non-RID S2 DTiVo and 6.4a - rebooting loop or working?

[FredThompson]

We've recently lost locals on non-RID S2 DTiVos. I've bought the appropriate InstantCake to get a drive image, if needed. The other forum is full of people complaining about reboot loops after upgrading to 6.4a. Would someone with a non-RID S2 DTiVo confirm 6.4a is stable on that platform? I'm running 6.2a and everything works great except for the missing locals. I've also found what is claimed to be 6.4a slices. Looking to find out if 6.4a is a dud or not. Don't care about MRV, just want locals again.

[tvtyme]

Yep, 6.4a is stable on non-RID DTivos. I have it on three HDVR2s. I chainload to an 8.1 kernel (can't remember in which thread I found it) and use Jamie's USB 2.0 backport drivers. Note that with an 8.1 kernel you have to use the 2.4.20-8 version of the backport drivers instead of the 2.4.20 version.
L8r

[FredThompson]

Got it working. Thanks.

[FredThompson]

Streams appear to be unencrypted but there are short periods in which blocky smearing happens. Is this common? I see it on locals as well as national channels.

[PlainBill]

Streams appear to be unencrypted but there are short periods in which blocky smearing happens. Is this common? I see it on locals as well as national channels.

There is a known problem with the non-rid DirecTiVos that initially manifests itself as dropouts or stuttering on tuner 2. Eventually it reaches the point where tuner 2 is unusable. Note that if your problem is occurring on tuner 1, it has a different cause.

PlainBill

[FredThompson]

Yes, I had forgotten about that. Thanks for your reply.

I'm going to replace the hard drive first to see if that's the problem. There are a lot of recordings for which the storage size is far too small for their contents. Maybe a slow drive means dropped inter-frames.

Fortunately, I have a second non-RID s2 so that could be activated if a replacement is needed.

Wish there was a way to do proper web interface and extraction for HD. I'd upgrade in a heartbeat. Direct2PC isn't working here. We have an HD box but I can't get D2P to work. Probably too much DRM collision with the high security we have on the PCs. Nomad looks nice but I see there is a 1-month expiration on recordings. Sometimes I don't watch stuff for months. Grrrr...

[PlainBill]

Yes, I had forgotten about that. Thanks for your reply.

I'm going to replace the hard drive first to see if that's the problem. There are a lot of recordings for which the storage size is far too small for their contents. Maybe a slow drive means dropped inter-frames.

Fortunately, I have a second non-RID s2 so that could be activated if a replacement is needed.

Wish there was a way to do proper web interface and extraction for HD. I'd upgrade in a heartbeat. Direct2PC isn't working here. We have an HD box but I can't get D2P to work. Probably too much DRM collision with the high security we have on the PCs. Nomad looks nice but I see there is a 1-month expiration on recordings. Sometimes I don't watch stuff for months. Grrrr...

The hard drive is the first point to check - marginal sectors can cause problems. One simple test is to pause live tv for a minute or so. If the stutter is gone when you resume watching (with the 1 minute delay), the problem was caused by a marginal sector. Depending on actual vs desired storage capacity and the availability of discretionary funds, using the drive manufacturer's non-destructive surface scan utility OR replacement with a larger drive is the way to go.

If it IS due to 'the non-RID bug' and you have minimal soldering skills, a $1.00 cap will solve the problem. Details are in another recent thread.

As far as the extraction problem, there aren't any solutions that can be discussed here, but Google is your friend.

PlainBill

[FredThompson]

I've swapped power supply and hard drive and found threads about cap replacement as well as adding a cap to bridge the 2nd tuner. There are also some which discuss removing the covers of tuners to find a red cap which goes bad. There are mentions of 12v 2200mf caps and I saw your mention of Panasonic FM caps. Haven't found images and I'm not sure which caps are the possible culprits. The only ones which look similar are small cans near the 4-pin power and 2 discs near the big brown can. (Damn small black print on glossy dark blue!) I've not successfully found a thread which has a photo or good description of the physical form of the caps. Would appreciate help with this aspect.

