# BUG REPORT: Recorded program shows longer time



## bytre (Sep 10, 2003)

Software: L147HECD-N
Bootstrap: 120B
Flash: F051

Recorded program shows the incorrect number of minutes. See attached image. "The Sopranos" is recorded, showing a 295 minute length. The actual program is 60 minutes long, not 295 minutes. Starting play and immediately pausing shows the 59:58 length. 

The program was recorded with 0 leading and 0 trailing minutes. It was recorded Tuesday 3/16 from 8-9pm (Pacific) on 9440. It was a single event recording (recorded after my normally scheduled one was inturrupted with a reboot).

It looks like it might be displaying the length if it was recorded in SD instead of HD. Steps to replicate are not known.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

I've seen a similar issue. I forget the fine details, but it had to do with fast forwarding - the time remaining display there showed what appeared to be SD times for an HD program.


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## Interprises (Feb 12, 2004)

In a similar vein -- had three shows setup for recording during early morning hours, yesterday. All three were not recorded in full. All three were HDTV programming. One was supposed to be 30 minutes in length, but only 4 minutes was recorded. Another was one hour in length and 11 minutes was recorded. The third was the movie _Eraser_, and about 55 minutes of the movie was recorded. All three programs were on different channels; DSCHD, HDNET and HBOHD.

Have not experienced this problem in the past. Seems to have surfaced when the guide became corrupted three days ago. I reset to factory defaults, and the Sopranos was recorded properly, this evening. Will follow-up, if necessary.


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## Jim Parker (Aug 12, 2003)

I have had a few problems since the guide corrution also. The timer for Stargate did not fire Friday  and two 60 minute timers had a recording length of about 120 minutes.


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## Big D (Aug 19, 2002)

I have noticed the incorrect timer minutes many times and I now think I have narrowed it down to the cause. To review, record a 60 minute program following all of our work around procedures and when completed, view the program's PVR info screen. If the recording shows 60 minutes and when you start the program and pause it and it shows 59 minutes and some seconds, you are good to go, the PVR functions will work correctly and the time remaining will indicate the correct number of minutes. If, on the other hand, you see times other than the 60 minutes ( I have seen all kinds of readings, some in the thousands of minutes) then you are going to have problems using the PVR functions such as skip. The program will play straight through okay, but if you try to skip through the commercials, at some point the recording will skip back to the bigging of the recording and start over.

Now for the cause: Whenever I start and end a recording with the unit powered on, it works every time. Whenever I start and stop a recording with the power in standby, works every time (there has been exceptions of course, but that is another thread). Whenever I start the recording with the power on and turn the unit off by going into standby which I would do when going to bed, sure enough that recording get hosed. This happens repeatedly over and over, so I now know to never put my unit into standby if a recording is in progress and I have removed the 921 power off command from my remote control so when I shut down my home theater to go to bed, the 921 stays on.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Big D, I routinely put my 921 into standby mode while recordings are happening, and the only time I've ever had a recording that showed a strange number of minutes was from my OTA PBS channel that was set to record during the night while the 921 was off anyway. I don't believe turning the 921 "off" while a recording is in progress has anything to do with the problem. I think it's an issue how the 921 is reading channel info from the data stream.


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## Big D (Aug 19, 2002)

You may be right Mark, I do know that after discovering this, I have tested it many times and it always follows what I wrote. One thing I did not mention and I sure should have as it is very important, this only applies to OTA recordings. I have never seen the problem happen with sat recordings. If you and others test this with OTA recording and do not see the bug, I would be very interested in hearing that. When a bug is so repeatable as this one is for me, I would fine it hard to believe that others are not seeing it also. One other thing, not sure if all my OTA channels do this as I don't record from them all, but those I do record from will always show incorrect time remaining and PVR functions will mess up if I put my 921 into standby during the recording.

Try it out and let us know what you see, and thanks for all the time you put into the testing for us, we really do appriciate it.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

What channels specifically, Big D? Are they channels that you have to regularly rescan for by any chance? 

I'll set up some tests tonight with an OTA recording to see what happens.


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## Big D (Aug 19, 2002)

No, I do not have to ever rescan, seems by OTA channels hang in there pretty well, however I do have a duplicate or two but that is another issue unrelated I believe. I doubt the PSIP is at fault, the same channel will work okay when I leave the unit on and fail when I turn it off while recording. In fact it is so touchy, I saw I was about to start a recording on 010.01 at 9:59 pm and it was 9:58 on the 921. I was heading to bed, so I quickly turned the 921 off, but missed it by a few seconds, it had already started recording. Sure enough, it had timer remaining and PVR issues when I played it back the next day. So it really only takes a moment for it to be recording when I turn the unit off for it to fail.


