# Bug Report: L180 0 second recording



## Cheezmo (Feb 5, 2004)

I had another 0 second recording this evening.

I had timers for CSI (11-1, 8-9) and ER (5-1 9-10).

The CSI ended up 0 seconds. The ER recorded fine.

Interestingly, I had 3hr 43 minutes free. Then after I deleted the "0 second" recording, I had 3hr 41 minutes free.

I wonder if back to back recordings on different OTA channels triggers this problem?


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## Bogney (Jul 11, 2003)

Cheezmo said:


> The CSI ended up 0 seconds.


 I had timers for Survivor, CSI, and Without a Trace. All were from the satellite but I used the SD channel to save hard disk space with Survivor. Survivor and Without a trace were OK. My CSI recording was 0 seconds.


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## DVDDAD (Dec 21, 2002)

I had back to back recordings with Survivor & CSI off HD Satellite feed. Survivor had 0 second recording and CSI recorded fine. This has happened ever since L180.


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## ggw2000 (Dec 22, 2003)

DVDDAD said:


> I had back to back recordings with Survivor & CSI off HD Satellite feed. Survivor had 0 second recording and CSI recorded fine. This has happened ever since L180.


This crap has got to stop! What the h*ll is this company doing? Everything seems to be going backwards!
I had a recording set for CBSHD (61.5) for survivor, CSI, and Without a trace from 8 to 11pm. Survivor was 0 secs. CSI and Without a trace both say 60 minutes. I had ER set to record on a west coast at 1 am and it says 24 minutes! My wife almost had a fit over survivor until I told here I set up a SD timer on west coast and it says 60 minutes (will find out tonight). She is really pissed about the ER tho.
At 8 pm I was watching another channel and saw the timer fire for survivor and the record light came on. The red record light was ON the entire hour!!!
How do you get a 0 second recording?
Mark, have you been in contact with anyone at Dish as far as what's going on here? I never had a missed timer or 0 second recording until L180. As I noted in another tread, my patience level with Dish is wearing real thin as I consider myself worse off than I was mid february and this is 3 months down the road.... Gerry


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Definitely been in contact...

All of the testing right now is geared towards OTA loss and timer failures. Maybe one of these days I'll actually get a 0 second recording and be able to figure out what happened, but I've never seen one. And my 921 is recording these days just about all of the time for testing.


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## Cheezmo (Feb 5, 2004)

Apart from Bogney's, the pattern seems to be back to back OTA recordings, in which case the first one may become a "0 second" one.

Another thing that may or may not be related is that I've noticed that when I leave it tuned to an OTA channel, then turn it off (standby), and an OTA timer fires (on another OTA channel), and I later turn it on while it is recording that OTA timer, I get the state where it powers on with no output. Pressing the output button eventually gets SD then HD to light up but it shows channel 77-0 UKN. At that point you can go to the DVR or Guide and get something legitimate tuned.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Yeah, but I do 7 back to back OTA recordings every week, and still don't get the 0 second ones. 

Your second point there Steve is known and documented.


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## guruka (Dec 27, 2003)

Yep. Had my first 0 second recording tonight on KCBS-HD. It was Joan of Arcadia. Luckily I recorded it twice, once off air from my CBS local and then again from CBS-HD. I've taken to doing this for many shows in case one recording fails. It's easy to delete the extra one. Tonight the OTA recording went fine (8-9 PM no padding) and the satellite recording (9-10 PM 1 min and 3 min padding)was 0 seconds (unusable.) Those were the only recordings scheduled for this evening. I was out of the house and the 921 was turned off. Last channel tuned was NBC-East (satellite.)

.....G


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## ggw2000 (Dec 22, 2003)

The 0 second recordings are not just happening on OTA recordings. I do not use OTA at all and have begun getting the 0 second recordings over the past week or so.
Today I hooked my 501 back up (now that I have a DP34) and will duplicate recordings on it as I can no longer TRUST the 921 to record. As I said above, I am worse off than I was in the middle of February!


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

ggw2000 said:


> The 0 second recordings are not just happening on OTA recordings. I do not use OTA at all and have begun getting the 0 second recordings over the past week or so.
> Today I hooked my 501 back up (now that I have a DP34) and will duplicate recordings on it as I can no longer TRUST the 921 to record. As I said above, I am worse off than I was in the middle of February!


