[Extractstream [MM]] Flaky Tivo... <sniff>

[TivoMerch]

My Venerable Philips HDR212 SA unit has gone a bit flaky on me... I don't 
know how bad it is, but I *think* it's either software-based or 
MPEG-decoder based - the encoder doesn't seem to be affected; and watching 
live TV seems fine... here's what it's doing:

My Tivo seems to glitch while playing back video from either pre-recorded 
shows or from the 30-minute 'live-TV buffer' -> sometimes the glitches last 
anywhere from milliseconds to 3-5 seconds, where the video freezes, and (on 
longer glitches) the audio b0rks up as well... when the audio does return, 
it may have a higher pitch for (maybe) up to a second thereafter - it's 
hard to time exactly...

AFAIK, I haven't found any glitches in any downloaded shows, but it's been 
hard to track so far, as I don't sit & watch every single show that I burn 
to SVCD; however, I do have one show that seems to glitch badly (sadly, the 
Enterprise season opener... :-(( <sniff> ) but I will be downloading that 
tonite or tomorrow (depending on schedule) and encoding that one posthaste 
to make sure the video is OK...

Also, reboots don't seem to help - so it's not a "long-standing program 
going nutz" problem...

This is what I'm thinking, but as my father-in-law used to say: "I could be 
full of condensed milk" with my reasoning:

1) TivoOS (for lack of a better term) hasn't been updated in quite some 
time - not only that, my Tivo hasn't been thru a "Full-Bore Slate-wiping 
reset" in *years*. My TivoChunk #'s are currently at: 2128007 ... Has 
anyone else had any problems with their Tivos when the chunk# gets that high?

2) Is it possible with all the jazz going on in that Tivo that maybe the HD 
can't keep up anymore? I'm still at single 40G 5400RPM hard drive - with 
the extra load (Webserver, telnet server, etc...) going on, would a memory 
upgrade (to 32Meg) and a 7200rpm / 8Meg buffer hard drive be prudent? Does 
the HD buffer size really *mean* anything to a Tivo anyway? How would I 
find out?

Unforch, because of this, I'm stepping up my efforts to "roll-my-own" tivo 
out of my Micro-footprint Athlon 1600+ (I want 100Mbit more than anything, 
and a bit'o'preprocessing of the video before I get it on my main 
workstation would be nice...) but the video capture card I have only 
supports Win2K, so fast boot times are a thing of the past... (I'm debating 
getting a different card that Linux likes... and 
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org is a very good friend of mine... ;-) )

Anyway, if anyone else has heard of this, or knows a remedy, I would be 
humbled if you could impart some of your wisdom my way... ;-)

Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger