# Random Channel / Tuner Loss



## BGreenstone (Sep 23, 2006)

I'm wondering if anyone else is having this problem: My S3 seems to randomly lose channels, and occasionally all channels will go dead and the diagnostic screen says "Not Tuned' for each tuner, and it is apparently trying to retune. Sometimes just one channel will go dead. Then sometimes a block of channels will go dead. But then sometimes every channel goes dead.

The cable is working fine as best I can tell because if I use the TV's tuner the channels are all there. Rebooting the Tivo doesn't seem to fix it. It'll just randomly come back.

My signal strength is high (95%), so it's not a weak signal problem.

Any thoughts?

-Brian


----------



## razor237 (Feb 1, 2002)

I had a some what similar trouble, I was channel surfing on one tunner, but i was going through the channels fast and when i stoped on a channel it was just a black screen. Then a diag screen popped up saying something about card one not authorized ...hmmm .. so i switched to tunner two went to same channel and it came up fine .... went back to tunner one and most channels would come up ..... 2- 11 and my hd channels worked but nothing else. so i rebooted my tivo and all has been ok so far . Im thinking i was going through the channels a little to fast and maybe the card kept trying to tune channel as fast as i was changing and some how lost its authentication from the cable company and was waiting to get i back..... I should have waited a few minutes to see if thats what the trouble was but i rebooted ...... I will not change the channels as fast and see if it happens again 


-Mike


----------



## sommerfeld (Feb 26, 2006)

BGreenstone said:


> I'm wondering if anyone else is having this problem: My S3 seems to randomly lost channels, and occasionally all channels will go dead and the diagnostic screen says "Not Tuned' for each tuner, and it is apparently trying to retune. Sometimes just one channel will go dead. Then sometimes a block of channels will go dead. But then sometimes every channel goes dead.


Just saw something similar happen with analog cable (tivo reported "searching for signal" when surfing through a bunch of analog channels in the 50-90 range).


----------



## tunnelengineer (Jul 21, 2006)

yep, me too. I have a few random channels in the analog arnge that won't display. No errors on the cablecard either. This is wierd.


----------



## 188 (Oct 15, 1999)

I think the cablecard can overload. I was checking my channels today and after I had run through a bunch, cable card 1 would not display. I switched to No. 2 and it was fine, and after a few minutes went back to No. 1 and it was fine. I think they just 
can't handle a lot of sequential channel changes.

A fine design--no one ever surfs!


----------



## diamar (Oct 1, 2002)

I just had the same thing happen today w/analog channels...but time seemed to heal it


----------



## sjxmang (Jul 19, 2005)

I've had a similar problem , but when it has occurred (couple of times) I have switched over to my tv (with own cable card) and it has the same problem... I suspect it's a comcast issue..


----------



## tunnelengineer (Jul 21, 2006)

not in my case. normal tv shows the missing tivo analog channels just fine. it's only a problem on the tivo


----------



## sommerfeld (Feb 26, 2006)

sommerfeld said:


> Just saw something similar happen with analog cable (tivo reported "searching for signal" when surfing through a bunch of analog channels in the 50-90 range).


Some further experimentation showed symptoms consistent with one of the two tuners being unable to receive channels above 58 or 59; the first tuner active after a restart could pull it off, while the second couldn't.

I have some trouble with weak/poor analog cable signal strength and will see if this happens after they tune it up.


----------



## Cloud (Oct 16, 2003)

I have no CC's installed. I have analog cable screwed into the back of the tivo. On occasion it won't tune channels 3 through 6. Once it was tuned in fine on 3 and then started flickering to a gray screen until it finally stopped displaying channel 3... 

The signal is fine.. Not sure why the tivo tuners won't tune 3 - 6 on occasion. This was just after set up. It went away 30 min later. Will keep an eye on it.


----------



## megazone (Mar 3, 2002)

I'm experiencing the same thing with some analog cable channels - 50-54 mostly, but sometimes 45-54. But just on one tuner. When this happens the other tuner works fine, but one tuner says it can't get a signal and advises troubleshooting.

Unfortunately, channel 51 is Cartoon Network - one of my most recorded channels (Adult Swim), so I discovered this with a number of bad recordings.


----------



## bocktar (Sep 24, 2001)

My honeymoon with the S3 has apparently ended as well. It ran for a week OTA-only with no problems whatsoever.

Six hours after successful installation of both CableCards, about 20% of my channel lineup disappeared. I'm all digital.

Four hours later, they all came back.

Four hours after that, the same 20% went away again, and they've been gone since.

Same symptoms. Good signal strength, diagnostics show "NOT TUNED."

Based on the threads similar to this one, I'm starting to get the impression that this isn't the cable company's problem.


----------



## chipvideo (Sep 25, 2006)

bocktar said:


> My honeymoon with the S3 has apparently ended as well. It ran for a week OTA-only with no problems whatsoever.
> 
> Six hours after successful installation of both CableCards, about 20% of my channel lineup disappeared. I'm all digital.
> 
> ...


Another failed recording. 2 minutes into cbs's 8 oclock show it gives me a black screen so I go into menu and it shows not tuned down the board. I then cancle the recording and it comes back. I am getting great signal and just keep getting tuner loss on this tivo. All other tv's work fine with comcast dvr's.

Not sure if it is one tuner or what. It was tuner 1. Tuner 0 was fine.

Why is it they show 0 for the first tuner and 1 for the second. You would think it would be labeld 1 and 2.

Looks like another couple days and I might just bring this back to circuitcity and cancle my tivo subscription. Tivo better give my upfront $299 back.

This box is plagued.


----------



## hickerson (Sep 16, 2004)

Same problem here. My analog channels from 38-49 don't show up on Cable Card 2. Very fustrating. I feel sorry for the cable tech who spent an hour today trying to fix it, and is coming back on Friday. I guess it is time to call TiVo support.


----------



## chipvideo (Sep 25, 2006)

Now my channel 107 HD CBS in Seattle is pixelating. 

Another thing I noticed is this is the same channel that has been having problems the whole time. Last week survivor recorded for 3 minutes. Same thing tonight on same channel at same time. Now pixelating on this channel only.


----------



## sommerfeld (Feb 26, 2006)

sommerfeld said:


> Some further experimentation showed symptoms consistent with one of the two tuners being unable to receive channels above 58 or 59; the first tuner active after a restart could pull it off, while the second couldn't.


okay, over the past couple days I've spent approximately three hours on the phone with various tivo CSR's exploring this issue. (One of my calls was cut off when my cordless phone ran out of battery). After going through assorted troubleshooting steps (mostly repeating stuff I tried on my own), I'm now at a stage where the case has *finally* been escalated to engineering, which is apparently a prerequisite to an exchange being authorized. Let's see what happens...


----------



## doctord (Dec 17, 2004)

I am having a similar problem. See Here:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=319415


----------



## g808 (Sep 14, 2006)

I'm suffering from this same problem. For me the issue is always with tuner 1 (tuner 2 is fine). I'm not receiving channels in the range from 35-53 (except 42 which always comes in on both tuners). The channels that I receive in that range fluctuate. Yesterday I could not get 37-53. Now today I cannot get 35-49. 

I thought it might be the CableCARD, so I tried swapping the cards and I still had the problem with tuner 1. I don't have any splitters. I have the cable from the wall directly connected to the S3. 

Sounds like a possible TiVo issue, and not a cable/CableCARD issue. I guess I'll have to try TiVo support.


----------



## hickerson (Sep 16, 2004)

I am still having missing analog channels on cable card 2.

I talked to TiVo customer support yesterday and they said it was probably the cable card or low cable strength.

I bought a signal booster. It did improve my overall picture quality, but I still have the missing channels.

Could it really be the cable card? I have went through two cards and the problem was the same on each.

Any suggestions?


----------



## tboydsto (Dec 31, 2003)

tunnelengineer said:


> yep, me too. I have a few random channels in the analog arnge that won't display. No errors on the cablecard either. This is wierd.


Me too. This happened before my CableCards were installed with Channel 2. I simply get the message that the TiVo is looking for the signal and to check Troubleshooting. This morning, I was again missing some analog channels (different ones this time). Very flakey!


----------



## generaltso (Nov 4, 2003)

I'm having a similar problem. There are about 20 random digital channels that just give me a gray screen on either tuner. There are about 5 other channels that give me video, but no audio.

The weird part is if I stay on any of these channels for very long, it seems to reboot whichever cable card it's using. I lose all my channels on that tuner until it boots back up. If I go into the CP Info screen, I get an error for about 30 seconds, then "waiting for time" for about 10 seconds, then "waiting for EUT" for about a minute, then "Ready". Once it's ready, my channels all come back except for the ones with video and/or audio issues. This is 100% reproducable.


----------



## Nalez (Mar 1, 2002)

Something I have noticed:
I seeem to get around this problem by just rewinding a bit. It seems like watching a real time live broadcast I *often* see the grey screen, but if I rewind a bit, it shows fine.

When I do have this problem, I am also seeing horizontal white lines go across the screen as well. Anyone else see this symptom?


----------



## hickerson (Sep 16, 2004)

I see the white lines also when a channels is about to go out.


----------



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

For people having this problem, PLEASE report it to Tivo. Tivo engineering (through a supervisor) is claiming that they don't have reports of these types of problems.


----------



## rickertk (Jan 23, 2002)

I was having this problem (missing analog channels from 54-74 on one tuner only) up to today. They installed my Cablecards, and in this market, Comcast appears to be running full digital simulcast, so the problem is no longer apparent. However, one thing that I was seeing before the installer showed up - if I left the Tivo on in the menus or paused on a recording, the buffer on the problem tuner would fill up on one of the problem channels. As soon as I went to Live TV, though, or if it timed out to Live TV, it seemed to start losing connection. I didn't have enough time to play around with it to see if this was just coincidence or if it was consistently getting confused when showing LiveTV. It might be worth trying if you're having the problem, though.

Keith


----------



## southerndoc (Apr 5, 2003)

jfh3 said:


> For people having this problem, PLEASE report it to Tivo. Tivo engineering (through a supervisor) is claiming that they don't have reports of these types of problems.


 Is there an email address? I hate calling their 800 number and waiting for 20 minutes to speak to someone. I'd prefer to just email them a bug report.


----------



## as6o (Jan 18, 2002)

I'm seeing the same thing. The upper analog channels show "Searching for Signal". One channel, Food Network, kept bouncing in and out of reception. If I fiddle with the cables it seems to help a bit. My installer said that if the cables aren't perfect you start to loose the high or low analog channels. Maybe the S3's analog tunners are finicky. 

