# R15/R16 0x1250 - Issues/Discussion



## Greg Alsobrook (Apr 2, 2007)

Systems in this software version:
R15-100 • R15-300 • R15-500
R16-300 • R16-500

Release notes:
http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=155865

Please post your full model number (e.g. R15-500, R15-300) as this thread will be used for multiple models.

We ask that you keep polite and focused within this thread, and post as much detail as possible.

Being part of the DBSTalk community means working together to help each other document issues and come up with solutions. While everyone gets upset from time to time, this is not the appropriate place for vents or rants.

All off-topic posts will be deleted.


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## ThomasM (Jul 20, 2007)

Did anyone receive this software release yet?

The Wisconsin R15-300 stream is running 0x123E.


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## zuf (May 25, 2007)

ThomasM said:


> Did anyone receive this software release yet?
> 
> The Wisconsin R15-300 stream is running 0x123E.


I have an R15-500 that has it. System information says it downloaded 0x1250 on Wed 4/8 at 11:59 p.m.


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## Sea bass (Jun 10, 2005)

ThomasM said:


> Did anyone receive this software release yet?
> 
> The Wisconsin R15-300 stream is running 0x123E.


R15 500 received 0x1250 on Tue 03/24


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## ThomasM (Jul 20, 2007)

Yes, the R15-500 current national release is 0x1250....but the current national release for the R15-300 is 0x123E for those with this box that may think they haven't gotten the latest update yet.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

This is for an R15 500, software 1250.

I originally posted this at the directTV forums, 
and was told to post it here.

Sorry, I can't post the original URL; but it was at forums.directv.com/pe/action/forums/displaythread?postID=10546562&ie=x#e10546562

This was originally on the 7th (about 2 weeks ago), but the issues are easily repeatable.

The bugs that I have found (all relate to a full disk on the recorder):

1. Last night, I cleared off some space, enough (I thought) to record three shows overnight. In fact, the first two recorded, and the third was "partial" (22 minutes of a 25 minute show. Missed the ending).

2. After that, according to history, there was a partial recording at 7 am of mythbusters (4 minmutes). Now, why there was 4 minutes here, and not 26 minutes (the whole show) of the other one, I don't know. That's bug #1.

3. Coming in this morning, to look at things, it actually said that that mythbusters was fully recorded (a full hour in the recording list), and the next show -- "Pitchmen" (currently airing) was 47 minutes recorded (47 minutes into the airing). However, as soon as the channel was changed, mythbusters dropped to 4 minutes from 60, and pitchment changed from recorded to "Not recorded".

The bug: If a show is not actually recorded, but only in the current memory list, it should not be listed as recorded -- that confuses a person looking at the list. (It triggers another bug as well).

4. At 10:00, it changed channels automatically to record Naked Archeologist. Fine; I wanted to watch it, and even though there's no memory to record, I can watch it. But about 12 minutes in, I hit rewind, planning to go back and watch the beginning again.

There was no "live tv history". It started to record/catch it in the live tv buffer from that point on. It seems that when the recorded asked "I need to change the channel; is that OK?", and I didn't hit "OK", it changed the channel, but turned off live TV recording.

5. At 10:39 (just now), the playback of the 10:00 show reached the end. Never mind that I wanted to go back and review part of it; I get a popup saying "Livepause has recorded this show for you. Keep or discard?". I said keep; it actually discarded it, flushed the live TV buffer, and put me back at "now". 10 minutes into the next episode of Naked Archeologist. Again, the list of recorded shows had shown this episode as recorded, and suddenly it was flushed.

That's the issues seen this morning.

A related bug that has bit me several times recently: If a partial recording is made, and space runs out, there does not seem to be any way to force the whole episode to be recorded once space is cleared up. I will get a popup asking "Ok to delete the oldest recording?", and if I say no, and then delete something else, I am unable to actually get the show recorded.


