# L184 Bug Report: No Timers Firing



## tm22721 (Nov 8, 2002)

I have had 13 timers that have worked Ok for the five months that I have had my 921 but none have fired in the past few days since L184. I can create new timers but they won't fire.

I have reset power and deleted recordings down to 50 hours but to no avail. Except for 100% missed timers everything else works. 

I now have a 921 that behaves like an 800 and I am not happy.


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## FaxMan (Oct 14, 2003)

I'm curious. Are these OTA timers or Sat timers?

I don't seem to have any problems. Sat timers only, I don't have OTA yet.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

I've had a situation where I had to delete ALL my timers, and then do a power-plug boot in order to clear corruption in the timer database. Nothing else had any effect.


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## Clarkjwc (Mar 8, 2004)

I am starting to see many Weelky SAT timers that are not comming on.
I has one that did come on and would not trun off. I had to do the 10 sec OFF to get it to shut down. Then when I looked to erase --- there was nothing there.

JC


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## tm22721 (Nov 8, 2002)

All of my timers are Sat, I don't get OTA in my area.


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## rjbu (Aug 12, 2003)

None of the timers that I had setup before upgrading to L184 are firing; all of these are Sat timers. A couple of the timers that I have setup since upgrading to L184 fired, but most are not firing. 

Any suggestions for fixing this other than deleting all of them and recreating them? I have more than 60 timers so that will take a while.


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## tm22721 (Nov 8, 2002)

I performed the suggested deletion of all timers and reboot. Problem solved, thanks.

No wonder the 921 is being held back. Can you imagine the chaos at the call center if 10,000 irate customers had this problem after L184 downloaded ??


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

If they don't fire after doing a power cord reboot, then you'll have to delete and recreate them. I still have one timer that fires regularly and correctly that was set up under L142 way back when, so I really don't know why you guys are experiencing this...

If the timers that aren't firing are weekly timers, check them to make sure that they are still set to fire on the correct day. Just about any kind of timer editing will screw up the day that weekly timers are set to fire.


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## MNipper (Jan 20, 2004)

Same problem here, with SAT-only timers. Also, they wouldn't even show up in the Guide (i.e. the red dot). I fixed it by churning thru the timer display, and editing each one. Note, that I tried this once, and it didn't seem to work (I didn't change anything, I just cycled thru the change process for each timer). So, I tried it again, and the second time that I went thru the process, I clicked on a different channel, and then clicked back to the correct channel, and then cycled thru the remaining change screen without touching anything. Now... someone else might find that they don't need to do the "channel thing", but what I know for sure is that all of my timers now show in my guide, and they are all firing again.

It's still a bit of a pain, but some may find this easier than deleting and re-adding everything. At least, after you make an individual timer change, you come back to the timer list in exactly the same place (i.e. you can progressively work thru all of your timers, and not have to "re-page down" into the list after each change).

All, FWLIW.


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## smooth28la (Oct 7, 2002)

Same problem... I have many missed weekly recordings over the weekend.

These timers have worked perfectly until this weekend.

Perhaps it was because I was parked on a Sirius radio channel?


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## rjbu (Aug 12, 2003)

Mark Lamutt said:


> If they don't fire after doing a power cord reboot, then you'll have to delete and recreate them.


Thanks. I did a power cord reboot last night after seeing that suggestion in another thread, and my timers started firing again.


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## FarNorth (Nov 27, 2003)

I missed a bunch as well, including one that was very important to me. I flew with my wife to watch the Indy 500 and set timers to record the race. Knowing there was a possibility of rain, I set multiple, back-to-back timers to cover the entire day. None of them fired and I missed all the rest of my regular timers as well. I rebooted, nothing. Finally, I erased all of them and put them back in and they seem to be working but I don't have the Indy 500 and, no, it will not be rebroadcast. Thanks, 921.


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## tgerrish (Jan 20, 2004)

SimpleSimon said:


> I've had a situation where I had to delete ALL my timers, and then do a power-plug boot in order to clear corruption in the timer database. Nothing else had any effect.


I was away on vacation for the last week or so, came back to find software update L184 had installed itself and that none of my timers had fired.

As SimpleSimon pointed out, the only thing that seems to fix this is to delete all timers, pull the card and hard boot the 921.


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## djtowle (Feb 2, 2004)

I had to delete all of my timers and reprogram them as well to get timers working again. No OTA hooked up, this is all Sat. timers. 



Mark Lamutt said:


> If they don't fire after doing a power cord reboot, then you'll have to delete and recreate them. I still have one timer that fires regularly and correctly that was set up under L142 way back when, so I really don't know why you guys are experiencing this...
> 
> If the timers that aren't firing are weekly timers, check them to make sure that they are still set to fire on the correct day. Just about any kind of timer editing will screw up the day that weekly timers are set to fire.


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

For the first time in a long time a timer did not fire for me. Last night I set a timer on Showtime HD to record and it did not fire at the time set even as I was watching the program at the same time on the same station? I manually hit the record button to start the recording and then stopped it at the end of the show. This has not happened to me in the past, maybe I've just been lucky?


