Remote Help

Hey all,

I've had my tivo up and running for a few days now and everything seemed to be ok until I leave the Tivo alone for a few hours. When I come back and use the Tivo the remote control doesn't work. The lights on the remote flashes like it's supposed to and I've checked the batteries but the Tivo just won't respond.

I can control the tivo via the web interface with no problems. I've checked the ribbon that runs from the ir port to the motherboard and it looks fine.
Is there a setting I'm missing? Should the Remote Address be set to 0 (not set) or 1? Does that even make a difference?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers, Jeremy.

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Originally Posted by bigmal

I've had my tivo up and running for a few days now and everything seemed to be ok until I leave the Tivo alone for a few hours. When I come back and use the Tivo the remote control doesn't work. The lights on the remote flashes like it's supposed to and I've checked the batteries but the Tivo just won't respond.

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There are times that the TiVo can get stuck and one of the first things to stop is the remote.

Other things that can cause similar problems are another remote having a button stuck down constantly flooding the room with IR (Video senders have also been known to do this) or bright sunlight on the TiVo.

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Originally Posted by bigmal

Should the Remote Address be set to 0 (not set) or 1? Does that even make a difference?

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If you only have one TiVo then 0 is the default setting and should work fine.

Peter.

Mine did this a lot when it was 1st set up, seemed to be caused when I forced a daily call via Tivoweb, a few hours later, it would freeze. Stopped forcing the calls, and it's now a very rare event. (famous last words!)

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Originally Posted by tonys

Mine did this a lot when it was 1st set up, seemed to be caused when I forced a daily call via Tivoweb, a few hours later, it would freeze. Stopped forcing the calls, and it's now a very rare event. (famous last words!)

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There is a bug in the phone module of Tivoweb which causes the above problem. If you follow the instructions from UpgradeToTiVoWebPlus this contains a 'fixed' phone module which should reduce the chances of this occuring.

Peter.

So last night after I posted the original message I got annoyed, gadgets can do that to me :-) and I re-imaged the hard drive (NZ image). Booted it up and when it came to the guided setup the remote still wouldn't work. So I unplugged the tivo and went to sleep and angry man.

I get up in the morning, plug the tivo in and it boots to the guided setup and the remote is working flawlessly. I leave it going all day come home and still it's going great. So I'm smiling again cause the Tivo is working but still a little frustrated that the problem is so difficult to diagnose.

Anyway, thanks for everyones help/feedback on that one. I'll upgrade to Tivowebplus (if I can just understand the tutorial) just to be on the safe side.

Cheers, Jeremy.

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So last night after I posted the original message I got annoyed, gadgets can do that to me :-)

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You may need a little anger management then as a TiVo will require some patience from time to time. Failing that I do supply spare parts at reasonable prices.... ;)

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and I re-imaged the hard drive (NZ image). Booted it up and when it came to the guided setup the remote still wouldn't work. So I unplugged the tivo and went to sleep and angry man. I get up in the morning, plug the tivo in and it boots to the guided setup and the remote is working flawlessly.

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Unless the NZ guys have done something out of the ordinary I've never had a TiVo be non responsive via the remote at the start of Guided Setup on an OzTiVo image.

It may be something to keep an eye on, or at least consider another remote (or know of someone close you can borrow one from) just in case it happens again (and no that isn't a sales pitch to sell you one!) :)

cheers

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bigmal

So last night after I posted the original message I got annoyed, gadgets can do that to me :-) and I re-imaged the hard drive (NZ image). Booted it up and when it came to the guided setup the remote still wouldn't work. So I unplugged the tivo and went to sleep and angry man.

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Tivoweb would have nothing to do with failures that early in GS.

As Darren suggested, it may be a faulty remote or flaky batteries.

While it's difficult to check what codes are being sent, you can easily test at least that some IR is being sent by the remote when it's not working by looking at the remote through a digital still or video camera.

Peter

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Originally Posted by Darren King

Unless the NZ guys have done something out of the ordinary I've never had a TiVo be non responsive via the remote at the start of Guided Setup on an OzTiVo image.

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Nahhhh we ain't done nuthin :P
Out of the zillion I've tested / imaged with our images, I have had no issues with various remotes in Guided setup.
Also if I remember correctly a Tivo in Guided Setup mode responds to any remote address and will set itself to that address.

Well now my Tivo remote hasn't worked for 2 days. I upgraded to tivowebplus and still the remote is dead :-(

Since upgrading to Tivowebplus the web remote doesn't work either (ugh - it's one of those days).

Time to start trying new parts....

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Originally Posted by bigmal

Since upgrading to Tivowebplus the web remote doesn't work either (ugh - it's one of those days).

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The image version in TWP can be flaky, try clicking the text link at the top of the page (or http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/sendkey/?type=text) and just press the text labels.

Peter.

Update - I left the tivo turned off for the day while I was at work. Came home, turned it on and it's going great guns.

Next time it locks up I'll try covering up the ir receiver for a while to determine if it's a flooding issue.

Something strange i did notice the other day was that when I was pushing the directional buttons on the tivo remote (when the tivo wasn't responding) the sky ir receiver flashed as if it had received a request to change channels. That shouldn't happen should it? I have a new pace sky decoder DS230NNZ.

I'm determined to get to the bottom of this problem. I'll post my results for those who're interested.

Glad to hear it's working again.

Being in Oz I'm not familiar the the sky box you mention, but I do have other gear (S2 TiVo for example) that flashes every time any IR Signal is received regardlesss of the type of remote used. So you Sky box might be similar. I would be worried if the TiVo remote made the Sky box actually do something.

Peter.

*Update*

The remote problems continued for days. Sometimes it would respond other times it wouldn't, so I ordered a new remote from Darren King.

A couple of days before the remote arrived I edited rc.sysinit.author and commented out endpad, tivoweb and tivoftp (I know this should've been my first point of call but I'm a newbie:) ). Since stopping those programs from running the tivo has been going great, no remote lockups for a week. When the new remote arrived that worked fine too.

I'm running the latest NZ Image with a 512mb cachecard. For thorough testing I'll start tivoweb, tivoftp and endpad one at a time and try to determine which one was potentially causing the lockups. I won't do this testing for a while tho as I want to enjoy having the tivo running for while :-)

Thanks to everyone who helped me on this one.

Jeremy.