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## ThomasM (Jul 20, 2007)

Keybounce said:


> This is for an R15 500, software 1250.
> 
> A related bug that has bit me several times recently: If a partial recording is made, and space runs out, there does not seem to be any way to force the whole episode to be recorded once space is cleared up. I will get a popup asking "Ok to delete the oldest recording?", and if I say no, and then delete something else, I am unable to actually get the show recorded.


The "live buffer" uses hard drive space that isn't measured by the "space available" meter at the bottom of the playlist screen. Normally, the unit always "reserves" 90 minutes of drive space for this buffer.

When you are recording a show and watching it, the show is actually being placed in the live buffer. You can see this by pausing and watching the show behind real time. When the show ends but you are still watching it, the control bar will show real clock times instead of time since the beginning of the show. If you change the channel or wait until the end of the show is 90 minutes old, the unit "transfers" the show to a different file that DOES count against available disk space. If your unit is very low on this, only a portion of the show will be placed in "recorded" status, and the rest will be discarded.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

ThomasM said:


> The "live buffer" uses hard drive space that isn't measured by the "space available" meter at the bottom of the playlist screen. Normally, the unit always "reserves" 90 minutes of drive space for this buffer.


If that were true, then I could have 0% space available, and 90 minutes of rewind. I do. Ok, so the "live" space isn't the same as the recording space -- it is additional.



> When you are recording a show and watching it, the show is actually being placed in the live buffer. You can see this by pausing and watching the show behind real time. When the show ends but you are still watching it, the control bar will show real clock times instead of time since the beginning of the show.


I agree that this is what happens -- you see the current time -- but I disagree on the rest of what you say.



> If you change the channel or wait until the end of the show is 90 minutes old, the unit "transfers" the show to a different file that DOES count against available disk space. If your unit is very low on this, only a portion of the show will be placed in "recorded" status, and the rest will be discarded.


No. Provably false.

First, in the middle of the recording, I'll get a popup saying "There isn't enough room", and I have the choice of deleting the oldest recording, or stopping the recording.

If I stop recording, and clear out space, then the rest of the show does not later go into the permanent file.

I do not have any ability to do anything besides "delete oldest" and "stop recording". I cannot "ignore", clean space, and continue.

What actually seems to be happening is that the show is copied into two sections of memory -- the live buffer, AND the recorded buffer. Once the recorded buffer stops, it seems that there isn't any reliable way to get it going again.

But as long as the show is in EITHER buffer, then the "long" sense of the show is displayed in the list of shows.

If what you said was true -- and I wish it was, it would be nice -- then what would matter was disk space when the show was over / the channel changed. But I can have 3 or 4% free at that time, and the show is still lost.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

When I am paused, only half of the frame -- every other line -- is displayed.

This makes it hard to read computer generated text on-screen while paused.

This is for an R15 500, software 1250.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

Closed captions do not work properly when any gui element, such as the time bar, or the list of shows, or the program guide are displayed.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

The effect of many buttons -- FF, RW, Play, at least -- take effect when released, not when pressed.

Can this be changed? I'm aware that holding down FF/Rewind is supposed to jump to the next 15 minute mark, but the reality is that it often won't go to the start or end of the show, speed 4 FF/RW gets there almost as fast and a LOT more convenient -- I don't use the hold-jump, and it just causes problems.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

Today, at 12:30 I have a recorded show, and then at 1:00 (am) a partial (same channel -- the channel that the receiver was tuned to before the 12:30 show recorded). If my disk was full, I would understand and expect that.

But then at 6:30, 10:30, and 11, I have three more partials (all the same channel -- a different one than the midnight shows). That 1 am show could have actually fit.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

A 12:00 and 12:30 show, same channel, were scheduled to record, and marked as "keep until disk is full". The 12:00 show records fully; the 12:30 show records two minutes, and then says "Full, stop recording".

What I expected: The 12:00 show would be deleted from recorded storage, but still in "live TV" memory -- this would allow me to rewind the live TV buffer and watch it, while the 12:30 show went into recorded storage.


