/40 which don't work well. mine was around 92/37 last time i checked and both tivo and tw say that is within spec although tw says their minimum is 80/32 i think before they'll work on it and tivo would like to see 96/40. i'm doing these numbers from memory, so i could be off on any of them.

anyway, just curious. still trying to collect every piece of data i can get. which reminds me, i need to check my uptime when i get home--i'm pretty sure i haven't had a complete channel line-up loss in at least a week although i do have sprinklings of noise on random channels, but if that's the price i have to pay for not having to intervene i'll grudgingly take it.

/guy


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## moyekj

The diagnostics page never showed any statistics for the 2 tuners that wouldn't tune anything - just couldn't tune at all to even generate that information. The other 2 were 36dB and 90s signal strength. At new location where all are functioning they are all about 37dB and 90s signal strength.


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## gteague

your numbers sorta bear out what i suspect about those two number being basically meaningless as long as they're within a certain range since your working tuners had levels not that much different regardless of whether they were ahead or behind the splitters. of course, we're not watching the readings continually and most likely would not notice the spike or dip that might cause a tuner freeze of all channels. you'd think tivo could send those readings to a log file or break them out of a system log file for later analysis, but that would mean them acknowledging the possible presence of such a problem and, to my knowledge, they have not yet done so.

/guy


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## jhjones75

Just had this happen to me again the other day. Lost NBC and Fox. Unplugging Tivo usually fixes it but not this time. Finally pulled the cable card and that did it.


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## gteague

i've only been pulling the cable card for total loss of channels, not for just one or two here and there. if the channel is one i can live without for up to a day, i usually just let it ride and then check it again later. if it's still down i call the cable support to see if they have an outage on it, but i can't remember the last time i just had a few channels disappear and not come back in a couple of hours at most. and, due to some posts on here i've found that i sometimes can get a channel to come back by changing channels up and down and coming back to that channel. the history channel and tlc are two that keep doing that to me about every 2-3 weeks on average, but cnn_hd is the worst. i think it rides a bad satellite channel on my system.

/guy


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## sldavis1952

gteague said:


> your numbers sorta bear out what i suspect about those two number being basically meaningless as long as they're within a certain range since your working tuners had levels not that much different regardless of whether they were ahead or behind the splitters. of course, we're not watching the readings continually and most likely would not notice the spike or dip that might cause a tuner freeze of all channels. you'd think tivo could send those readings to a log file or break them out of a system log file for later analysis, but that would mean them acknowledging the possible presence of such a problem and, to my knowledge, they have not yet done so.
> 
> /guy


I asked Tivo support about log files or logging errors with the problem of losing channels on my Tivo Premiere, but they said they couldn't do that. It was something a system engineer would have to do. So I think you are correct that haven't acknowledge the problem.


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## sldavis1952

gteague said:


> i've only been pulling the cable card for total loss of channels, not for just one or two here and there. if the channel is one i can live without for up to a day, i usually just let it ride and then check it again later. if it's still down i call the cable support to see if they have an outage on it, but i can't remember the last time i just had a few channels disappear and not come back in a couple of hours at most. and, due to some posts on here i've found that i sometimes can get a channel to come back by changing channels up and down and coming back to that channel. the history channel and tlc are two that keep doing that to me about every 2-3 weeks on average, but cnn_hd is the worst. i think it rides a bad satellite channel on my system.
> 
> /guy


I haven't been pulling my cable card either with the lose of a couple of channels. They usually come back within a few hours. I have a recurring problem with cnbc and msnbc not coming in and Tivo/cable card saying they are not authorized. Then a couple of hours later they are back.


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## PinWiz

moyekj said:


> The diagnostics page never showed any statistics for the 2 tuners that wouldn't tune anything - just couldn't tune at all to even generate that information. The other 2 were 36dB and 90s signal strength. At new location where all are functioning they are all about 37dB and 90s signal strength.


I had a similar experience last week. Got a new elite from the Tivo sale (should have waited for the Woot sale...)

First installed in a downstairs location to replace a Series 2 that had been running fine for years. Got cablecard and tuning adapter from Cox beforehand so installed all that. Can't tune any channels on any tuner. Had cox ping it several times over a couple of days to no avail. (I must give Cox tech support kudos, they always picked up the phone quickly and stayed on the line as long as I wanted.) Finally scheduled a truck roll.

Tech comes out, he practically laughs at my cabling and splitter setup (it was a mess and acient splitters and cables) He replaces some cables and splitters and lo and behold it starts to work! Even setup a Moca network through the elite and that worked great.

However.... the ultimate goal was to place it in another location upstairs. This was to replace a TivoHD which had been running great for years. So I moved the elite upstairs. So it works fine except, only the first 2 tuners work! Figure it must be the cablecard since the DVR diagnostics showed tuners 2 and 3 didn't even see a QAM256 signals, it indicated them to be analog. Go to cox store and they trade the cablecard, no problem. Put it in, have it paired, exact same result, only 2 tuners working.

Finally, called Tivo technical support, which I have never done in many years of owning Tivo's. They have me do a few things, but then they have me powercycle the tuning adapter. Note that I didn't do that when I did the TivoHD to Elite swap, I never turned it off. After the power cycle of the tuning adapter, I've got all 4 tuners! I always figured the tuning adapter was a dumb device that only did something for SDV channels, but something else must be going on, I guess the TA has to know something of the capabilities of the attached Tivo, and it is communicated after a powercycle. Note the TA is mounted inline between the cable from the wall and the elite, there are no splitters.

Anyway, it's been perfect for about 5 days now, and I have week and half until my initial 30 days are up, so hopefully things are good now.....

Just a note, I'm seeing signals strengths in the mid-80's / low 90's and SNR's of 34-36db on each tuner. And the moca is working great also. Attached my PC to the moca network with an Actiontec bridge and I finally have the speed and reliability I never got with wireless.


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## moyekj

PinWiz said:


> Finally, called Tivo technical support, which I have never done in many years of owning Tivo's. They have me do a few things, but then they have me powercycle the tuning adapter. Note that I didn't do that when I did the TivoHD to Elite swap, I never turned it off. After the power cycle of the tuning adapter, I've got all 4 tuners! I always figured the tuning adapter was a dumb device that only did something for SDV channels, but something else must be going on, I guess the TA has to know something of the capabilities of the attached Tivo, and it is communicated after a powercycle. Note the TA is mounted inline between the cable from the wall and the elite, there are no splitters.


 Interesting. Note that when I moved my Elite downstairs I did not power cycle the TA that was previously attached to Premiere unit there but all 4 tuners started working regardless. The TiVo does handshaking with the TA so part of that handshaking should account for all tuners. So I assume my issue was signal related and didn't think it could be TA related. Guess it's something to keep in mind if I decide to try and move it back upstairs again.


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## moyekj

Sigh... A recording today had a lot of pixelation. So I go to check DVR Diagnostics and finds millions of RS Uncorrected errors for all 4 tuners. That is something I never saw on my Premiere unit that was at same location. I expect a few RS Uncorrected when first tuning a channel but to get millions of them is a sure sign of trouble. SNR=37dB and signal strength in 90s for all 4 - seemingly good numbers that obviously don't mean much. These tuners really just don't cut it. My 30 day window is getting closer and I'll have to think about getting my money back for the unit + lifetime subscription. I hesitated for a long time to get an Elite because of this thread and others and my experiences so far continue to confirm the Elite tuners are very poor.


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## gteague

yes, as much as tivo attempts to explain these away (and i admit i did like the answer of a tivo tech i trust comparing these to the telecom crc errors which i've worked with daily for 20 years), their presence hangs over my head as well.

do you mean literally 'millions'? mine usually sit in the 4-digit range for corrected and the low 3-digits for uncorrected, as a general rule. for example, my worst tuner currently has 5552 uncorrected and 538 corrected. the best one has 5114 and 26.

if you tune to a channel and take note of how many you started with and then sample periodically, how fast are they incrementing? does this change depending whether you're on a sd or hd channel?

/guy


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## gteague

btw, i just checked my uptime and it computes out to 21 days if i did the math right. 1845373 seconds. i really really hesitate to say that keeping unused tuners on sd channels is helping the situation, but i can't say it isn't helping given that i have hardly ever gone more than 7 days uptime at a stretch.

