Myriad of Series 3 Problems

[mac1077]

Recently my Series 3 TiVo has begun to act up. The first problem is the response time for a remote command. It sometimes will not work at all other times it will take up to 30 seconds before implementing the command. In addition, the sound will go out so you do not hear the station or the familiar TiVo bong.

I just rebooted it and the same long delays took place with the remote. In addition, the HD channels were intermittent meaning the sound and picture were choppy. When I tried to change channels to basic TV, it would not do it.

Any ideas on what is wrong?

mac1077

[WK-Michael]

We'd recommend two things. For the remote, see this info:

http://www.wkblog.com/2006/07/my_tivo_remote_stopped_working.html

and for the choppiness, see this:

http://www.weaknees.com/protect.php

[mac1077]

I don't know if you got my earlier reply so here goes again. The two fixes were not the right ones. I have identified another symptom. The problems seem to happen when watching or recording the HD channels. The stuttering moving to a freeze happens on the HD. In addition, a planned recording of a HD program lasted 3 minutes than stopped and the problems recurred. Any ideas?
Mac1077

[WK-Michael]

Then you very likely have a bad hard drive in there. Is it a stock unit? Is it under warranty? Is it from us?

[mac1077]

Hi Michael, It is a stock unit and I think still under warranty. I purchased it from TiVo (should have gotten it from you but didn't know about you). I will contact them. Out of curiosity, why would the problems start with HD channels?

Mac1077

[WK-Michael]

When you record HD, the unit (and especially the drive) is doing much more work than it does with SD broadcast. HD takes about 8x the bandwidth of SD.