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## CCarncross (Jul 19, 2005)

For Pete's Sake, clean up some recordings on your hard drive!!! Most of these become non-issues if you always remember to keep some free available space. General rule of thumb, just like in the regular computer world, when you get down to 10% free, time to start cleaning house.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

Software that fails when the disk is full -- in an environment where a full disk is expected and "normal" -- is still broken software.

===
Today, Discovery was having a mythbusters marathon. I had the first one put on the record list, and with nothing else on the record list, this would -- I thought -- keep the channel on discovery, so that I could, in the morning, rewind the live TV buffer and watch some.

While that may seem odd, the last time there was a mythbusters marathon and I actually tried recording stuff, I ran into a different bug that made it unworkable.

The bug today: When I turned the system on, at 12:15, I found that the "Live TV" buffer was empty. Never mind that it had been on one channel the whole time. It started recording at 9, ran out of space at 9:32, and then stopped doing anything. I was expected at least to rewind to 11:00, probably to 10:45, and maybe even farther back. Instead, zilch.

Previous bug: When I was recording several mythbusters in a row, the disk filled up on the first one. I continued to watch it, live. When I reached the end, half an hour into the next show, I saw "Live pause has recorded this show for you". I said to delete it, and then the Live TV moved to the next show -- with no past buffer. The idea that I had was simple -- I can watch TV, skip past commercials, skip past the segmetns that I'm not interested in, hit pause when I have to take care of stuff in the house (very common, sadly), and not miss anything. That wasn't how things worked, sadly -- when recording, it kept not recording / not putting stuff in the live buffer.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

Today at 3:55, I get the "We need to change stations to record something at 4" message. So, I say Ok, hit record on the show I was watching (live buffer). At 4, the recorder changes channel, my show is trimmed to only 56 minutes (disk full), and things seem ok.

But 5 minutes later, I go to live TV, and see that the live TV isn't recording into the live TV buffer. The idea of "finish watching one show, then delete it, and record the next show" doesn't work well when the Live TV buffer doesn't get used.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

... So at 6:30, I was watching the 5pm mythbusters. I had the 5pm, and 6 pm episode "recorded". I accidentally hit channel change, rather than volumne change on the remote.

No popup saying "Mythbusters is currently recording, do you want to stop"?. It just changed.

I changed the channel back, and tried to see what I had.

The 5 pm episode had 33 minutes, 5 to 5:32. Out of memory, fine.

The 6 pm episode had 6:25 to 6:30.

Why did the 6 pm episode have such a strange set of times -- not the beginning of the episode? Why didn't the 5 pm episode have more time?

Why no warning about the show supposed to be recording?

Note that 6:25 was when I came back to the TV from dinner, and started using the remote.
===

In general: If the TV is going to change channel, and there is stuff that should be recorded in the live buffer, it seems that it would make sense to test for free disk space at that point, and save anything out of the live buffer into permanent storage then, rather than giving up partway through and giving a false "still recording" indicator.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

Gaah.

Alright, I am 100% certain that the DVR will decide that it is OK to turn off the live TV buffer whenever it feels like it. Today, at 1:30, was a show that I had missed three times already. I had nothing else scheduled to record after it. I turned to the station 4 minutes early. Even if the disk filled up during recording (which it did), with nothing to cause a channel change, live TV rewind/fast forward should be sufficient, right?

Baah. Next time I won't try to record it, and maybe then it will work.

4 times now that I've missed the ending.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

Guide problems with odd-time showings.

Example: Tonight, Scifi -- Syfy -- has a show from 8:01 to 9:01, a show from 9:01 to 10:01, and from 10:01 to 11:01. If the guide is showing the 9 pm, 9:30, and 10 pm columns, then the display will show stargate atlantis (10:01 to 11:01), with the third column "lit". But if I press left-arrow, I expect to go back to the Primeval showing at 9:01. The lit bar moves to Primeval, but the description on the top shows the description of the 8:01 showing of Eureka.

This problem doesn't happen if the columns are 8:30, 9, and 9:30, or if they are 9:30, 10, and 10:30. It does happen at 8, 8:30, and 9.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

This isn't constant, but it's annoying.

At 4 pm, I have The News Hour record. Normally it records completely; sometimes at 4:30 it switches to another show and records it.

Tonight, at 7, it recorded one minute of a show that isn't repeating later (part 2 of a two parter -- double grr), and then switched to a 7:01 showing of another show that repeats again at 9:01. 

Yes, the box itself has two inputs; I only have one connected, and the recorder knows this, normally only scheduling one show at a time, and indicating "Won't record" on others.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

This morning I find the receiver paused and on channel 1013, a pay-per-view channel that doesn't even show in my channel list. It wasn't charging me; it shows "Call customer service".

I left it last night paused on playback of a show.

Recorded this morning was 48 minutes of one show (then disk full), followed in history by several "canceled", then 5 minutes of a channel 17 show at 8 am.

What I don't understand, and consider bugs:
1. Why is it on a PPV channel?
2. Why is it not paused on the playback where I left it?
3. Why is the current TV channel not 17, where it was last recording something?
4. If it was able to record 5 minutes at 8 am, why did it stop recording the other show at only 48 minutes -- why not continue recording more of that show?


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

Last night was a big block of stuff off Cartoon Network.

Code Geass at 2, Death Note at 3, Big O at 4:30 -- not recorded.

But then this morning it recorded something off history channel.

As far as I can tell, when it changes channels, and frees up the "live tv buffer", it also frees up more recording memory.

Which brings up the bug/request: Clean up that memory beforehand, so that the 4:30 show that doesn't repeat (and is marked as keep) would be recorded, instead of the 10am "keep til disk is full" that repeats.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

I really think this software does not like Marathons.

Doctor Who marathon: First problem: I had doctor who episodes set to record and keep until I delete. Now they are recording as "til disk is full". I do not know what caused that setting to change.

Second problem: Similar to the issues I had with Mythbusters. Using recorded Live TV, about an hour in the past, and I went out of the room for a few minutes. When I came back, it was at the current time, at about 3:04. Going back showed the last hour as "Started at 2:19, ended at 3". But back at that 2:19 was 2:00. Somewhere, there's a 19 minute gap. Note that this is a time range of just over an hour, when the live buffer is supposed to be a minimum of an hour and a half.

But equally, there's something else going on. When I record Meerkat manor, if the disk fills up during the 12:30 episode, the 12:00 episode is not deleted to make room. Here, the Dr. Who episodes are being deleted to make room for the next one, and each time a recorded episode goes poof, the live buffer get clobbered.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

Gaaarrrrr. PLEASE FIX LIVE PAUSE.

So this afternoon we had a power outage. Came back up and watching TV about 3:47. Around 6:15 I finished watching the 4 pm episode of Doctor Who.

I was curious about how much time could be rewound. I was at 5 pm; the bar showed 4-5; I had time before that, and as far as I knew, everything from 5 to 6:30 ("How do you solve a problem like Maria".)

I rewound, wanting to look for a specific scene. So, from 3:47 to 4:00, at FF speed 2.

Hit 4:00, and suddenly "Live pause has recorded this show for you. Do you want to keep it?". No. Now I'm back at HDYSAPLM, but with only 6:19 to current.

Everything from 4 to now -- including the first hour and 20 minutes of the next show -- got tossed.

Live pause is broken.
It doesn't keep the "current TV buffer" show when the channel changes, even when I do have disk space.
It never seems to pop up when I do want to keep/watch a show
Anytime that it does come up it ruins the "rewind live TV" feature.

It is worse than not being there right now. Please, fix it or remove it.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

Another problem with the live tv buffer not being there. A 9 pm show on syfy, (3 minutes, disk is full), a 9:30 show (not recorded), and I come home at 10:30. No rewind buffer at all; channel still on Syfy.

And, another case of "half of one show recorded (7 pm), followed by a second show (7:15).
===

Problems with "Double-click" on record:

Normally you press record twice to record a series, or to cancel recording a series.

If you are looking at a list of episodes, you can hit record, down, record, and that second record acts as a double-click, toggling the state of the episode recording.


