HDHomeRun Prime Power Adapter Problem?

[KeithAbbott]

Lately, I've been noticing one or both of my Primes stalling for upwards of 10-15 seconds when watching a show. The video and audio will suddenly freeze, usually displaying a black screen, and will resume playing by itself in about 10-15 seconds. When it resumes, it resumes at the current live location, meaning that I have just missed 10-15 seconds of content. My suspicion is that my power adapter for one or both Primes are going bad. I turned on diagnostics for both units this past Monday; can somebody take a look and see if any power issues are showing up in the logs?

My device IDs are: 13231929 and 13256C0B

Device ID 13231929 seems like the more likely culprit.

p.s. I did reboot both Primes earlier today, thinking that may have cleared up the problem. I don't think it did.

p.p.s. I do not use the SiliconDust app for viewing/recording, I use different software.

[jasonl]

Is there a specific time I can look at?

[KeithAbbott]

Best times would be:

• Monday, 8/17 from 7:00pm-10:00pm
• Tuesday, 8/18 from 6:30pm-9:30pm
• Wednesday, 8/19 from 12:30-3:30pm
• Thursday, 8/20 from 2:00pm-4:00pm

[KeithAbbott]

@jasonl, hold off on this for now. My 13231929 device shows all but two channels as being "not-subscribed", there was only two channels that I could find that still worked fine (there may be a few more, I have hundreds of channels and I did not check every single one of them). After working with Spectrum, they believe it might be a problem with the high split converter, they are sending me a new one to try. I'll report back after I get the new unit.

p.s. Earlier today, I did swap the power adapter for the Prime that's been acting up with a spare, but the results were unchanged. I'm hopeful that swapping the HSC will solve the problem and the rest of my equipment is still fine. I should know by the middle of next week.

[KeithAbbott]

Well, I received the replacement HSC, connected it all up, and after working with Spectrum (I think they had to essentially pair the new unit to my cablecard?), it is behaving exactly the same as the original HSC. I then swapped the power adapter with the HSC paired to my working Prime, I'm still getting the exact same results. I'm going to try to swap USB cables and see if that makes any difference.

To me, this feels like a problem with my account on the Spectrum side. I think if it was some sort of hardware issue, none of the channels would work. Instead, the same two channels as before continue to work, and I can see in the Prime system log entries that say "subscribed" when I access either channel. Nonetheless, Spectrum will be rolling a truck on Tuesday morning, so they can spend a half a day in my basement. Yay...

Does anyone on this forum have any insight as to what might be going on?

[KeithAbbott]

I just swapped the USB cable with the one that came with the new HSC, nothing has changed. I can still only view two channels, all others are returning not-subscribed. Spectrum phone support was suggesting that maybe the USB port on the Prime has gone bad; is that a possibility? I feel like if that was the case I wouldn't be able to view the two channels that I am able to.

To recap: I've swapped out the power adapter for the Prime, I've swapped out the HSC device, the power adapter for the HSC, and the USB cable connecting the Prime to the HSC. Maybe I should swap the coax cables into and out of the HSC? Maybe I'll try connecting the coax input to the HSC to a different coax port on my unity gain amplifier?

[leerandall]

When I first installed my 2 HSCs with my 2 Primes, the same thing happened. One HSC had the full channel line-up, but the other did not. After spending some time with Spectrum HSC support on the phone, they realized that they didn't flip the right switches/press the right keys for the second HSC. I cannot remember exactly what they had to do, sorry, but after a while they caught wise and figured it out. On your end, keep watching/refreshing the HSC channel line-up pages on the non-working one. When they get it figured out, those will populate with all the channels fairly quickly.

I have since dumped all Spectrum equipment and service. It was a particularly good day when I was able to walk into their local office and return all that equipment and tell them I no longer wanted to pay them $280 every month. A good day indeed.

[KeithAbbott]

I tried this morning connecting the coax input to the HSC to a different coax port on my unity gain amplifier, with exactly the same results as before. I think the only other hardware change that is left is to swap out coax cables into and out of the HSC, which I will do between now and when the Spectrum tech gets here on Tuesday morning. However, it seems unlikely to me that my RG6 coax cable has suddenly gone bad.

This is a snippet from the log from the working Prime viewing a channel this morning:

Code: Select all

20260823-13:55:48 Tuner: tuner0 streaming rtp to 192.168.1.40:8356
20260823-13:55:48 Tuner: tuner0 tuning 235 TNT HD
20260823-13:55:48 CableCARD: tuner0 235 TNT HD access = subscribed

And this is a snippet from the log from the problem Prime viewing the same channel this morning:

Code: Select all

20260823-13:58:40 Tuner: tuner0 streaming rtp to 192.168.1.40:8314
20260823-13:58:40 Tuner: tuner0 tuning 235 TNT HD
20260823-13:58:41 CableCARD: tuner0 235 TNT HD access = not-subscribed

It seems pretty clear to me from the log message that Spectrum is telling my HSC/Prime that I am not subscribed to that channel. Is there any other root cause that I am not thinking of that would create that log entry? I'm sure Spectrum will try to blame everything else under the sun as the cause of the problem.

[KeithAbbott]

I'm expecting that the Spectrum tech is going to try to blame the problem on my Prime. Would it be a valid test to swap cablecards between the two units? I realize Spectrum would have to re-pair both units, but I can't think of any other way that might prove or disprove whether the Prime is the root cause of the problem.

In my mind, once the cablecards are swapped, if my problem Prime starts working and the other Prime shows not-subscribed messages, that would prove that the problem is not my hardware (although it could be a problem with the cablecards themselves). Is my thought process valid, or am I oversimplifying things?

[jasonl]

The card in 13231929 just isn't authorized for most of the channels. On most providers, they have to add the channel packages both to the account for billing purposes and to each CableCARD in order to authorize the card to receive those channels. If all the correct packages don't get added, channels will be missing. They should compare the two cards and then try to make the broken one match the working one, and send a refresh to the card.