Registered: May 2002
Location: Santa Clara, CA
Posts: 18

I have a SAT-T60 with two 120Gb drives and a cachecard.
I also have a 9 month old daughter.

To prevent conflicts between the two I bought a media cabinet
with a glass door and installed all my gear in there.
To reduce the likelihood of overheating I didn't attach a back.

Recently my TiVo has been behaving oddly. It will pause on one frame
for a second or so, then resume. A moment later it will pause again then
skip a few frames and resume. I'm guessing that it's getting a read error
then resyncs itself at the end of a GOP block or something.

If I go back and replay the affected section it's OK.

Internal temperature is reported as 63C which the box says is OK.
I plan to take the TiVo out of the cabinet and see if it runs cooler
and whether that fixes the problem. I will add cooling fans if that
is likely to help.

If that doesn't fix the problem I'm guessing I'll have to replace
one or both of the disks - which I'd prefer not to do as I've got
a lot of shows that I'd like to keep.

Anyone seen this before? Is it just a heat problem or are the disks
on the way out? Any advice appreciated.

__________________
Sony SVR-2000 : Seagate 80Gb : Lifetime Subscription
Sony SAT-T60 (Resurrected) : Dual 120G Maxtors & CacheCard

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Registered: Oct 2002
Location: Mill Creek, Washington
Posts: 4364

I think it's the heat! 63C is too hot. With adequate cooling your temperatures should be under 50C, even with two hard drives.

You're on the right track .... try cooling things down first.

__________________
Sony SAT-T60 DirecTivo 160GB 120 hrs (v3.1.0c2 - Family Room)
HR10-250 HiDef DirecTivo 250GB (v3.1.5e - Family Room)
MX-500 Remote
Sony SAT-A4 Receiver (Bedroom)
Sony SAT-B4 Receiver (Rec Room)
Sony KV-40XBR800 HDTV
Sony STR-DA4ES Dolby Digital Receiver

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Registered: May 2002
Location: Santa Clara, CA
Posts: 18

I finally got chance to pull TiVo from the cabinet and now it's on top. It's running at least 10'C cooler. The pauses are almost entirely eliminated; the remainder are almost certainly due to transmission errors, so it looks like the disks are fine but another component was overheating.

__________________
Sony SVR-2000 : Seagate 80Gb : Lifetime Subscription
Sony SAT-T60 (Resurrected) : Dual 120G Maxtors & CacheCard

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Registered: Jul 2002
Location: Cambridgeshire, UK
Posts: 9266

It's the MPEG-2 decoder that overheats. When it does, it looks exactly like a failing drive.

__________________
Please do not PM me asking for TiVo backups. I don't have any.

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