Tivio V4 gone Mental

[brianhu]

Our Tivo V4 is doing funny things.  Over the past few weeks it has lost internet and not recovered itself, lost all 30%+ recordings we had and now is trying to find shows to record and is recording all those three times and trying to stop  us using live TV.  I has been stuttering on recordings for ages so the hard drive is probably nearly dead but we were trying to watch as much as possible before it actually died.  It looks like that time may well have come sooner than we hoped.

I gather we cannot get a replacement V4 box and will have to accept a V6 one.  We have another V4 box in our daughter's room on a separate cable that is working well and has a lot of stuff recorded so want to keep that.  We also have a M350-500 VM Broadband on another cable running in cable modem mode to an Asus router so connection to a V6 box by wifi would be easy to do.

Both my wife and I currently have Covid, so would not advise an engineer visit, so can a replacement box be arranged to be sent by courier for me to fit myself?

[SpacePhoenix]

Failed TiVo boxes are replaced with V6 boxes, which require a separate Virgin broadband connection (the old TiVos have a built in modem).

[japitts · Accepted solution]

There's never been a "V4" TiVo, but from the sounds of your description you have a legacy TiVo (https://www.virginmedia.com/care/tv-fault/which-tv-box ) which is indeed replaced by the newer V6. It's a much quicker, much newer box with more recording tuners & streaming apps - the only difference is the lack of an inbuilt modem and hence a requirement to connect via Ethernet (recommended) or WiFi to your homehub to provide that broadband connection.

As a way of testing the hard drive, you've not mentioned issues with live TV so I presume that's OK. Try pausing live TV for a short time and watch delayed - this is also a recording and uses the HDD in the same way.

There is no reason to swap any equipment that's working, it's only a faulty box that's replaced. Box replacements are usually done by engineer visit - amongst other reasons, it gets the faulty kit back in the repair loop quicker. But this doesn't apply to TiVo > V6, which I'm sure the forum staff will confirm when they respond to this thread.

[brianhu]

Thanks a lot for that help. Live TV is fine, as you suggested and the stuttering on playback is intermittent so difficult to reproduce - it just happens at least once a day when watching recorded programmes, but no pattern to when it is going to do it. What was new was the self inflicted loss of over 30% recorded occupancy when it decided to do what looks like a factory reset overnight on standby without any command from me at all. Before that, the first serious issue that came to light last week was the loss of internal internet when we went away on holiday that meant that all recordings until the re-connect had oddball numbers instead of names. I went through the re-connect process and left it to see what would happen to the actual and programme recordings. That was when the box decided overnight to dump everything and start from almost blank. As the box is at the moment it is still fine with live TV working normally but with all the recorded programmes and series links gone and nothing showing at all on the series links listing or future recordings, something is seriously wrong with that side of things.

[brianhu]

I shouldn't have said anything - tonight the box was recording a programme and we were watching another one on live. Part way through the live programme at about 21:30-ish the whole system froze completely. After waiting a little while to see if it would recover, I did a mains power reset. After the usual start-up sequence the live programme resumed live. Checking the recording that had been recording, it had re-started from the recovery time and I ended up with two recordings with a short missing part in the middle of the programme that corresponded with the frozen period.

I have now initiated a full "reset everything" from the remote to see if that clears the box behaviour tomorrow.

[japitts]

There is currently a known issue with the reset that I suspect you've used, a sticky post at the top of this forum explains - https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Virgin-TV-V6/Known-Issue-Clear-and-Reset-Function-V6/td-p/51613... 

Your TiVo is on its way out and needs replacing with a V6.

[Roger_Gooner]

I think it's possible that VM will send a tech to replace TiVos with V6s. This is actually a good thing as he can check cables and signal levels. He might replace your hub as well (my tech migrated my V6 to a 360 and swapped my hub 3 for a hub 5 even though my hub 3 was capable to supporting the M600 I was upgraded to).

[Joseph_B]

Hey @brianhu,

Welcome back to the Community Forums and thanks or the post.

Sorry to hear about your issues with your TiVO box, I know you stated you were going about preforming the reset again, did this go about fixing the behaviour on the box are are you still experiencing the same issue?

Joe

[brianhu]

Hi Joseph.  Thanks for coming back.  We have not been using it a great deal for recordings because of a lack of trust really.  However, the box does seem to have settled down somewhat since the factory reset.  We are still occasionally  experiencing some lock-ups although one of these was on live TV.  I would suggest that we leave well alone for a little while to see if any of the other behaviour returns as we begin to use it more heavily again.  If nothing else, we should be clear of our Covid infections in a few more days so at least could accept a service visit if it becomes necessary later.

[Tom_W1]

Hi @brianhu thanks for your reply here - we're glad to hear that the performance has improved for you!
If things do deteriorate please let us know and we can take things from there.

We do also wish you well in your recovery and hope you are at full fitness by now 😊

Many thanks