I'll ask one of my budies at TiVo about it... 

-Aaron


----------



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

geekmedic said:


> Is there an email address? I hate calling their 800 number and waiting for 20 minutes to speak to someone. I'd prefer to just email them a bug report.


No.

And the current wait time is exactly why I mentioned to the supervisor today that few people were probably calling in.

I'm trying to track down a problem that may be similar to this - boxes with incomplete recordings.


----------



## g808 (Sep 14, 2006)

hickerson said:


> I am still having missing analog channels on cable card 2.
> 
> I talked to TiVo customer support yesterday and they said it was probably the cable card or low cable strength.
> 
> ...


I don't think it's a CableCARD issue. I see missing analog channels on only tuner 1. I swapped the cards and still saw the same problem on tuner 1. If it were the CableCARD, then the problem should have moved to tuner 2 after the card swap.


----------



## chipvideo (Sep 25, 2006)

I have two series3 and it happens on both of them on my local HDTV stations via cable. Only happens on the locals. I also noticed last night some major flashes flashes on the screen watching CBS and had a static noise come through as well for less than half a second at a time about 4 times durring the 60 minute program. My cable strength is awesome. Ive never seen this before with a cablecard directly into my tv or using the comcast moto box. What is going on here. This is very upsetting. 

It has to be something that is corrupting the series3 because it has never happened until I started using them.


----------



## Nalez (Mar 1, 2002)

jfh3 said:


> No.
> 
> And the current wait time is exactly why I mentioned to the supervisor today that few people were probably calling in.


Thats why I do not bother calling support. I can send a email or fill out a online form quicker than it takes me to dial a 1-800 number let alone navigate a phone menu system and wait on hold for support.

My time is to important to help tivo debug there products.


----------



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Nalez said:


> Thats why I do not bother calling support. I can send a email or fill out a online form quicker than it takes me to dial a 1-800 number let alone navigate a phone menu system and wait on hold for support.
> 
> My time is too important to help tivo debug there products.


Unfortunately, if every one had your attitude, bugs would never get fixed because Tivo wouldn't have enough problem reports to warrant looking into it.


----------



## hickerson (Sep 16, 2004)

I called TiVo support today. They were very professional and understanding, but didn't have any solutions. My issue was sent to the engineers, and I should hear more tomorrow.


----------



## Nalez (Mar 1, 2002)

jfh3 said:


> Unfortunately, if every one had your attitude, bugs would never get fixed because Tivo wouldn't have enough problem reports to warrant looking into it.


I would think if tivo had a online form for submitting bug reports, they would get more reports than they currently do.


----------



## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

It might be more difficult to validate the issues that way. There are many software companies that will not accept electronic bug reports.


----------



## ThePlungerMan (Sep 13, 2006)

bocktar said:


> My honeymoon with the S3 has apparently ended as well. It ran for a week OTA-only with no problems whatsoever.
> 
> Six hours after successful installation of both CableCards, about 20% of my channel lineup disappeared. I'm all digital.
> 
> ...


Same for me. Losing a block of channels then coming back. 2 times same block, another time another block. Comes back a few hours latter or this last time, last night, this morning. And it happens on both tuners.
Going to call Tivo.


----------



## Tivortex (Feb 29, 2004)

Last night all my digital cable channels dissappeared. Just black screens. The OTA and analog channels were still there. I rebooted this morning and they all came back !


----------



## eisenb11 (Sep 6, 2006)

I just had a non-crash lockup.

I was recording a HD show when the Recommendations had the 2nd tuner tune to an analog channel that I don't get.

The result was a lockup on the good channel.

To fix it, I had to tune the second tuner from the bad channel to a good channel, then cancel the hosed recording.

Tivo needs to be able to handle tuning into "bad" channels much more gracefully.

I was going to manually edit the channel list to get rid of all the "bad" channels, but the problem is that since having my cablecard installed there are a bunch of "bad" channels that I should be getting...


----------



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Tivortex said:


> Last night all my digital cable channels dissappeared. Just black screens. The OTA and analog channels were still there. I rebooted this morning and they all came back !


If you see this again, go into the CableCARD menu and see what the info on the Conditional Access screen shows.


----------



## bocktar (Sep 24, 2001)

jfh3 said:


> If you see this again, go into the CableCARD menu and see what the info on the Conditional Access screen shows.


CableCard 1:

Unit Address: ***********
***-*****-*****-***
Encryption: DES
Connected:yes, EnabledByCP:yes
Auth: SUBSCRIBED
CA enable: possible
ECM PID: 0x0430
Component PIDs:
0x0800 0x0801 0x0802
0x0000 0x0000 0x0000
Host Validation: Unknown 00
Copy Protection Key: Disabled
CCI: 0x00

CableCard 2:

Unit Address: **********
***-*****-*****-***
State: Subscribed
ECM PID: 0x0431
Component PIDs:
0x0840 0x0841 0x0000
0x0000 0x0000 0x0000
Host Validation: Unknown 01
Copy Protection Key: Disabled
CCI: 00


----------



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Interesting cable card info - that looks as I would expect, so at least that's not the same problem I'm seeing.

I'm seeing a problem where the state changes from SUBSCRIBED to Unknown or something else and see it after a blank clannel tune or partial recording.

I just wish Tivo would log some more info into recording history when some of these conditions occur.


----------



## nmurphy (Nov 3, 2003)

I am having this same problem. Used to be channels in the 24-28 range. Now it is channels in the 55-60 range. No pattern that I can figure out. 

I called TiVo yesterday, and CS (who was very nice) said it was a cable issue. I, however, am not so sure. I have RCN coming tomorrow to install cards, and they said they will also send a tech guy to check the signal. Hopefully, RCN will be able to resolve it. I may go to Radio Shack to get an amplifier to see if I can fix it myself. 

I also get the flash lines on recordings, just before the screen goes to gray, and the message "looking for cable . . . " appears. I really d/n want to send this back because there is a back order of 7-10 days.


----------



## Necro (Sep 26, 2006)

I saw something similar last night. I was watching the game on card 1 and had another show on card 2. I flipped to card 2 and was channel surfing. I'm talking up the S3 to the wife and how great it is... Then I notice none of the HD channels are working. Black screens.

Then the cable card diagnositc screen popped up saying to call the cable co... About a minute later, it started working again.

This makes me lose a lot of faith in the Tivo's ability to record something in it's entirety. Does anyone know if the recording will start back up if the cablecard blinks out???


----------



## hickerson (Sep 16, 2004)

nmurphy said:


> I am having this same problem. Used to be channels in the 24-28 range. Now it is channels in the 55-60 range. No pattern that I can figure out.
> 
> I called TiVo yesterday, and CS (who was very nice) said it was a cable issue. I, however, am not so sure. I have RCN coming tomorrow to install cards, and they said they will also send a tech guy to check the signal. Hopefully, RCN will be able to resolve it. I may go to Radio Shack to get an amplifier to see if I can fix it myself.
> 
> I also get the flash lines on recordings, just before the screen goes to gray, and the message "looking for cable . . . " appears. .


We have almost exactly the same problem. I tried two signal boosters (one from Radio Shack) and it helped the picture quality but didn't solve the missing channels problem. Let us know if your RCN solves the problem.


----------



## tunnelengineer (Jul 21, 2006)

I have the missing channel problem periodically too. This does not seem to be a cable problem. When the cards don't work right you lose all your digital or analog channels, not just a few analog channels here and there. Unless someone can provide some information to sicpute it, I say Tivo is at fault in this matter.


----------



## skweaz (Feb 19, 2004)

Had a tuner loss occur last night trying to peform two scheduled recordings at 7pm, both on HD channels (Amazing Race and Simpsons). Rebooting the unit seemed to fix it. 
I manually started recording both channels again and there was no tuner loss.

Also had a similar problem last Wednesday, two scheduled recordings at the same time, both on HD channels, tuners lost on both.

I just reported the issue to TiVo support. I am going set up additional recordings this week to see if it is in fact scheduled HD recordings on both tuners at the same time causing it.


----------



## BTV Engineer (Sep 22, 2006)

I've experienced one instance of a channel loss. I have a Season Pass for "60 Minutes" and it was recorded this last Sunday on a digital HDTV cable channel (CBS 705). I even saw that it was on the air as I went to live TV and saw it being recorded. When I went to watch the recorded show all the info looked fine but when I hit play I got a warning that the recording failed due to a lack of signal. Before and after the recording that channel was fine but it wasn't recorded during the normal air time.


----------



## nmurphy (Nov 3, 2003)

Has anyone experiencing these problems exchanged their S3? If so, was the problem gone with the new box? The frustration with this is that TiVo feels it is a cable strength issue and my cable company (RCN) has their answer: "We don't support TiVo." My response is always that I am not asking for TiVo support, simply trying to isolate the source of the problem. 

If a new box eliminated the problem, that would be interesting to find out.


----------



## g808 (Sep 14, 2006)

Nope, but I did spend all morning with TiVo support and they cannot figure out the issue. However, they do seem to agree that it sounds like an issue with the tuner. 

They want me to ask Comcast to come out and verify the CableCARDs are both working fine and that the signal is also fine. I've already tried each card one at a time in each slot, and both cards work fine in slot 2, but do not receive analog channels 35-53 on slot 1. I don't see how it's a CableCARD issue. Hopefully, TiVo will do something once it's confirmed NOT a cable or CableCARD issue by Comcast. I'm sure the tech is going to say it's a TiVo problem.

And the saga continues...


----------



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Just saw this in another thread:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=4439248&&#post4439248

Could this be the problem some of you are seeing? You can't see digital versions of analog channels because your cable card isn't authorized properly?

"have digital silver, and used to have Motorola DCT-3412, which is a digial only box. So Comcast marked me as a digital customer. I get the digital copy of channels 2-80 on my S3. When I first got the S3, and the cable cards were not properly authorized, I couldn't get channels 35-80. When I unplug the cards, S3 would revert back to picking up the analog copy of those channels, but with the card in, my S3 needs authorization to get those channels."


----------



## megazone (Mar 3, 2002)

g808 said:


> I'm suffering from this same problem. For me the issue is always with tuner 1 (tuner 2 is fine).


It is tuner 1 for me as well.


----------



## megazone (Mar 3, 2002)

jfh3 said:


> Could this be the problem some of you are seeing? You can't see digital versions of analog channels because your cable card isn't authorized properly?


I don't think so, because Charter around here isn't doing digital simulcast. There aren't digital versions of these channels as far as I know - and I can still set recording quality, so the S3 thinks they're analog.


