I've got a curious one, I think I know the problem, but I can't figure a solution.
I'm using my Tivo HD, had it for a few years, except for an occasional lag or hiccup in recording, it's been pretty good. Upgraded to a 1TB hard drive a while ago and the recording irregularities seem to have gone away. I used it on analog cable for a long time, and upgraded to digital cable cards (two S cards) a year ago or so. Cable cards seem to work fine, once I figured out what channels I really get, and turned off the HD channels since I didn't have an HD set to watch them on anyway. Then I upgraded my tube to a nice LED/LCD HDTV and changed all my season passes to HD channels where I could, OMG, why did I wait? So things were going fine, until..... Charter Cable recently went to SDV, lucky me. They came out and installed the tuning adapter, a Cisco (Scientific America) STA1520. It works as it's supposed to. They also installed an M card, and that seems to work fine, I can record two digital channels at the same time with no issues. But here's the rub. Lately with so few shows to record, Tivo may not actually change channels for a day or two, staying on one channel (in this case, BBC America to record Top Gear or Dr. Who). The problem is after about 12 hours, the video signal stops. Blank screen, Tivo reporting "this channel is not available" or something to that effect. If I change the channel up, it works, and back down to the original blank channel, and it's back on. What I suspect is something has a time out built in, either the tuning adapter or the switch at the cable company hub, and it stops the channel after some amount of time, about 12 hours. When Tivo goes to record something on that channel, it doesn't have to change the channel, it's already on the correct channel, but there's no signal, so no recording. It doesn't understand to change the channel and back again before recording. I've tried all the typical stuff, reboot Tivo, reboot the tuning adapter, etc. I've talked to Charter a bunch of time and all I really get is canned answers, no one I talk to actually understands what SDV is or how it really works, only the troubleshooting guides they have on the computer. So, who knows these systems well enough to hazard a guess as to what is actually timing out, if there is a setting change that perhaps Charter can make to the tuning adapter, the hub switch, or even to Tivo to avoid this issue. I have Tivo suggestions turned on so it would likely have recorded something else during the dead time, there by changing the channel for me, but it seems if you don't watch the suggestions for a while, it slows down the recording of them to one or two shows a day, or less. Glen