/guy


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## TishTash

jdaniels1982 said:


> I have had similiar issues up here on Long Island....so I don't think its necessarily a Time Warner Cable issue, I have cablevision.
> 
> I purchased the Elite XL4 about 2 weeks ago and have had consistent issues with heavy pixelation(mostly on upper HD channels such as Bravo and SYFI. The HD broadcast nets(cbs,nbc,abc etc) have come in crystal clear.
> 
> I replaced the XL4 box once already and the cablecard twice with no change to the problem. I do not use a tuning adapter with cablevision.
> 
> I have noticed the problem is definately worse at night around primetime, which I have noticed other people on this thread have stated as well.
> 
> Cablevision has been responsive to the issue and has come to the house twice, the second time running a brand new cable from the pole into my bedroom. While the signal strength is strong(consistently above 90).
> 
> Cablevision came back to the house today and ran an hour's worth of tests on both the line coming into the house and the frequencies of the channels I am having the most issues with. All of them were exceptionally clean with strong signal. Besides tightening some fittings, there was nothing else they could do...they have already run new wires and checked all signals.
> 
> I spoke with TIVO and they are insistent that the XL4 is just more sensitive to signal errors then previous models or Cablevision cable boxes because it splits the signal 4 ways. I asked the Tivo rep if the bar is unrealistically high in terms of the signal that is required for the XL4 to work properly. I mean if I have another premier and 2 cable boxes that work flawlessly, and tivo is telling me that the signal is the problem, i think this is incorrect thinking on their part.
> 
> I mean how clear does this signal need to be, do I need to be plugged directly into the headend? I mean come on this is silly.
> Im frustrated now and am considering just downgrading the the Premier XL with 1TB hardrive.


I have identical issues. A restart usually solves the problem for a while, but it recurs within a day. (For me, reinserting the cable card doesn't.) I don't have issues with other TiVo's, which is the frustrating part.

Then I just realized: I added an Elite, with four tuners. Could this be a straw that can break a camel's back? I used to have no problems with three 2-tuner TiVo's off a splitter with a robust signal; now with the Elite, there are an extra two tuners.

I'm going disconnect the other two TiVo's and just have the problematic Elite feed off the signal. I'll let you know what ensues.


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## moyekj

gteague said:


> yes, as much as tivo attempts to explain these away (and i admit i did like the answer of a tivo tech i trust comparing these to the telecom crc errors which i've worked with daily for 20 years), their presence hangs over my head as well.
> 
> do you mean literally 'millions'? mine usually sit in the 4-digit range for corrected and the low 3-digits for uncorrected, as a general rule. for example, my worst tuner currently has 5552 uncorrected and 538 corrected. the best one has 5114 and 26.
> 
> if you tune to a channel and take note of how many you started with and then sample periodically, how fast are they incrementing? does this change depending whether you're on a sd or hd channel?
> 
> /guy


 Yes I literally do mean in the millions for RS uncorrected which is what really strongly suggests there is a problem. I have yet to see the numbers change while I am looking at Diagnostics screen but when I first tune the channels I get in the 5000 range of uncorrected errors and it doesn't seem to change when looking at it for a couple of minutes. However I'll go watch other programs and check back in a couple of hours and then see numbers in the multi-million range on all tuners. So far I've actually only seen 1 recorded show pixelate (an every day recording I've been watching for years without problems on that channel and which also recorded on Premiere unit and showed no problems) while other recordings have been OK.
I usually remove all SD channels from my lineup as I have no interest in those and all channels I watch have HD versions so I haven't checked SD channels.


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## PinWiz

moyekj said:


> Sigh... A recording today had a lot of pixelation. So I go to check DVR Diagnostics and finds millions of RS Uncorrected errors for all 4 tuners. That is something I never saw on my Premiere unit that was at same location. I expect a few RS Uncorrected when first tuning a channel but to get millions of them is a sure sign of trouble. SNR=37dB and signal strength in 90s for all 4 - seemingly good numbers that obviously don't mean much. These tuners really just don't cut it. My 30 day window is getting closer and I'll have to think about getting my money back for the unit + lifetime subscription. I hesitated for a long time to get an Elite because of this thread and others and my experiences so far continue to confirm the Elite tuners are very poor.


Hi moyekj,

The exact same thing happened to me last night! Note the I'm in Mission Viejo also, so we're getting the same feed from Cox. I was watching a recording of the Angels game on 1064 (Fox Sports West HD, recorded 4pm - 8pm) and the pixelation was horrible. So I immediately went to the DVR Diagnostics screen and saw literally millions of RS Uncorrected on each tuner. So just like you I'm thinking, this Elite just isn't working right, it may have to go back.

However.... my downstairs TivoHD was recording the same Angels game. So I go down there to check that recording. It turns out, there was lots of pixelation in the exact same spots of the program! I cross-compared several places in the recording, and they both had the really bad pixelation in the exact same spots. The spacing of the pixelation was over a couple of hours. I looked at the DVR Diagnostics on the TivoHD, and while it didn't have millions of RS Uncorrected, it did have many hundreds of thousands, which is highly unusual. (yes I check periodically being the geek I am..)

My guess is that something just went bad on Cox's end, and the fact you saw the same thing at the same time seems to confirm it.

I've had more problems getting the elite working right than any other Tivo I've had, but they all so far seem to be factors external to the box, from bad cabling to the TA not being reset. And what I thought was a CableCard issue was not one. My 30-day window expires on the 13th, I'm hoping my analysis is right, an elite with lifetime is one big purchase....


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## aaronwt

So isn't this ultimately a TA issue? Are people without the tuning adapter having these problems too? On my two Elites with FiOS I have not seen these issues, but FiOS also(fortunately) doesn't use Tuning Adpaters.


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## moyekj

PinWiz said:


> Hi moyekj,
> 
> The exact same thing happened to me last night! Note the I'm in Mission Viejo also, so we're getting the same feed from Cox. I was watching a recording of the Angels game on 1064 (Fox Sports West HD, recorded 4pm - 8pm) and the pixelation was horrible. So I immediately went to the DVR Diagnostics screen and saw literally millions of RS Uncorrected on each tuner. So just like you I'm thinking, this Elite just isn't working right, it may have to go back.
> 
> However.... my downstairs TivoHD was recording the same Angels game. So I go down there to check that recording. It turns out, there was lots of pixelation in the exact same spots of the program! I cross-compared several places in the recording, and they both had the really bad pixelation in the exact same spots. The spacing of the pixelation was over a couple of hours. I looked at the DVR Diagnostics on the TivoHD, and while it didn't have millions of RS Uncorrected, it did have many hundreds of thousands, which is highly unusual. (yes I check periodically being the geek I am..)
> 
> My guess is that something just went bad on Cox's end, and the fact you saw the same thing at the same time seems to confirm it.
> 
> I've had more problems getting the elite working right than any other Tivo I've had, but they all so far seem to be factors external to the box, from bad cabling to the TA not being reset. And what I thought was a CableCard issue was not one. My 30-day window expires on the 13th, I'm hoping my analysis is right, an elite with lifetime is one big purchase....


Interesting. Before leaving to work this morning I checked Elite diagnostics again and the 4 tuners were just showing ~5000 RS uncorrected each which is essentially the same as when I checked last night, so I'm hoping you are right and it just happened to be a problem with Cox. My show with pixelation was recorded from 5-6pm which coincides with the window you gave of 4-8pm. It was the only show recorded in that window and I haven't seen pixelation yet on other shows recorded at different times (but on other channels). So I will keep a close watch and I also setup duplicate recordings for some programs on my Premiere to be able to compare in case problems come up again. I'll also be sure to check Diagnostics on my Premiere to see what the RS uncorrected counts are like, though may be too late since channels may have changed since the glitch happened.


----------



## Tropic

I recently bought an Elite from B&H that had all 4 tuners DOA. Returned it and picked up an XL4 and it has been working fine since.


----------



## drebbe

I bought my first TiVo in the recent Woot sale of Elites. I have Comcast, so no SDV, all four tuners are 89/90 signal strength with 36/37 S/N. No issues at all in the 11-12 days I have had it.