----------



## tunnelengineer (Jul 21, 2006)

both tuners for me.


----------



## g808 (Sep 14, 2006)

megazone said:


> It is tuner 1 for me as well.


Hey megazone - Have you called TiVo support? If so, what has been your experience so far?

I'm going to pull the CableCARDs tonight and re-run the setup, so the Series3 is setup for use without CableCARDs. If the samething happens with those channels not working only on tuner 1, then it definitely cannot be the CableCARDs, and must be the TiVo.


----------



## ThePlungerMan (Sep 13, 2006)

g808 said:


> Hey megazone - Have you called TiVo support? If so, what has been your experience so far?
> 
> I'm going to pull the CableCARDs tonight and re-run the setup, so the Series3 is setup for use without CableCARDs. If the samething happens with those channels not working only on tuner 1, then it definitely cannot be the CableCARDs, and must be the TiVo.


I'm not sure that would be the acid test though.


----------



## LostTivo (Nov 1, 2004)

Same problem here. For me, I'm randomly missing channels between 24 and 50ish - both cards for me. On a couple occasions, I have been on a channel when it breaks in and out. Had the cable people out 5 times now and no solution. Tried calling Tivo and got a rather unhelpful fellow who just told me the problem was signal strength. Thinking I might ship the box back now. I didn't drop 800 bones to get less channels than what my series 2 offers me. HD is nice and all but come on...


----------



## LostTivo (Nov 1, 2004)

LostTivo said:


> Same problem here. For me, I'm randomly missing channels between 24 and 50ish - both cards for me. On a couple occasions, I have been on a channel when it breaks in and out. Had the cable people out 5 times now and no solution. Tried calling Tivo and got a rather unhelpful fellow who just told me the problem was signal strength. Thinking I might ship the box back now. I didn't drop 800 bones to get less channels than what my series 2 offers me. HD is nice and all but come on...


After reading some of your posts I decided to try something. Tried 2 channels I wasn't getting on both cards - 53 and 40. Sure enough, neither of them worked. I restarted the Tivo. After it rebooted, one of my cable cards was getting both channels in, the other still wasn't getting them in. Definitely seems to be a Tivo problem  :down:


----------



## g808 (Sep 14, 2006)

g808 said:


> I'm going to pull the CableCARDs tonight and re-run the setup, so the Series3 is setup for use without CableCARDs. If the samething happens with those channels not working only on tuner 1, then it definitely cannot be the CableCARDs, and must be the TiVo.


I did this, and I still get the same problem. Missing a range of analog channels on tuner 1, but not on tuner 2. I really suspect this is a TiVo issue. I'm going to report this to TiVo as apart of my open case with them.


----------



## DiscoBayJoe (Sep 19, 2006)

Channel 42 (USAP) has been missing on my 1st tuner for several nights now.  A Restart of the Tivo woudln't fix it, neither would removing/re-inserting the cablecards. Conditional Access showed SUBSCRIBED on the 2nd cablecard but something like "MISSING AUTH_REKEY" on the card with the missing channel. A Call into Comcast and they re-sent the signal. My card now says UNKNOWN under Conditional Access but it appears to have all channels (I didn't test all 250+, but spot checked a dozen or so, and USAP is back).


----------



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

DiscoBayJoe said:


> Channel 42 (USAP) has been missing on my 1st tuner for several nights now. A Restart of the Tivo woudln't fix it, neither would removing/re-inserting the cablecards. Conditional Access showed SUBSCRIBED on the 2nd cablecard but something like "MISSING AUTH_REKEY" on the card with the missing channel. A Call into Comcast and they re-sent the signal. My card now says UNKNOWN under Conditional Access but it appears to have all channels (I didn't test all 250+, but spot checked a dozen or so, and USAP is back).


If you see this problem again, I'll bet you can "fix" it yourself by going into test channels for that particular cable card. If you still have the unknown status, do it and see if you are back to Auth: Subscribed.


----------



## g808 (Sep 14, 2006)

With my problem was that simple. Both cards are subscribed, but no go on tuner 1 even without the CableCARDs.


----------



## nmurphy (Nov 3, 2003)

Although I have not had much of an opportunity to watch TV or recorded programs, the installation of the cards seems to have solved the problem. The RCN tech also checked incoming signals and basement signals, and reported that they were within the range. Lowest was -2. I believe -10 through 10 is the range they look for. 

I will hopefully have more time to view the shows recorded and watch some TV tomorrow. If the problem is ongoing, I will report back. But for now, it seems resolved.


----------



## pntsoptional (Aug 18, 2006)

Time Warner Cable/Former Adelphia

I've been having the missing channel problem for the past week. I received all my channels on tuner 1, but Im missing channels 30 - 39 on tuner 2. These are all basic analog cable channels including SCI-FI, CNN and MTV. This also isnt an intermittent problem. I never get those channels on tuner 2.

When I originally received the box I set it up without the cable cards for about a week as an analog tuner and everything worked fine. The missing channel problem started about two days after I received my second set of cards. Initially, I assumed it was a card problem, but Ive had yet another replacement card put in to no avail. I then tried using the tivo with no cards and tuner 2 still wont receive channels 30  39, but tuner 1 works just fine. Im also getting the missing channels in my bedroom.

At this point I assumed it had to be the unit, so I called Tivo CS. She told me that theyve actually heard of this problem and that the engineers were working on it. Long story, well long I was polite but firm and she was able to authorize an exchange. I didnt ask for an exchange, but I demanded a better fix than try a different cable card.  

Now I get to wait ten days (her estimate) for the replacement to arrive and see if that fixes anything. Weeeee!  

Sorry if I rambled, I just though the info could be useful to those having a similar issue.


----------



## g808 (Sep 14, 2006)

I'm very close to forcing a replacement too.


----------



## LostTivo (Nov 1, 2004)

They are telling me they won't replace mine because some of the channels work. I am currently on hold with a supervisor. If that is really the case, I will just return the thing for a refund and they will lose a customer.


----------



## g808 (Sep 14, 2006)

LostTivo said:


> They are telling me they won't replace mine because some of the channels work. I am currently on hold with a supervisor. If that is really the case, I will just return the thing for a refund and they will lose a customer.


I'm very close to that point too.


----------



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

LostTivo said:


> They are telling me they won't replace mine because some of the channels work. I am currently on hold with a supervisor. If that is really the case, I will just return the thing for a refund and they will lose a customer.


If they are pretty certain that it's a software problem, then there may be no reason for an exchange.

But if the engineers believe this is a hardware problem, not authorizing an RMA is unreasonable.


----------



## ThePlungerMan (Sep 13, 2006)

jfh3 said:


> If they are pretty certain that it's a software problem, then there may be no reason for an exchange.
> 
> But if the engineers believe this is a hardware problem, not authorizing an RMA is unreasonable.


Whats unsettling is they (Tivo), doesnt have a way (sure fire way) to determine if its the cards or the box.


----------



## LostTivo (Nov 1, 2004)

ThePlungerMan said:


> Whats unsettling is they (Tivo), doesnt have a way (sure fire way) to determine if its the cards or the box.


My problem is definitely not related to cable cards - I don't even have them hooked up anymore. The problem is standard analog cable channels.


----------



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

ThePlungerMan said:


> Whats unsettling is they (Tivo), doesnt have a way (sure fire way) to determine if its the cards or the box.


We don't know that.

Tivo engineering has been silent on this issue so far. I have a problem ticket open with some very specific questions that might help end users determine whether the partial recording problems they are seeing are related to CableCARD hardware, CableCARD authorizations or Tivo software. It's possible that some of the "no tune" problems are related.

If I hear anything back, I'll post on TCF. Until we have a fix (or at least more explaination on how things are supposed to work), Tivo is going to have a much higher rate of return than they may have otherwise expected.

I believe the partial recordings issue (and possibly this one) is far more likely to be a software / error handling problem than a hardware one. (If things work the way I think they might, then the problem may related to handshaking between the Tivo and the CableCARDs).


----------



## g808 (Sep 14, 2006)

> If things work the way I think they might, then the problem may related to handshaking between the Tivo and the CableCARDs


If that is true, then why do I not get channels on tuner 1 (tuner 2 is fine) without the CableCARDs?


----------



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

g808 said:


> If that is true, then why do I not get channels on tuner 1 (tuner 2 is fine) without the CableCARDs?


I was talking about the partial recordings issue.

It seems to me that there are at least two problems here and that the random tuner loss can be a symptom of either one.


----------



## bocktar (Sep 24, 2001)

I've been working with my cable company this week to resolve this issue, and I think it may have been fixed this morning.

My first issue was marginal signal strength. The tech indicated that he was shocked I was getting any digital channels at all given how bad the signal coming into the house was (another testimonial for the GOOD sensitivity of the S3 tuners).

After that was resolved, the problem of missing channels persisted. We initially tried restarting the box, pulling power, removing the cards, powering back up, and starting the official setup process over. This did not have any effect.

Our next attempt was to restart the box, pull power, remove the cards, power back up, and start the official setup process over with the cards swapped. This did not have any effect.

Our third attempt involved restarting the box, pulling power, removing the cards, powering back up, and activating a brand new card in the first slot per the official setup process. This worked!

After that, the person at the headend decided to completely remove one of the "old" cablecards from their system (removed all knowledge that it ever existed), and then reprovisioned the card. We then activated it in the second slot per the official setup process. This worked!

As of this writing, I have a fully functional S3.

The field tech indicated that they had worked with three S3 installs in the past week, and that all three were experiencing the exact same problem.

At this time, the person at the headend suspects that the S3 may not properly handle channel mapping changes at the headend. The person at the headend indicated that they're going to do additional remapping in the near future, and we are going to treat that as a controlled experiment to see if this is indeed an issue.

I also want to add that I have been incredibly pleased with the level of support and enthusiasm from my cable provider. They geniunely want this to work. The field techs have been excited about getting to work with the new device. The person at the headend has been researching issues in forums and establishing contacts with TiVo. They've even ordered an S3 so that they can have a test unit in their office to work with.


----------



## g808 (Sep 14, 2006)

bocktar - What was your exact problem? My problem was that even without CableCARDs installed I could not get channels 35-53 to tune in on tuner 1 only. Tuner 2 would work fine with or without CableCARDs.

TiVo support finally just told be to exchange the box at Fry's, which I did this morning. I'll give the new one a try when I get home.


