Lately the DVR/cable box kept crashing. Basically shutting off and rebooting. It kept getting worse. Starting on Saturday the box would reboot a few minutes after turning it on. This kept up all weekend, rebooting within a few minutes of turning on the cable box. The problem first started a month ago, but every time we called Spectrum they would say they cant send repairmen over due to the pandemic. Also, they did a remote analysis of the box and said they found nothing wrong with it, so even if a repairman came over it would cost me an extra $50 or more on my cable bill for him to troubleshoot and fix the problem. So, I decided to take my very limited understanding of electronics and fix the box myself.
So, here is what I did know.
#1, the box does reboot and return to working condition. If it was something broken then this would not happen. For example, if the internal disc was broken or a chip was fried, it would remain broke. Technology 101, machines can not heal. So it cant be the hardware in the box.
#2 With the television shut off, the box succeeded in recording a 1 hour episode of a television show without crashing. So basically the electronics work. It is just that something is crashing the box when the television set is on.
This had me suspecting outside sources.
Possibility #1 Spectrum Cable is sending corrupt code in their latest updates of their box interface programs, which the newer boxes are able to compensate but causes older boxes to crash. And my boxes are about a decade old at least. I don't want to trade in the crashing box because it allows me to record shows that are suppose to be record protected. Newer DVRs won't allow for DVD recorders to record off off many of the cable channels, such as any Viacom owned channels like MTV. I asked Spectrum if there was a possibility of corruption in their latest updates and they swore there wasn't any.
Possibility #2; The surge bar that section of the living room has all it's electronics attached to has a dim light blinking instead of a bright unblinking green light. I initially suspected the surge bar and had removed the cable box from it and plugged it into it's own outlet a month ago. But the rebooting continued to be a problem.
Possibility #3. The owner of the house I am currently living in had the entire house rewired by someone who later turned out not to be a licensed electrician. This could account for the dim blinking light on the surge bar, but the rewiring was done last October, and the rebooting problem didn't start until around July.
Possibility #4: The reboot only seems to happen when the television is on. So is the television set somehow doing this? It is a very cheap large screen television given to us as a gift two years ago. One of those smart televisions from a brand I never heard of which was bought at one of those Black Friday door buster sales. You can hook it up to the internet and get Youtube, Hulu, Netflix, Disney+ and all the other streaming services on it. And it occasionally crashes. Every now and then the start screen freezes and you need to pull out the power plug and plug it back in so it can reboot. But this happens about once a month.
So, here is what I did. I removed the HDMI cable and instead hooked up the composite cables between the television and the cable box, and so far it has been six hours with no crash.
So basically it has something to do with the HDMI cable, which can either be the television sending bad code to the cable box during their interface, or perhaps the electricity or surge bar having a problem, and the television pulls electricity from the cable box through the HDMI cable causing the crash.
Still don't know what the F&%k is going on. Will try a brand new surge bar once one is available ( pandemic closing the store we previously got our electronic components from prevented us from doing that a few weeks ago. ) But I am wondering if anyone else has had this problem or has heard of someone else with this problem?
Topic: Television Set Crashing the DVR? (Read 188 times)