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## The Merg (Jun 24, 2007)

Keybounce said:


> Gaaarrrrr. PLEASE FIX LIVE PAUSE.
> 
> So this afternoon we had a power outage. Came back up and watching TV about 3:47. Around 6:15 I finished watching the 4 pm episode of Doctor Who.
> 
> ...


The LiveTV buffer clears itself whenever the channel is changed. It is not broken in this way. That is designed behavior. From the R15 manual:



> If you start watching a program late, even if it is not set to record, you can back up to the beginning (up to 90 minutes) using REWIND, as long as you haven't changed channels since the program started.


As for it erasing the LiveTV buffer when you answer no to the question about saving the buffer, I agree that should not happen.

As for why it sometimes asks you to keep/delete when you have paused, according to the R15 manual:



> If you press PAUSE during a program, the saved portion you can access extends from 90 minutes to 4 hours. When the program has completed, or if you change channels, you are asked if you want to save the program.


So, if you have paused but do not have more than 90 minutes in the buffer it will not prompt you to keep/delete when you change channels.

- Merg


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## CCarncross (Jul 19, 2005)

Some of the issues Keybounce experiences could also be related to the fact that he has his drive completely filled, apparently almost all the time. In the hardware world, rule of thumb is you don't want to keep a drive below 10% free space for any length of time, they tend to have issues and seem to suffer larger performance hits. There is no reason to believe that a hard drive in a DVR, which is nothing more than a purpose built custom PC, would behave any differently than a regular desktop PC when the drive gets filled. As an experiment, it would be interesting to see if some of the recording logic/buffering issues went away if the drive had 10% free space available....


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

Hmm. So the answer is "Documented bug"?

(Stripping nested quotes makes replying hard.)



The Merg said:


> The LiveTV buffer clears itself whenever the channel is changed. It is not broken in this way. That is designed behavior. From the R15 manual:
> 
> 
> > If you start watching a program late, even if it is not set to record, you can back up to the beginning (up to 90 minutes) using REWIND, as long as you haven't changed channels since the program started.


But the problem is, this doesn't work most of the time. If I come home in the afternoon, or when I get up in the morning, there is zero minutes in the buffer. The buffer gets turned off whenever the DVR feels like it, and that makes this "you can rewind if you start watching late" feature not work.

(Incidentally, it happened today again while watching Daily show. At about 10:45, it cleared the live buffer, skipped forward to "now" at 10:59, and that was that.)



> As for it erasing the LiveTV buffer when you answer no to the question about saving the buffer, I agree that should not happen.
> 
> As for why it sometimes asks you to keep/delete when you have paused, according to the R15 manual:
> 
> ...


Funny. I read that segment of the manual as "If you press pause, then (feature x, and) when the program has completed, or you change channels, you are asked if you want to save".

But that's not what happens.

A big part of the issue is that this TV rewind buffer doesn't work in a good, useful way. If that "more than 90 minutes" feature activates, then when you reach the end of a program, the behavior of rewind/fast forward changes, and you lose some of the features/benefits.
- The time that the TV can remember can extend up to 4 hours
- For a station having several hours of something that you want to watch, it is very possible to be far behind, and just want to watch, skip, watch, skip to catch up.
- Even without that, just imagine watching Kill Bill vol 1 and 2 right after each other. In the middle of vol 2, you want to rewind to vol 1, see an earlier scene, and then return to vol 2. Opps, you can't.



"CCarncross" said:


> (Issues about full disk space)


Traditional computer file systems have issues with fragmentation because they use small allocation units (typically around 1K), and usually fixed size. The first attempt to vary the size was berkley unix that used either 512 or 4K.

It turns out that most of the issues with fragmentation go away in systems that vary the allocation size (reiser), or automatically "clean up". Systems where everything is treated as an append only log, with cleanup as the "write point" wraps around turn out to have almost non-existent fragmentation until the disk gets really really full.