----------



## bocktar (Sep 24, 2001)

g808 said:


> bocktar - What was your exact problem? My problem was that even without CableCARDs installed I could not get channels 35-53 to tune in on tuner 1 only. Tuner 2 would work fine with or without CableCARDs.
> 
> TiVo support finally just told be to exchange the box at Fry's, which I did this morning. I'll give the new one a try when I get home.


My problem was that after everything was installed and working properly early last week, I intermittently (and then permanently) lost a cetain subset of my channels.


----------



## g808 (Sep 14, 2006)

g808 said:


> TiVo support finally just told be to exchange the box at Fry's, which I did this morning. I'll give the new one a try when I get home.


Just set up the new S3, ran the setup without the CableCARDs, and....IT WORKS!

I then added the CableCARDs, re-ran setup, and....IT STILL WORKS!!! All channels on both tuners. Hope this continues to work.

Looks like I was right, and there was a problem with tuner 1.

Now I have to setup all my Season Passes again. Minor issue for a working Series3. Good luck to everyone else with this issue.


----------



## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

g808 said:


> I then added the CableCARDs, re-ran setup, and....IT STILL WORKS!!! All channels on both tuners. Hope this continues to work.


 I thought seeing as you have a new S3 that you would have call in and re-provision the cablecards to a new host. Did you have to call cable co at all to get cablecards working with new S3?


----------



## nmurphy (Nov 3, 2003)

g808 said:


> Just set up the new S3, ran the setup without the CableCARDs, and....IT WORKS!
> 
> I then added the CableCARDs, re-ran setup, and....IT STILL WORKS!!! All channels on both tuners. Hope this continues to work.
> 
> ...


That is very good to hear. I am waiting for my replacement S3, and even though the installation of cablecards seems to have resolved my problem, I still get the gray screen - pause, pause, pause - then the picture comes on.

The pauses seem to be getting a little longer - but that may be me holding my breath.


----------



## ThePlungerMan (Sep 13, 2006)

I talked to Tivo support about the random channel loss today. She said, it most likely is the card. She said some cards are slightly thicker than others and maybe it doesnt fit correctly. Told me to schedule an appt. w/ my cable company . To try,,,, remove and reinsert card or try another model of card. She seemed to be confident that will work. This will take me past my 30 day take back if I cant get them out soon. 
I have a signal strength of 95 than bam gone for 45 minutes then on again. This for the ball game today on espnhd. Which when these channels go,,,,, my other dvr moxi is getting said lost channels. I cant ever get tnthd channel,(the grey cc screen comes up to activate)
I deserve to be on their payroll; for all the crud Ive had to go thru to get this s3 to work. 4 visits for the cable cards to work, now this. 
This product will probably go down in my history of bought items to be at the top of the list for unbelievable happenings. I wish I never bought this, and waited for to see if it works right.
Thinking of taking it back and waiting for them to come out with a better version or updated software to help them determine. If its either, cards, software, hardware. Not a happy camper.


----------



## juancho (Sep 14, 2006)

I am having the same problem described here, but with tuner 2. I am sure this is a tivo problem.


----------



## g808 (Sep 14, 2006)

moyekj said:


> I thought seeing as you have a new S3 that you would have call in and re-provision the cablecards to a new host. Did you have to call cable co at all to get cablecards working with new S3?


Nope, that's not how Comcast here works. Once they wipe the card and re-program it with the channels I should receive that's it. It's tied to the card, and not to the TiVo. I never had to provide the host info to Comcast when I activated the cards. Just the serial number of the card.

ThePlungerMan - Hang in there. I can say from experience it's worth it. I had to endure countless phone call and online support chats along with several Comcast visits to get all this working. My issue was definitely with the S3 box. I did all the troubleshooting to prove it. I went as far as removing both cards and the problem still was there. That's what prompted TiVo support to give up, and tell me to exchange it.


----------



## jmelby (Oct 6, 2006)

I'm having the same problem as described by the original thread author and some others here... specifically with the analog channels only--channels 25 - 50 are displaying the searching for signal message most of the time. Sometimes, some of the channels work on one end of this range or the other, but the channels in the middle never work. 

The cable company came out today to take a look and reported that my signal strength is strong, and when we test through the tivo on the digital channels, it is at 96. There is not a digital version of the basic tier channels, so the signal strength check doesn't work there... which lead the Tivo tech support service rep to think that it is a problem with the cable card not being properly authorized for these channels... correct me if I'm wrong, but the analog channels are not running through the cable card, I thought. 

The other strange thing about this is that everything was working fine on these channels before I got the cable cards installed, and afterward as well--for about a week. The channels also work just fine with the cable connected directly to the tv. 

In any case, the cable company is coming back Monday to replace the CableCards (they were out today). Until I saw this thread, I thought this was a signal problem for sure, but now I'm certain it is Tivo... do their techs read these forums at all? Hopefully this is a software problem so it won't require a new box (I'm sure Tivo is hoping so too). From what I read here, it seems like replacement is the only thing that fixes it?


----------



## LostTivo (Nov 1, 2004)

jmelby said:


> There is not a digital version of the basic tier channels, so the signal strength check doesn't work there... which lead the Tivo tech support service rep to think that it is a problem with the cable card not being properly authorized for these channels... correct me if I'm wrong, but the analog channels are not running through the cable card, I thought.


You are absolutely correct and I had the same argument with a Tivo rep. Here is the best thing to do - take out the cable cards and run guided setup again with cable only. If the channels still aren't working, call Tivo and tell them that. If I were you, I would just ask for a supervisor. I wasted 5 hours on the phone with them and got nowhere. 

They were supposed to call me back today so of course they didn't and instead I called them and after waiting on hold for 30 mins was told that the techs won't get around to it until Monday. i told him I wanted to exchange it and he said that wasn't possible.

If I hadn't transferred my lifetime over, I would just return it at this point. The service has been awful and as nice as this thing is if it were working, its just not worth the hassle I've had to endure. I've now had the box for close to the 30 days and it has never worked. I've had the cable company out 5 times now and spent probably close to 8 hours in all on the phone with Tivo -- all while I pay for the HD stuff from my cable company that I can't even view. I figure best case scenario, Monday they tell me to exchange and I will have to wait another 10 days to get a new box. What a joke.

:down:


----------



## BigFrank (Sep 21, 2006)

Arg.

I'm experiencing this on tuner 1 as well. channels from around 50 - 70. 

Has anyone yet determined if hardware or software is the likely culprit?


Frank


----------



## pnrmurph (Oct 6, 2006)

Add me to the list of people who have this problem. I have had my Series 3 for about 2 weeks and my CableCard install is this Sunday the 8th. So yes, I don't have cable cards and the problem is affecting certain analog channels, particularly the higher numbered ones. I just noiced the problem last night. Like the others have reported it only seems to be on one turner, although I haven't figured out which one yet. For the problem channels they either display a gray screen or a gray screeen with a message about Tivo trying to tune the channel. In some cases, the channels eventually appear properly. The lower analog channels and in-the-clear QAM channels seem ok on both turners. Everything tunes in fine on the other TVs. With my CableCard install on Sunday, this isn't good.


----------



## g808 (Sep 14, 2006)

BigFrank said:


> Arg.
> 
> I'm experiencing this on tuner 1 as well. channels from around 50 - 70.
> 
> ...


Seems like a hardware problem to me. After my exchange the new unit is working fine.



> Add me to the list of people who have this problem. I have had my Series 3 for about 2 weeks and my CableCard install is this Sunday the 8th. So yes, I don't have cable cards and the problem is affecting certain analog channels, particularly the higher numbered ones. I just noiced the problem last night. Like the others have reported it only seems to be on one turner, although I haven't figured out which one yet. For the problem channels they either display a gray screen or a gray screeen with a message about Tivo trying to tune the channel. In some cases, the channels eventually appear properly. The lower analog channels and in-the-clear QAM channels seem ok on both turners. Everything tunes in fine on the other TVs. With my CableCard install on Sunday, this isn't good.


You can test by flipping between the tuners. Once the CableCARDs are installed, then you can use the Test Channels function to see which tuner it is.

For me (San Jose) it seems like Comcast doesn't tie the card to the device. I removed the cards from my defective box, and transfered them to the new box and they just worked. Comcast seems to send a signal to wipe out previous data from the card, then re-authorize it with whatever programming you should be receiving.


----------



## pnrmurph (Oct 6, 2006)

Thanks. Knowing Cablevision, I will probably need to pay another $46 to have them move the cards to a new box if I need one.


----------



## John949 (Sep 16, 2006)

I am not using cable cards but just discovered that I am having this problem too. I finally noticed that my now playing list was missing shows that should have been recorded. So far only analog channels have had the signal loss problem when trying to record season passes.


----------



## pnrmurph (Oct 6, 2006)

I did a little more investigation of this problem. One interesting thing I noticed last night was that on my SciAtl 8300 many channels were displaying a "Not Authorized" banner. It included pay channels like HBO, but also basic cable channels like SciFi. Interestingly enough was that the analog channels I am having trouble tuning on the Tivo were channels showing an "Not Authorized" on the 8300. My SciAtl 4200 box in the bedroom was fine. When I rebooted the 8300 box, all the channles I am supposed to get came back, so I am wondering if this was just a stange coincidence.

The other thing I noticed is that appears that Cablevision of Hauppauge now digitally simulacasts all the analog channels on the basic tier. I wondering (and hoping) that when I have my cable cards installed, the Tivo will just tune to the digital versions of the problem channels and there won't be an issue. It appears that the problem tuner is Tuner 0, by the way.

When viewing the diagnostics screens on the 8300 and 4200 I have, I noticed that the signal levels were a bit high. I have a splitter/amp with a variable gain so I turned things down a bit. Even after that I was noticing breakups on CBS-HD when viewing that channel on the Tivo, but this channel was fine on my TVs built-in QAM tuner as well as the SciAtl boxes. I then split the cable from the pole with a two way splitter so one side goes to the Tivo and the other to my splitter/amp. Now that the Tivo is bypassing the splitter/amp, the breakups on CBS-HD are gone, but I still have the problem tuning certain analog channels on the Tivo's "Tuner 0".

It seems that the tuners in the Tivo are a bit sensitive and that if you don't have the singals just so, you are going to have issues. From reading the various threads here on CableCard issues, it seems many were related to the signal levels.

My cable card installation is tomorrow, so I will begin my prayers and sacrifices now to ensure that all goes well.


----------



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

For what it's worth, I haven't had tuner loss or a partial recording that I'm aware of since the cable company fixed some equipment that was responsible for hot signal levels.

