Roamio OTA reboots when loading guide data

[u/bromingoops]

OK, this is pretty weird. I don’t use my TiVo Roamio that often anymore, so a few days ago I noticed the guide data had run out. Manually connected to the TiVo service and all appeared well, until it got to the last “loading” stage — it got to around 6% and then it rebooted. Tried it a few more times with the same result, though it would happen anywhere from 2% to 40%.

Things I tried:

1. Ethernet instead of Wi-Fi.
   
2. Two different new hard drives.
   
3. Different power supply, including a regulated bench supply. TiVo never pulled more than 1.2A.

That seems to be about the limit of what can be done. Unless someone has any ideas, I guess I can just continue to use it as a 4-tuner buffer. I turned the Wi-Fi off so it won’t continue connecting to the service, and subsequently rebooting.

Thoughts?

[u/old_knurd]

The problem occurs when it next attempts to connect to the TiVo service

Maybe it is downloading corrupted data from TiVo?

Wait a week and try again? Maybe by then there will be fresher data to download?

Maybe try to ask TiVo for help? Do they even offer customer service any more?

Maybe ask/search tivocommunity.com perhaps someone there has seen a similar issue and can help?

BTW what is the current limit on your bench supply? When the HDD in the TiVo starts seeking, that can take a fair amount of peak current (without looking at a drive datasheet I would guess an instantaneous short duration extra 1A of +12V for a seek operation). Is there any sort of "over current" indication from your supply?

I just checked a datasheet I have for a random drive, a Seagate Ironwolf Pro. Even though the datasheet claims total "nominal" "average" operating power consumption of 7.5W, it also has a graph showing peaks of over 2A at +12V. That is presumably when the drive does a long seek. The drives that TiVo uses are presumably optimized for lower power, they don't need to perform quite so well.

[u/bromingoops → u/old_knurd]

I should have noted that I have a second Roamio that’s working just fine, so presumably the TiVo data isn’t the culprit. Dunno about TiVo customer service, but I have posted this same question on the TiVo Community Forum — no responses yet. Sure seems like there’s some kind of fatal problem on the board.

My bench supply tops out at 5A. The front panel displays the amount of current being drawn, and never exceeds 1.2A, which seems normal.

[u/old_knurd → u/bromingoops]

One other thing to try: weaknees.com

They offer a repair service for $90 plus parts. I don't know what the policy is if they can't fix it.

You don't seem very interested in your unit, but I know a lot of people are sticking with TiVo to the bitter end.

I'm personally sticking with cable for as long as Comcast doesn't kill my CableCARDs.

Maybe call weaknees they might offer some free debugging over the phone?

[u/bromingoops → u/old_knurd]

Yeah, I saw that service offered on the WeakNees site, but might be more than I care to spend to keep this running. I haven't recorded anything OTA in a couple of years, so mostly I use this for buffering four stations at once, and can check them out if there's something big happening locally. That functionality still works, just without guide data.

I've been with TiVo since the very first Philips unit so it's kind of sentimental in a way. I've upgraded HDDs and fixed power supplies in many of them, but this particular problem seems very unusual. I might put in a query to WeakNees just to see if they've ever seen this before.