----------



## moyekj

aaronwt said:


> So isn't this ultimately a TA issue? Are people without the tuning adapter having these problems too? On my two Elites with FiOS I have not seen these issues, but FiOS also(fortunately) doesn't use Tuning Adpaters.


 No, I had issues with Elite tuners with just CableCard and no TA attached. Only recently did I add TA to it. 2 of 4 tuners wouldn't tune period in the original location I wanted to install the Elite (where previously I've had a Premiere for years and S3 before that without tuning issues). Not until I moved Elite to a different cable drop did all 4 tuners start working. There's no doubt in my mind that Elite tuners are a LOT less robust than previous models and require optimal conditions to work properly.


----------



## moyekj

Checking for RS uncorrected tonight the counts did go up on a couple of tuners to 20K range but nowhere near the millions I saw yesterday. My Premiere meanwhile has very low RS uncorrected counts (under 100) in contrast. However I didn't see pixelation in Elite recordings. So while not great Elite looks to be OK if it remains this way.

I use SDUI on both Elite & Premiere and noticed the Elite is just slightly more sluggish which is to be expected having 4 tuners to buffer.


----------



## CoxInPHX

I installed my Woot Elite today, swapped CC and TA from my SD HDHomeRun Prime to the Elite. Cox had it re-paired in minutes, all channels working fine, no pixelation or signal issues. Love the Glo-Remote :up: The buttons are so much more precise.

Installed CC and TA before running guided set-up. Took many (I lost count) connections before it updated to SW Vers 20.2.1.2. I ran into the DST issue where the clock was ahead one hour even after updating the SW, took a few more connections and reboots to get DST inactivated, (AZ does not do DST).

Copied over the season passes using kmttg. Some did not transfer, looks like if there is no guide data for that particular season pass it errors out is that correct, moyekj? EDIT: Found the answer: http://code.google.com/p/kmttg/wiki/remote_control
_NOTE: Scheduling Season Passes only works if there is Guide Data present on the destination TiVo related to that show. Attempting to schedule a show for which there currently is no Guide Data will result in error message: "RPC error response: Unknown collection."
_

Here are my Elite Stats so far:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=9163488#post9163488
Cable Provider: *Cox*
City, State: *PHX, AZ*

Bluetooth Adapter: *No*

MoCA in Use: *No*
MoCA POE Filter Installed: *No*
MoCA POE Filter Installed at Modem: *No*

CableCARD Make: Scientific Atlanta (SA/Cisco)
CableCARD OS/Firmware Version: *Cisco PKEY1.5.2_F.p.1601*

Tuner Signal Strength: Range *2dBmV to -5dBmV* (2dBmV @ 147MHz to -5dBmV @ 921MHz)
TiVo Signal Strength Meter: *~86-92*
Tuner SNR: Range *32-38dB*
OOB SNR: *34dB*

RS Uncorrected: *~5000 not increasing*
RS Corrected: *~50-200 not increasing*

Tuning Adapter: *Yes Cisco*
Tuning Adapter OS/Firmware Version: Cisco *STA1.0.0_1520_LR_F.1601*
Tuning Adapter Coax: *RF Pass-though used*
Tuning Adapter Signal Strength Downstream (FDC): *-5dBmV*
Tuning Adapter Signal Strength Upstream (RDC): *29dB*

No issues so far with signal or picture, or rebooting.


----------



## moyekj

CoxInPHX said:


> Copied over the season passes using kmttg. Some did not transfer, looks like if there is no guide data for that particular season pass it errors out is that correct, moyekj? EDIT: Found the answer: http://code.google.com/p/kmttg/wiki/remote_control
> _NOTE: Scheduling Season Passes only works if there is Guide Data present on the destination TiVo related to that show. Attempting to schedule a show for which there currently is no Guide Data will result in error message: "RPC error response: Unknown collection."
> _


 You can use tivo.com to copy over the season passes that don't currently have guide data. It will not preserve the proper priority for them but you can then use kmttg to easily re-arrange the priorities. I copied over all season passes from Premiere to Elite that way and even though web page gave some strange error at the end it did eventually go through to the Elite (it also did cause the Elite to reboot itself as others have reported when using tivo.com for season passes). Then I used kmttg to re-arrange season passes order.

Glad to hear the Elite is working without trouble for you so far. My experience was shaky at first but seems to have stabilized now.


----------



## yukit

This is probably not Elite specific, but SPM is not working for me to copy Season Passes from a TivoHD to a new Elite (Woot deal) It just gives me an unknown error.

4 tuners are working for me so far.

Xfinity on-demand access is a nice touch, but I find the navigation pretty slow, though I never had a Comcast settop box for a comparison.


----------



## leiff

I wasted allot of time transferring my SP's to my XL4 from my S3 at tivo.com also getting errors. Finally realized doing too many all at once was causing this. Try maybe no more than 50 at once? Doing it this way worked for me transferring in blocks.


----------



## PinWiz

I was fortunately able to transfer my season passes using tivo.com pretty much no problem. It did reorder them for no apparent reason. The only minor issue I have had in this area is renaming my two tivo's doesn't seem to have taken completely. The elite has gotten the new name 'bonus room', but the the old TivoHD I've tried to change from 'bonus room' to 'family room', it hasn't taken even after waiting several days for things to propagate.

It would be highly desirable to have wishlist support at tivo.com and the smartphone app.....


----------



## jhjones75

I normally wouldn't pull the card for the loss of a couple channels either, but they were out for 3 days and survived a reboot, so that's when I finally tried it.


----------



## moyekj

PinWiz said:


> I was fortunately able to transfer my season passes using tivo.com pretty much no problem. It did reorder them for no apparent reason. The only minor issue I have had in this area is renaming my two tivo's doesn't seem to have taken completely. The elite has gotten the new name 'bonus room', but the the old TivoHD I've tried to change from 'bonus room' to 'family room', it hasn't taken even after waiting several days for things to propagate.
> 
> It would be highly desirable to have wishlist support at tivo.com and the smartphone app.....


 After changing the name on tivo.com you have to net connect twice and then reboot the TiVo once you see the name change in System Information screen. If you don't reboot it will keep broadcasting the old name to other TiVos thus creating a mess. Once you reboot it will broadcast the new name. I just went through re-naming yesterday and found it took 2 net connects to get the new name and a reboot after that to eliminate old name broadcasting.


----------



## yukit

leiff said:


> I wasted allot of time transferring my SP's to my XL4 from my S3 at tivo.com also getting errors. Finally realized doing too many all at once was causing this. Try maybe no more than 50 at once? Doing it this way worked for me transferring in blocks.


Thanks for the suggestion. I was copying about 30 SPs, so I did 10 at a time. that worked.


----------



## TishTash

TishTash said:


> I have identical issues. A restart usually solves the problem for a while, but it recurs within a day. (For me, reinserting the cable card doesn't.) I don't have issues with other TiVo's, which is the frustrating part.
> 
> Then I just realized: I added an Elite, with four tuners. Could this be a straw that can break a camel's back? I used to have no problems with three 2-tuner TiVo's off a splitter with a robust signal; now with the Elite, there are an extra two tuners.
> 
> I'm going disconnect the other two TiVo's and just have the problematic Elite feed off the signal. I'll let you know what ensues.


For me, by sheer luck I suppose, the deletion of the other tuners in the splitter hierarchy ended up "fixing" the tuner instability issue. I'm inferringperhaps too simplistically, given the tales told herethat weak signals wreak havoc on the Elite/XL4 tuners. (And for all intents and purposes, the two are identical from my understanding.)

Oh well, time to rejigger the splitting setup.


----------



## scole250

Are the problems being reported here limited to the 4 tuner Premiere Tivo or both 4 tuner and 2 tuner?


----------



## aaronwt

moyekj said:


> After changing the name on tivo.com you have to net connect twice and then reboot the TiVo once you see the name change in System Information screen. If you don't reboot it will keep broadcasting the old name to other TiVos thus creating a mess. Once you reboot it will broadcast the new name. I just went through re-naming yesterday and found it took 2 net connects to get the new name and a reboot after that to eliminate old name broadcasting.