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## paulcdavis (Jan 22, 2004)

My timers stopped firing on Sunday. I had two weekly timers for animal planet for 5:00 -5:30 am and 5:30-6:00 am with default pads and a one time timer for Meet the Press on LIL kntv NBC from 5:00-6:00 am with default pads. I also had a weekly timer for 8:00-9:00 am with default pads. None of these timers fired, although all my Saturday timers did. The 921 was in stanby and had been tuned to a sat channel before standby.

The Timer Action order list was wrong, however, still listing timers from last Wednesday as the next to fire.

A soft reboot fixed the action order list and the rest of my Sunday timers and one early Monday timer have fired ok so far.

Has anyone else seen a connection between corruption of the Timer Action order list and tiker failures?


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

I didn't get "Odyssey 5" recorded this week off HD.Net, unfortunately. In the past, I've had problems with this weekly timer firing once on the day it's supposed to, and again 24 hours later (for no known reason). Even after I deleted it and re-created it, it has done this several times over the weeks.

This week, it only fired the day after it was supposed to, so I didn't get the desired show at all. I think my particular problem was the "the 921 doesn't handle midnight well" issue, though, rather than a general case of multiple timers failing to fire. I don't know what the deal is with timers that start or stop at midnight (maybe the padding plus the timer confuses it about the date?).


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

paulcdavis said:


> ... Has anyone else seen a connection between corruption of the Timer Action order list and timer failures?


Yes. See post #3 above for solution.


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## H2OSkier (Jan 20, 2004)

Just noticed none of my Sunday timers fired, both were Sat. One was SD and one was HD if it matters.

Ken


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

I had a timer set to record a movie on HBOHD. Padding was set to default. I found I wanted to set a second timer for the movie just prior to the existing. Now I have two movies set to record adjacent to each other with paddings overlap. 
The first timer fired and recorded. The second timer recorded 0 minutes. 

I repeated the same exact sequence the following night. This time I manually set the paddings to 0, all of them. The repeat fired and recorded both movies.

I realize this was just 2 data points but it is something I just don't trust. Padding times. I will go back to setting all my paddings to 0 regardless of timer position on the grid. 0 paddings used to be fail safe and very reliable for me.


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## dishguy (Feb 7, 2004)

Interestingly, I haven't had any problems with timers till this Sunday, when two HBOHD timers back to back failed trying to record Sopranos and Deadwood. The wife was not happy. I think I'm one step closer to the HD Tivo box... Hope the next release fixes these issues as patience with this box is getting real thin. I'm on 184 for what it matters.


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## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

Mine missed Sopranos (Season Finale) and Deadwood as Well. Ouch. This is getting absurd. Now we can't even trust the Satellite timers.

Luckily (this time) I was babysitting the box (at least a baby screams when he needs something). Kicked off both programs manually, then power-plug reset after Deadwood.

(I think many wives are going to be asking for TiVo's soon)


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Well, for what it's worth, my Sunday timers fired normally.


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## 4HiMarks (Jan 21, 2004)

My timers stopped firing sometime Monday night. I got my M-F Screensavers at 7:00 on TechTV on Monday, but not on Tuesday. A Monday 10:00 pm timer for Bikini Destinations on HDNet didn't fire also. I deleted the timers, did a power plug reboot, and added then back. The 10:00 timer for The Shield on FX fired.

This may or may not be related, but I set a timer to record the end of the NASCAR race Sunday on FX, and set the options to extend 1 hour after the scheduled end (good thing too, as the race ran quite a bit over). I also set it to record Meltdown at 8:00 Sunday (also on FX). When I got home a little after 10:00 it was still recording. When I looked at the DVR menu, it had never stopped! It recorded everything in between the end of the race and the movie, and kept right on going after the movie ended. 

-Chris


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## TV Director (Feb 14, 2004)

For the first time since I had the 921, I had timers fail, too. Sunday evening...HBOHD...Sopranos and Deadwood both failed. No "0 second" recording...just a record event that vaporized. From what I've seen above I'm not the only one to miss these specific shows. A common link?


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

For the first time, I too am getting multiple timers which simply do not fire. The event times come and go, and the timers get deleted after their times are past, but nothing ever gets recorded. Essentially, it's as if the timer never existed.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

For those of you that are willing, I would appreciate if you would start keeping a log of what timers you define, start times, end times, timer pad options, channel, how you defined the timer, if the timer fired correctly or not, what channel you left your 921 tuned to before the timer fired (or not), whether the 921 was on or off before the timer fired, if you were watching another live channel when the timer fired or a prerecorded event, if you were watching a prerecorded event, was it SD, HD, OTA, etc...

That kind of thing. I daily fill out a spreadsheet form with my timer testing, and honestly am not having any trouble with my timers firing and recording the way they should be. If any of you are willing to step up and help out here, maybe we can determine a common problem that causing these timer failures.


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## 4HiMarks (Jan 21, 2004)

I'm willing to give it a try, but with it being summer re-runs right now, and a bit of a lull in the sports schedule, there aren't that many things I expect to be recording. 

-Chris


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## 4HiMarks (Jan 21, 2004)

So far everything has fired since I deleted timers, did a power plug reboot, and added them back on Tuesday. That is: 10:00-11:00 Tuesday SD sat channel F/X (137?) weekly timer, 0/0 padding, 921 on, don't remember what channel it was tuned to, but it was a sat channel. 7:00-8:00 Wed SD sat channel 191 M-F timer, 0/2 padding, 921 on, tuned to F/X. Both timers were set from the guide.


