for the past 3 weeks, my tivo series 3 hasn't been able to record HD channels.

i have comcast cable. and have had my tivo for about 14 months without fail.
but now when i'm watching a HD channel, the image becomes all pixelated, and/or the image will freeze and my entire Series 3 sorta locks up. The TiVo remote won't really work while this is happening. And more times then not, the Series 3 will end up rebooting. this type of behavior is the status quo about 95% of the time when viewing/recording HD channels. maybe 1 out of 20 HD shows will record correctly.

I do not have this problem if I'm watching a SD channel. So if my Series 3 is recording a SD channel i'm good. If my Series 3 is recording two SD channels I'm good. But any time I add an HD channel on either of the tuners to the mix, that's when i get the lock up on the Series 3 and the reboot.

I thought it might be my external hard drive. so I removed that from the configuration, and let the Series 3 reconfigure without the External drive, but that hasn't seem to do anything. With no External hard drive connected, I'm still getting the same Issue.

I did kickstart 57, kickstart 58, and just now did a kickstart 54. all of these tests come back normal. in particular, for the kickstart 54, i passed all the tests (initial state, short test, conveyance test, extended test, off-line scan).

I was almost sure this issue had to be a hard drive issue, but now taking the external drive out of the equation, and passing all the hard drive tests on the internal drive, i'm thinking now the hard drive isn't the issue. any thoughts on this?

Could there be something wrong with the internal working of the actual Series 3 box causing this issue?

Could it be something with my Cable Signal? Or my Cable Cards?

I'm at a loss. and not having HD sucks. Please help!