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Diagnosing sickly Tivo HD

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  • Diagnosing sickly Tivo HD

    Hello,

    I'm new here and am hoping someone can help me pinpoint what may be wrong with my Tivo HD.

    Symptoms:

    Blocky/pixelated channels, worse on HD channels, low signal strength via diagnostics (varies between 0-44), utterly insane number of RS errors, high-pitched whining noise

    I had the cable guy come out to check the line, no problems with signal on other devices. My Premiere gets a 93% on that same exact line and plays fine. I also replaced the cable card and hdmi cable, just to rule out possible issues there. It made no difference.

    As for the whine, it seems to come from the HD, but the kickstart test comes back as passed. I also did some recording tests, and recorded content seems to play correctly -- meaning pixelated recordings show those same exact pixelations, it's not random, as one would think would occur with a bad HD. And old recording before I had any problems still play fine.

    Some of the capacitors on the power supply look a teensy bit 'puffed up' near the top, but did not notice any blown capacitors on the power supply itself. No clicking sounds or problems starting the Tivo.

    So, any ideas? I thought maybe due to the RS errors, I would need a line filter/attenuator thingy, but that probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense if the signal strength is coming in at 44%.

  • #2
    That all sounds exactly like a power supply problem to me. Any raised middle is a problem. See this page for more info:

    http://www.weaknees.com/bps
    Been here a long time . . .

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    • #3
      Originally posted by WK-Michael View Post
      That all sounds exactly like a power supply problem to me. Any raised middle is a problem. See this page for more info:

      http://www.weaknees.com/bps
      Thanks for the reply. Hoping that is the issue, as that won't be that hard to fix. I just found the signal strength issues sort of weird. Then again, I guess if power is low somewhere it may mess things up.

      As for the whining HD, I think I will replace it, as that whine is sort of annoying. Is it okay if I just swap a Hard drive from another Tivo HD straight over? Or do I need to do anything special to it? The system itself has lifetime, but expect that's tied into a chip on the motherboard or something, not saved info on the HD.

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      • #4
        Just do a "clear and delete everything" on the hard drive after you move it.
        Been here a long time . . .

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