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## TV Director (Feb 14, 2004)

Mark Lamutt said:


> For those of you that are willing, I would appreciate if you would start keeping a log of what timers you define, start times, end times, timer pad options, channel, how you defined the timer, if the timer fired correctly or not, what channel you left your 921 tuned to before the timer fired (or not), whether the 921 was on or off before the timer fired, if you were watching another live channel when the timer fired or a prerecorded event, if you were watching a prerecorded event, was it SD, HD, OTA, etc...
> 
> That kind of thing. I daily fill out a spreadsheet form with my timer testing, and honestly am not having any trouble with my timers firing and recording the way they should be. If any of you are willing to step up and help out here, maybe we can determine a common problem that causing these timer failures.


Here's the deal, Mark...
It happened again tonight...I tried to record The Sopranos And Deadwood from HBOHD, and they just vaporized. No "0 second" recording...just vanished into thin air as if they never existed.
For BOTH shows I used the program guide to enable a timer event... Sopranos was at 9pm, and Deadwood was at 11pm. Both had a one minute pad at the top of the event, and a 3 minute pad at the end. Neither event conflicted with the other, and no other timers were set for the evening. 
I was at work this evening, so the 921 was off when the events were scheduled...and the last channel it was on was CNN (200). Up until last week, this process was rocked solid in reliability.
I'll set up some other events for test recordings and let you know if they fail. Good luck, and thanks for all your help on this site.

-TV Director :listenup:


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## TV Director (Feb 14, 2004)

I set up 3 test events overnight, and 2 of the 3 did not fire. At 6am I tried to record The Abyss on HBOHD, and at 9am I tried to record Luxury Planes on DiscHD...neither event recorded. They were programed off the program guide with 1 minute pad off the top and 3 minutes at the back end. The one event that DID record was a manually programed event on the local NBC HD. It was from 11am to 11:20am with the same padding. Recording was fine. In all instances the 921 was powered off, and the last channel it was on was NASA TV (213).

-TV Director :listenup:


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## bytre (Sep 10, 2003)

I had a longstanding sunday timer for the sopranos which failed. I used "search" to find the tuesday showing and added a timer for it. It also failed. I searched again to find more showings. This time, I put in timers for the Wednesday encore and the Saturday showing.

Looking at it this morning, it looks like no Wednesday recording took place. Wife's not gonna be happy.

I haven't done a reboot recently. I will try that.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

As I've posted in several threads, and so far it seems it's 100% successful:

Delete ALL timers. Power-cord reboot. Life becomes good.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Definitely pull the power cord to force the cold-reboot guys - it sounds like there's something very hosed up with your boxes that a cold reboot will fix.


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## bytre (Sep 10, 2003)

I did the full reboot this morning. I only have the one timer, think I should delete it (post reboot) and rebuild it?


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

bytre said:


> I did the full reboot this morning. I only have the one timer, think I should delete it (post reboot) and rebuild it?


Yes. My experience has been that corruption finds it's way into the timer database, and apparently (guessing here), a 'virgin' timer database is created whenever there is a cold reboot with no timers defined.


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## Redster (Jan 14, 2004)

Sorry Mark,, wife was 2 pissed off to tell me what didnt record and just told me last night. I guess Wed and Thurs , the shows she wanted didnt record. Normally we are watching local OTA and she uses guide to see what is on SD channels then creates a one time only timer, receiver then gets turned off. Evidently those timers are not recording but the weekly OTA timer of her soap is fine. I did a power reboot this morning for 5 mins. Will see how it turns out.


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

Mark Lamutt said:


> For those of you that are willing, I would appreciate if you would start keeping a log of what timers you define, start times, end times, timer pad options, channel, how you defined the timer, if the timer fired correctly or not, what channel you left your 921 tuned to before the timer fired (or not), whether the 921 was on or off before the timer fired, if you were watching another live channel when the timer fired or a prerecorded event, if you were watching a prerecorded event, was it SD, HD, OTA, etc...
> 
> That kind of thing. I daily fill out a spreadsheet form with my timer testing, and honestly am not having any trouble with my timers firing and recording the way they should be. If any of you are willing to step up and help out here, maybe we can determine a common problem that causing these timer failures.


I was watching a local satellite channel last night (PBS). I set a timer using the create button for E on channel 114 in my area that was supposed to start at 8:00pm and end at 9:00pm. I used the default padding option. The 921 was on because I was still on PBS. I always leave the 921 on HD. The timer did not fire. Fortunately, I set the same timer on my 510 and it worked. I seems like they break something every time they try to fix something else.


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## TV Director (Feb 14, 2004)

Mark Lamutt said:


> Definitely pull the power cord to force the cold-reboot guys - it sounds like there's something very hosed up with your boxes that a cold reboot will fix.


Good advice...I did the power cord reboot and everything is now fine! DUH! I should of known that! :icon_stup Problem is...it's been working so well lately you don't think there might be that type of problem and solutiuon.