Yes, I'm very comfortable soldering. Been doing it for 30 years. Need to order a cap from Digi-kiy for another repair, anyhow.

Here are 2 photos of the power supply P9130002 small.jpg P9130003 small.jpg

Here is a frame to illustrate what I am seeing. I assume this is what people refer to as a dropout from tuner issues. It looks like one or more missing frames so the deltas are correct but the data to which they point is incorrect. bad frame.png

[PlainBill]

I've swapped power supply and hard drive and found threads about cap replacement as well as adding a cap to bridge the 2nd tuner. There are also some which discuss removing the covers of tuners to find a red cap which goes bad. There are mentions of 12v 2200mf caps and I saw your mention of Panasonic FM caps. Haven't found images and I'm not sure which caps are the possible culprits. The only ones which look similar are small cans near the 4-pin power and 2 discs near the big brown can. (Damn small black print on glossy dark blue!) I've not successfully found a thread which has a photo or good description of the physical form of the caps. Would appreciate help with this aspect.

Yes, I'm very comfortable soldering. Been doing it for 30 years. Need to order a cap from Digi-kiy for another repair, anyhow.

Here are 2 photos of the power supply P9130002 small.jpg P9130003 small.jpg

Those caps don't appear to be obviously bad. However, they ARE crap brands. The two on the left are 2200µF, 10V, just with different form factors. For the life of me, I can't remember the value of the one on the right, and of course it is cleverly hidden. I seem to remember listing all values in a thread within the last year, I'll see if I can find it.

Here is a frame to illustrate what I am seeing. I assume this is what people refer to as a dropout from tuner issues. It looks like one or more missing frames so the deltas are correct but the data to which they point is incorrect. bad frame.png

A quick test for the 'bad tuner cap' problem is to redo setup and tell the DirecTiVo only input 1 has a dish connected. If that fixes the problem, the information is available, although I would prefer to do a more professional repair than others have done.

PlainBill

[PlainBill]

Addendum: This post has a complete list of the caps used in the power supply.

PlainBill

[FredThompson]

Wonderful information. Thank you. I'll replace the caps in both power supplies. Cheap caps are also a common issue with cheap disc players. Upgrade the caps and add some weight to the disc clamps so there's more centrifugal force to reduce wobble. IEEE had a good article about this a few years ago. If you want, I'll post it here.

[PlainBill]

Wonderful information. Thank you. I'll replace the caps in both power supplies. Cheap caps are also a common issue with cheap disc players. Upgrade the caps and add some weight to the disc clamps so there's more centrifugal force to reduce wobble. IEEE had a good article about this a few years ago. If you want, I'll post it here.

A link would be nice.

My intent is to analyze the circuit board and identify the caps likely responsible for the Tuner 2 failure on non-RID systems. Unfortunately, I suspect all my non-RID DirecTiVos are packed away in closets. Of course, I HAVE been intending to clean out the closets...

PlainBill

[tas3086]

see post 16: http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/sh...-TIVO-Series-2

[PlainBill]

see post 16: http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/sh...-TIVO-Series-2

Thank you. Not to be rude, but that's not a repair. A repair is replacing a failed part with the equivalent or better. You did a patch job - installing a much larger cap on the same supply rails. It's a little like nailing a piece of plywood over a broken window - a good temporary expedient, a proof that you were on the right track, but not a good repair.

Actually, I did something similar a few months ago on an LCD TV. The picture had a weird distortion running through it. I identified a voltage regulator with slightly low output and scoped the output - sure enough, a lot of noise. After identifying the filter caps, I soldered a single cap of 3 times the capacity across the regulator. Sure enough, the problem went away. Next I removed the two bad caps and replaced them with ones of the correct voltage and capacitance, but of better quality. Then I sold the TV for about $100 more than I had in it. And I was confident it would not fail again.

PlainBill

[FredThompson]

I've been out of town. Here are three articles about upgrading capacitors and other components. Not so sure about the real benefit of inertial weight for a spinning disc. Don't optical video media use matrix error correction? Copy the data and store it on magnetic media, not optical.