How long has the drive been in the unit? It may take several hours to finish indexing your data and to make all services available.

If it's been more than 24 hours, then you should try a restart.

Hi Michael,
Thanks for the fast response. The drive has been in the unit about a week. I've been going back and forth with other things and TiVo to try and get something working.

I tried a reset from the settings menu but the results are the same. Video on Demand (Tivo Central Menu) and Netflix (Now Playing list) just return to the same menu.

Since my first post, I also tried disabling the firewalls in my router and cable modem. That made no difference either.

BTW this is the second third party drive that has failed with the same symptoms. The first was bought from an eBay seller who made the same plug-and-play claims that Weaknees does. He wasn't able to diagnose the problem via email and essentially gave up.

I'm open to suggestion at this point. Should I send the Series 3 to you guys for repair?

Thanks again,
Alan Mintaka

It feels like there's something about the networking going on here, since both of those features depend on broadband.

Are you using wired or wireless?

Have you tried it attached via ethernet directly to the cable modem?

From my first post, "It's connected by wired Ethernet to a LinkSys WRT54GS router and then to a Comcast cable modem."

I have to get a M-M ethernet adapter and another cable to bypass the router. I'm working on that now.

In the meantime, I did try a few other things:

1. Disabled the firewalls in the router and cable modem. This made no difference.

2. I remembered that once when I had a working Netflix interface, I was also using one of those TiVo USB-Wireless adapters. So I switched back to a wireless connection to see what would happen. That made no difference either, but at least it ruled out some kind of flaky difference between wired and wireless settings with this router.

I should be able to by pass the router tomorrow. However I've been wondering about something else while I try to solve this intractible problem: could HDCP be running some kind of interference here? I'm not using the HDMI output on the Series 3. I'm using both the component video/audio and composite video/audio outputs (the latter for a "legacy" TV).

I've seen HDCP blocking interfering with combinations of HDMI/component/composite video in the past. This is a stretch, I know, but I'm grasping at straws at the moment.

Also, I'm short a few HDMI cables I'd need to see if that was the problem.

Thanks for your continued time and patience. I'll post again when I've bypassed the router and tested the result.

Alan Mintaka

Yeah - I've also seen strangeness related to HDCP. I also don't see how it fits in here, but considering past experience, I'd say it's possible. It's a good area to investigate.

When you say "a few" HDMI cables, does that mean you have a matrix switch or a receiver in the mix? Those often mess with HDCP even more, so I'd take that out of the equation also, as a troubleshooting step.

Hello Michael,

Long story short - nothing worked. I removed everything from the equation but a direct wired ethernet connection from the Series 3 to the Comcast Modem. I removed all A/V outputs from the Series 3 except HDMI. There were no switches or distribution amps of any kind in the mix.

I also disabled all customizations in the modem, including the firewall and "port forwarding" (DirecTV advised me to add some ports to the list in order to run their PC application - didn't work, of course).

I reset the both the modem and the Series 3 between each change. Also verified that the Series 3 could connect to the TiVo service as long as the modem was connected - no problems there.

The only thing left I haven't tried is resetting the Comcast modem to factory defaults. However I have to talk to Comcast about that first in order to restore my ISP login correctly. I may or may not do that tomorrow.

At the moment, my inclination is to remove the Weaknees hard drive from the series 3, return the hard drive for a refund, and toss this completely useless Series 3 in the dump. That's $1000.00 for the unit and $700+ for the "TiVo lifetime service subscription". Worthless if anything goes wrong.

A hard lesson learned.

Thanks for your time and patience while I figured out how badly I've been screwed by TiVo. Too bad I'm a slow leaner, eh?

Here's another long-shot thought: we've seen CableCARD problems that are actually related to a bad power supply, and bad power supplies are pretty common in your model these days.

There's a pretty easy visual way to check for a bad power supply in the TCD648250B: bursting capacitors.

See this page for more info:

http://www.weaknees.com/bps

Hi Michael,
Now that you mention it, I've heard of that one before in connection with the old Comcast cablecards I once had. That'll take a little downtime while I get the unit out of the component chassis and taken apart. I'll post as soon as I have a result.

I also have yet to reset the modem to factory defaults. One thing at a time.

Thanks again for hanging in there,
Alan Mintaka

Hi Michael,
Now that you mention it, I've heard of that one before in connection with the old Comcast cablecards I once had. That'll take a little downtime while I get the unit out of the component chassis and taken apart. I'll post as soon as I have a result.

I also have yet to reset the modem to factory defaults. One thing at a time.

Thanks again for hanging in there,
Alan Mintaka

Hello Michael,
Sorry for the delay in this response. Life threw a few curves since my last posts.

BTW I have finally accessed Amazon and Netflix, but I have done so via my Samsung Blu-Ray player, which has the "Smarthub" technology. I still would like the Series 3 working as it should though.

I did finally check the power supply in the Series 3 today. Yes. there is one cap that has a convex top similar to those shown in the example linked in your post. There is no discoloration that I can see. The rest of the caps have flat to slightly concave tops, no discoloration.

It does look like an easy part to swap out. How should I proceed here? Should I go ahead with a replacement supply sold by Weaknees, or contact TiVo and have them check the unit out? My concern is that whatever's wrong with the VOD menus won't be helped by a PS change, since I don't even use cablecards. It may be a problem that has to be debugged inhouse by TiVo.

I know I had this working before the original hard drive failed and I had no cablecards. This is what's frustrating me.

Thanks for your continued support,
Alan Mintaka

TiVo really won't be able to help you with that hardware. They won't even accept it for a swap at this point.

So if you want to try to get it working, you really need to get a power supply from us:

http://www.weaknees.com/ps

I suspected that might be the case with TiVo. OK, I'll try a new PS as soon as my budget permits (next two weeks or so).

Thanks again for your help.

BTW, my latest posts still do not appear in the forum, though you are obviously replying to them. Any idea why they're visible to you but not me? Can any other posters besides Weaknees techs and moderators see my posts? I don't get it.

Take care,
Alan Mintaka

Sorry about that! They were on Moderation, but I didn't notice.

Hi Michael,

No prob at all. I was just concerned that I might have done something wrong, specifically including HTTP links to other threads. Sometimes red flags are raised when posts contain links.

Now I'm off to shuffle some bucks around my accounts so I can buy another PS. Let's hope that does the trick, but for now it looks as though accessing Amazon and Netflix videos will have to be done via my Samsung Blu-Ray player and its "Smart Hub" software.

Using the Samsung that way will make the Series3 unnecessary, even if I can get it working with the new PS. If the whole situation plays out that way, I'll think about selling the Series3. Somebody with a land-line cable service that provides the cards might have a better use for it than I will.

As I suggested in an earlier post, it looks as though buying the Series3 will be a hard lesson learned. If only TiVo had made the thing capable of receiving satellite services....

And if only I had noticed in the first place that the Series3 could only receive land-line cable.....

I'll let you know about my success or lack thereof with a new PS, but I suspect that it will be about a month before I can post any results. In the meantime, I thank you once again for the help and advice.

Take care,
Alan Mintaka