You should not need to reboot the box. I've changed my names a bunch of times over the years and never needed to reboot any of the boxes for the name change to take effect. It only took one or two connections for the name change to show up on every box. I changed the name of one of my boxes last week. Depending on the box it took one or two connections for everything to show properly. It didn't take a reboot for any of my three Premieres.


----------



## CoxInPHX

scole250 said:


> Are the problems being reported here limited to the 4 tuner Premiere Tivo or both 4 tuner and 2 tuner?


This thread is for documenting the Elite/XL4 experience/issues.

It appears the Elite/XL4 has less tolerance to signal issues than the regular Premieres. However, I and several others here are not having any issues at all, (knock on wood). My signals are relatively strong and clean though.


----------



## moyekj

aaronwt said:


> You should not need to reboot the box. I've changed my names a bunch of times over the years and never needed to reboot any of the boxes for the name change to take effect. It only took one or two connections for the name change to show up on every box. I changed the name of one of my boxes last week. Depending on the box it took one or two connections for everything to show properly. It didn't take a reboot for any of my three Premieres.


 The problem is while the name change happens without rebooting the TiVo continues to broadcast the old name in addition to the new name under Bonjour, which only a reboot of that TiVo clears up. That was my experience anyway and matched what happened several months ago after renaming a Premiere as well. Perhaps giving it more time would clear away the old name broadcasting without rebooting but if you want everything working properly right away a reboot will do it.


----------



## moyekj

My Elite in new location seems to be working well. All tuners can still tune and I have not had any more pixelation during playback and RS Uncorrected counts are in the thousands range, not millions. So the event where I had millions of RS Uncorrected must of been a 1 off problem with Cox that night and just bad timing coinciding with getting my Elite going. i.e. It won't work in the original location where I wanted it since the signal is apparently not optimal enough but works fine at new location, so I'll just leave it there.


----------



## gteague

yeah, that sounded like more of a headend problem than a problem on the elite. it didn't quite fit the 'pattern' of problems.

i came home from work yesterday morning to find my tivo had rebooted itself. not sure why--there wasn't a generalized power outage. but it did reset my 21-day uptime i posted about which was one of the longest strings i've had without losing the channels. either my strategy of keeping tuned to sd channels when idle is paying off or there was something in the update that helped or the time warner signal has been less bad than usual--i just don't know. i'm just glad i haven't been having to re-seat my cable card every 3 days as i've been doing since i bought the elite last year.

/guy


----------



## alyssa

being one that lives dangerously; 
Whadda you all think of sending the hdd away to be paired prior to getting the CC installed? i.e. i can't get the unit running to make sure the hdd is working properly.

I'm heading away on vaka & would *love* to have a couple of paired hdds & the cc & ta waiting for me when i get home....Are there a lot of hdd problems with this unit (xl4/elite)?


----------



## PinWiz

Following the advice here, I rebooted my TivoHD, and the new name was finally broadcast. Note that I had made the name change about a week before this, so there were plenty of connections made. Rebooting did the trick.

My Elite is running well now, no problems or glitches. My 30 days expire on the 13th, and everything is looking good. 

One of the reasons I went with an Elite was the built-in Moca networking, and it's working great. I have an Elite and a TivoHD on the network (as well as a PC). On TivoHD to Elite transfers I'm seeing ~26Mbps (as reported by the elite box). I assume the transfer rate is limited by the TivoHD. What's the real world maximum of each box? Whatever that number is, this is fast enough to essentially mimic streaming which is what I was after.


----------



## Jonathan_S

I'm sure this isn't elite specific, but coming from the TiVoHD I've noticed two changes that are minor annoyances to me.

Wishlist searches: On the TiVoHD the results of a wishlist search would only show a given movie once, if you wanted to see additional airing you'd have to select it and pick the show upcoming episodes options (at least in general; occasionally you'd get guide data glitches that would cause a movie to be listed twice). I'd use that to see what recent movies were coming up.
On the elite it doesn't do that consolidation, so movies with multiple airings are listed multiple times (I assume one entry per airing; but I didn't bother to confirm that). This makes browsing the wishlist results far less useful as they're swamped by whatever is in heavy rotation on the premium channels.

Recording History: On the TiVoHD it was already somewhat annoying that the recording history was dominated by "28 day rule" entries telling me that extra copies of an episode weren't being recorded. But the Elite made it worse. Now it's even further cluttered by "repeat" entries; something that used to be unlisted. So now it's harder than ever to flip through the "future history" to see something that won't record.
(Of course with four tuners I doubt that'll come up much. But why make it less functional by burying any 'real' conflicts amid tons of entries things that it already recorded or was told never to record?)
Now if they added this AND a filter function so I could filter out the entries I didn't care about then it'd be wonderful. But without a filter it's just injecting more 'noise' and further burying the 'signal'.

All said, the four tuners and the extra speed are very nice. And the unit's been working great; no problems with it. I certainly wouldn't trade back. But why make those two things less functional?


----------



## L David Matheny

Jonathan_S said:


> Recording History: On the TiVoHD it was already somewhat annoying that the recording history was dominated by "28 day rule" entries telling me that extra copies of an episode weren't being recorded. But the Elite made it worse. Now it's even further cluttered by "repeat" entries; something that used to be unlisted. So now it's harder than ever to flip through the "future history" to see something that won't record.


The TiVo should have a Recording History severity display option allowing us to hide the "28 day rule" entries telling us only that a repeat showing wasn't (or won't be) recorded. Activating that option would make it easy to look for serious recording conflicts. Maybe the option could be toggled by one of the colored buttons.


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## leiff

I hope Tivo finds more use for the color buttons. As it is I find almost no use for them.


----------



## mrizzo80

Anyone ever experience a completely distorted picture with their Elite/XL4? Hard to describe what it looks like... almost like a hybrid of a normal image and a cartoon image. There are lines all over the place. 

This occurs on live TV, recorded content, even the images on the HDUI menus. I just tried the HDUI reset command; did not fix it. 

This has happened 2x now. A reboot fixed it the first time and I assume it will fix it this time as well. Have had the Elite for just over 2 months.

Anyone else ever see anything like this?

I've been on the fence regarding buying the 3 year extended warranty (the unit is lifetimed). Guess this will force me to.


----------



## L David Matheny

mrizzo80 said:


> Anyone ever experience a completely distorted picture with their Elite/XL4? Hard to describe what it looks like... almost like a hybrid of a normal image and a cartoon image. There are lines all over the place.
> 
> This occurs on live TV, recorded content, even the images on the HDUI menus. I just tried the HDUI reset command; did not fix it.
> 
> This has happened 2x now. A reboot fixed it the first time and I assume it will fix it this time as well. Have had the Elite for just over 2 months.
> 
> Anyone else ever see anything like this?
> 
> I've been on the fence regarding buying the 3 year extended warranty (the unit is lifetimed). Guess this will force me to.


I've seen wildly incorrect colors for the TiVo logo on a few occasions when the TV was turned on during the TiVo Premiere boot process. Or maybe the HDMI cable was reconnected during the boot process; I don't remember. Anyway, I think it's some kind of an HDMI negotiation anomaly. Your problem may be different.


----------



## Teeps

mrizzo80 said:


> Anyone ever experience a completely distorted picture with their Elite/XL4? Hard to describe what it looks like... almost like a hybrid of a normal image and a cartoon image. There are lines all over the place.
> 
> This occurs on live TV, recorded content, even the images on the HDUI menus. I just tried the HDUI reset command; did not fix it.
> 
> This has happened 2x now. A reboot fixed it the first time and I assume it will fix it this time as well. Have had the Elite for just over 2 months.
> 
> Anyone else ever see anything like this?
> 
> I've been on the fence regarding buying the 3 year extended warranty (the unit is lifetimed). Guess this will force me to.


How is the TiVo connected to the TV?


----------



## mrizzo80

Tivo --> Receiver via HDMI --> TV via HDMI.

I considered maybe an HDMI handshake issue, but didn't test much further. I assume if I change my receiver from TV Input to PS3 Input and turn on the PS3 to send a signal (and then turn the receiver back to TV input) that would force a new HDMI handshake between Tivo/Receiver/TV? Pulling the HDMI cable would be a challenge.