I still think there are problems with error handling that need to be addressed on Tivo's end though.


----------



## LostTivo (Nov 1, 2004)

If anyone cares, I had a friend come over today with his Series 3. Tried some analog channels on mine - as usual, they were gone. Hooked up his Series 3 and everything worked fine. Unplugged it around 20 mins later and hooked my Series 3 back up and half my channels were missing again. I called Tivo and am exchanging my system. Hopefully that takes care of everything as I am tired of messing with this thing.


----------



## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

I'm beginning to wonder what TiVo's willing to do to facilitate a return and full refund if they, along with the cable company, cannot get this working.


----------



## colincd (Apr 25, 2006)

Does getting a replacement Series 3 Tivo fix these missing channel problems?


----------



## John949 (Sep 16, 2006)

After some experimenting I decided to return the S3 and get a full refund. The S3 would not detect or lose the signal for several analog channels. My TV and computer Tuner card has no problems with these channel using the same cable. I tried to get the Tivo to work with and without an amplifer. Both tuners in the Tivo failed to pick up the signals. After an hour with Tivo tech support I came to the conclusion that Tivo's position is to blame the cable company even though the cable works just fine for the other four tuners in my house.


----------



## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

I assume you purchased your TiVo through TiVo. I went through Circuit City and I fear that they'll charge me a pretty hefty restocking fee even if we can definitively determine, as you did, that the problem is that the S3 is inherently defective.


----------



## BigFrank (Sep 21, 2006)

Well, I exchanged my TiVo this weekend and my tuner problem seems to have not followed onto the new Tivo.. yet....

I'll give you an update if this status changes.


----------



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

jfh3 said:


> For what it's worth, I haven't had tuner loss or a partial recording that I'm aware of since the cable company fixed some equipment that was responsible for hot signal levels.
> 
> I still think there are problems with error handling that need to be addressed on Tivo's end though.


So much for this - had another problem Saturday night.


----------



## msenko (Oct 9, 2006)

I also had missing analog cable channels on just one tuner. Most channels between 7 and 40 were either completely missing or would drop out constantly. The second tuner was fine except on channel 38 (ESPN), which would drop out every couple of seconds. I don't have cable cards, so I ruled this out as a possible cause immediately. I did lots of tests with and without amplifiers, splitters, and attenuators with no improvement. I've never had problems with the TV's tuner or with my S1. I was within 30 days of purchase, so I exchanged the unit at Fry's and so far so good. Both tuners receive all channels on the new unit.


----------



## slocko (Mar 5, 2004)

So there seems to be a batch of defective S3s??????


----------



## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

It's too expensive for there to be these kinds of problems, given such a short window to get them working correctly before losing the right to return them. Comcast has tried three different cable cards in Slot 2, and with all of them the TiVo is missing lots of channels. It shouldn't be this hard.


----------



## g808 (Sep 14, 2006)

colincd said:


> Does getting a replacement Series 3 Tivo fix these missing channel problems?


It did for me. It really depends on your exact problem. I did a lot of troubleshooting to rule out cable signal and/or CableCARDs as the root cause.



> After some experimenting I decided to return the S3 and get a full refund. The S3 would not detect or lose the signal for several analog channels. My TV and computer Tuner card has no problems with these channel using the same cable. I tried to get the Tivo to work with and without an amplifer. Both tuners in the Tivo failed to pick up the signals. After an hour with Tivo tech support I came to the conclusion that Tivo's position is to blame the cable company even though the cable works just fine for the other four tuners in my house.


Sounds like you have the same issue I did. You didn't want to just exchange it for another one? It would most likely solve your issue since it sounds like a hardware problem.


----------



## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

Bought two S3s from Amazon, and both units have analog tuner problems. Analog cable only, no CableCard.

Unit #1: No problem with one tuner. For the other tuner, it could not get channels 2-6 after the unit warmed up. Tried several cycles.

Unit #2: No problem with one tuner. For the other tuner, it could not get channels 2-6 when the unit was cold. Tried once only.

Based on my observations, there is a temperature dependency.


----------



## colincd (Apr 25, 2006)

Anybody who has gotten TIVO to replace their Series 3, what did you say to the CSR to get them to send you a new one?
Did you have to go round and round with them?


----------



## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere. Without CableCard, is there a way to show which tuner I'm using?

I did an experiment last night. After powering up, both tuners worked fine for channels 2 to 6. I scanned for digital channels, and then one tuner could not find channels 2 to 6. After a while, both tuners worked again. Hard to reproduce the result without knowing which tuner I was really using.

My theory is still on temperature sensitivity. Scanning for the digital channels generated more heat in the tuner circuit, so the more problematic tuner no longer worked for the low analog channels. Having two out of two S3s with the same problem seems to indicate more systematic problem than just my units.


----------



## LostTivo (Nov 1, 2004)

colincd said:


> Anybody who has gotten TIVO to replace their Series 3, what did you say to the CSR to get them to send you a new one?
> Did you have to go round and round with them?


Yes, they told me they couldn't exchange it since some of the channels worked (don't ask me how that works). I wasted over 8 hours on the phone with them and probably 10 different phone calls wasting my time. Finally, I had a friend come over and we swapped boxes. His worked fine - mine didn't. Called them and told them and despite that - still had to jump through hoops and finally they told me they would exchange it.


----------



## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

LostTivo said:


> Yes, they told me they couldn't exchange it since some of the channels worked (don't ask me how that works).


I would have asked the CSR how he/she would feel about buying a TiVo that works for even numbered channels only.


----------



## ThePlungerMan (Sep 13, 2006)

After 4 tech visits to get the cards to work then losing channels from time to time, and then losing ALL but a couple channels today, Im fed up. This is gross, absolutely horrendous. Threads that go on and on and on about troubles. Im bummed, I wanted it to work. Im taking it back, (have 2 days left) Gonna wait till Tivo seems to have a clue on whether its the cards fault or the Tivo. Im not getting stuck in-between Tivo and the cable company pointing fingers at each other while in the meantime I foot the bill.


----------



## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Very strange.... while I've had abomitable interacations with Tech Support, the Customer Service folks I've worked with (four, in just the last two weeks) were all, consistently, polite, courteous, helpful and accommodating.


----------



## pinrail (Dec 17, 2005)

I was having the same problem. TiVo Support tried to tell me it was the cable card at first, so I had the cable company come out and swap out the cablecards. Still no improvement. Then they told me to get a signal booster. The cable company tested the signal strength, but it was very high, almost couln't be any stronger. 

So then I removed the cable cards and redid the setup, and still channels 35 - 58 didn't come in. So even though tivo support didn't believe me, something was wrong with the box. 

I took the Tivo back to Fry's and got a new one. The new on works 100%. 

The thing that gets me is that the support guy that i talked to acted as if he had never heard of this before. I pointed out this forum and said there seems to be a lot of people having the same issue. His comment was that they don't monitor the boards and they have nothing to do with the forums. (then why have links to this community from your website) 

So if your having this issue also, i would suggest just returning your tivo and getting a new one. The second one for me seems to work great.


----------



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

pinrail said:


> The cable company tested the signal strength, but it was very high, almost couln't be any stronger.


If the cable signal strength is very high, that could cause problems as well.

Have them make sure that it's as close to 0 dBmv as possible.


----------



## pinrail (Dec 17, 2005)

jfh3 said:


> If the cable signal strength is very high, that could cause problems as well.


Well the new tivo seems to deal with it ok.


----------



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

pinrail said:


> Well the new tivo seems to deal with it ok.


Just because the box "deals with it" doesn't mean it's a good thing.

It's your $800 - if you don't want to make sure the cable company is feeding it a very hot signal, be my guest.

If the cable company told me that things were on the high end (e.g. hot), I'd have them get it down to a decent range ASAP. From -5 to +5 should be reasonable, I'm sure others more knowledgable than I can chime in.

Mine was originally something like +17 and the cable tech near about had a heart attack. Now it's +1 after they fixed some faulty equipment.


----------



## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

jfh3 said:


> It's your $800 - if you don't want to make sure the cable company is feeding it a very hot signal, be my guest.


For an $800 box, it should be able to handle the signal as well as other less expensive TiVos. I've never had any tuner issues with other TiVos until the S3. I have already sent one back for exchange. I could not reproduce the problem with my second unit last night, so maybe I'll keep it. Perhaps TiVo concentrated on the digital tuner and did not pay much attention to the analog tuner.


----------



## TivoDoctor (Mar 8, 2003)

I believe it is a problem with the analog tuner. I had a Series 3 Tivo that I was using to tune only 3 digital stations and 1 analog station with an antenna. Initially I had no problem tuning the analog station, but then it would only come in intermittently. Eventually, I could not tune the analog channel (35) at all. I called Tivo to tell them I was returning the box. They agreed to return the lifetime service to my series 1 and refund my $199 transfer fee. I returned it to Circuit City and there was no restocking fee.


----------



## s2kdave (Jan 28, 2005)

ThePlungerMan said:


> ... I cant ever get tnthd channel,(the grey cc screen comes up to activate)...


I had my cable guy come this morning to fix a cable card. I have Time Warner in San Diego. I also didn't get TNTHD as well as DHD with the same grey screen. The cable guy said that I won't get those unless the cable co enters in a code on their side for me to receive them. He called to double check to see if the code was there, sure enough it wasn't. He added it and they worked right away. I think he called it an RF code or an HF code.

David


----------



## colincd (Apr 25, 2006)

colincd said:


> Anybody who has gotten TIVO to replace their Series 3, what did you say to the CSR to get them to send you a new one?
> Did you have to go round and round with them?


Called TIVO Support today and am getting a replacement S3.
Hope it works or my wife will kill me..


----------



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

c3 said:


> For an $800 box, it should be able to handle the signal as well as other less expensive TiVos. I've never had any tuner issues with other TiVos until the S3. I have already sent one back for exchange. I could not reproduce the problem with my second unit last night, so maybe I'll keep it. Perhaps TiVo concentrated on the digital tuner and did not pay much attention to the analog tuner.


You have clearly missed the point.

The Tivo may run fine with a hot signal being fed to it, just like it may run fine if the fan stops.

But it's still not a good idea to stress the box if you don't have to.


----------



## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

jfh3 said:


> You have clearly missed the point.
> 
> The Tivo may run fine with a hot signal being fed to it, just like it may run fine if the fan stops.
> 
> But it's still not a good idea to stress the box if you don't have to.


is there a simple way or cheap meter that one can use to check signal levels?