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## Interprises (Feb 12, 2004)

Re: http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?p=215060#post215060

So far, after restoring _defaults_, recordings have completed, properly.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Big D - I set up 3 different OTA timers last night for varying lengths on different OTA channels, and with each, turned the 921 off with the power button on the remote after the timer had fired. In all 3 cases, the recordings were normal and correct. I couldn't replicate what you're seeing.


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## Big D (Aug 19, 2002)

Wow, I am very surprised. I have seen other posts on wrong times remaining and inability to use some PVR functions at times from others, just not this exact bug as I am seeing it. I guess I just assumed others were seeing it, I should know better than to assume. Looks like I will need to do a through job of testing today to see if I can add any additional data to my findings. Of course it is possible that your beta load has corrected the behavior, I wonder if anyone else has ever seen this or am I the only one and it is either my 921 or my setup that is causing the problem.

So, has anyone ever set up a OTA recording using our appropriate workarounds, started the recording and then put the 921 into standby and had the subsequent recording either indicate incorrect times when paused while watching or have the skip function cause the recording to start over at some point while watching the recording?

I should add for clarity, I always get a 60 minute recording, the entire show, if I set it up for 60 minutes, it is the indication of the time remaining that is incorrect. I do not get shorted on the recording like some others are reporting, that I believe is different bug. Example, if I pause right after I start the recording, it will show 38 minutes remaining, however if I watch the entire show straight through, all 60 minutes will play. What happens after that that initial 38 minutes has gone buy is the timer will usually jump up to something like 1,250 minutes remaining. Kind of funny really.

Thank you for the testing this Mark, I will try to do my part now and get us some additional info.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

I did create the timers manually, rather than through the guide and then changing the record channel. I'll try that method tonight.


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## Big D (Aug 19, 2002)

Mark, I also use the timer menu to set up my timers, not the guide and edit the channel. I plan on testing it both ways today.


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## Big D (Aug 19, 2002)

Well, I did a number of tests today and I have to admit, I could not reproduce the bug, which baffels me. I even set up longer term tests just as I have seen fail before, they worked fine. I would not bet money on this not still being an issue and I will keep my eye on it, however in the meantime, I will not worry about it. It is remotely possible I have not seen this since L146/L147, maybe it was squished then. It is also possible that I did not get the zero minutes before and after edited correctly, you have to go back in to the recording settings and edit them to zero, they do not take the first time if you set them to zero when first setting the timer.


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## Big D (Aug 19, 2002)

Some additional info on this. Two nights ago, I recorded two OTA programs, one after the other, allowing 1 minute between shows. I left the 921 on over night as well. Here is what happened: First show recorded 60 minutes, showed 60 minutes when I paused it right after starting and the skip function worked fine through the entire show. Second program that recorded just 1 minute later did not do so well. It showed 37 minutes recorded in the PVR screen, showed 374 minutes recorded when I hit pause. I started watching it and hit the skip button successfully at the shows beginning and at the first commercial break. I checked the time remaining before hitting skip, it was counting down okay. Before I used skip for the second set of commercials, paused now showed 1758 minutes (i believe, did not write it down). Since I know from previous experience that hitting the skip button once I see this it will start the recording over, I did not skip and watched the remaining program. As soon as it was over, I checked the time remaining, it was counting down, now about 1730 minutes, so I hit skip, guess what, it started over right from the beginning. I hit pause again at the opening and it read not the 374 minutes it showed the first time, but 358 (again I think, did not write these down).

So, it appears the issue is not with turning off the 921 (standby), rather something else. It does seem that this happens with 2 or more recording close together and it is the second one that gets screwed. Anyone else got any ideas?


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

What did you record, and from what channel Big D?


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## Big D (Aug 19, 2002)

West Wing and L&O, both NBC stations, so no change in the OTA tuner was needed either. I scheduled WW to end at 9:59 and L&O to start at 10:00.


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## Big D (Aug 19, 2002)

I am sorry to report that this bug is still with us in L180. I recorded Cold Case on CBS OTA 013.01 and L&O on the NBC OTA 003.01 channels last night, using the menu method to set up the timers. I had previously set these timers in L149 and did not delete and reset them after L180s download, so they had 0 minutes padding.

Checked them it this morning with the following results: Cold Case shows 60 minutes recorded in the PVR menu, showed 60 minutes with a pause just after starting to view it and all PVR functions worked fine while watching it. L&O showed 60 minutes in the PVR menu, showed 543:06 minutes when paused just after starting and PVR functions seemed to work. FF to 525:xx minutes and timer changed to 42:xx minutes within one frame, during the remainer of the program the timer worked correctly. New this time is the PVR function continued working after the timer changed, it normally does not work for me after I record a program that has this bug. It normally will restart from the beginning of the recording if I try to skip or FF.


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