Just to clarify my earlier post, when I say lines, i don't mean horizontal or vertical lines. These are contoured lines/shadings layered onto the screen objects.

I had a Premiere for over 2 years and never saw this until I got the Elite. Exact same setup/HDMI cable.


----------



## Teeps

mrizzo80 said:


> Tivo --> Receiver via HDMI --> TV via HDMI.
> 
> I had a Premiere for over 2 years and never saw this until I got the Elite. Exact same setup/HDMI cable.


Eliminate the variables:
connect TiVo to receiver using a new, or better, a "known good" hdmi cable. 
connect TiVo directly to the TV with a "known good" hdmi cable.


----------



## gteague

wow, look at this:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=476691

nearly a year of tivo/catv hell and how many posts here, and they finally acknowledge there might be a problem ...

/guy


----------



## MeInDallas

Shocks me as well. After all the money I spent buyng attenuators, signal boosters, and having Time Warner Cable techs coming out, at Tivo's direction. Not to mention taking a hit on selling a new Elite on Ebay at a $150 loss just to get the evil monster out of my house, they *FINALLY* say "Oh ooops sorry, there might be an issue here folks".

I'm flabbergasted right now


----------



## gteague

MeInDallas said:


> Shocks me as well. After all the money I spent buyng attenuators, signal boosters, and having Time Warner Cable techs coming out, at Tivo's direction. Not to mention taking a hit on selling a new Elite on Ebay at a $150 loss just to get the evil monster out of my house, they *FINALLY* say "Oh ooops sorry, there might be an issue here folks".
> 
> I'm flabbergasted right now


i know. we went through it all together along with a couple of others who had the same problem at the time. i can't explain why my problem went nearly completely away--the only thing i did was what i posted before--making sure that all four tuners weren't on hd channels all the time, but i didn't get off absolutely free--it's now the exception rather than the rule when i get a recording on any channel without noise or some other sort of anomaly. but i am not about to start changing anything--i wouldn't go back to the way it was before where i could never count on my box recording anything anytime i was gone for more than 2 hours. i don't blame you for ditching yours.

/guy


----------



## Teeps

Well, I stepped off the curb; bought a XL4 on Tuesday.
Got $50 knocked off the price (origially $399) after the $349 offer appeared on TiVo Central page, even though the $349 price was for an Elite.

TiVo even sold a life time sub for my S3 for $99, too.

It's supposed to be here Monday 24Sept12; we'll see how it goes.


----------



## superseagulls

I have so many regrets buying this POS.

My Elite is 4 months old, and now I have an N30 code no internet - it seems the internal networking has died. Tested myself and verified with support, these things are put together with a bunch of cheap components. 
How do Tivo think they are going to attract new customers when us the loyal customers feel burnt, and would no longer recommend them?

I certainly wish I had alternative from ****ehouse Networks here in Florida, but I guess I will send it back for repairs, doesn't bode well for the continued longevity of this POS.............


----------



## aaronwt

superseagulls said:


> I have so many regrets buying this POS.
> 
> My Elite is 4 months old, and now I have an N30 code no internet - it seems the internal networking has died. Tested myself and verified with support, these things are put together with a bunch of cheap components.
> How do Tivo think they are going to attract new customers when us the loyal customers feel burnt, and would no longer recommend them?
> 
> I certainly wish I had alternative from ****ehouse Networks here in Florida, but I guess I will send it back for repairs, doesn't bode well for the continued longevity of this POS.............


Maybe you got a bad unit. I have two Elites, one launch, and have not had these issues with them. But I do have the four year warranty from Best Buy on them. But that was really to help with the resale value when I replace my Elites with a six Tuner TiVo. Which will hopefully show up next year.


----------



## MHunter1

aaronwt said:


> resale value when I replace my Elites with a six tuner TiVo


If the 4-tuner Elite/XL4 is having stability issues that the 2-tuner Premiere is not, we'd better hope TiVo makes the internal component structure more robust by the time a 6-tuner consumer unit is offered.

Both of my 2-month-old Elites freeze on the "please wait" screen every 36 hours on average while navigating the UI for common tasks such as scheduling a recording or changing a keep-until date, requiring a hard reboot.

At TiVo's request, I had Comcast inspect my signal quality and CableCARDs because of high "RS uncorrected" numbers. Comcast said their equipment is performing properly, plus they questioned why TiVo thought signal quality would lock up the UI.

It seems there are too many outside variables that the Elite/XL4 has to deal with, such as who your cable and network providers are and how many cable outlets are in the house that affect the unit's ability to concentrate on buffering more than two tuners all the time while also performing UI navigation tasks.

Aaronwt, I also decided on the 4-tuner 2TB model with PLS and an extended warranty for resale value. Let's just make sure the people we sell our Elites to don't read this thread!


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## rogmatic

I can't believe what a nightmare the elite has been. I was the biggest tivo fan boy in the world before I got it.


----------



## MeInDallas

MHunter1 said:


> Let's just make sure the people we sell our Elites to don't read this thread!


This is what worried me to death about selling mine on Ebay. I kept trying to ask the woman what cable provider she has, and she never answered me back. I been waitiing and waiting for her to come back to me to tell me something is wrong, but no word yet. I called Tivo and they told me the Elite is on another account now, even though it still shows up on mine as an "Inactive Tivo Device" so I know she is using it, or someone somewhere is. I'm just glad the evil monster is gone now.


----------



## Teeps

XL4 arrived on Monday evening.
About one hour later it was up and running.
Next day paired the cable card, made sure that much was working.
Then connected the tuning adapter (which Time Warner configured without "it" being connected) later that day and all stations I pay for are working.
I can move non copy right shows to my S3 (in another room) for viewing.
I can move non copy right shows to PC for bulk storage and editing out commercials.

As it goes, so far, so good.


----------



## rogmatic

Since taking out my cable card, my Elite has been working for the last 3 days (which is HUGE progress for me). I would much rather have a box that actually works - even if it just gets 4 channels.


----------



## duanew

I wonder what percent of people have no problems at all. I have been wanting a 4 tuner Tivo for a while, but the problems that everyone are having are making me wonder. I have a series 2 that I have had for 8 years that has been rock solid except for a hard drive failure (I am surprised that it lasted as long as it did) and a power supply failure. I think that I have also oiled the fan once or twice.

I know connecting all of the cablecards and tuning adapters reduces reliability. I just hope the one I purchase works perfectly.


----------



## mrizzo80

duanew said:


> I wonder what percent of people have no problems at all. I have been wanting a 4 tuner Tivo for a while, but the problems that everyone are having are making me wonder. I have a series 2 that I have had for 8 years that has been rock solid except for a hard drive failure (I am surprised that it lasted as long as it did) and a power supply failure. I think that I have also oiled the fan once or twice.
> 
> I know connecting all of the cablecards and tuning adapters reduces reliability. I just hope the one I purchase works perfectly.


I've had an Elite for about 3 months. Works just as well as the 2-tuner Premiere I've had since 2010. Both have occasional hiccups; but no major issues with either.

The Elite is using the same cablecard and TA the 2-tuner model was using.


----------



## Teeps

rogmatic said:


> Since taking out my cable card, my Elite has been working for the last 3 days (which is HUGE progress for me). I would much rather have a box that actually works - even if it just gets 4 channels.


Has the cable company ever replaced the home run cable from their local source (pole or service box) to your home?


----------



## rogmatic

Teeps said:


> Has the cable company ever replaced the home run cable from their local source (pole or service box) to your home?


I think they may have a while back, but I am not sure. They say the signal is perfect when they come out.


----------



## rogmatic

As a further update, my Elite has been rock solid since I removed the cable card. I think I have definitely identified the problem. Now I just need a solution.


----------



## toy4x4

With the issue I had last night (loud squealing from the Tivo and would not turn on until I disconnected all cables), I am questioning the purchase of a lifetime subscription as I don't think this thing is going to last.. Yes I bought the 3 year warranty, but if this thing dies once, that is shot..

Had it two weeks, about to send it back and see if I can get a S3 with lifetime off Ebay..


----------



## aaronwt

What is making the squealing? IS it the fan or something else?


----------



## toy4x4

aaronwt said:


> What is making the squealing? IS it the fan or something else?