Thanks Mark!
-TV Director :listenup:


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## BobMurdoch (Apr 24, 2002)

Mine blew all the timers this week starting with Monday morning (Sunday worked fine for me). All old timers didn't fire, and the two new timers I made fired, but had the wrong names attached (from the show before). I deleted most of my timers due to rerun season so I didn't notice until yesterday when the MTV Movie Awards didn'tstart recording. Pulled the smart card, let it reboot and the new timer was fine. I'll go home and delete the old timers, do a cold reboot, and redo them to make sure I don't have any residual problems....

This is the first time since I got the 921 in January that I had problems of this magnitude (I had a couple glitches with my 721 like this early on as well). Other than the World Poker Tour and Queer Eye, I didn't miss anything new that was critical, just my kids cartoons....

Sigh.... C'Mon Charlie PLEASE throw some more manpower at the Whack-a-bug game you've got here. Whether this becomes an orphan or not with the next HD PVR coming in 6 months to a year, your best (ie. those willing to shell out $1K for a receiver) customers are getting MAD and need you to get this box stable (Hey, even the original Dishplayer was made stable so anything is possible)


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## tm22721 (Nov 8, 2002)

Two old daily timers failed to fire again last night. Channel 8100, 18:30-19:00 & channel 191, 19:00-20:00. Single shot timers still appear to work OK.

These two timers worked ever since I deleted and re-entered all timers on June 2nd (earlier in this thread). Nothing appears to have been altered in the timer setup pages. 

I will start performing a daily re-boot on the espoused theory that it could be a memory leakage/corruption issue.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

tm22721 said:


> ... I will start performing a daily re-boot on the espoused theory that it could be a memory leakage/corruption issue.


Keep an eye on the Menu-7 Timer Management screen.

If you find it 'incorrect' immediately after a reboot, you definitely have timer database corruption, and will have to delete your timers.

I've got no idea what causes this, but the delete all, power-cord re-boot sequence sure seems to clear it for me. Done it 2-3 times now.


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## tahoerob (Mar 22, 2003)

I too had timer failures starting on 6-9-04!?!?!?

I deleted all but one. Did a SMART CARD REBOOT instead of a hard power reboot. 

IT WORKED. Also much easier than trying to access my power cord.

The kept timer worked & subsequent new timers worked afterwards.


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

I wonder if fixes in recent software versions (e.g. L182) to reduce crashing have introduced this as a side effect, or at least revealed this, when it might not previously have been visible.

This is just random speculation, but perhaps even after the sources of whatever leaks which were causing crashes/reboots were corrected, there was still a timer resource leak of some type. Perhaps the previous crashes were masking this, since they caused the receiver to reboot frequently, so a slower leak having to do with non-firing timers may have been concealed until this issue was successfully addressed. It could take a certain number of days (without a reboot or software upgrade) to manifest...


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## BobMurdoch (Apr 24, 2002)

I don't think so. It seems like everyone had the same symptoms start happening all this week. I'm guessing some kind of corrupted EPG download is to blame (before they stopped firing they recorded two shows and then slapped the wrong labels on them.... If the system mistakenly thought that there was a triple timer conflict when there wasn't really one (or the reverse may be true as well) Then that could have introduced any number of gremlins into the mix.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Slordak - I've been thinking the same thing for a couple of days now. I don't believe that this is a corrupted EPG problem because it would be visible on the guide if the EPG was corrupted, and someone by now would have noticed it. But, a very slow memory leak that takes a week or 2 to build up before it hits does sound reasonable. With the memory leak fixes from L182, now the 921s aren't rebooting every 3rd or 4th day, so this one gets uncovered. Could be...


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## ggw2000 (Dec 22, 2003)

But, a very slow memory leak that takes a week or 2 to build up before it hits does sound reasonable. With the memory leak fixes from L182, now the 921s aren't rebooting every 3rd or 4th day, so this one gets uncovered. Could be...

Mark, that's a good thought and one that needs to be fixed NOW! This 921 has continually gone downhill over the past two months. It is a totally unreliable DVR- period! It is now no better than a 811 or 6000 and I put it's current value at about $300 max since it cannot even do simple recording anymore. It's time for Dish to fessup that this project is a failure and recall the units and give current owners their money back. Enough said about that now onto missed timers.

Tonight I setup two timers for Deadwood on HBO (300) from 9-10 and 10-11 with 0/0 padding. This were setup using the EPG. The 921 was in standby mode. 9 o'clock came and went and the unit never started recording. I turned the unit on and went into the guide. The red ball that was there had just disappeared but the one for 10 o'clock was still there. I checked the "action order" and it looked good. Turned unit back off. As I sit here writing this 10 o'clock has just passed and NO recording on that one either!
Please refer back to my first paragraph on what I think of this POS.

I smile as I watch my $100 501 chugging along with it's little red light on. A real pathetic situation has developed here..

ps: Simplesimon, have you run an extension cord to your easy chair so you don't have to get up to do your power plug reboots on the regular basis as you indicate you are having to do?

ppss: Mark, I see alot of people having problems with the likes of the Sopranos and Deadwood. I'm beginning to wonder if the problem with missed recordings isn't a possible bug in the "ratings" portion of the Software. A bug in this area could actually affect all shows on a random basis. Just a thought as Eldon doesn't seem to have any ideas.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

ggw2000 said:


> ps: Simplesimon, have you run an extension cord to your easy chair so you don't have to get up to do your power plug reboots on the regular basis as you indicate you are having to do?


