Hi all,
I'm a new customer of TWC using dual cable cards on my Series 3 HD.
I've been troubled by audio dropouts from day one. I've read a number of threads that blame this on the Series 3's inability to handle a hot signal. Many of my channels read 100/36 db, and they definitely show huge numbers of uncorrected RS errors when this is the case.
Using the wisdom of the masses, I tried to fix this problem by dropping in some attenuation. This really did help quite a bit. My audio dropouts have nearly disappeared, but in order to make that problem go away, I sometimes drive the signal down low enough so that I lose channels completely, or get frequent pixelation errors.
I don't want to fight this problem forever, so I opened a case with Tivo support, suggesting that I would be happy to buy a new box without this problem if they were willing to transfer my lifetime service.
Of course, they were not willing to do so, and blamed the problem on TWC.
So I'm not sure what to do about all this. But it raises a number of questions.
1) Tivo support guy says "Whereas the signal does seem good (100 is a bit too high),". Is 100 really too high? Can a cable signal be too high, and if so, how does one actually verify this?
2) Tivo support guy says "those RS values should be as close to 0 as possible. With that type of feedback, it looks like there may be too much noise on the line". Yes, I know those values should be close to 0. Is this a symptom of the Tivo Series 3 HD problem with hot signals? How can I tell if there is actually noise on the line? Can TWC test this? Can I test it somehow?
3) Tivo support guy says "or quite possibly an issue with the CableCARD". I see basically the identical behavior on both Cable Cards. It doesn't seem likely that there is a problem with both cards. Any way to test this?
I don't mind sitting in the middle of a finger-pointing war between TWC and Tivo, if there is some way to drive it to conclusion. But I am afraid right now I don't have that possibility. If I get TWC to make a service call, I think they are just going to come out and say everything is good, and that my problems are all related to Tivo. If I do have a service call, I need to know what to do to get useful data out of it.
Has Tivo ever actually admitted that this problem exists? If not, is it a real problem, or just an urban legend?
One final note: Changing the settings for dolby output/PCM output has no effect on the problem.
- Mark
I'm a new customer of TWC using dual cable cards on my Series 3 HD.
I've been troubled by audio dropouts from day one. I've read a number of threads that blame this on the Series 3's inability to handle a hot signal. Many of my channels read 100/36 db, and they definitely show huge numbers of uncorrected RS errors when this is the case.
Using the wisdom of the masses, I tried to fix this problem by dropping in some attenuation. This really did help quite a bit. My audio dropouts have nearly disappeared, but in order to make that problem go away, I sometimes drive the signal down low enough so that I lose channels completely, or get frequent pixelation errors.
I don't want to fight this problem forever, so I opened a case with Tivo support, suggesting that I would be happy to buy a new box without this problem if they were willing to transfer my lifetime service.
Of course, they were not willing to do so, and blamed the problem on TWC.
So I'm not sure what to do about all this. But it raises a number of questions.
1) Tivo support guy says "Whereas the signal does seem good (100 is a bit too high),". Is 100 really too high? Can a cable signal be too high, and if so, how does one actually verify this?
2) Tivo support guy says "those RS values should be as close to 0 as possible. With that type of feedback, it looks like there may be too much noise on the line". Yes, I know those values should be close to 0. Is this a symptom of the Tivo Series 3 HD problem with hot signals? How can I tell if there is actually noise on the line? Can TWC test this? Can I test it somehow?
3) Tivo support guy says "or quite possibly an issue with the CableCARD". I see basically the identical behavior on both Cable Cards. It doesn't seem likely that there is a problem with both cards. Any way to test this?
I don't mind sitting in the middle of a finger-pointing war between TWC and Tivo, if there is some way to drive it to conclusion. But I am afraid right now I don't have that possibility. If I get TWC to make a service call, I think they are just going to come out and say everything is good, and that my problems are all related to Tivo. If I do have a service call, I need to know what to do to get useful data out of it.
Has Tivo ever actually admitted that this problem exists? If not, is it a real problem, or just an urban legend?
One final note: Changing the settings for dolby output/PCM output has no effect on the problem.
- Mark