Damn Tivo now has garbled video

I'm struggling to find the words to describe the dismay I am feeling about my hunk of junk Tivo.

I have had (and am still using) a series 1 for many years and it for the most part works perfectly.

However I just cant use my Series 3 reliably.

If ever the power fails or I have to reboot it, it won't start and I have to leave it off for 24 hours before it will recover.

Going to some menu items causes it to lock intermittently then of course I can't reboot.

And now the video has started breaking up, and of course rebooting it has caused it to not restart.

If I knew of an equivalent or better alternative I would run over the thing in my car.

Ringing support is like talking to children, who never call back or actually offer anything useful (like a fix or a new one).

I have been through all the signal strength garbage with no effect, I can alter the displayed signal strength from 98+ down to nearly nothing and it makes no difference. It's not too weak, It's not too strong all my other stuff works with it except the Tivo.

I feel completely ripped off.

Rohan

Do you still have the original drive in it and is it still under warranty?

Peter.

Yes it has the original drive.

It's only 8 months old.

I would gladly void the warranty (as it's useless anyway) to resolve the issue if I could.

Has there been enough data gathered to point to a likely culprit like the HDD for example?

Is it possible to get a new drive and load the original image on it?

Regards

Rohan

I only asked those questions to see if it was still under warranty and had not been voided.

Due to the number of issues you are experiencing, it may not only be the hard drive (but likely to be).

If I was you I would struggle through with support to get it swapped out.

You will need to push them for a swap out, and complain more about the menus locking up and not being able to reboot.

That should keep them off chasing signal strength issues (BTW 98 is quite high).

Peter.

Your right of course in the correct way of resolving the issue is with their support, but I just feel it's not worth it.

Do I feel ripped off, of course. Do I think they should fix it, absolutely. But going on my own experience and that of others here it seems to be an extremely painfull path to take, and that just replacing the disk myself would be much easier (assuming it's the likely culprit).

I just have the feeling that trying to get them to sort it out, will take me forever and then they are likely to either want to take mine and repair it (so I will be without it for sometime) or send me a "refurbished" replacement. I get a bit funny about getting someone elses ex-broken (and perhaps still broken) unit in place of mine that I paid $700 for.

I realise there is no guarantee, but if the feeling is the disk, then I might as well go ahead and change it. I found the WinMFS instructions which I assume will work for me?

BTW the WinMFS assumes you have a working disk to begin with, If mine is somewhat broken and I cant get the image off it, is there somewhere it can be obtained?

Regards

Rohan

A couple of things before you go that route.

If it is not just the drive that has become faulty you will end up with a TiVo that is no longer covered by warranty.

The TiVo reports it's drive details as part of the daily call, so if you connect with a replaced drive you do run the risk of not getting any assistance from them for the other hardware issues.

Hybrid do not repair your TiVo, they exchange it for another one. From the reports I have seen, the replacements have all appeared to be new units (the refurbs are sold on eBay via premium home theatre).

WinMFS is designed to be used to copy a TiVo Drive to a larger replacement drive. As long as there is no non recoverable corruption on your drive it will work.

Peter.

Ok, I'm just about at the end of my leash on this one.

I have been constantly emailing Tivo for 14 days now (because that is the only way they can be contacted) and I hear nothing.

They are the worst company I have ever dealt with ever :mad:.

I have no option but to make a formal complaint against them with the Dept of Fair Trading.

How can a company have no way of contacting them for warranty?

I assume I will have to try and fix it myself.

I have been waiting over 7 days for a responce to my email to them too.

There must be a way to contact

Hybrid Television Services (ANZ) Pty Limited. 02 89861700

write a letter to

Hybrid Television Services (Anz) Pty Ltd
Ste 52/ 26 Pirrama Rd
Pyrmont NSW 2009

Are they going out of business ? Tivo profitable in Australia ?

I have stopped recommending Tivo to my friends due to their poor service.

Can you complain to TIVO US that Hybrid Television Services (ANZ) Pty Limited. are giving TIVO a bad name in AUS. Do they care ?

Charles

I got a reply today.

"We're sorry about the delay in responding - we migrated to a new support system just before Christmas and have also had a significant increase in customer enquiries over the holiday period."

Well, I finally received an email back from Tivo after 26 days. This is their excuse.

Thanks for your e-mail. We apologise for the delay in responding - your e-mail was incorrectly assigned to an unmonitored queue and so slipped through the cracks.

Yeah right every email I sent magicly ended up in the same place....... I think not. :mad:

However they just said they will be sending out a replacement unit.

11 days later I got it, after it was delivered to the wrong address (not Tivo's fault but Australia Post).

So I thought I would finally setup the Home Networking that I ordered in July last year, so I could get some of the recorded shows off, but guess what, no networking enabled on my account, even though I got an email confirming my order.

So now I have to email them again and get that sorted out. Hopefully that email won't get put into the too hard basket like my last 10.

Rohan

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.