You misunderstand. I haven't had to reboot my 921 for probably 2 weeks now.
No OTA, and keep my timers clean (I NEVER edit a timer - always delete and recreate - no idea if that's helping, but seems like an obvious thing to do considering the total pile of crap the software is).


ggw2000 said:


> ppss: Mark, I see alot of people having problems with the likes of the Sopranos and Deadwood. I'm beginning to wonder if the problem with missed recordings isn't a possible bug in the "ratings" portion of the Software. A bug in this area could actually affect all shows on a random basis. Just a thought as Eldon doesn't seem to have any ideas.


Excellent theory - someone should look into it. Note: I've never used any of the ratings lock options. I also don't have HBO.


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## tahoerob (Mar 22, 2003)

ggw2000 said:


> ps: Simplesimon, have you run an extension cord to your easy chair so you don't have to get up to do your power plug reboots on the regular basis as you indicate you are having to do?


Please see my post above. A simple Smart Card in/out reboot fixed my timer problem for now. Also, you may NOT have to delete/reset timers.



ggw2000 said:


> ppss: Mark, I see alot of people having problems with the likes of the Sopranos and Deadwood. I'm beginning to wonder if the problem with missed recordings isn't a possible bug in the "ratings" portion of the Software. A bug in this area could actually affect all shows on a random basis. Just a thought as Eldon doesn't seem to have any ideas.


My timers also did not fire for AM Buzz Lightyear & Tarzan cartoons on Disney!!! They worked this morning correctly after smart card reboot last night.


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## FarNorth (Nov 27, 2003)

Okay, here's what happened to me last night. I have multiple timers set, all for sat recordings, various sources. Some are weekly, some like 'Dave' are M-F. I was watching a DVD and I noticed my 7 pm timer for CBS-HD didn't fire. Odd. I had missed a bunch when I was in Indy for the Indy 500 so I had followed instructions and erased all my timers, done a power plug reboot and then reset them all. I checked the guide and saw that I had one set for 8, another for 9 and yet another for 'Dave' at 10:35. All are set with the default padding. I checked the timer screen, all showed. 8 came, the timer didn't fire. Then, I set some manually, some on HD channels, some on SD. None fired. Time would come, the red dot would disappear from the guide, nothing happened. Finally, I did the power plug reboot. The lights never came back on, I checked and had a black screen but the red light came on. I pushed the red button on the remote, there's Dave, the recording had fired right on time. I set more timers over night, they all fired just fine.

My guess and it is only a guess is that somehow the clock on the guide gets out of phase with the clock in the software.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

I think it might help track this down if whenever a timer fails to fire, do a Menu-7 and see if it's "right". Every time I've had trouble like this, there's been something 'flaky' in the Timer Management screen - timers out of order, old timers at the top, etc.


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## tgerrish (Jan 20, 2004)

ALL of my timers just failed again, and deleting and setting new timers did not work. As before, I had to delete all timers, hard boot the 921 and enter all of the timers again - this seems to have fixed things. 

It sounds like the last software update L184 has a problem where it corrupts the timers. I hope the E* 921 developers put a high priority on fixing this, since a PVR without timers is more like a PVX (or maybe PV- ???).


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## tm22721 (Nov 8, 2002)

Can E* roll us back to L182 until this new problem is fixed ? L184 appears to have been a minor upgrade, yet it's caused major new problems.

If ever a reason to rollback existed, this is surely it.


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## sgt940 (Jan 9, 2004)

Mark Lamutt said:


> For those of you that are willing, I would appreciate if you would start keeping a log of what timers you define, start times, end times, timer pad options, channel, how you defined the timer, if the timer fired correctly or not, what channel you left your 921 tuned to before the timer fired (or not), whether the 921 was on or off before the timer fired, if you were watching another live channel when the timer fired or a prerecorded event, if you were watching a prerecorded event, was it SD, HD, OTA, etc...
> 
> That kind of thing. I daily fill out a spreadsheet form with my timer testing, and honestly am not having any trouble with my timers firing and recording the way they should be. If any of you are willing to step up and help out here, maybe we can determine a common problem that causing these timer failures.


Ok just when I was liking this box I have had this happen three times this week (twice to my wife). It happened twice yesterday. I have more details on the last time so here it is. I had set a timer for 6:30 to record the Reagan Funeral on fox SD(8403) and a second timer on Speed SD for 8:00 to record the Nascar Truck race. The unit was left on CNN (200) on arriving home after going to the truck race live at 10:30 niether timer had fired. My wife was really ticked as she wanted to watch the Reagan funeral.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

I have been away for 4 days and just returned home to find all my timers fired fine. The difference- This time I made sure all the pads were set to 0. Timers were, weekly OTA, single OTA and single sat. Two were simultaneous, OTA and sat channels. Several weekly timers were OTA, adjacent times but not channel switched. 

Before leaving I powered off the 921 to standby. 

Only one incorrect recording due to the network changing the time of a program to a different night. NBR on a TIVO would have caught this.

The major difference between this week and the previous 4 day recording period was that the previous week I left the pads set to default. The previous week the timers were a disaster of failure.