No idea. I was not home and the wife unplugged it. She actually unplugged everything. The Tivo would not power up until I took the cables off the back..

Ok, now that I think about it, I'm not convinced it was the Tivo. Could have been the UPS as it is the only loud high pitched noise you could hear in the bedroom where she was when she first heard the noise. So I asked the wife again and it is the UPS... She said the "Replace Battery" light was on. Whew!

So the only question is why the Tivo would not power on until I removed all the cables.


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## Teeps

rogmatic said:


> They say the signal is perfect when they come out.


They told me the same thing; but the tech could see the picture pixelating, mind you this was my S3 having the problem.

So he went up the pole and viola! Chewed RG6 cable; he replaced it and all was good. He couldn't explain what or why but speculated that noise on the line might have been the cause.

Bottom line they need to physically check the connection of the cable on both ends.


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## L David Matheny

Teeps said:


> They told me the same thing; but the tech could see the picture pixelating, mind you this was my S3 having the problem.
> 
> So he went up the pole and viola! Chewed RG6 cable; he replaced it and all was good. He couldn't explain what or why but speculated that noise on the line might have been the cause.
> 
> Bottom line they need to physically check the connection of the cable on both ends.


They need to check it on both ends and all along the length of it. I think a short or other impedance change at a certain point on the cable could selectively filter out certain frequencies. That would be consistent with the reports that this sort of cable damage has affected only one channel or a few channels.


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## saeba

Just finished setting up our new XL4. Brighthouse came out and we installed the cable card and tuning adapter and got it going. No significant issues.

I previously was using an XL as our main viewing DVR and I was very pleased at how easy it was to transfer over the season passes from it to the XL4 using the TiVo.com website. I also used the TiVo app on my tablet to make further adjustments.

And love the ability to stream between the two premieres! Most content on Brighthouse is copy-protected so you can't transfer it, but it all streams ! Now I have 6 tuners between the two premiers for recording and I can watch any of the recorded shows on either. Beautiful!

We've had TiVos since 2000... and gotta say, it just gets better and better !


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## rogmatic

I like my Elite a lot - except it loses signal when I have the cable card in. I know this is a big problem, but it is still usable now for network channels and I am hopeful that they will someday fix the cable card signal issue.


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## rogmatic

Does anyone know whether loss of signals issues could be the result of cable card pairing issues and what data I would look at to find out whether this is the case?


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## gteague

a summation of sorts ....

i started this thread back at the first of the year because i'd bought an elite about 3 months earlier and spent an average of 3 hours per day on the phone with either tivo or time-warner because the unit would not go for more than a couple dozen hours without declaring all the channels had disappeared and locking itself down until either the cable card was pulled and then re-seated or the system was rebooted. time-warner spent at least a dozen hours here checking cables and levels and tivo spent several dozen hours talking to me. unfortunately, they were mostly saying 'more cable cards! more cable cards!' until time-warner got fed up with it and refused to provide any more cards to me. i spent perhaps a hundred hours or more on the phone with the time-warner card-pairing centers.

at some point i escalated with time-warner and got a field supervisor assigned to my case, but all he managed to do was get me a couple more cable cards which worked as well as the previous dozen cable cards--not well at all. i also escalated with tivo and was assigned an executive vp of tech support, but since he was unwilling or unable to talk directly to time-warner for me, about all this accomplished was that i now had company on some of my cable card pairing calls.

but about 6 months ago after i sent some suggestions to tivo margaret, i noticed i was going longer between channel losses/lockups, first i'd go for a week, then a month, then 2-3 months. no explanation and no difference or changes in my cable service on the time-warner end of things. and today i'd estimate the problem hasn't recurred in 4-6 months now--phenomenal!

after reading through some threads on the new 20.2.2.x update i saw someone mention that his rs corrected and uncorrected readings had improved, so i just now checked mine. hold onto your hats for this: all 4 tuners have zero (0) rs uncorrected errors! as a comparison, here is a representative sample of my readings from 6-8 months ago:

rs_uncorrected: 5079,4694,5132,5120
rs corrected: 32,537,59,21

and a reading from now:

rs_uncorrected: 0,0,0,0
rs corrected: 42,89,0,38

i am firmly convinced that the elite unit was solely to blame for all my problems from the beginning and that tivo has found ways to correct for hardware or firmware problems with firmware/software updates. there's just no other logical explanation.

hey @me-in-dallas: you should have kept that unit in your storage closet just a few months longer instead of pulling it out and selling it buddy! but now you might try again with a new one and have a better expectation of it working.

it's been a long, long exhausting trip and think how bad the tivo competition has to be in order for me to put myself through more than a year of such ordeal just to get a gadget working. that's just sad.

/guy


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## MeInDallas

gteague said:


> hey @me-in-dallas: you should have kept that unit in your storage closet just a few months longer instead of pulling it out and selling it buddy! but now you might try again with a new one and have a better expectation of it working.


I actually purchased a brand spankin new one right after the update came out. I had read here in the forums about the RS Corrected and Uncorrected errors going to zero, so of course I got extremely excited.

I got the new one, got it all set up, update downloaded and installed, was off and running. I thought well it has a 7 day trial, I can surely test it out before I have to put it on a subscription within 7 days. Things went perfect for about 2 days, and wham bam, all channels lost yet again. Once it started it just got worse and worse, and the times they would get lost would be more often. At first it would go for about 6 hours, and then in the end it wouldnt even last an hour. I checked the diagnostic screen many times to see if the errors were there and there was nothing, not even one error. Everything was at zero. I did notice this time however I was able to pull the cable card out, and count to 10 and put it back in and the channels would come back. 90% of the time I could do that and didnt have to reboot.

After 7 days my trial was over, and I wrote an email to Tivo Margret telling her about my experience. Kinda got the same response I had been getting for a year now. Decided in the end I cant keep paying Tivo subscriptions for equipment that does not either work correctly, or is not compatible with the cable system here in my area. So I boxed up the new Elite/XL4, listed it on Ebay, and now some happy camper in Arizona is the new owner of barely used Elite/XL4.

Hooked up my new HTPC with the Ceton card with 4 tuners and 2TB of storage space that I dont have to pay a monthly subscription on, and I havent looked back. I never miss any shows and it works like a charm.

I have always loved Tivo, I had been with them since the Series 1, but I cant pay money for something that does not work. I wouldve gladly put a Lifetime on that XL4 but what good is it if I miss all my programs? I dont know what the issue is with that particular model, but I cant figure out why the 2 tuner models work perfect, and then this HTPC works great as well.

Oh well, I guess Tivo cant please everyone, glad its working for you though


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## rogmatic

I put back in my cable card after the last update and have gone 5 days without losing a signal - my longest streak ever.


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## CoxInPHX

gteague said:


> hold onto your hats for this: all 4 tuners have zero (0) rs uncorrected errors! as a comparison,
> 
> here is a representative sample of my readings from 6-8 months ago:
> rs_uncorrected: 5079,4694,5132,5120
> rs corrected: 32,537,59,21
> 
> and a reading from now:
> rs_uncorrected: 0,0,0,0
> rs corrected: 42,89,0,38
> 
> i am firmly convinced that the elite unit was solely to blame for all my problems from the beginning and that tivo has found ways to correct for hardware or firmware problems with firmware/software updates. there's just no other logical explanation.


I find the unwavering, constant RS Uncorrected value of Zero (0) to be highly suspicious. I have never once, since the first Fall Update 20.2.2, seen anything other than Zero. I highly suspect TiVo disabled the RS Uncorrected count display. Either that or TiVo somehow quickly mastered error correction. I would expect to have at least a few every now and again, especially on my H.264 channels above 900MHz.


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## gteague

yeah, there's definitely something fishy in tivoland that they seem to be keeping very tight lips on.

hey, @meindallas, did you try my 'magickal' trick of recording 4xSD shows simultaneously once a day? i have not the faintest idea if that's helping matters, but i'm scared to stop doing it now!

this new update 20.2.2.1 has killed my wishlists. i had to re-create most of mine and one spewed out the contents of 73 files into the general index and i have no hope of every cleaning up that mess. i'm pretty anal about such things, if you couldn't guess. [g]

i'm sorry it didn't work for you, but it sounds like you've found a replacement. i'm going to look up that unit because back when i was struggling there didn't seem to be any options that weren't more trouble than they're worth, such as tw or at&t. verizon is as close as grapevine, but not in euless and now might not ever be--i understand they've stopped new build-outs.

