Garbled picture or no sound

**Skolink** · 13-02-2010, 07:02 PM

The last few days we've an occasional problem where a program has no sound or the picture is all garbled.
I don't know whether it is broadcast this way or if it is the TiVo's fault.
I haven't seen this mentioned in the forums before. Has anyone else had this problem?
After reboot that particular recording is still garbled.

**Skolink** · 14-02-2010, 09:22 PM

After being transferred (and transcoded) with TiVo Desktop Plus the recording plays back fine.
Have lodged a TiVo support query and replied with the system info requested...

**petestrash** · 15-02-2010, 01:12 AM

Is this the original drive?

I have seen similar issues with some non AV rated drives. When used for playback there is some corruption or cannot keep up the stream to the buffer, but when transferring the show out of the TiVo error correction kicks in and works fine (would probably play ok if transferred back also).

Peter.

**Skolink** · 15-02-2010, 10:00 AM

Yes this is the original 160Gb drive, only about 2 months old. I haven't yet made any modifications at all to our TiVoHD. My wife has just complained that it doesn't have much space. I thought 60-120 hours would be heaps since we watch and delete, and don't keep anything long term. Strangely a 1 hour HD program is reported as occupying 5% of space, so that's only about 20hours total recording! 20 hours seems more consistent with how few programs we had recorded before it started automatically deleteing things. So anyway it means that I have permission to upgrade the HDD to 1Tb.

**Lurker** · 15-02-2010, 05:26 PM

I noticed my HD filling up faster than my Series 1 - when I got the Tivo Desktop installed I found out why - even though I selected record in SD and output at 720lines (old TV) it may still record in HD as the file sizes are much larger - a 30 minute show can range form 1GB to 3GB - my old S1 was just over a GB per hour at the same "quality " settings. So the 160 GB is not a lot :-)

**CheshireCat** · 16-02-2010, 12:40 PM

We too have seen the disappearing sound issue, though rarely.

I had occasional garbled video until I added a signal booster to the aeriel line.

On (rare) occasion we have a short total loss of sound, and slight video glitches, though this only seems to affect CTV8. I had one case of an entire recording from One being soundless, I didn't try to transfer it though. I have assumed this is because the TiVo needs a very strong signal and ours (even with booster) is insufficient.

We also have an occasional problem where when we switch the TV on, it cannot detect the HDMI signal from the TiVo. A quick power cycle of the TV fixes it, though.

**Skolink** · 17-02-2010, 11:40 AM

Interesting. Was the program on One the news a few days ago?
What was your signal strength (on the TiVo-signal-o-meter) before and after the signal boster?
Ours is 73 to 74 on most channels. Cant remember which mux is slightly higher at 76 sometimes.

The response I got from TiVo support was the usual crap about checking video and audio cables.

**CheshireCat** · 17-02-2010, 11:57 AM

The program on One was a couple of months back. It was one of the kid's shows.

I'll need to check the signal strength when I get back, but IIRC the before was in the 60s and the after is in the 80s or 90s.

**Skolink** · 17-02-2010, 08:48 PM

Where is the signal booster located, since you mention reception is still bad even with such high signal level? If it is immediately before the TiVo then it's a waste of time since the signal-to-noise ratio will be the same, the weak signal will just become a strong noisy signal. Put it up in the ceiling or on the mast immediately after the antenna if possible.

**CheshireCat** · 18-02-2010, 10:04 AM

After checking, I have some more detailed figures.

Without the booster, I get a signal of between 40 (which completely fails) and 65 (for TV3, which just about works).
With the booster, I get a signal ranging from 80 up to 100 (TV3). These work fine for all of the time, bar the very rare sound-loss problem and very rare CTV8 artifacts. I think the CTV8 issue is more due to their satellite-to-Freeview link than to our freeview reception, though.

The booster is currently connected at the ariel socket, although previously it was connected to a separate socket (the splitter is in the attic) which worked just as well.