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## ggw2000 (Dec 22, 2003)

DonLandis said:


> I have been away for 4 days and just returned home to find all my timers fired fine. The difference- This time I made sure all the pads were set to 0. Timers were, weekly OTA, single OTA and single sat. Two were simultaneous, OTA and sat channels. Several weekly timers were OTA, adjacent times but not channel switched.
> 
> Before leaving I powered off the 921 to standby.
> 
> ...


Don, I always set my padding to "0" on all recordings... Still getting missed recordings..


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

lujan said:


> I was watching a local satellite channel last night (PBS). I set a timer using the create button for E on channel 114 in my area that was supposed to start at 8:00pm and end at 9:00pm. I used the default padding option. The 921 was on because I was still on PBS. I always leave the 921 on HD. The timer did not fire. Fortunately, I set the same timer on my 510 and it worked. I seems like they break something every time they try to fix something else.


I finally decided to do a power plug reboot yesterday and then I set two consecutive timers for the same HD station using the default paddings. They worked just fine. Originally, I didn't think I needed to power plug reboot because 184 was supposed to be a minor fix. It must have been more major than we were led to beleive or that we should just do a power plug reboot after every upgrade (major or minor).


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## deweybrunner (Feb 8, 2004)

Don Landis, in a previous thread, explains the procedure for a re-boot. He put a lot of time with those at Dish to get this right. If you are having problems with timers etc, follow his procedure. Ever since I did, i'm not having any problems at all. My timers fire just fine and ota channnels coming in fine.


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## tahoerob (Mar 22, 2003)

tgerrish said:


> .............It sounds like the last software update L184 has a problem where it corrupts the timers. I hope the E* 921 developers put a high priority on fixing this, since a PVR without timers is more like a PVX (or maybe PV- ???).


I think you mean POS intead of PVX!!!!!!!

I guess us early adopters might be SOL if they do not fully support the 921 after 942 comes out.

I am still keeping my eye out on the progress of Voom's HD DVR.


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## sgt940 (Jan 9, 2004)

sgt940 said:


> Ok just when I was liking this box I have had this happen three times this week (twice to my wife). It happened twice yesterday. I have more details on the last time so here it is. I had set a timer for 6:30 to record the Reagan Funeral on fox SD(8403) and a second timer on Speed SD for 8:00 to record the Nascar Truck race. The unit was left on CNN (200) on arriving home after going to the truck race live at 10:30 niether timer had fired. My wife was really ticked as she wanted to watch the Reagan funeral.


Ok an update, turns out no timers were working at all, power cord reboot appears to be having them working again. I believe what triggered this was early in the morining I had tried to set a timer that conflicted with two I already had set. After deleting the conflict is when I think the timers quit working.


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## bytre (Sep 10, 2003)

Same here. My power cycling reboot restored the timers that weren't working through a deletion/readdition.


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## paulcdavis (Jan 22, 2004)

I had two weekly timers fail to fire on Saturday. 4:00-5:00pm CNN and 5:00-5:30pm KGO (LIL), however, two one time timers 4:00-6:00pm Scifi and 6:00-8:00pm Scifi fired ok. All were from the program guide with default pads. The unit was in standby and had last been tuned to a Sat channel. The action order on Saturday evening showed that the next timers were weekly M-F timers, not my Sunday timers.

I re-booted Saturday evening which corrected the timer action order. My weekly Sunday timers have fired ok so far. I'm going to try checking the timer action order every morning and re-booting if it is wrong to see if that will keep my timers working. The question I have is whether the timer failure causes the Action order list to become corrupted, or the Action order list becomes corrupt and that causes the timers to fail.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

paulcdavis said:


> ...The question I have is whether the timer failure causes the Action order list to become corrupted, or the Action order list becomes corrupt and that causes the timers to fail.


My belief is that the list is just a display of corrupted data, and it's the corruption that causes timer failure.


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## Clarkjwc (Mar 8, 2004)

For what it is worth, I had a timer not fire last night,even with the red ball on the guide. I selected the program and pressed the remote Record. Record indicator came up. Went back to DVR 3 hr later and found the record still running. Tried to stop via DVR menu -- NG. Could not select any other ch.The only think I could do is select other programs recorded. Called support.They had me use the STOP on the remote. That worked. Selected the initial program and got a sub program menu. This sub menu showed all of the programs recorded for the past 347 min.

So----- what code defect will allow the remote STOP to work but not the DVR menu? This one should be easy(?) to find and FIX!

JC


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Clarkjwc said:


> ... So----- what code defect will allow the remote STOP to work but not the DVR menu? This one should be easy(?) to find and FIX!
> 
> JC


Yeah - we're all saying that - including people that have a right to have such an opinion. Lesseee ... 100 lines of code a day for 30 years ... no actually, not that much - I did too many other things during those decades - like manage the people that were writing the code or answering the questions.


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## ggw2000 (Dec 22, 2003)

Got back yesterday after being gone for a week. Had only one timer set while gone- wife's Soap 10-11 am on CBS, mon-fri, sat. This timer has never failed to fire since back to L14x. Little woman went in to catch up on a couple in the afternoon and not ONE day had fired. Nothing!! I thought she was going to have a coronary!! She went for the shotgun but I had hidden the ammo when all this fracus started a couple of weeks ago on timers. I will not post my thoughts on this POS as I have already earlier in this thread. Luckily I switched over to my lowly 501 and all her soaps were there. Real *itch that I have to pay $4.99 a month to back up this $1000 boat anchor  .