/guy


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## moyekj

CoxInPHX said:


> I find the unwavering, constant RS Uncorrected value of Zero (0) to be highly suspicious. I have never once, since the first Fall Update 20.2.2, seen anything other than Zero. I highly suspect TiVo disabled the RS Uncorrected count display. Either that or TiVo somehow quickly mastered error correction. I would expect to have at least a few every now and again, especially on my H.264 channels above 900MHz.


 Yes, my Premiere has non-zero RS Uncorrected & RS Corrected counts but my Elite none:
Premiere:
Tuner 1: 354 & 175
Tuner 2: 1 & 2222

Elite:
Tuner 1: 0 & 0
Tuner 2: 0 & 0
Tuner 3: 0 & 3
Tuner 4: 0 & 114

Now granted my Elite has a direct clean feed from cable drop that was necessary to get it working properly (and 0 RS corrected errors seem to imply a very clean feed). I initially had it in location my Premiere was at and it would not tune on all 4 tuners. The coax for my Premiere is after 2 splits so understandably poorer signals. But all zero for RS Uncorrected is highly suspicious. I would guess even if I moved the Elite to where my Premiere is that it would remain with 0 counts with current software even though 2 tuners would not work at all.


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## Teeps

MeInDallas said:


> Hooked up my new HTPC with the Ceton card with 4 tuners and 2TB of storage space that I dont have to pay a monthly subscription on, and I havent looked back. I never miss any shows and it works like a charm.


MeInDallas,
I am happy that you are having great success with the Ceton card. Tootal2 is having similar success too.
However, the Ceton is not without its problemsl 131 pages and... 
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1336614/latest-ceton-infinitv-4-info-thread

I came close to going with a Ceton Card too, as I have 2 PCs that can function as HTPC, but choose to stick with TiVo.
In my case the WAF trumps the HTPC...


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## L David Matheny

CoxInPHX said:


> I find the unwavering, constant RS Uncorrected value of Zero (0) to be highly suspicious. I have never once, since the first Fall Update 20.2.2, seen anything other than Zero. I highly suspect TiVo disabled the RS Uncorrected count display. Either that or TiVo somehow quickly mastered error correction. I would expect to have at least a few every now and again, especially on my H.264 channels above 900MHz.


I doubt that TiVo has "quickly mastered error correction" since that is surely done within some chipset. But if the chipset isn't serviced in a timely manner, errors could occur due to data overrun or underrun, so TiVo may have cleaned up some of their supporting code (which is probably what you meant anyway). I'm OTA-only, and I suspect I'll always see at least occasional uncorrected errors because of RFI. But I would expect that a properly working cable feed should get uncorrected errors very rarely.

I suppose TiVo could change their code to simply stop displaying the uncorrected error counts retrieved from the chipset (IOW, falsify them), but surely they wouldn't stoop to such blatant dishonesty.


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## gteague

most of us who targeted the uncorrected errors for attention due to the loc problems didn't notice them increment over time on the same channel, they only changed when a new channel was selected. this behavior and conversations with the executive tivo support tech who was also trained as cisco router support (as am i) made me support the theory that the rs errors were the same as cisco crc errors (cyclical redundancy errors) which worked the same way. when a a device connected to an internal interface (think cable company connected via your cable card) bounced or went down and up (think what happens when you change channels), then you would get a 'clump' (hundreds or thousands) of crc errors on your router. it was perfectly safe to ignore this number _as long as it didn't increment in normal use_.

so thus i came to ignore the rs uncorrected errors as a source of the cable card channel loss problem and i still don't believe it is the only or entire issue because my system started getting better long before these rs counts dropped to zero. it is entirely possible that tivo has worked in a tiny firmware routine to clear the counters on these error every time a channel is changed. it would be very interesting to know whether anyone is seeing them increment at all on bad channels. if not, then the more probably theory is as @coxinphx suggested and @ldavidmatheny echos.

/guy


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## L David Matheny

gteague said:


> most of us who targeted the uncorrected errors for attention due to the loc problems didn't notice them increment over time on the same channel, they only changed when a new channel was selected. this behavior and conversations with the executive tivo support tech who was also trained as cisco router support (as am i) made me support the theory that the rs errors were the same as cisco crc errors (cyclical redundancy errors) which worked the same way. when a a device connected to an internal interface (think cable company connected via your cable card) bounced or went down and up (think what happens when you change channels), then you would get a 'clump' (hundreds or thousands) of crc errors on your router. it was perfectly safe to ignore this number _as long as it didn't increment in normal use_.
> 
> so thus i came to ignore the rs uncorrected errors as a source of the cable card channel loss problem and i still don't believe it is the only or entire issue because my system started getting better long before these rs counts dropped to zero. it is entirely possible that tivo has worked in a tiny firmware routine to clear the counters on these error every time a channel is changed. it would be very interesting to know whether anyone is seeing them increment at all on bad channels. if not, then the more probably theory is as @coxinphx suggested and @ldavidmatheny echos.
> 
> /guy


I believe my TiVo HD clears its error counters on every channel change, even between subchannels within a main channel. OTOH, my Premiere seems to clear its error counters only when the main channel changes. Maybe that makes more sense since the errors should correlate with noise on the main channel.

If TiVo changed its code to clear the error counters some milliseconds after a channel change, that could hide the (largely meaningless) burst of errors that can occur with the channel change, which might actually make the error counts more useful. Is anybody suggesting that they did something like that with this latest software update? (I don't have it yet.)


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## MeInDallas

Gteague did you get that new firmware update (1.37) the other night on your tuning adapters? About midnight there was a new firmware update that was pushed out, and now when I go into my Ceton diagnostic screen, and look at the tuning adapter, it says "6 tuners available" and it didnt have that before. Are you using the Motorola ones? Did it help the situation any with your Tivo?


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## gteague

MeInDallas said:


> Gteague did you get that new firmware update (1.37) the other night on your tuning adapters? About midnight there was a new firmware update that was pushed out, and now when I go into my Ceton diagnostic screen, and look at the tuning adapter, it says "6 tuners available" and it didnt have that before. Are you using the Motorola ones? Did it help the situation any with your Tivo?


you've caught me flatfooted on this one. i can't even find a definitive place to show the firmware version of the tuning adaptor, which is a motorola.

if what i'm reading is right, the last time the ta has been reset or rebooted or lost lock was on 10/31 so i'd have to tentatively conclude that i didn't get an update.

and i'm not really having any serious, show-stopping problems anymore. noise on certain channels. the worst thing to happen in the last 6 months has been this later update. first, i lost most of my wishlists. they just got stuck at 'updating' in the new spm and i felt i had to just delete and re-create them. then, when i re-created them the contents of the old wishlist folders spewed into the general index of /my shows/ with no way to clean them up or put them into a folder.

and when i went to re-create the wishlists, i discovered that if you try to put a title and flag it with (-) for don't record, it kills the whole wishlist. i like to do a category wishlist such as /science&nature/ and then flag shows to not record and i can't do that. tivo margaret says this will be fixed in an update next year. but this update has also regressed all the speed tivo had gained with the hd interface and those spinning pizza pies abound.

oh well, sorry to get off subject and rant out. in short, i don't seem to have gotten a tuning adaptor firmware update. perhaps someone can remind me where i can look for the firmware version.

/guy


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## MeInDallas

OK if youre in the HD menus, go to Tivo Central, then down to Settings & Messages, then over to Settings, then it will take you to an SD menu. Go down to Remote, Cable Card, & Devices, then when you get to the next menu, go down to Tuning Adapter. Click on that then Tuning Adapter Diagnostics and you will go into that weird grey screen. Then go down to Code Modules and click on that. You should see there the Platform Version: 01.37, if you got the new firmware update. The previous one was 1.35 that we had. You will have to click Clear to get out of the grey screen. 

