Post by Chris Miller on Mar 18, 2009 21:49:30 GMT -5
When I came home from work tonight, I saw my that my tuning adapter was in "das blinken" lights mode. It was doing the steady 8 blinks followed by a pause.
I called TWC and followed the usual procedure. The CSR was friendly, but almost nothing about the TA's. He was reading from a script and his suggested work around for the 8-blink was to unplug the power from the TA to a few seconds than plug it back in. At this point, he could not see the TA from his end. According to the CSR, the 8 blinks means that the TA is initializing.
As soon as I unplugged the TA, my TiVo displayed the "hey, where the tuning adapter go?" message, which is what you would expect. I plugged the TA back, the lights did a little dance and went out again. When you power cycle a TA, you need to press the power button on the front to get it back on. Which I did, and I got the steady green light that we must see in order to watch the Animal Planet in HD.
The TiVo did not detect the TA. TWC could see the TA and they said it was reporting that everything was good. I could not get the TiVo to see the TA. I unplugged the USB cable and back again, no change. At this point, I was passed to another CSR and he was familiar with the TA. We were able to verify that we had a good return signal, but the TA was not getting any commands from the TiVo.
I knew that if I restarted the TiVo, it would see the TA. Fast reboots are not in the TiVo DNA and I didn't feel like waiting 5-10 minutes for the TiVo to boot up. As a last ditch effort, I unplugged the USB cable for about 30 seconds. When I plugged it back in, the TiVo displayed the banner message that it found a TA and it could access the SDV channels.
My second question (the first one is why the TA is going into Das Blinken lights mode) is why it takes so long for the TiVo to see the TA. The ever helpful TWC CSR suggested that it was something with the TiVo and how it handles USB.
That didn't seem likely to me, but I wasn't going to argue the point with the man from TWC. TiVo is a pretty Linux box and Linux has worked with USB for years, this is not new technology.
I called up TiVo support and explained what happened and asked if there was any way to expedite TiVo's recognition of the TA. The TiVo CSR was pretty knowledgeable and said that the TiVo should recognize any newly attached USB device within 30 seconds. As long as the device was sending a signal over the USB.
Hmm, that points the finger pack to the Tuning Adapter, which is still beta fresh for our purposes. The TiVo CSR's suggestion was to unplug both the USB and power from the TA the next time I had to power cycle the dizzy little box. I'll experiment when it happens again and see which combination gets the TA working with the TiVo is in the shortest amount of time.
I called TWC and followed the usual procedure. The CSR was friendly, but almost nothing about the TA's. He was reading from a script and his suggested work around for the 8-blink was to unplug the power from the TA to a few seconds than plug it back in. At this point, he could not see the TA from his end. According to the CSR, the 8 blinks means that the TA is initializing.
As soon as I unplugged the TA, my TiVo displayed the "hey, where the tuning adapter go?" message, which is what you would expect. I plugged the TA back, the lights did a little dance and went out again. When you power cycle a TA, you need to press the power button on the front to get it back on. Which I did, and I got the steady green light that we must see in order to watch the Animal Planet in HD.
The TiVo did not detect the TA. TWC could see the TA and they said it was reporting that everything was good. I could not get the TiVo to see the TA. I unplugged the USB cable and back again, no change. At this point, I was passed to another CSR and he was familiar with the TA. We were able to verify that we had a good return signal, but the TA was not getting any commands from the TiVo.
I knew that if I restarted the TiVo, it would see the TA. Fast reboots are not in the TiVo DNA and I didn't feel like waiting 5-10 minutes for the TiVo to boot up. As a last ditch effort, I unplugged the USB cable for about 30 seconds. When I plugged it back in, the TiVo displayed the banner message that it found a TA and it could access the SDV channels.
My second question (the first one is why the TA is going into Das Blinken lights mode) is why it takes so long for the TiVo to see the TA. The ever helpful TWC CSR suggested that it was something with the TiVo and how it handles USB.
That didn't seem likely to me, but I wasn't going to argue the point with the man from TWC. TiVo is a pretty Linux box and Linux has worked with USB for years, this is not new technology.
I called up TiVo support and explained what happened and asked if there was any way to expedite TiVo's recognition of the TA. The TiVo CSR was pretty knowledgeable and said that the TiVo should recognize any newly attached USB device within 30 seconds. As long as the device was sending a signal over the USB.
Hmm, that points the finger pack to the Tuning Adapter, which is still beta fresh for our purposes. The TiVo CSR's suggestion was to unplug both the USB and power from the TA the next time I had to power cycle the dizzy little box. I'll experiment when it happens again and see which combination gets the TA working with the TiVo is in the shortest amount of time.