Strangely enough, I used to get a lot of 0 second recordings, and now can't remember when the last one was - probably prior to L180.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Same here, Simon. I got a few 0 times in recordings some time ago but decided to carefully analyze why and I discovered that in each case I had generated a situation that exceeded the system limits of one tuner for OTA or a max of two recording streams simultaneously. This always got tricky with adjacent scheduled timers. Padding times made this more obvious but a timer sequence mentioned above like 8-9 and 9-10 on OTA is an overlap at 9:00. Consequently I have developed the practice of doing a non-overlap and set the timers for e.g 8:00-9:00 and 9:01 - 10:00. AND setting the pad timers to 0 each. Friday, I do this timer sequence for Joan and Jag and again for the missing persons show or whatever crime show is on at 10:00. My wife likes all three and we usually like to go out so we used to miss them but now, I get all by setting the OTA timers so they never have any chance of overlap. Exceeding system design is easy to do with the 921. I do it often if I don't think about it. In some cases the latest L180 is generating warnings. While these warnings are getting better they are still, IMO, somewhat cryptic and not complete. The above overlap is real but does not flag a conflict. 

In the above, I know that I could have set the 921 for an event like 8:00 to 11:00 with pads because in my case the shows were all on one OTA channel, but I began doing them one at a time and setting the repeat for weekly. It's an old habit (setting the timer events per program) that I have not yet broken.


In the example given by guruka, his exceeding system design is obvious in his description of how he set those adjacent timers. The one thing I could never predict is which adjacent timer event would fail. I just figured out how to prevent both from failing. I really haven't had one of these failures in many weeks, probably since February.


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## leemathre (Sep 25, 2003)

I have had two 0 second recordings within the last week. One was on HBOHD and the other was on one of my International channels, two different satellites and no OTA involved. In both cases, there were no other scheduled recordings within an hour on each side of the two that did not record. Also, both were scheduled to record while the 921 was turned off, so I was not doing anything that could have interfered with the system.


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## the_tx_dude (Jan 26, 2004)

I continue to have O second recordings on my OTA channels with no DVR functions (KPRC Houston NBC station). Since 180 I have yet to successfully record any Law and Order primetime show from this channel. Before I was able to.

I have tried every way of setting up timer including, but not limited to, making sure no other timer is going, tuning to various OTA and sat channels before timer should fire, viewing program and then pressing manual record and stop, etc. In every instance I end up with a 0 second recording even though red light is on and it is shown as recording. I hope the next release can fix this.


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## ksquared (Feb 2, 2004)

[long (1500 word) rant about (lack of) stability of 921 deleted]

Sigh. 0 second just burned me. Was trying to record CBSHD-west,
"Survivor". Had over 5 hours free in HD. Tried to watch from
begining while it was recording - couldn't. It would only show live.
I could go to other things recorded in the DVR queue, but every time
I selected the survivor item in the list, it would be live and wouldn't 
rewind (or start from begining, which is the button I was clicking to select.
Could only watch the last half live. When it finished, I had a 0 length recording. I've had several fractured (rebooted - about 4-6 minutes 
missing in middle) SD recordings since 180. I don't do much HD 
but I have yet to successfully record an entire HD show (4-5 attempts)
since 180 came out.

Terminally frustrated...
K^2


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## BobMurdoch (Apr 24, 2002)

O Second recording for King of Queens this week. I had an 8pm timer finishing up, and another 9pm timer firing at the same time. Evidently too much for it to handle. I knew something was up when the remote response got REAL sluggish while I was watching a recorded show at the same time


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## Jason (Aug 8, 2002)

I just got my first recording error on my 921 in a week's ownership. I had a timer set for World Fighting Championship on HDNET from 9pm-10pm. The timer fired okay and showed that it was recording throughout the entire hour. When I tried viewing it, it showed 0 seconds recording time and it told me that the event was unviewable and to just delete it. Has anyone else had this problem since the L184 software update?


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## TedKaz (Mar 1, 2004)

Yes the same thing happened to me when I set to record The Fog on TNT-HD.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Jason and Ted, what were you doing when the timers fired for the 0 minute recordings that you had? And what were you doing while the recordings were in progress? 

I've yet to be able to determine a pattern for this, and haven't had it hit me except for the 1 time back under L142 in December.


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## Jason (Aug 8, 2002)

Mark Lamutt said:


> Jason and Ted, what were you doing when the timers fired for the 0 minute recordings that you had? And what were you doing while the recordings were in progress?
> 
> I've yet to be able to determine a pattern for this, and haven't had it hit me except for the 1 time back under L142 in December.


Mark,

I was watching a previously recorded event when the timer fired for the World Fighting Championship on HDNET. A few minutes after the timer fired, I hit the DVR button to get to the status screen and verified that the event was recording. I checked back again about a half hour into it and it still said that the show was recording. Shortly after the event ended, I tried viewing it and it said it was unviewable and to just delete it. It showed 0 seconds recording time. This has only happened once since I got my 921. If it happens again, I will repost here with the details. I am just glad that it wasn't something important that I missed!


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Jason - was it a previously recorded OTA event or Sat event, and was it HD or SD?


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## Jason (Aug 8, 2002)

Mark Lamutt said:


> Jason - was it a previously recorded OTA event or Sat event, and was it HD or SD?


It was a previously recorded OTA event that was SD.


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