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## tahoerob (Mar 22, 2003)

TIMERS FAILED TODAY.
Last failure was 6/9/04. Reboot fixed it.
Now, 10 days later the "memory leak" or whatever bad programming that is going on has struck again. 
First noticed this AM while using themes menu, I set an auto-tune timer that did not fire. Then a DVR timer set that did not fire. I set another timer & then did a SMART CARD reboot.
Timers now WORK. It seems that we have a 10 day window until timers FAIL due to the software problem. 
FYI: SMART CARD soft boot works to fix until next failure.
This NEVER occured until AFTER L184.

Boot: 120B, Flash: F051
Software Version: L184HECD-N


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

tahoerob said:


> TIMERS FAILED TODAY.
> Last failure was 6/9/04. Reboot fixed it.
> Now, 10 days later the "memory leak" or whatever bad programming that is going on has struck again.
> First noticed this AM while using themes menu, I set an auto-tune timer that did not fire. Then a DVR timer set that did not fire. I set another timer & then did a SMART CARD reboot.
> ...


I think Mark posted some stuff about this in another thread. It probably kicked in at L182 when they did the major memory leak & GSOD fixes. He says that that uncovered some timer trouble that takes 10 days to appear. We didn't see it before because our boxes never stayed up that long.

Workaround: Boot once a week.


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## Clarkjwc (Mar 8, 2004)

I'm building a new deck and my unit has been unplugged for three days.I re-aimed the dish today and set two timers for HBO movies tonight. Neither one fired, nor did my weekly timer for the 10 PM news. I going to have to call for a movie credit, again!

ARRG!!

JC


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Over the past 2 weeks I have had some timers fail! This, after I have resumed the practice of setting pads to 0. 
In all three failure cases, I noticed that the switch matrix had no match between the tuners. A check switch did not fix the problem but just indicated there was one. (Tuner #2 had no input) Last evening, I had the timers fail for the third time but decided to leave it alone and after 6 hours, I began to see my subscribbed channels dropped (turned red) from the guide with the call to subscribe message. I also verified my satellite dishes proper functioning with a 6000 working properly.
In each case I did the long off power plug reboot, performed a check switch test, and was back in business and timers once again began to function. 

I am coming closer and closer to installing an appliance timer switch on the power plug of the 921 to automate the long power plug reboot each day. What do you people think of this idea. Obviously, I would not be able to have a recording taking place during that time. Mark, your thoughts?


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## Jerry G (Jul 12, 2003)

DonLandis said:


> I am coming closer and closer to installing an appliance timer switch on the power plug of the 921 to automate the long power plug reboot each day. What do you people think of this idea. Obviously, I would not be able to have a recording taking place during that time. Mark, your thoughts?


It's not a bad idea, Don. But I've had timers fail (or in one case fire, but the recording stopped after 8 minutes) within 24 hours of a power plug reboot, so I believe the problem is a very severe one that is unpredictable as to when it will occur and can occur very soon after a reboot.

If we can say that the ability to record is the most basic function of a PVR, and extend that slightly to say that being able to do a timed unattended recording is just as basic, then at this time the 921 is unable to perform it's most basic functionality. I think I will have Dish unsubscribe my 921 as I can't see paying the $4.99 monthly PVR fee than my 921 doesn't function as a PVR and has become essentially useless.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

I think that's not a bad idea for now, Don.


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## tahoerob (Mar 22, 2003)

I have been able to fix the timer problem each time with a simple smart card reboot.
Since the timer data corrupt seems to occur ~ every 10 days, a previous suggestion of a smart card reboot ONCE a week is far more simple!!!!


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## ggw2000 (Dec 22, 2003)

tahoerob said:


> I have been able to fix the timer problem each time with a simple smart card reboot.
> Since the timer data corrupt seems to occur ~ every 10 days, a previous suggestion of a smart card reboot ONCE a week is far more simple!!!!


Tahoerob, I believe and always have that a smartcard reboot is the way to go. I have used this to get rid of the thin blue line problem and will use it to reboot this *** at least twice a week. I have worked with and built computers for many years and personally will NOT do a power plug reboot. I know HDD are suppose to "auto park" in case of power failure but I am not going to take the chance of a screwed HDD... Others can do as they want of course-they paid for it... Gerry


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## tahoerob (Mar 22, 2003)

ggw2000 said:


> Tahoerob, I believe and always have that a smartcard reboot is the way to go. I have used this to get rid of the thin blue line problem and will use it to reboot this *** at least twice a week. I have worked with and built computers for many years and personally will NOT do a power plug reboot. I know HDD are suppose to "auto park" in case of power failure but I am not going to take the chance of a screwed HDD... Others can do as they want of course-they paid for it... Gerry


Thanks, I agree that if a power reboot was a often needed procedure, they would have a switch accessible!!! Of course they did not plan ahead very well anyways 

I think that sometimes the best solution is the simplest one!

All of my GSOD & other malfunctions were fixed by smart card reboots. I have had to do a power cord reboot twice since Jan. The last one was when I think my babysitter hit that STUPID green reset button on the UHF Pro remote  :hurah:


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Reminder on the power plug reboot reasons as explained by the E* tech.

