Damn Tivo now has garbled video

Well it has been over 9 months since my last post regarding my Tivo woes.

I did finally get a replacement unit, but in order to get them to enable the network package that I ordered months before that, I had to withhold the return of my first faulty unit untill it was done.
Funny how that got them working, and more excuses about wrong email addresses and lost in the wrong queue...... all rubbish of course.

Of course the bad news is the replacement Tivo has exactly the same problems as the first. The picture breaks up every few seconds.

Given that the problem has now happened with 2 units, I thought it must be a problem with the incoming signal.

Well last weekend much to the amusement of my neighbours I re-did my whole antenna system including raising it another 6.5m on a guyed mast.

Everything about it is either new or checked, but although I seem to have reduced the problem, picture breakup still occurs.

It happens on every channel and I have checked the signal strength and it ranges from 85 to 99, depending on the channel.

I then read somewhere that picture breakup can be caused by a bad HDD and running out of buffering whilst trying to write to bad sectors. But I have had 2 units do exactly the same thing?

I also read that it can sometimes be apparent when using HDMI. I am still to try switching back to composite to see if that is the case.

So while I have improved things, I still have the problem, so any suggestions would be gratefully accepted.

Cheers

Rohan

The fact that you are getting similar results on two units and that it has been somewhat improved by changes to your antenna setup, does still point to a signal issue.

85-99 is actually quite high and may even be overloading the tuner.

Is there an amplifier in your antenna setup? try disabling it.

Peter.

I have had an amplifier in line in the past, but not for some time now.

I have also tried placing an antenuator in the antenna feed and played with all sorts of settings, way down to severe breakup and then no picture at all.

Nothing I try seems to work.

However if I take the same antenna feed and plug it directly into my digital TV, or any one of 2 STB's then they all work fine.

I'm down to last straws, I have the unit running from a UPS, perhaps that is my culprit?

Regards

Rohan

Does the UPS produce a clean sinusoidal output? If it is a square wave (or 'modified square wave') the harmonics may well be interfering with the TiVo. Try adding a ground wire to the TiVo case temporarily (or removing the UPS).

I have my two TIVOS on a UPS with no issues.

abount once a month I get garbled video and I need to reboot the unit to fix.


I have a full DIGITAL ONLY ANTENNA with DIGITAL ONLY Master Head AMP. RG6 QUAD SHIELD and 8 WAY SPLITTER

I have a 20 meter pole mast but I am behind a huge HILL. !

I also have my TiVo's running on UPS's, but I did have an issue with a UPS causing weird problems on an S1 TiVo a few years ago. Once I swapped out the UPS the issues went away.

Peter.