----------



## BigFrank (Sep 21, 2006)

Well, this happened to me again - All my digital and HD content from cable (antenna is fine) stopped coming in. Black screen on all those channels.
A reboot fixed the problem. 

This is *definitely* a TiVo bug.


----------



## old64mb (Apr 11, 2005)

Just got the S3 I bought for dear ol' mom from Amazon today, and it's having the reported problems with KRON (4) and KGO (7) analog SD here outside SF, no CCs or digital cable involved...sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. I'm going to see if I can narrow it down a bit based on what other people have mentioned. Also not running the b update yet, but will see what happens when that's in.

On the bright side, the tuners are certainly better than her Trinitron's; a couple of weak channels (one that she's not paying for!) are coming in much better.


----------



## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

BigFrank said:


> Well, this happened to me again - All my digital and HD content from cable (antenna is fine) stopped coming in. Black screen on all those channels.
> A reboot fixed the problem.
> 
> This is *definitely* a TiVo bug.


while I think it's most likely a flaw on TiVo's end. It MIGHT be a cablecard issue and rebooting the tivo gives them the kick that they need.

I wonder, for example, do TV's with cablecards keep the card slots on all the time or only when the tv gets turned on? If the cards are only "on" when the tv is on, then they get "rebooted" regularly but with tivo being 24/7/365 the cabelcards would get no such oppurtunity.

We all know of certain hardware/software configurations that require periodic reboots.


----------



## BigFrank (Sep 21, 2006)

MichaelK said:


> while I think it's most likely a flaw on TiVo's end. It MIGHT be a cablecard issue and rebooting the tivo gives them the kick that they need.
> 
> I wonder, for example, do TV's with cablecards keep the card slots on all the time or only when the tv gets turned on? If the cards are only "on" when the tv is on, then they get "rebooted" regularly but with tivo being 24/7/365 the cabelcards would get no such oppurtunity.
> 
> We all know of certain hardware/software configurations that require periodic reboots.


True. True. When I said *definitely* I knew I would regret it. I should have said *very very likely*.

Yes, its possible that the cablecards could get into a bad state all on their own. However, I suspect that this is not the case -- and even if it were, the TiVo could easily remedy the situation by reinitializing the cards (or, if the code is architected that badly restart itself) when this problem occurs.

I suspect this is just a bug that TiVo has not yet caught and they need to address it. I am trying to decide if I want to take the time to call in an incident.


----------



## jdmass (Dec 1, 2002)

After a few weeks of working great, last night I suddenly started experiencing loss of a few analog channels that were previously fine (Charter cable channels 31, 32, 33, 36). This is only happening on Tuner 1. The other tuner continues to receive them. 

So first thought is a cable card problem, but I'm not so sure because of one VERY strange experience that I haven't yet able to reproduce:

I tuned into channel 33 (TNT) and left it there to see if the display would "kick in" eventually. After about 5 minutes no change, but I noticed that there seemed to be a buffer of data (green bar when "play" is pressed). So I rewound a bit and the buffered show displayed properly! As long as I stayed prior to real time --even by a few second-- the picture displayed, but if I jumped to the end, the display was black!! Later I tuned to another channel and then tuned back, but the behavior was not the same -- picture was black, but no buffer was being recorded. 

Again the other tuner displays no similar problems.

Should I try swapping the cablecards between tuners to see if the problem follows the card? If I do, will this screw up my cablecard authorization?

I'm going to try to reproduce -- If it is recording into the buffer, then this would seem to indicate a Tivo bug.


----------



## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

BigFrank said:


> True. True. When I said *definitely* I knew I would regret it. I should have said *very very likely*.
> 
> Yes, its possible that the cablecards could get into a bad state all on their own. However, I suspect that this is not the case -- and even if it were, the TiVo could easily remedy the situation by reinitializing the cards (or, if the code is architected that badly restart itself) when this problem occurs.
> 
> I suspect this is just a bug that TiVo has not yet caught and they need to address it. I am trying to decide if I want to take the time to call in an incident.


you have moto or SA cards?

I have moto and *knock on wood* have had no issues related to getting channels (there's some copy protection weirdness going on though...).

Seems in a coupkle threads the SA cards do weird stuff like get stuck in loops when people check the cablecards info screens. Makes me think the SA cards are somewhat less staple in the S3.


----------



## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

jdmass said:


> After a few weeks of working great, last night I suddenly started experiencing loss of a few analog channels that were previously fine (Charter cable channels 31, 32, 33, 36). This is only happening on Tuner 1. The other tuner continues to receive them.
> 
> So first thought is a cable card problem, but I'm not so sure because of one VERY strange experience that I haven't yet able to reproduce:
> 
> ...


sicne it is getting recording but not displaying it sure sounds like it tunes just find but there is a tivo bug so it doesn't show real live.

Unless you know that your system doesn't "marry" the cards to the host ID (apparnetly some do and some dont)- I woudn't swap cards. Could make a mess...


----------



## johnandjulie13 (Oct 17, 2006)

Hello All:

I received my S3 right at the beginning of the month. As I already had a cable card in my television, I moved the card to the Tivo. There were no problems with reinitialization (through Comcast) and the unit worked great. Then, about a week later, all of the analog channels become b&w and snowy. Resetting didn't work but unplugging and repowering did work. Unfortunately, the problem would keep recurring.

After about a week, Comcast arrived with my second cable card and the 2nd tuner worked fine, for about 48 hours. Once again, all of the digital channels come in fine while the analog channels are in b&w and snowy.

On my third call to Tivo, they offered an exchange and I am now awaiting a replacement. Based on my experience with this unit, I would agree with those that say the problem is with the Tivo's analog tuner. I hope this was a manufacturing problem and not a design problem. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the replacement unit will not have any problems.


----------



## gsusong (Oct 17, 2006)

Tonight I came home from work and the front of the Tivo said it was recording Boston Legal and Criminal Minds.

I pushed the live tv button and it showed info for criminal minds, but no picture. I pushed the live tv button again and it showed the info for Boston Legal, still no picture.

I went into now playing and played the Boston Legal that was recording. There was only 2 minutes of the show recorded. The info said that it was 36 minutes into the show.

I went back to now playing and even though the front of the unit claimed criminal minds was recording, it wasn't. I then went back to live tv and saw the info bar at the top with criminal minds info. I pressed up channel and told it yes, stop recording criminal minds. It stopped recording both shows. (actually, it wasn't recording criminal minds, it just said it was.

I moved to Boston Legal and pressed the record button and got the last 15 minutes or so of Boston Legal.

I went to recording history and there was a "not recorded" listing for criminal minds. The reason it showed was, "the video signal was unavailable on cable in".

I tested the signal strength on each card and had 97%.

What is going on? There used to be 3 things you could always count on, death, taxes and that the Tivo would have your shows. There are only 2 left.


----------



## seredyns (Apr 10, 2003)

I saw the EXACT same thing last night with NCIS. I finally got both cablecards working with all channels this past weekend and now this!



gsusong said:


> Tonight I came home from work and the front of the Tivo said it was recording Boston Legal and Criminal Minds.
> 
> I pushed the live tv button and it showed info for criminal minds, but no picture. I pushed the live tv button again and it showed the info for Boston Legal, still no picture.
> 
> ...


----------



## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

gsusong said:


> Tonight I came home from work and the front of the Tivo said it was recording Boston Legal and Criminal Minds.
> 
> I pushed the live tv button and it showed info for criminal minds, but no picture. I pushed the live tv button again and it showed the info for Boston Legal, still no picture.
> 
> ...


I'm thinking that it's a cablecard issue. THe directv units behaved similarly when channels were not authorized or if they get cut off in the middle.

For example- with a directv dvr powered by tivo- if the box tried to record a channel that you were not auhthorized it would show a black screen with the rred dot. But the recording length at completeion would be zero (or maybe it wouldn't even show up in NOPL- I forget).

If you record a channel that was only on for a period it would behave similarly. For example- I used to set my HR10 to recort the HD baseball feed of my local team. I would set it for the 3 hour window PLUS pad for 90 minutes in case there were extra innings. So the tivo would try to rtecord for 4.5 hours. But as soon as the game was over Directv would kill the channel so the recording in NPL would be equal to the exact amount of time the channel was on.


----------



## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

MichaelK said:


> I'm thinking that it's a cablecard issue. THe directv units behaved similarly when channels were not authorized or if they get cut off in the middle.


It may be a cablecard issue for some folks, but not in general. Like others in this thread, I have no cable-cards and am encountering the problem.

I just got my S3 last night (not even subscribed yet!). I had intemittent problems with channel 42 last night; today it's a block starting at 43. Taking a closer look at it today, it's always tuner 0 that has the problems. (Note my two tuners are labled "0" and "1" in the diagnostic info under system information. Am I looking somewhere different from most people in this thread who are talking about tuners 1 and 2, which I assume are the cablecard numbers?) Tuner 1 has no problem bringing in any of the channels (at least, none that I've observed so far).

I have 4 other TiVos and 3 TV's which can all tune the stations at various places in the house. I've done straight swapping at this location - disconnecting the cable input of the S3 and connecting the cable to a S2DT. Both tuners on the S2DT can change to the channels.

I would pretty definitely say it's a hardware problem, but it may be one they can get around in software. It's clearly not a Cablecard problem in my case!


----------



## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

I talked an hour ago with an excellent TiVo support person (whose name I didn't catch, and who I was prepared to laud in the promised post-call survey, which never happened (TiVo: you should fix this - I just heard some random beeps and noises and was then dropped)).

As of the end of last week, this was a problem they had formed a group to look at, and they were trying to collect information from affected people. So if you have the problem and haven't reported it recently, you might want to try a call - there's now officially a place for them to gather everybody's experiences together.


----------



## PPC1 (Sep 16, 2006)

CrispyCritter said:


> As of the end of last week, this was a problem they had formed a group to look at, and they were trying to collect information from affected people. So if you have the problem and haven't reported it recently, you might want to try a call - there's now officially a place for them to gather everybody's experiences together.


Which problem are you talking about? Are you talking about the partial recording issue, or the other issue some have reported where the tuner loses the ability to tune certain analog channels once the unit gets to warm?


----------



## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

PPC1 said:


> Which problem are you talking about? Are you talking about the partial recording issue, or the other issue some have reported where the tuner loses the ability to tune certain analog channels once the unit gets to warm?


The random channel/tuner loss (this thread). I would expect the partial recording issue might be related for some folks, but there's probably something else going on there as well.

