Official AVS TiVo HD Topic! - Page 145

I went to native just to ensure i got the best pic quality and that was also the advice from the person who professionally calibrated my TV.

The eSATA on my HD TiVo is dying. I can tell this because I'm now getting weekly reboots and a terrible clicking inside the eSATA.

It's not dead yet though. It may be on life support.

As you are all aware programs are recorded to the HD with the largest capacity on it. That means I'm going to lose a majority of my programs.

I'm thinking about going in there and moving all the eSATA programs out of there into my hard drive on my computer and then transfering them back on an as need basis. Unless one of you Brainiacs has a better solution.

Any thoughts, ideas?

I think that is the best solution for you. Yes, you could use a DVD recorder, if you had one, to offload in real-time. But you would lose the HD/5.1 as everything would be converted to SD/2.0. If I were you I would crank up kmttg and get it going before it's too late.

Note: when doing the transfer, don't let the TiVo perform a record operation and manually set both tuners to dead-air channels. This maximizes CPU power available for the transfer. When I do that I get a sustained 13Mbps transfer rate from TiVo HD to PC.

Are you saying your eSATA HDD is failing? I don't know how many ways people may have tried this, but if your drive is still readable, couldn't you clone it to an identical model with appropriate software? I've used Acronis for that sort of thing, and more recently Easeus TodoBackup (though not on a DVR drive). And when I upgraded the drive in my TiVo HD, I used WinMFS (but not the copy-everything option). Have you read up on that?

If you're instead saying that the eSATA interface in your TiVo HD is failing (rather than the drive), then disregard this transmission.

Yeah. I was wrong. Generally, you want to use a fixed output. I use native, but then send the signal to a DVDO video processor which then sends out a fixed signal to the TV. This bypasses the HDMI handshake issue.

I thought this sounded interesting...

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2366250,00.asp

Well, I finally tweaked them and apparently they now have Mcards. (This has not be particularly important as we don't use the property in the winter.)

But now they say I need to subscribe to a package more than just basic cable to get a card. Otherwise, I need to pay $75 to own a card with no extra packages.

Is that legal?

Yes, cable cards are for digital cable, not just basic cable. Cable cards wouldn't do you any good if they were just used for basic cable, unless you have all your channels as digital channels.

Anyway it makes sense to have a digital package when you have cable cards. It will expand your selection of not only digital channels but HD as well.

In my area anyway tuner adapters have been a major #fail. Once a month like clockwork they would go into brick mode - that's when the light flashes 8 times and pauses.

Cable Card Support was who I was calling and they informed me that a fix was on the way (finally). Well, in my area it arrived a couple of days ago. We have a member in our local forum who fills us in usually the day before something happens and he told us the tuner adapters were going to get a fix.

Sure enough when I got up the next day the tuner adapter menu was on the screen informing me that I had a tuner adapter hooked up to my TiVo (duh!). But what that really mean is they did something to reset the TA. Both of my TiVo's were like that.

So hopefully that will put an end to what was for me a bi weekly call to Time Warner to get a signal sent to the TA. Seems to be working, I had a box that was due to go out on me last week and it's showing a solid green light.

But the TiVo HD does not provide any guide data for the HD locals which are provided with basic cable.

That is the principal reason I need a card.

Since this is a rental unit and I am there only a few weeks out of the year, it is not a big deal. But is is certainly a pain to have to check the analog channels, jot down the times and then set a manual recording for the HD locals.

I'm not positive, but I think there's an FCC waiver/reg allowing small cable TV providers to require you to purchase the CableCARD. It has something to do staying competitive because they're small and don't have the resources of a Comcast or TW for example. Something along those lines anyhow.

But do you know if most companies generally require that you subscribe to a higher package than just limited basic to be able to get a card, though?

That's what I've always wanted to know for sure, and I've heard conflicting information. I just use my TiVo OTA right now, but that would probably force me to sell it if I ever had to depend on cable for my locals-only (as that's all I'd ever be willing to pay for from cable - I have a hard enough time justifying what I pay for the crappy programming I get from Dish Network already, and cable's an even worse deal to me - especially at the prices around here).

Not sure about that, it's possible though, there's likely lots of individual waivers for small carriers. Comcast requires a higher package to rent their DVR, but they do provide CCs with just Limited Basic. That requirement by Chambers may not even been regulated by the FCC, they can set what ever requirements they want, it's their business. To be honest, I'm not sure of the exact regs on CCs, but I'll bet that Chambers is probably not doing anything wrong.

Were it me, I would contact the FCC and see what they say.

If that's so, then that's all I need to know for my situation. Thanks.

it's a law that every carrier must provide one CC free of charge to a customer. Get an M card (since you'll pay for an extra S card if you get two).

Every carrier? Are you sure some small carriers don't have a waiver of that regulation? I also do not believe any of them have to provide it for free, they my choose to, but I don't think they are required to.

Agreed, I pay $2 a month for my m card with Cox Orange County.

They must have fewer than 1000 customers! That's the exception.

Do you have any references for this? Something I can show my cable company?

I did more research and it turns out some companies were 'grandfathered' out of the cablecard requirements if their system was built before CC's and if the CC's would not work with their system. It's something I've 'heard' for years (and Comcast has always provided the first card gratis) but I've only been able to find out the cable companies must be able to provide them. I'm still looking...

Well, I'm most certain Cox Orange County has way more than 1,000 customers, so I guess they are part of the grandfathered out group.

How fast is everyones grid guide on the most recent update?

I just bought a TiVo HD and the first day the grid guide seemed to load instantly, today I got my cablecard and now the grid guide loads slowly, the channel names are instant, but the guide data loads kind of slow?

Is this just how it is?

If you just got the cable cards then it's probably downloading the new guide data which takes one to two days. Once it finishes, the guide will be back to the normal quick speeds.

Remember - I'm not asking whether you have to pay for the first CableCARD or not.

I'm asking if any or all cable companies will let you have a CableCARD when only subscribing to Limited Basic, and not a higher tier.

They should, since to get guide data with some devices you still need a cable card for the basic digital channels. I know with Comcast you can and with FiOS too.

From what I remember reading in the FCC docs - they must have CC's available if the customer does not have a device (DVR) capable of receiving the signal.

I got a cable card from Comcast when I subscribed to their lowest tier. You need it to be able to use the guide for their free HD channels.

Note that if you've got a TivoHD (or Series 3) that you either need a M card or two S cards in order to use two tuners - only one tuner will be available if you add a single S card. As was mentioned previously, get an M card and save a monthly fee.

Or a combination of the M and S card...that also works.

If you have an M card - you don't need an S card. The M supplies the "Multi" stream. you'd be wasting money if you put an M and S card in.

Currently using kmttg to transfer (archive) TiVo recordings to my PC and save them on a single external eSATA drive (2TB). That drive is close to being full and I'm thinking about adding another eSATA drive (2TB) to transfer additional recordings to.

I know that you can specify multiple video shares with pyTivo, but I would like to navigate the two external drives as a single pyTivo share when pulling recordings from my PC to my TiVo and thought maybe Windows 7 Libraries might work.

Has anyone been able to get pyTivo to work with a Windows 7 Library as a share? If so, what path do you use, or how else did you accomplish it?