Sound Stutters / Drop Outs

[GaryF]

Hi, I'm starting to get annoying issues with the sound dropping out for fractions of a second intermittently but frequently enough to make watching a recording unbearable. It also happens when viewing live TV via TiVo.

I found this post thread relating to poswer supply, so I tried switching with a spare I had, but to no avail: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1964

Any ideas what I can do to fix it? I have a cachecard installed and tried removing the memory from as well it to see it that cured it, but sadly not.

Occasionally I am also getting some picture interference like flashing coloured blocks over parts of the screen, but this does not seem to happen in conjunction with the sound issue. Its the sound that the main cause of angst at present.

Is it time to move my disk and cachecard into another TiVo?

Thanks,
Gary

[Pegasus]

Are you able to rule out issues with your receiver (i.e. Sat box or Freeview box)? I get a lot of picture pixellation on Freeview on certain channels, due to my village being in a dip in the land. That's why I hate digital, cos you either get a signal or you don't, there's no snowy-but-still-watchable in between like there was with analogue.

Sound issues are often PSU related, but as you've already tried that one that seems unlikely. Also there's the picture pixellation to consider.

My next thought would be disc issues. One could imagine if the disc is having to do repeated attempts to read bad data that the picture (& sound?) might stutter. Hmm...

Do you have terminal access to your TiVo? If you do you could try to run the TiVo equivalent of "checkdisk". At a telnet prompt run

Code: Select all

mfsassert  -please

You will then get a GSOD (green screen) and TiVo will run a disk check (which could take anywhere from 20 mins to 4 hours - ignore any onscreen suggestion as to how long it will take, I've never found them even remotely close!)

Then run it again. Yes really! The second run sometimes mops up things which were found by the first run.

I'm not convinced this will fix your issue, but it won't make it worse either

[GaryF]

Hi thanks for your disk correction suggestion below - it sounds like it is worth a try.

Sorry I'm a bit of numpty, but to get a terminal session on my TiVo do I need a physical wired connection or can I telnet/connect to it's IP address remotely from a windows computer on the same home network and run this command ? Or any other way to force it using startup hacks (see I almost sound like I know what I'm doing!).

Thanks,
Gary

[Pegasus]

Yeah that one:

telnet/connect to it's IP address remotely from a windows computer on the same home network

You can open a Windoze "command" box and run "telnet <ip-of-your-tivo>"

Alternatively, I think there is a "kickstart" code that will do it, but I've never got that to work.


Edit: assuming "telnet" is provided on Win10 if you have that. (I stopped with Win7 thank you very much). If not you could install "PuTTY" program,

[steveroe]

Do you get the sound issues and/or pixelation if you watch from the DTV box directly via Aux bypass on the Tivo - that should help narrow it down to see if it's a reception issue.

[GaryF]

Ok, I enabled the telent client on my Windows 10 laptop, connected to TiVO and ran the command. Here is what I get and I've lost connection to the host :-

[TiVo [p0] ~]# mfsassert -please
Filesystem assert: false && "mfsassert" at fsassert_main.C line 37 in int fsassert_main(int, char **)
Filesystem flagged as inconsistent!
Tmk Assertion Failure: false && "mfsassert"
int fsassert_main(int, char **), line 37 (fsassert_main.C)
Tmk Fatal Error: Thread mfsassert <406> died due to signal -2
1a344ec 1a32a44 1a1a604 1a160f8 1c28cd4 1800134

I now have a green screen of death as was predicted - A severe error has occurred... if after 24 hours the recorder does not restart seek help on tivoland.com/forum

Perhaps, this was not a good thing(!). Maybe it's now beavering away trying to sort itself out and I just leave it to come back, and then hit it with the same command again as prescribed?

Thanks for your help thus far all. I'll give the AUX viewing a try as well, if / when he comes back.

[GaryF]

He's back again

Shall I run the same command for a second time based on what it said above upon first execution?

[Pegasus]

Yeah that gibberish is normal

Yep you can run it again.

[GaryF]

Done.

It reported exactly the same second time around and I now have the GSOD, which should hopefully go away again in a bit.

Will moitor and report back...

Thanks for the assistance.

[GaryF]

Fingers crossed, but my stuttering seems to have stopped

Thank you kindly.