I've been trying to find online an update log somewhere to see what was released in that version, but theres just nothing out there on it that I can see. I wish I knew what this release fixed, or updated. No one seems to have any clue about it. I've read in some other forums that I follow, that other people got it as well, but no one knows anything about the fixes.


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## gteague

dang, i thought i went into every one of those funky menu screens, but evidently not. in any case, yeah, i'm still on 01.35 which says it was built 3 years ago on 12 nov 2009.

unlike some others, i've never been able to pin down any specific problems to the tuning adaptor. in the middle of my worst problems, tw replaced my original ta with a new one, but, as far as i could tell, it made no difference whatsoever at the time.

but of course i freely acknowledge that i don't have a 100% understanding of the signal flow through the tuning adaptor.

/guy


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## MeInDallas

I definately think the issue has something to do with either the cable card or the tuning adapter, or maybe a combination of them both. I always noticed the "lost channel syndrome" seemed to be cured sometimes by just pulling the cable card out and sticking it back in, and sometimes I could even pull the tuning adapter USB out and put it back in and the channels would come back, and I didnt have to go thru a whole reboot. I dont guess I'll ever know what the problem is now at this point.

You might want to try to unplug the tuning adapter, wait a couple of minutes, and then plug it back in, and see if it will download the firmware update from the headend. I'm not sure why you havent gotten it yet. Maybe they are just rolling it out a little at a time in different areas. The 1.35 version was from 2009 and now it says the 1.37 version is from 2010, so I do wonder if there are any firmware updates in the last 2 years that are out there. Makes you wonder.


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## gteague

MeInDallas said:


> You might want to try to unplug the tuning adapter, wait a couple of minutes, and then plug it back in, and see if it will download the firmware update from the headend. I'm not sure why you havent gotten it yet. Maybe they are just rolling it out a little at a time in different areas. The 1.35 version was from 2009 and now it says the 1.37 version is from 2010, so I do wonder if there are any firmware updates in the last 2 years that are out there. Makes you wonder.


i think i'll forego pulling the plug for now. for one thing, tivo couldn't have fscked up my wishlists any more with this latest update if they'd been a hacker group with a grudge. given the cold snap txu will probably drop my power tonight anyway. [g]

i'm trying to catch up on my recordings at the moment. a year ago when i bought the elite i bought a western-digital drive from newegg and i hesitated because it was refurbished. but it was cheap and such drives were hard to get at the time. but about 3-6 months ago it's been causing problems at reboot and since tw has the copy-protection flags i can't copy off the files so i could replace the drive. i tried replacing the cable and moving the power adaptor, but neither of those things helped and i suspect the drive will go out sooner rather than later. so i hold my breath every time my tivo has to reboot.

/guy


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## gteague

... that i started this thread on 01-19-2012, 06:26 AM after several months of problems with the tivo elite, so, approx two years of fighting this problem or these problems.

in june my tw internet was down more than it was up. just when they would schedule a truck roll it'd come back up. towards the end of the month i had to pay $100 for a month of clear cellular internet service since my tw internet was down for a week.

so i called tw accounts seeking a rebate on my internet service for june and they basically told me to f___ off. this time i didn't go to their ceo but i did start posting on facebook and twitter and other places i thought might make them uncomfortable. finally i got contact from an escalation office who scheduled a truck roll--that very evening in fact, a world's record. well, except for that time i went through their ceo and got half their techs converge on my house just to get the tuning adaptor working, but i digress ...

local yokel tech shows up by himself around 2100 obviously wanting nothing but to get home to dinner and at first refuses to even look at anything since my catv and internet are both working. i show him my logs and log into the cable modem and show him what it shows about the connection.

finally he pulls out his meter and measures 10db at my wall. he then goes to my outside box and measures -2db coming in from their switch or repeater. which means i'm losing 12db from their box to my wall. tech looks closer and finds a pretty wrecked connector--white spots of buildup and it looks like it's been crimped badly as well. he builds a new connector and re-checks the signals and i win the pool at 4db (he had 2db) at my wall. this means my signal has improved 200% or more (well, at least my signal strength has increased 200%) and 6db loss is easily accounted for by cable run length, connectors, and splitters. s/n readings went up from 33-35 to 36-38 on cable modem and tivo. signal strength increased from 94 to 95 on tivo.

bottom line; for the first time in two years i'm actually getting what i pay for in terms of service delivery. my tivo hasn't lost all channels in a month or so and i only occasionally have a signal loss on a single channel, easily accounted for by satellite degradation. 

oh, and they refunded my entire june internet bill as well. all i can say is keep after them and fight the good fight. of course you only have to fight if you can't find a service you think might be better and for me that was the case.

/guy


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## Teeps

gteague said:


> ... that i started this thread on 01-19-2012, 06:26 AM after several months of problems with the tivo elite, so, approx two years of fighting this problem or these problems.
> 
> local yokel tech shows up <snip> finally he pulls out his meter and measures 10db at my wall. he then goes to my outside box and measures -2db coming in from their switch or repeater. which means i'm losing 12db from their box to my wall.
> 
> tech looks closer and finds a pretty wrecked connector--white spots of buildup and it looks like it's been crimped badly as well. he builds a new connector and re-checks the signals and i win the pool at 4db (he had 2db) at my wall. this means my signal has improved 200% or more (well, at least my signal strength has increased 200%) and 6db loss is easily accounted for by cable run length, connectors, and splitters. s/n readings went up from 33-35 to 36-38 on cable modem and tivo. signal strength increased from 94 to 95 on tivo.
> 
> /guy


Good to hear the problem is finally solved.

You know, the home run drop was suspected and mentioned several times in the 11 pages of this thread.
I'm surprised it took time warner[sic] so long to go there...


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## gteague

Teeps said:


> Good to hear the problem is finally solved.
> 
> You know, the home run drop was suspected and mentioned several times in the 11 pages of this thread.
> I'm surprised it took time warner[sic] so long to go there...


there's been at least 3 techs inside that box in the last year and a half. but evidently they all missed this one. to be fair, you had to look really closely to see the problems. the bad crimping job ought to have been fairly obvious but the corrosion build up was very hard to see unless you were specifically looking for it, manifesting as white 'kruft' on the pin.

/guy


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## Teeps

gteague said:


> there's been at least 3 techs inside that box in the last year and a half. but evidently they all missed this one. to be fair, you had to look really closely to see the problems. the bad crimping job ought to have been fairly obvious but the corrosion build up was very hard to see unless you were specifically looking for it, manifesting as white 'kruft' on the pin.
> 
> /guy


Sounds like the local yokel was either real good or lucky. I'll take either instance when it fixes a problem.

My, squirrel chewed cable, was a no brainer, once the tech decided to go up the pole.


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## DaveDFW

Maybe your experience shows that the Elite and XL4 are extraordinarily susceptible to experiencing total tuner failure in the presence of low signal levels.

In the past I've owned S3s, HDs, and two-tuner Premieres that never experienced total tuner failure, despite being installed in the same location, using the same cabling, and presumably receiving the same signal levels.

Personally, I have not experienced the XL4 total tuner loss since approximately February, at which time I was experiencing tuner failure somewhat regularly. Either Tivo quietly pushed out a software fix or Time-Warner stopped sending the magic signal which the XL4 could not handle.


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## gteague

DaveDFW said:


> Maybe your experience shows that the Elite and XL4 are extraordinarily susceptible to experiencing total tuner failure in the presence of low signal levels.
> 
> Personally, I have not experienced the XL4 total tuner loss since approximately February, at which time I was experiencing tuner failure somewhat regularly. Either Tivo quietly pushed out a software fix or Time-Warner stopped sending the magic signal which the XL4 could not handle.


same here. and about the same time frame as well. i went from having to reseat the cable card at least 3-4 times a week (if not more) due to having zero channels accessible to only having a single 'channel not found' on a handful of channels about twice a week which could well be a source or satellite issue.

/guy


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## Teeps

Yesterday, I had the black screen on ch 469 NBCSN-HD (timewarner SDV channel. )
Flipping back and forth between the next up and down channel resumed the picture.
I pressed the record button, wanted to record the program that was live.
Well, I noticed the buffer was showing to the left of the progress indicator.

So, it appears that even though there was no picture. There was a stream that was recording in the buffer.

Same thing today when I checked; same channel.


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