It's also the case that if the allocation units are large compared to the seek time -- if it takes you 10 ms to seek, and your allocation size and drive buffer hold 20 ms worth of data -- then fragmentation becomes a complete non-issue. When the fragment sizes are in the 20-50 MB size, you don't care about fragmentation at all.



> he has his drive completely filled, apparently almost all the time.


I was up to 6% free recently. I'm starting to clear off the movies from february now.


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## The Merg (Jun 24, 2007)

CCarncross said:


> Some of the issues Keybounce experiences could also be related to the fact that he has his drive completely filled, apparently almost all the time. In the hardware world, rule of thumb is you don't want to keep a drive below 10% free space for any length of time, they tend to have issues and seem to suffer larger performance hits. There is no reason to believe that a hard drive in a DVR, which is nothing more than a purpose built custom PC, would behave any differently than a regular desktop PC when the drive gets filled. As an experiment, it would be interesting to see if some of the recording logic/buffering issues went away if the drive had 10% free space available....


That might be true. But, as I pointed out some of his issues are not truely issues, but expected behavior according to the receiver manual. I do find it interesting that with a full drive he gets partial recordings from two or three shows at different times.

He gets a partial recording that fills up the drive so the recording stops. A half hour later, he gets another partial recording that stops because the drive is filled. It's like the drive defragged itself in the meantime and found some additional space to start recording again.

I'm assuming that he is not marking everything as Keep Unit Delete, so why isn't it deleting off old shows to make room for the current recordings? Or is it removing old partial recordings, thus only having room for new partial recordings.

- Merg


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

Most of my shows are "Keep until I delete"; a few are marked as "Keep until disk is full".

Oddly, sometimes they DON'T delete when disk is full -- generally, when they were earlier on the same channel.

I have seen it stop recording while claiming 1% free.
===

So I ran into two issues with Torchwood: Children of earth not recording properly. One is a real bug: Today, episode 3 recorded from 6 to 7, and then the channel changed to something else at 7.

The show ran run from 6 to 7:15. 
The recording was partial.
The show repeats.
None of the repeats was put into the "ToDo" list -- the DVR would have been happy to misrecord my show and not tell me or fix it.

That is a bug.

The recorder -- a 15 500 I believe -- has two input connections for the satellite, but it is in a room with only one connection. So I cannot record two shows at once. The software normally is aware of this, and won't let me manually schedule recording that overlap by even one minute (an 8:00-9:01 show prevents a 9:00-10:00 show), but it's happy to do this on series recordings.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

A second serious issue seen with Torchwood: Children of Earth.

I think part of this is the timing of the episodes. The initial runs are 1:15, and most of the repeats are 1:00; the "final chance" repeats on Sunday are all 1:15. (Milking commercials.)

At 6 pm today, episode 5 won't record (conflict with a higher priority show). That's OK -- there's 3 more chances to record it.

But none of those three show up in the "ToDo List". There's no way to tell ahead of time if it's going to get recorded or not, and given the early termination issue, that's not a minor concern. (I had episode 4 also get clipped, and had to manually add a replacement recording in).

Now, earlier this week, Torchwood: CoE episode 1 did not record (Disk space issue). Since it was repeating, I wasn't worried; I waited to see if it would show up in the ToDo list for this weekend.

No such luck; I had to add it manually.


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## CCarncross (Jul 19, 2005)

Keybounce, just try clearing some space and see if some of your recording logic issues go away. I don't think anyone will have any better advice. I'm sure there are some issues that still need to be sorted, but some of these issues you have direct control over. If you record so much that your drive is constantly full, you either need to record less, or watch more so you can keep up with it a little better. Or upgrade to a receiver that is capable of adding an external drive, like the HR2x series, so you can keep more stuff. No matter what you do, if you record more than you watch, and have most/many recordings as keep until I delete, any hard drive will fill up eventually.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

Lets see. Right now I have 2% available, and another 2% or so marked as deletable.

T:CoE day 4 aired from 8 to 9 tonight, recorded fine. Primeval was next on the ToDo list, 9 to 10. 9 pm came, and the channel did not switch. Primeval was still on the todo list; when I manually changed the channel to Syfy, then it started recording.

