As far as we know, the TiVo never turns on the cable box - but never turns it off either. So if it's on, you should be fine. How is it turning off?

Cablevision, not Verizon, but...

I experience "loss" when something turns off the cable box. If that something is a power outage or my wife touching the remote. I don't think TiVo knows how to turn on the cable box. You have to turn it on and keep it on. Take it out of your programmable remote's shutdown and everything.

You should see if your cable box has some sort of a timer, because it's not the TiVo that is turning it off, I'm guessing.

Cablevision turning cable box off ruins recordings

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I have Cablevision too, and have spoken to many people there, both in cust. svc, and sr tech people. I have also spoken to TIVO customer support.

My problem is
* TIVO series 2: requires cable box be on all the time, because it can't turn it on
* Cablevision: "requires" (recommends) you turn the cable box off when not using it, so it can update itself, usually overnight.

Obviously, these are in direct conflict with each other.

If your cable box is feeding your TIVO, which you need if you want to record channels like HBO, that require that cable to unscramble them, this is where you run into problems.

If you leave your cable box on all the time for the TIVO, eventually a Cablevision update will be required, and unlike Windows, there's no choice as to when to accept the update. So, Cablevision will search remotely for cable boxes that are on, and have have not gotten the update forced into it yet, and turn it off (put it into "bypass"), and "force" the update.

The problem is that Cablevision does NOT turn the cable box back on again after the update is complete, before it goes searching for the next cable box to force the update to.

This is a MAJOR problem because while perhaps overnight they wreck one recording of yours, while they force the update on you, the fact they don't switch turn the cable box back on again before moving on to find the next cable box to update, can cause any number of recordings to be ruined (recording nothing but black screen), until someone discovers the cable box has been turned off remotely by Cablevision, and turns it back on again.

This is especially troublesome if you go out of town for long periods of time, or on vacation an there is no home to catch it. You may think you are recording your shows, but when you get home, you may discover, thru deduction, and what was ruined, that an update was done the night you left, and you have recorded nothing but black.

This defeats the entire purpose of having a TIVO.

To be clear, this would be a problem for anyone having their Cablevision cable box hooked up to ANY recording device on an unattended timer: VCR, DVD-BURNER, non-TIVO stand-alone DVR.

It's really not right, since I am paying over $100/month. It's a "denial of service" by Cablevision to me, as I am not getting what I am paying for, and they are doing it to me.

As I have said, I have talked to several people at Cablevision, and although they have all heard about this problem before, none of them have any solutions that solves all of the problems without spending more money.

I also find it very interesting that one of their solutions is to buy another one of their services, which I won't do, and it won't solve all of the problems. It seems suspicious to me that they know of problem, and instead of fixing it with what you already have, they try to sell you more stuff. It makes me think they will never fix it.

*** I am interested if this happens with Verizon Fios, and DirecTv, because I might become a customer of theirs over this.

The next step is to contact my congresspeople, which I will when I have the time, if I am still with Cablevision, and they can't figure something out, that gets me what I am paying for, without me buying anything, or shelling out any more money than I already do.

*** The other question is, is there something, like a filter, that can be attached to the incoming coaxial cable that can filter out JUST the updates, from getting thru to the cable box? Seriously.

Would love to hear anyone's thoughts on this, especially the stuff marked with ***.

Thanks.

Not just Cablevision. It is Time Warner, also. My brother works for them and he spoke to one of his techies and they said that, because I am in IT, I should know that updates have to happen. I replied back that if I arbitrarily puhed updates and turned off the computer without scheduling downtime, I would be fired as well.

Find out if you have the "latest" cable box. My old box has a timer that can power on the cable box every day at the same time. Not a great solution but this works if you are out of town for a few weeks. The most you'll see is about 24 hours (max) of black recording.

The reason I mentioned new cable boxes (yes, I know you posted way back on 2008, but someone else might be reading this) is that some have a setting that, on reboot or wall power on, will actually go power on the whole box and point you at a channel.

The best solution is to get rid of the cable box altogether and get cable cards for the Tivos that support them. If your cable company tries to talk you out of it, tell them you might keep the box if they can find a way to completely power on the box after their updates or a power failure.

As was said, this is not a Tivo issue, it is a cable company and cable box issue.