That could be the unit, drive, or cable service. We haven't seen a lot of failures with the Series3 units, so we can only guess based on older units. On DTV units, that would be a tuner problem, or a bad dish or line. Considering that the CableCARDs are the easiest part of the puzzle to swap, we'd recommend starting there.

Determination of a bad card

Is there a way to tell which card did the recording from looking at the actual taping (OK, I know it's not tape...)? It would be easier to replace one if I could say, consistently, that it happens on that card over and over. Because you KNOW I'm going to have to explain this to my good friends at the cable company and I like to have my ducks lined up before I call.

I don't believe there's a way to tell which card recorded which program, but certainly if you remove one card, the other one will be responsible for any recordings created during that time frame, so you could set up two little test periods...

So here's where I am. If I remove the second card, there was no problem (within 24 hours, it's always possible that it could have locked later). Inserting it back, I get the problem (break up of signal, start and stop, gray screen to a little video, to gray screen).
I have not tried removing the first card, since the TIVO says start in the bottom slot.
A) Does it matter which card is in which slot? If I am to test the 2nd (top) card, then it appears that I should move it to the bottom slot.
B) Can I just remove the bottom card, even though the TIVO says to start at the bottom slot.
Final, minor, bit of symptoms here. When things lock up, AND something is still being recorded on one card, I can view live TV on the one channel that is being recorded, but nothing on any of the other channels on this TIVO. However, the cable source itself is still good, in that I can see all content on a different television. Finally, a reset of the TIVO gives back all access.
Let me know about the card switching, please. It seems to be leaning toward a bad card, but before I have TimeWarner out (and you KNOW they will say it is the TIVO, not the card) I want to be as sure as I can be.
Doug

One more...the problem doesn't appear immediately (of course) so I can't just demonstrate the problem to TimeWarner or even myself, without a delay.

How I figured it out....

The problem is with Card 2 in the TIVO (I am confident). It is not handling the decryption properly, although it works fine with the "standard" signals. Thus the joy in tracking this down.

To figure this all out involved a combination of recording and checking diagnostics. I had an idea which channels had problems, just not why. I sat down and set up to record everything for the next several hours on two channels which had "failed" in the past. Fortunately, it started screwing up right away.

I went to diagnostics and was able to tell which cable channels were associated with which recording channel. Further, with the decrypting channels, the card information will tell you which recording channel it is associated with.

I was able to then figure out that Card 0 in diagnostics (Card 2 in the slot...what is THAT all about) was the one hosting the frozen channel. I was able to stop recording and switch channels using the Info button, and it would come back, then go back to the "bad" channel and it would freeze again. To confirm that it was the card and not the recording channel, I stopped recording both tests, selected the Card 1 (both diagnostics and slot) and set it to record the channel which had just been locked. No problem. Choose another channel with the "bad" card. Lockup! Woohoo!

I am on the phone with a "tech" (hah!) at TWC, but have my ducks in enough of a row that they have just bumped me to a supervisor and are booking me a tech visit to replace the card.

OK - just so you know, we have seen instances where the card slot is the problem, so you might want to first confirm your theory when the tech arrives by swapping cards and making sure the behavior follows the card and not the slot.

Will do. If that's the case does that mean that I need a fix on the TIVO itself?

Same problem - not sure about diagnosis

Hi I've had the same annoying gray screen "on behalf of your cable provider" in the middle of a program or recording. I've had 2 new cards put in and that solved nothing. TIVO says it's a signal strength problem and I need to put in a booster at the source in my apartment. I'n NYC and have Time Warner as my provider. Just wondering, has anyone with this problem checked their signal strength? Thanks. Charles

Yes - and the fix is to swap out the TiVo in that case.

You should also probably try a new TiVo. If you've swapped cards and added a booster, you're probably just getting a poor internal connection somewhere. In any event, a TiVo swap it pretty much all that's left.