The issue I discussed with tech support was specifically a tuner not being able to pick up a block of channels over analog cable. (I haven't noticed a heat relation myself, though a reboot seems to allow a channel or two to be tuned before things go bad again. Waiting half an hour with the TiVo off didn't help me)


----------



## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

CrispyCritter said:


> It may be a cablecard issue for some folks, but not in general. Like others in this thread, I have no cable-cards and am encountering the problem.
> 
> I just got my S3 last night (not even subscribed yet!). I had intemittent problems with channel 42 last night; today it's a block starting at 43. Taking a closer look at it today, it's always tuner 0 that has the problems. (Note my two tuners are labled "0" and "1" in the diagnostic info under system information. Am I looking somewhere different from most people in this thread who are talking about tuners 1 and 2, which I assume are the cablecard numbers?) Tuner 1 has no problem bringing in any of the channels (at least, none that I've observed so far).
> 
> ...


I think you are correct- there is certainly a tivo bug related to some of this. SOmeone reported someplace that LIVE tv was unwatchable but if he paused and was behind in the bufer if worked fine. That sure sounds like a bug to me.

But with all the cablecard stuff it's tough to say some of it isn't that.

I wish tivo would but in more debug or status info so you could check cablecard status and copyright flag info easily.


----------



## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

MichaelK said:


> I think you are correct- there is certainly a tivo bug related to some of this. SOmeone reported someplace that LIVE tv was unwatchable but if he paused and was behind in the bufer if worked fine. That sure sounds like a bug to me.
> 
> But with all the cablecard stuff it's tough to say some of it isn't that.


I have seen that without CableCards. After rewinding a bit, live TV worked fine again.


----------



## FL-Larry (Sep 26, 2006)

Had the same thing happen to me, but only seems to be on CBS for some reason. Last week CSI showed up as being recorded but all I had was a black screen with nothing recorded. Last night I tried to watch NCIS and had the same thing happen. When I hit live TV it showed a black screen on both tunners, when I hit channel up then back down the picture was there and was able to record from that point on. I don't know if it is related but this did not happen until after the Tivo updated to 8.0.1b.


----------



## yunlin12 (Mar 15, 2003)

I'm in San Jose (SF Bay area Comcast). My Studio 60 (KNTV channel 703 on Comcast) HD recording this week said it can not get any signal from the channel. In the NPL, I can see the show, saying 1:00 show, but when I hit play, it would jump to a screen with orange background saying no signal was found on the channel, so nothing was recorded.

The episode of Heros on NBC on the same HD channle just before it recorded fine. I don't know if these two recordings were recorded using the same tuner or not, since they are sequential, and I didn't program in any overlap at the end of the shows.

This is the first and only time it's happened. I never had problem picking up the HD local on Comcast, even when my cable cards were not initialized correctly, and can only see local channels, I always could get the HD locals.

SF Bay area's NBC local is also notoriously bad with their HD feed, last week's Heros and Studio 60 both had serious audio problem in the feed. But looking on Comcast forum for my area on AVS forum, no one's made a peep about any signal loss on studio 60, so I'm leaning towards a Tivo blip.


----------



## g808 (Sep 14, 2006)

yunlin12 said:


> I'm in San Jose (SF Bay area Comcast). My Studio 60 (KNTV channel 703 on Comcast) HD recording this week said it can not get any signal from the channel. In the NPL, I can see the show, saying 1:00 show, but when I hit play, it would jump to a screen with orange background saying no signal was found on the channel, so nothing was recorded.
> 
> The episode of Heros on NBC on the same HD channle just before it recorded fine. I don't know if these two recordings were recorded using the same tuner or not, since they are sequential, and I didn't program in any overlap at the end of the shows.
> 
> ...


I'm also in San Jose and my Studio 60 recording fine in HD (channel 703). Sorry, but it looks to be a TiVo issue.


----------



## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

c3 said:


> Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere. Without CableCard, is there a way to show which tuner I'm using?
> 
> I did an experiment last night. After powering up, both tuners worked fine for channels 2 to 6. I scanned for digital channels, and then one tuner could not find channels 2 to 6. After a while, both tuners worked again. Hard to reproduce the result without knowing which tuner I was really using.
> 
> My theory is still on temperature sensitivity. Scanning for the digital channels generated more heat in the tuner circuit, so the more problematic tuner no longer worked for the low analog channels. Having two out of two S3s with the same problem seems to indicate more systematic problem than just my units.


I was re-reading this thread and I didn't see your first question answered. Without cable-cards you can get tuner information by going to
Messages and Settings/Accounts and System Information/Diagnostics

For me, that consists of a couple of pages of data for each of tuner 0 and tuner 1, including channel, frequency, type of signal, etc. When debugging, I'm going to that page, then hitting live TV and changing channels, then hitting left arrow to take me back immediately to the Diagnostic page.

A question since you've been looking at temperature: what's the normal range for the S3? Searching doesn't yield anybody reporting it yet! Mine is showing 47C(Normal). (That's on the System information page, a screen or two down).


----------



## TexasAg (Apr 2, 2006)

Mine is usually 48C. It's OK up to 55C, I believe.


----------



## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

Update on my problem: I'm running analog cable only (no cable-cards and I disconnected the OTA input for now). Tuner 0 was not able to get channels 43-53 all of yesterday (tuner 1 was fine with them). Last night, tuner 0 suddenly stopped getting 25-41 as well. That's a much more serious problem for me: it includes most of the networks!

This morning I noticed in addition to not getting 25-42,43-53, tuner 0 was having problems with channel 16. It would get 16 for a split second every 2-15 seconds or so, quite randomly. The quality was excellent for that split second. The rest of the time the picture was a grey screen, with the "searching for signal" message popping up if it was a big gap between signal. Tuner 1 has no problems with channel 16.

Since a marginal situation like this is an excellent opportunity for debugging, I spent some time trying things. Basically I got no differences in behavior for anything I tried: rebooting, turning off for a while, disconnecting the OTA antenna. 

Perhaps most importantly, I got no differences when I inserted a 6db attenuator on the cable input. The marginal situation of channel 16 didn't change, the channels tuner 0 and tuner 1 got didn't change. To my mind, that just about eliminates signal strength as the cause of the problem. The fact that tuner 1 had no problems after attenutation means my basic signal is strong enough. If I'm correctly interpreting channel 16 as a marginal signal for tuner 0, then a 6db difference in strength should have some effect if the root cause is signal strength!

I'll call up TiVo later today and see if they want engineering to run any tests on it in situ. Otherwise, I'll just have to exchange it.


----------



## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

very telling- thanks for sharing your experience


----------



## ejennis (Mar 5, 2002)

CrispyCritter said:


> Tuner 0 was not able to get channels 43-53 all of yesterday (tuner 1 was fine with them). Last night, tuner 0 suddenly stopped getting 25-41 as well.


Last week I started having this problem as well, same set of channels too. Up until then my S3 was working just fine with 2 CC, it just stopped getting that block of channels on tuner 0. Called support and they escalated it up to Engineering level, I was supposed to get a call back on Friday with an update, but have not heard anything yet.

The strangest part was during the level 2 tech call, the guy had me try running guided setup again. During the repeat of guided setup, I went in and checked the channels on the CC config menu, the missing channels were now tuning. However, after I went to the other tuner to verify the problem was not over there, it was not, and came back, the missing block of channels was missing again.

-Eric


----------



## dbenrosen (Sep 20, 2003)

I experienced this problem for the first time yesterday. I was able to get channels below 13 and the HD channels of the local stations. All other channels were grey screens. Except, on one tuner it was recording something on Starz Action (channel 351 on my cable system), and that one was fine. Any other channel was out. Both tuners had the same channel problems, and I got 351 on both tuners. I was all set to call Cablevision but checked here first. A reboot fixed the problem, but that is not going to be acceptable if this persists.


----------



## r11roadster (Oct 24, 2006)

I am on my 2nd unit with this issue and am awaiting a call from them. Will call again tomorrow to see if there is an update. mine started in the 25-30 and 69-75 range it has settled down to one or two channels around 56. thing is when I tune to a digital channel on tuner 0 the problem channel moves up the dial. The longer it is tuned to digital the further up it goes. I'm just worried that it will move on down to a channel that I record on before this is resolved.

PS I tried that pause trick and the buffer does indeed fill up and display the channel, but there are thin white lines popping on the picture. If I FFWD to live it returns to the black screen.


----------



## dbenrosen (Sep 20, 2003)

I had the problem again last night, but I am fairly certain it is a CableCard issue in my case and not the TiVo. I went to the CableCard diagnostics page, and both cards listed the Authorization Status as CP Failure. I called Cablevision, and a reboot fixed it. They said they would replace the cards if the problem persists.


----------



## dbenrosen (Sep 20, 2003)

Happened again last night. This time Cablevision is coming out to replace my CableCards. I'll let you know if this fixes the problem. Has anyone had luck with a cablecard replacement?


----------



## old64mb (Apr 11, 2005)

Just an update...my non-CC OTA analog issue has now moved from the 4-7 range to the 30ish range on Tuner 1.

I wanted to see what others had come up with here before calling them, but will do so now and let you folks know what they say.

Update: CSR was nice, but also mentioned they hadn't had a call on this particular issue (no CCs, just analog with tuner drop out) - so if anyone else who is having this particular bug can confirm this and call them would be much appreciated.


----------



## hunterd42 (Oct 29, 2006)

Installed the new S3 a few days ago, and happened upon the Tuner 0 problem described by folks here. I'm currently using Comcast (San Jose, CA) analog cable. Tuner 0 won't reliably tune channels 30, 33, 35-41, and 43-53. Tuner 1 is much more reliable, but not perfect; it did once drop signal briefly. Symptoms are as described throughout this thread: gray screen, "Searching for signal on: Cable In", no signal lock on Diagnostics screen. If the tuner fails during recording live TV (data lock was previously acquired), then going back ~10 seconds from realtime shows the channel is in fact tuned, but with periodic interference in the form of thin white vertical bars and pops / clicks in the audio. If I change Tuner 0 to channel 79-1, which gets me NBC HD (703 for Comcast digital HD subscribers), stay there for about 20 seconds, and then tune back to a problem channel, then it will usually come in fine for about 20 seconds, but then flicker out.

There is also a temperature dependency. With the TiVo sitting in the TV stand (glass shelves, open back), it runs around 45C. If I remove it and stand it on its side on the floor ($800 tottering precariously!), then Tuner 0 often gets the lower problem channels. If I lie it flat on the carpet, then those channels drop out again. These changes in tuner behavior occur within only a few seconds.

