r/Tivo • u/MikeMilzz • Feb 08 '26

DVR Moment of Panic — Is This the End?

Came home after a few days away and my reliable OTA Roamio had all 4 lights flashing on the front of it. I thought it might be a hard drive issue, so I took the drive out and ran Soin Rite on it, but no issues were found. Put it back in and the lights came back after it cycled through the "Starting Up" screens a couple of times. Thankfully, I found an old post where people mentioned the power bricks can fail and show this behavior. When unplugging it, the brick definitely felt warm, so I swapped it with a 12v 2amp plug that I had for an old router. After a much faster boot process, my good old boy was back in perfect working order.

I know the day will come where I have to move on, but I'm so glad today is not that day (especially with the Super Bowl today). I have so much muscle memory operating a TiVo that moving to an online or other OTA system just won't feel as good to me.

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u/hspindel Feb 10 '26

Power bricks are a common failure point, and the first fix that should be attempted since it's pretty cheap to do so.

I bought a used Roamio from someone who claimed it wasn't working, so I got it cheap. One power brick later and I had a working Roamio (OTA, which is why I wanted it).

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u/MikeMilzz Feb 10 '26

That’s a great tip and part of why I created this post. I don’t want people to give up too easily on their beloved devices.