Audio dropping out

[woz_331]

Hi there, not sure if this is the right forum, been a while since I've had anything to ask.:)

I have a Sony SVR-2000 TiVo running OzTiVo 1.6 Philips (installed 1.6 fresh from image, and have done update_oztivo to put it to latest image as at today). I bought it in Sep 2005 from the US and it has the original 30GB Quantum disk as well as a 300GB Seagate that I installed a few weeks after getting the TiVo. It's plugged into a Teac HDB840 set top box using S-Video.

Up to now, everything's been peachy.

However, about 2 days ago I noticed that the audio would just randomly drop out. At first I suspected this was the set top box, because a channel change would fix it for a while, but I realised that the audio would come back in that gap between the TiVo saying it had changed channels and the STB actually doing the change, so this led me to believe it must be TiVo related. I plugged in my iPod in place of the STB audio to verify this, and found I would still lose sound with this hookup. So, there appears to be some elusive problem with the TiVo.

I have found that if I unplug the S-Video connection for a few seconds then reconnect it, the sound comes back momentarily. I have taken a video of what happens: 3.3MB Quicktime 7 H.264 (http://warwickbrown.net/tivoaudiodropout.mov) (there was a sort of click sound right as the audio dropped, but I was talking over it)

Sometimes it can take ages for the sound to drop, but right now it is happening near immediately.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what it might be? I guess my first thoughts would be failing drives or perhaps a broken audio chip on the motherboard, but frankly I'm quite stumped. I haven't tried re-imaging or anything yet, thought I'd be better to post here and see if anyone had any pointers.

Thanks!:D

[Skolink]

I wouldn't rule out software/HDD as being the issue. Pulling out the S-Video cable probably has the same software effect as changing channel, with the audio inputs being muted (so you don't hear random noise), then unmuted once channel change complete or video input restored.
Get rid of the old 30Gb drive, and just install on the 300Gb as a single drive.

[woz_331]

Update of sorts.....earlier this evening the picture completely broke down and the audio was working fine. It looked like when your digital TV reception is playing up, but plugging the STB directly into the TV proved that TiVo was the source of this, not the STB.

I'm not sure whether that makes it any easier to diagnose. I'll run diagnostics on the drives when I get a chance in the next few days and probably do a fresh image.

[Darren King]

As Skolink mentions, check the hard disk and rule this out before suspecting anything else. Even just try another small (5GB and up) drive as a completely different hard disk as a test.

I will say however that if it is still running one of the original hard disks that has unknown amount of hours use before you purchased the unit and you have been running the TiVo fairly constant since 2005 then it will be hard disk related.

[woz_331]

Thanks for replying Darren.

I have swapped the hard disks out and put the image on a fairly new one, booted it up, and the problem remains.

What other possibilities are there? Is this a mainboard problem? Might it be time to say the hard goodbye and buy a new TiVo HD?

[Darren King]

From what you have tried it would most likely be a motherboard issue. I can't diagnose any further remotely, sorry.

Your options? That's up to you. The Series 1 is getting old and can do just standard definition and only record one program at a time. But then on balance you can still feed it external video from a Foxtel box (no external video input on a TiVoHD) and the old TiVo's are still repairable and have many years of life left yet if you can live with it's video limitations as mentioned above. They *are* slowly being replaced with people wanting more but then there are also still hundreds out there with people still very happy using them and I'm always happy to keep the hardware working as long as people still want them.

Then again if you only use your TiVo for free-to-air recording (ie not Foxtel) then the TiVoHD is a very nice piece of kit and a few hardware and software hacks are starting to emerge for it which make it even more attractive.