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to timaster6
CONFIRMED: TiVo Premiere problem, fix coming "Spring 2012&qsaid by timaster6:So you may be able to get this fixed on your cablecard if you get hold of the right person inside Cox. Oh, I'm satisfied my cablecards are probably all correctly authorized - the journey started the same with some phone droid telling me I had to buy their Whole Home Fail, er, DVR. (The one with TWO tuners and 500gb storage - what an amazing product...) Two of my cablecards are in TiVo Premieres, and those continue to claim lack of authorization. I don't believe that's really the case because the third cablecard is in a SiliconDust HDHomeRun - I can see the new channels in Windows Media Center just fine. It's pretty ironic that it IS actually a TiVo problem all along. If Cox handled cablecards credibly I might have believed them, too. Anyway, I got confirmation Sunday night from a TiVo VP that a fix to the Premiere software is being tested and will likely be slated for release "Spring 2012." So if you've come to this thread after resisting the sales pitch for Whole Home Fail and done the reset-your-tuning-adapter-and-restart-your-TiVo tango a couple of times with our clueless self-appointed friends in the digital age: there it is. This really is a TiVo issue. |
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ajwees41 Premium Member join:2002-05-10 Omaha, NE |
ajwees41
Premium Member
2012-Feb-28 1:42 am
Re: CONFIRMED: TiVo Premiere problem, fix coming "Spring 20so the plus pack are not available on tivo's do to a software error? I find that hard to believe. |
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Believe what you like... but this person is the source of the information, and she's DEFINITELY in a position to know. She participates on tivocommunity.com and responded to a PM I'd sent her. » margretschmidt.com/Home/ ··· ign.html |
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ajwees41 Premium Member join:2002-05-10 Omaha, NE |
ajwees41
Premium Member
2012-Feb-28 3:52 pm
no what I don't get is if the hardware for the tivo is mpeg4 why is there a software problem that doesn't allow the plus package channels in mpeg 4? |
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A possible answer is in your question. The hardware can handle it but the software is handling the setup messages wrong. Every tuning event is a conversation between the cablecard, TiVo and tuning adapter.
h.264 video is new - likely there's some message coming from the cablecard/TA during the tuning event and its not being interpreted correctly. The cablecard/TA is likely telling the TiVo (and this is very simplified conjecture) that channel is in the stream located at xxx Mhz, this is the expected bitrate of the stream (and perhaps what the error correction level is), video PID yyy, audio PID zzz, and the codecs used for both the audio and video. PIDs are headers in the stream that tag what the content is of the next few hundreds or thousands of bytes, it gets complicated.
Quite likely it's mis-identifying the codec and leaving the chipset (hardware) configured to decode mpeg2. If the hardware is expecting mpeg2 and sees h.264 it will send back some sort of exception (there's a problem!) which is being displayed to the end-user as "channel not authorized." Why that error? Either its the default "I give up" last-resort error message, or its the same condition that happens when you tune a channel that really isn't authorized: the keys don't generate a viewable/listenable set of streams and are just delivering garbage bits. I'd bet a hardware mpeg2 decoder is going to consider h.264 to be "garbage."
It's all just conjecture though, to know what the conversation really is would require getting documentation from Cisco that's likely covered under NDA.
A failure to negotiate can be as simple as uppercase/lowercase not matching what's really expected, maybe there's an extra byte, or a missing byte... hard to say. You'd have to use test equipment to decode at the protocol level. |
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ajwees41 Premium Member join:2002-05-10 Omaha, NE |
ajwees41
Premium Member
2012-Feb-28 6:22 pm
so why then can a pc tuner pick up the channels while tivo can't if they use the same cable card software? I wonder if cox is just not allowing them on the tivo's? |
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said by ajwees41:so why then can a pc tuner pick up the channels while tivo can't if they use the same cable card software? I wonder if cox is just not allowing them on the tivo's? Thats not a Cable Card issue. All the cablecard does is check authorisation and decode the raw encrypted datastream and give the result back to the host. At that point its up to the hardware/software (PC, Tivo, etc) to know what to do with the datastream. If the Tivo isn't correctly handling the decrypted H.264 or mpeg4 datastream, that could be the issue. The PC seems to manage the feat just fine. |
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BryanInPHX Premium Member join:2001-03-06 Phoenix, AZ |
to ajwees41
Ceton took an interest in this issue early on, Back in November, see first post, and has the ability to release firmware updates much faster than TiVo. TiVo never took this issue seriously until recently. |
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to ajwees41