The 8 second power button reboot also interupts the hard drive power but only after the lengthy "8 sec" pressing of the power button. Normal pressing briefly just shuts down the active operation and display of the 921 but the hard drive continues to buffer record. After that 8 second pressing you release it and it may be that the power to that hard drive was only interrupted for a moment before you release the button which applies power again to the system including the drive to reboot. Possible that the power button reboot process could act like a rapid off and on of power to the hard drive. This type of momentary interruption of the drive power is not considered a good thing. Therefore it is considered to be better to power plug for a full 2 minutes 20 seconds minimum or longer for a safe reboot. The reason for that oddba;ll time period is just something they determined in the lab and was considered minimum for all 921's to completely reboot all systems. It is not necessary to turn it back on at 2'21" I just leave mine off for 5-10 minutes when doing this. I pull the plug and come back later. 
This makes the 921 go to complete power off for a safer extended period of time and prevents power jogging of the hard drive from ever happening as is quite possible with the 8 second power button reboot process. In addition, it assures the 921 power supply completely shuts off residual power to the other electronics which would completely dump all volatile memory. 

Smart card swapping is also never recommended as a routine practice due to the fragile contacts in the smart card socket. History has proven that these sockets wear out easily with constant card swaps.


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## sgt940 (Jan 9, 2004)

DonLandis said:


> Over the past 2 weeks I have had some timers fail! This, after I have resumed the practice of setting pads to 0.
> In all three failure cases, I noticed that the switch matrix had no match between the tuners. A check switch did not fix the problem but just indicated there was one. (Tuner #2 had no input) Last evening, I had the timers fail for the third time but decided to leave it alone and after 6 hours, I began to see my subscribbed channels dropped (turned red) from the guide with the call to subscribe message. I also verified my satellite dishes proper functioning with a 6000 working properly.
> In each case I did the long off power plug reboot, performed a check switch test, and was back in business and timers once again began to function.
> 
> I am coming closer and closer to installing an appliance timer switch on the power plug of the 921 to automate the long power plug reboot each day. What do you people think of this idea. Obviously, I would not be able to have a recording taking place during that time. Mark, your thoughts?


That creates another problem for me as after each power plug reboot I loose at least 2 of by OTA channels and have to re-scan them.


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## tm22721 (Nov 8, 2002)

My two timers failed last night for the third time in three weeks (about one week between incidents). The timer action order seemed to be wrong so it's probably timer database corruption. They are non-OTA with 0 padding. One of the timers is Mon-Fri and the other is Daily. Has anybody else with timer problems had a mixture of Mon-Fri and Daily timers ?

I deleted the timers, rebooted then re-entered them so I should be OK for the next week or so.


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## Maddogg (Sep 15, 2003)

For the last two weeks I've had SAT timers not fire. When it happens, no timers will fire at all. The only way to fix it is to Hard Power Off (unplug from wall for a couple minutes) the unit. I've tried deleting all timers, reseating the smart card, etc. but the only thing that works is a hard power off reboot. The red dot will show on the guide but when the time comes to record - nothing happens. Red dot disappers, but no timer record. Once I power cycle the 921, the timers will then work ok for another 3-4 days until they fail again and I have to power cycle the unit again to get them to fire. My 921 was fairly stable but has gotten very buggy lately with this an a lot of other strange behavior. I've also had the "it won't stop recording" bug from a manually started timer. No respnse from any button on the remote including the stop button. Again I had to power cycle the unit to get the recording to stop. VERY SCARY!


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## borfhead (Feb 2, 2004)

Don't make the same mistake I did last night...I set up a timer to record the second night of "Salem's Lot" on TNT-HD and when I noticed it didn't fire at the start, I quickly did a manual timer to record to the end of the show....BIG mistake, because I then went to bed...and tonight when I went to look at my DVR menu, all my previously recorded events were wiped out, because the timer never shut off and overwrote everything! I had one big event with about 16 shows all on TNT and I had zero time left for recording...

So beware, if a timer fails, it's time to do the power cycle or card pull...don't try doing a manual timer unless you're ready to stop it when the program is over.

I've read Mark's note about Eldon knowing about the bug and that is what DISH said to me tonight too, after I called to complain and asked for my $5 DVR credit (again!). This is the first time the 921 really pissed me off, as I had a bunch of stuff I was looking forward to watching...the price we pay for being early adopters...hhhmmmpppfff!


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## BobMurdoch (Apr 24, 2002)

C'Mon E*...... when is the next software download to fix the "minor" "upgrade" that L184 was.... I love my Sirius channels, but this release was just as bad as any during Dishplayers infamous history....


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## H2OSkier (Jan 20, 2004)

I'm sure getting tired of having to fix my timers. I'll have to keep track this time but even after going though the recommended routine the timers seem to fail pretty quickly.

Ken


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

borfhead- Ditto on the manual timer. When it says record the entire event, it should be changed to read "record the channel until you pull the plug!"

Time to add that appliance timer to reboot the 921 daily!

Remember back when the 921 would do the spontaneous reboot? Do we miss that auto refresh now? nah... that would happen right in the middle of a great program. at least with the appliance timer I will pick the time it powers down and restarts!


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