It's interesting that channel 42 is fine on either tuner. Take a look at the standard Cable TV Channel frequencies -- or look at the Diagnostics screen -- and you'll note that its visual carrier is 12.5 KHz above 41 and 43. The same is true of 25-41 and 43-53, which are 12.5 KHz above the majority of other channels. These facts hint that the tuner problem is also frequency-dependent.

Update: By the time I talked with TiVo Customer Service on Tuesday, Tuner 0 had become worse, and was no longer tuning any channels 25-41 and 43-53. The CSR wasn't familiar with this issue (or that Tuner 0 exists), and went off to do some research. The tentative conclusion: there could be "something wrong with the internal splitter". Resolution: Return to retailer for exchange. Hooray for the 30-day return policy!

Hooked up the new S3 tonight, and so far no problems. Both tuners get all channels. We'll see how this holds up over time / temperature, and what happens when Comcast (eventually) installs CableCards.


----------



## rtmoore4 (May 12, 2005)

gsusong said:


> Tonight I came home from work and the front of the Tivo said it was recording Boston Legal and Criminal Minds.
> 
> I pushed the live tv button and it showed info for criminal minds, but no picture. I pushed the live tv button again and it showed the info for Boston Legal, still no picture.
> 
> ...


I have had the exact same problem since I purchased my unit. The funny thing, the same thing happened when I first bought my Mitsu TV two years ago. It took Mitsu about four months to finally release a firmware update to fix the problem. Fortunately, you can still use the TV without cablcard, but with the S3, that is the whole reason I bought it.

TiVo support has been less than helpful on this issue, despite someone posting that they have an internal "unit" to look into he problem. Nobody I've spoken to over at the tech support group seems to know anything about a special group to look into this issue.

Sadly, this unit is going back. My wife won't even use it anymore, instead prefering to go back to our S1, which work just fine, of course, but isn't in HD. 

Randle
S1, 300 hours, formerly lifetimed
S2, lifetimed

Update: TiVo is refusing to accept a return on my unit, because they say it has been 34 days since I activated it. Four days after the official policy and they won't budge an inch! They sell a defective unit, won't support it, and now won't take it back? Well, congratulations TiVo, you've just lost a satisfied customer. I used to be the huge TiVo supporter, but you have just turned me off. Never again will I recommend TiVo to a friend. Not only that, but I'm also not going to be buying any more units for friends. I've given away three TiVo units, the last one with one year of service, in addition to the three units I own, over my TiVo buying history. No more. Oh yeah, and I'm selling my stock. I'm starting to think the naysayers are right about this little company I used to believe in.

As far as where to go from here, they say they will only process an exchange for me. Well, I guess we'll see how many exchanges they go through (and shipping charges they have to eat) before they finally decide to either fix this problem or refund my money. I'm so disgusted with TiVo right now I could just spit.


----------



## rtmoore4 (May 12, 2005)

MichaelK said:


> while I think it's most likely a flaw on TiVo's end. It MIGHT be a cablecard issue and rebooting the tivo gives them the kick that they need.
> 
> I wonder, for example, do TV's with cablecards keep the card slots on all the time or only when the tv gets turned on? If the cards are only "on" when the tv is on, then they get "rebooted" regularly but with tivo being 24/7/365 the cabelcards would get no such oppurtunity.
> 
> We all know of certain hardware/software configurations that require periodic reboots.


In my case, the Mitsu TV does keep the card on all the time. That was the problem. There was something in the cablecard guide stream that was causing the TV to choke. Once Mitsu updated their firmware to reject whatever the malformed "packets" (for lack of a better term), the problem disappeared. Apparently, TiVo engineers need to take the Mitsu engineers out for a beer or something and figure this out.


----------



## rtmoore4 (May 12, 2005)

BigFrank said:


> I suspect this is just a bug that TiVo has not yet caught and they need to address it. I am trying to decide if I want to take the time to call in an incident.


Please do, Big Frank. The more of us that call in and complain about this issue, the faster they will address it.


----------



## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

gsusong said:


> Tonight I came home from work and the front of the Tivo said it was recording Boston Legal and Criminal Minds.
> 
> I pushed the live tv button and it showed info for criminal minds, but no picture. I pushed the live tv button again and it showed the info for Boston Legal, still no picture.


I had the same problem from time to time with the CableCard when it was installed in my TV, before the S3 came out, and I have experienced one loss of authorization on one card since I have gotten my S3. There have been several cases, however, where I experienced the problem and it did not appear to be an authorization problem.


----------



## colincd (Apr 25, 2006)

rtmoore4 said:


> Sadly, this unit is going back. My wife won't even use it anymore, instead prefering to go back to our S1, which work just fine, of course, but isn't in HD.
> 
> Update: TiVo is refusing to accept a return on my unit, because they say it has been 34 days since I activated it. Four days after the official policy and they won't budge an inch! They sell a defective unit, won't support it, and now won't take it back? Well, congratulations TiVo, you've just lost a satisfied customer. I used to be the huge TiVo supporter, but you have just turned me off. Never again will I recommend TiVo to a friend. Not only that, but I'm also not going to be buying any more units for friends. I've given away three TiVo units, the last one with one year of service, in addition to the three units I own, over my TiVo buying history. No more. Oh yeah, and I'm selling my stock. I'm starting to think the naysayers are right about this little company I used to believe in.
> 
> As far as where to go from here, they say they will only process an exchange for me. Well, I guess we'll see how many exchanges they go through (and shipping charges they have to eat) before they finally decide to either fix this problem or refund my money. I'm so disgusted with TiVo right now I could just spit.


This mirrors my issue.
I had these tuner issues, missing audio on some of the digital channels.
My wife and I are TiVo lovers, yet I knew I had to send the TiVo back to stay married to her. She was so upset that such an expensive item did not work.
I was over my 30 days by about four days as well, and they took it back.
I argued that they should start my 30 days from the first day I called TiVo support with issues and they agreed and took the boat anchor back.
Call back and try that.


----------



## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

I deliberately cut-off the back-and-forth stuff that TiVo wanted to try, and returned my S3, because I knew I had a hard limit for returning it. I'm not sure why they set the time limit so short.


----------



## donnlewis (Oct 27, 2006)

Comcast in Maryland. S3 dropping SD channels 2, 3, 4X, etc approx every day. Two SA cablecards. Reboot always temporarily fixed the problem (until the next time). Support had me repeat Guided Setup (!) and call back. When I called back, they asked a few more questions, then offered to replace unit. Will post when new unit arrives, to see if replacement solves problem of Random Channel / Tuner Loss.


----------



## Tapioca Dextrin (Sep 22, 2006)

I'm getting sort of the same problem with my S3. Last week it was fine. Then channels 31 and 32 went dead. But that wasn't the strangest thing. Channel 20 should be PBS. My S2 has PBS on channel 20. Cable pluuged straight into the TV has PBS on 20. 

And S3, I hear you ask - it's decided to give me MSNBC World (on both cable cards)  

Of course Tivo tech support claim it's a cable card issue


----------



## r11roadster (Oct 24, 2006)

But it may be a CC issue. if you have digital simulcast the S3 is tuning the digital channels mapped to the analog channel #. the tv and S2 are tuning the actual analog signal. your cable co may have them mapped wrong.


----------



## Tapioca Dextrin (Sep 22, 2006)

I just got off thephone with Time Warner. Amazingly, the tech knew about both Tivo and cable cards. After an hour, he said that Time Warner was sending me the wrong signal through the cable, but it would take a few days to get sorted out. At least I have most of my channels working.


----------



## Alfred vonCampe (Mar 29, 2002)

I haven't read all the replies in this thread yet, but I think I also have the problems described here. Everything appears to work fine on my S3 with two CableCARDs. But every so often (sometimes while I watch live TV, sometimes when my TiVo is recording something while I am not there), I get a completely black screen (no audio, no video). If this happens while I am watching live TV, usually changing the channel to a different channel and then back again fixes the problem. Of course, this is not very useful when I am not around. It happens on both HD and non-HD channels.

I think it is one of my CableCARDs, but I haven't figured out a way to determine whether the channel I am watching is using the CableCARD in slot 1 or slot 2. Is there a way to find this out? And are these symptoms the same ones that everyone else is experiencing? In case it matters, my cable provider is Charter. I have not called them yet as I am trying to get more information on this problem and determine whether it's a software problem (TiVo) or a hardware problem (CableCARD, Charter).

Thanks,
Alfred


----------



## pl1 (Jan 18, 2007)

Alfred vonCampe said:


> Is there a way to find this out?


 You can get some tuner information by using the S-P-S code S-P-S-replay-S and re-enter it to remove it. It will tell you what TiVo is doing. Shows up at the bottom of your screen. It might help.


----------



## Buran (Mar 29, 2005)

rtmoore4 said:


> Four days after the official policy and they won't budge an inch! They sell a defective unit, won't support it, and now won't take it back? Well, congratulations TiVo, you've just lost a satisfied customer.


In other words, you agreed to a 30-day return period, that was listed in writing at time of sale ... and now you're complaining when the company refuses to give you something you aren't entitled to? You knew the return window was 30 days. 34 is greater than 30. That's basic math. You are outside of the return window. Period. You should have called four days ago and didn't. Seems to me like you think the world owes you something. Hate to break it to you, but it doesn't. You want the company to give you something it never agreed to -- something that will cost it money. Would you complain this much if they accidentally billed you for less than the standard monthly fee you thought you'd have to pay?

By the way, I have this problem too (789 KETCDT keeps vanishing here on Charter in St. Louis) but I'm not raising an unwarranted fuss. It's probably a software glitch (especially since when it happened before, a reboot fixed it) and it will be fixed (although I too want to know how to avoid having to call; I'm hearing-impaired and that's a good reason to not want to have to call).

I'm looking forward to hearing of a solution in the future. Anyone who contacts TiVo, please add my report to the pile. I might be missing other channels in that immediate block (or more) but 789 is the only one I've tried to record from that suffers from this bug.


----------



## Alfred vonCampe (Mar 29, 2002)

It happened again tonight (well, really earlier today -- read on). Shortly after posting my previous reply, I turned on the TV for the evening. The screen was black, and when I hit the Play button, I could see that I had the usual 30 minutes in the buffer. The Info button (or the right arrow) brought up the information for the current show (Heores). However, when I went to the beginning of the buffer, the contents were from the mid day news at noon (I could tell because they show the current time on the screen)! This was from around 9 hours ago. Changing the channel up and then back down correctly tuned to the current show. At the same time, the other tuner was recording a show successfully. Very weird...

Alfred


----------