said by ajwees41:so why then can a pc tuner pick up the channels while tivo can't if they use the same cable card software? I wonder if cox is just not allowing them on the tivo's? If it took TiVo this long and doesn't have the fix, I'd suspect TiVo cheapened out on the hardware and didn't put in a H.264 decode chip in the box. While modern PCs can brute force decoding H.264 HD video using CPU power alone, TiVo box may not have such powerful CPU inside. |
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ajwees41 Premium Member join:2002-05-10 Omaha, NE 1 edit |
ajwees41
Premium Member
2012-Feb-28 11:41 pm
said by Foxbat121:said by ajwees41:so why then can a pc tuner pick up the channels while tivo can't if they use the same cable card software? I wonder if cox is just not allowing them on the tivo's? If it took TiVo this long and doesn't have the fix, I'd suspect TiVo cheapened out on the hardware and didn't put in a H.264 decode chip in the box. While modern PCs can brute force decoding H.264 HD video using CPU power alone, TiVo box may not have such powerful CPU inside. if the hardware decoder was or is cheap how can a software update fix it? sounds more like the tivo firmware can't pick up the mpeg 4 stream even though there is supposed to be mpeg 4 hardware. found this An update for the NoVa area. I just got off the phone with a helpful representative from Cox. I asked about the current issue I'm having with the Plus Package premium channels, i.e. Cox is unable to authorize the channels. He read me an email from his tech lead that stated that this is a known issue on Tivo's end. Apparently Tivo was not as ready for the roll-out of MPEG4 channels as the lead us all to believe--this makes sense given that SilconDust boxes and other retail boxes are receiving these channels already. According to conversations between Tivo and Cox, Tivo will have a patch worked out and sent to Cox for testing by 20 February 2012 (next week). The Cox representative said that once Cox tests that the patch works, they should be able to authorize the channels. The target date for this authorization is 28 February 2012. hopefully it will be nationwide or ready, so when cox areas go mpeg 4 on the plus package tivo should get them |
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Azlen join:2010-05-03 Peoria, AZ |
Azlen
Member
2012-Mar-16 8:01 pm
Is there an update on this? Did the fix with Cox and Tivo work? |
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BryanInPHX Premium Member join:2001-03-06 Phoenix, AZ |
Margret Schmidt, VP of User Experience at TiVo, did confirm that TiVo sent Cox a software patch and Cox confirmed the fix worked, and that the fix would be included in a TiVo software update. That update is in customer beta testing, and reportedly does fix the issue. |
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Azlen join:2010-05-03 Peoria, AZ |
Azlen
Member
2012-Mar-17 11:02 pm
Do you know if it's going to be an individual update or included in a larger update? I would think the number of Tivo Premier plus Cox users in markets with MPEG4 has to be pretty small. I wonder if there is a chance of being included in that beta testing. |
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BryanInPHX Premium Member join:2001-03-06 Phoenix, AZ |
I received a call today from "Janice" Tempe Field Team Leader at Cox, That TiVo will be releasing a software update for the MPEG4 issue on March 31st, I hope that info is accurate. There is also another posting with more details on the TCFs quote: Just got a call today from a "Janice" at Cox-PHX advising that they have tested the new software and the Plus channels now can be viewed. She indicated that the software version was 20.2.1.M4-01-2-746 and was advised by Tivo that it would be available on or about March 31st.
» www.tivocommunity.com/ti ··· t9009560 |
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alanhdsl Premium Member join:1999-10-09 Phoenix, AZ |
alanhdsl
Premium Member
2012-Apr-11 8:48 pm
So... I have a TiVo HD and am in Phoenix. I presume the fix is only for the Premire? And that the HD (and original Series 3) won't be able to get the Plus channels. |
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The TiVo HD's tuner doesn't have the range. The hardware just can't do it. A software update would not change that, nor are there likely to be more forthcoming.
If i recall correctly, on my Series 3 HD the channels showed up in the grid all the same. |
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BryanInPHX Premium Member join:2001-03-06 Phoenix, AZ 2 edits |
Actually the TiVo HD hardware does support 1GHz and MPEG4 (H.264), the question is whether or not TiVo would update the software. My guess is no. But it is worth a few emails to editor @ tivo.com and margret @ tivo.com TiVo HD hardware specs: Broadcom - BCM7401 chipset » www.broadcom.com/product ··· /BCM7401» pdf1.alldatasheet.com/da ··· 401.htmlMicroTune MT2131 - RF Tuners » www.zoran.com/IMG/pdf/PB ··· 0069.pdf |
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ajwees41 Premium Member join:2002-05-10 Omaha, NE |
ajwees41
Premium Member
2012-May-21 9:35 pm
we installed one of the premieres and it's not updated to 20.2.1.M4-01-2-746 yet, but Omaha does not use mpeg 4 yet. |
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BryanInPHX Premium Member join:2001-03-06 Phoenix, AZ |
said by ajwees41:we installed one of the premieres and it's not updated to 20.2.1.M4-01-2-746 yet, but Omaha does not use mpeg 4 yet. SW Version 20.2.1.M4-01-2-746 was a leaked beta trial version prior to the current SW Version and was never intended to be an official public release. The current SW Version should be 20.2.1.1-01-2-7xx This current SW version does include a fix for the Cox H.264 Plus Pak. |
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