Tivo Freezes and Sound cuts out...

Hi Guys,

I bought my philips HDR120 TIVO some months ago from George in Eksys.
I installed the oztivo image (1.4), and went thorugh the setup.
As soon as I started the TIVO up I saw there was a little 'jerky' pictures, this would go away if i reboot the system, but re-appear again, sometimes after 5-10 minutes, other times after a few hours.
I tried some recordings, and thought I was in heaven when I was able to watch the beginning of the recording perfectly, but then I tried to fast forward and the problems started.....I was not able to get it to play back normal again, the picture was just jumping fortha and back, and lots of artifacts....this happened on all the recordings i made...it didnt even help to restart the decoder....
Even if i did not fast forward, the picture would eventually start staggering and LOTS of artifacts would appear, plus the sound would also dissapear.
To keep the house in peace, the TIVO was disconnected for some months so I could figure out what to do.

A few days ago i took the old TIVO out again, re-imaged the harddrive and tried again. Much to my dismay, the picture is still jerky when watching live tv...I tried a recording, and to my suprise the video and sound was working perfectly for about 40-50 minutes..then all sound cut out and picture was getting more and more artifacts...but it was not unwatchable. I kept watching through my recorded game without sound in fear of that oif i tried to restart the recorder, the recording would be unwachable again (like it did the first time around). At the end of the game, i actually found out that the whole system had locked up, the remote didnt work at all, had to disconnect the system.

I just read that alaskadude had similar problems with the sound cutting off after 40-50 minutes, but his problem was related to his airnet card.
I dont have a airnet card, Im actually not sure which card I have ( either cachecard or turbonet i thing) Can I find out from inside the TIVO ?

So my two problems that has to be fixed is the constant jerky video in live tiv playback ( especially if I try to pause/play live tv ), and the sound cutting off on my recordings.......

I thought the problem might live with the old 20gb maxtor drive inside it, and I am planning to change it out for a newer 200gb one...but I just thought I could ask here on the forum to see If I could get some points to check out before I fork out the money for a new hdd, just to find out that the problem will stay the same ;)

So please guys, if you have any info that could be valuable to me, please let me know !! :)

Have a great day!!

Regards

Arve

Hi Arve and welcome.

This sounds like a classic case of the hard disk being faulty, as are most of the fixes for the problems yours is exhibiting especially if it is the original 20GB unit that came with the TiVo. The symptom of sound cut-off with an airnet is exclusive to an airnet and not a wired network card, and it does not accompany with pixelation or lockup - just loss of sound so you can rule that out completely.

My suggestion is go and get that 200GB hard disk and give it another go. If after this you are still experiencing problems, contact George who will then put you in contact with me to organise local warranty service which I do for all of George's TiVo's if it was sold with a warranty and still within the warranty repair period.

If you do not want to get a new hard disk first then you can at least try imaging up another small hard disk (anything over 2GB will do) and see if you get anything different. You want have much recording time, of course, but it will rule out hard disk related issues provided the test hard disk is known to be in good condition.

Thanks for your helpful info Darren. :)
I'll run down to the shops to get a new 200gb one as soon as I can to test it out :)

Btw, Any suggestions for disks who would suit the TIVO ?
I was thinking of getting a 200GB Seagate 7200rpm 8M Cache IDE HDD....

Thanks again Darren....

Arve

Quote:

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I was thinking of getting a 200GB Seagate 7200rpm 8M Cache IDE HDD....

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Out of everything you can get that is the standard "weapon of choice" of most TiVo's I see, although these days people are paying the few extra bucks and getting the 250GB version. Just make sure it is Parallel IDE and not SATA as the TiVo can't hook up SATA hard disks.

5 year warranty on seagate too! :)

Hi guys,

Well I ran down and bought myself a new 250GB Western Digital drive a couple of days ago ( they had ran out of Seagate ). I image the drive and put it in the TIVO.
First time the guided setup crashes after selecting video input....just reboots the TIVO every time I try...so I re-image the drive and voila.. I can complete guided setup without hassels :)

The TIVO seemed to be running fine, no jerky picture in LIVE TV or anything...I tried a recording, and the first 1 hour 45 minutes was excellent, no problems at all. Then the picture got REALLY jerky, I mean jumping back and forth all the time, making it unwatchable. Sound also cut out around this part...Restarting the TIVO and resuming playing dosent change anything....

After this, LIVE TV works fine, but the TIVO is hanging all the time ( remote dosent affect it at all ), well actually I dont know if it is hanging or not, cause I could see it recording a show as planned this morning, but i still could not get any menus up with the remote ..???
Just tried to access tivoweb and its not responding....

Anyone have any ideas of what I could try to make the tivo more stable ?:)

Thanks for your time !

Cheers

Arve

Sorry to hear you are still having problems.

Just a thought now that hard disk has been ruled out: What type of network card is installed in the TiVo? Is it one that says near the RJ-45 ethernet cable connector "TV-LAN" or similar?

If so, try removing the card totally or disconnect the network cable and see what happens. I've seen a few of these cards be problematic causing lockups and the like.

Ok, Darren, I will check what kind of card it is when I get home...
What about disabeling TIVO web, as I read around the forum that it might cause some crashes...? In that cas how would I go about disabling it ?

Not sure, as I don't dabble in software. In general though TiVoWEB won't cause the problems you describe with that many lockups or picture problems.

Just out of interest, you did not alter the standard 127MB swapfile size at all?

Hi Darren, no I didnt touch the swapfile size.....has that been known to cause problems ?

Yes it has if not done correctly. But if you left it at the default 127MB for a 200 or 250GB hard disk this is fine and not your problem. I still suggest to remove the network card and see if this makes any difference.

I've checked the network card in my tivo and it is a X-Factor 1.0,
any known problems with this card ?

I re-imaged my drive again yesterday just to try again, so I will see how it goes today and the next few days....if the sound keeps going off, and the tivo keeps crashing, i guess i'll try to remove the x-factor card to see if that might be the case...:confused:

I've never known the X-Factor to cause problems, no. However you have nothing to lose by trying all the same.

I put in another drive but this proved to be much worse than the original. Crashes at least once a day, sometimes 2 or 3 times in an hour! However, because I was busy, I never got around to swapping the drives back again, and for whatever reason, my Tivo is virtually trouble free now. Same drive that was causing all the issues but now all is good. The trouble just seemed to 'go away' after a couple of weeks. My guess is bad sectors that have now been used and passed.

Sorry I can't explain why this is, but maybe perseverance is the key (or laziness) :)

Phil

Hehe much the same as one of my tivos here. Sometimes the sound cuts out (but it is fixed by doing a channel up/down). After a week or two it goes away again and I don't see it for a few months. It doesn't happen too often now so I haven't worried much about doing any more investigation.

Too busy with house DIY anyhow ;)

ZollyMonsta