If I had, somehow, accidentally hit "do not change channel", then Primeval would no longer be on the ToDo list. So that did not happen.



> Keybounce, just try clearing some space and see if some of your recording logic issues go away.


Software that is designed to operate in disk full conditions that fails to work correctly is still software that fails to work correctly.

The interruptions on one show with another show that starts later occurs when there is space available, so that isn't the issue.

Equally, the "Live TV buffer being empty" happens when there's plenty of disk space.

Haven't tried the marathons recording with lots of space.


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## The Merg (Jun 24, 2007)

I think one thing to see is if you clear up some space if the issues go away. That would help in determining if it is a truely low-space hard drive issue or if something else is going on. I would see if you could get at least 25% free. If the issues continue, then we can probably safely assume that harddrive space is not the issue. I realize that some issues of yours are directly related to free space (Disk Out of Space issues), but some of them might not be.

- Merg


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## CCarncross (Jul 19, 2005)

Keybounce said:


> Software that is designed to operate in disk full conditions that fails to work correctly is still software that fails to work correctly.


Who says the software is designed to work in disk full conditions?


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## The Merg (Jun 24, 2007)

CCarncross said:


> Who says the software is designed to work in disk full conditions?


I have to agree with keybounce in the sense that the software should be designed to handle conditions when the drive is full or near full. It's performance at the minimum should not be what seems like hap-hazard. It should at least handle conditions similar each time.

- Merg


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## CCarncross (Jul 19, 2005)

I really don't know of any OS's that work as reliably when run under disk full conditions, so I naturally extrapolate that out to our DVR's. Does that seem like an unreasonable assumption to you? Do you know of anyone that runs their PC's or MAC's with 1-2% disk space available? Those are the support calls I get from non-computer people asking me to come fix their devices....


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## The Merg (Jun 24, 2007)

I don't think that's an unreasonable assumption. My thinking though is that if they have developed options such as Keep Until Delete and that it will delete automatically when the drive is full then it should be able to handle situations when the drive is nearly full, otherwise what is the point of having it automatically delete shows when the drive is full.

My issue would be is why is it not deleting those shows not marked as KUD so that it can record new shows.

- Merg


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

Keybounce said:


> Lets see. Right now I have 2% available, and another 2% or so marked as deletable.
> 
> T:CoE day 4 aired from 8 to 9 tonight, recorded fine. Primeval was next on the ToDo list, 9 to 10. 9 pm came, and the channel did not switch. Primeval was still on the todo list; when I manually changed the channel to Syfy, then it started recording.


OK, now I am really upset. Day 4 disappeared. History only shows "Canceled.". Day 5 was suppose to record from 11:30 to 12:45 (right before the "inside look at 12:45"), but it also shows "Canceled".) Yes, I had plenty of disk space (made sure of it).

Both repeat again tomorrow, and both are now scheduled as one-time recordings. Of course, both Day 4 and day 1 are now 1:15's tomorrow instead of 1:00's earlier this week.

(commercial sk*l*ip will get a lot of use 

Disk space: There are two partitions on that internal drive. One is (I think) 100 MB, and holds the operating system, the /tmp, etc. That doesn't fill up. The second is the rest of the drive, about 100 hours, and is just data. That can fill up, and should never do anything more than stop recording.



> Who says the software is designed to work in disk full conditions?


Lets see. It detects disk full; it is supposed to remove some files automatically; it prompts to remove the oldest when it does fill and has nothing to automatically remove; it stops recording, and lists as "partial" when it fills. It uses the live buffer to pretend that it has more than just the actual recorded stuff.

I say it is designed for disk full situations.

Do I fill up my second hard drive at home? Sure. Nothing breaks, except that when it happens Time Machine quits backing up, and later it clears more space. And sometimes it tells me "Removed all backups, still cannot backup". Then I have to go in manually.



> Do you know of anyone that runs their PC's or MAC's with 1-2% disk space available?


I've consistently formatted my microsoft windows system (back in the 95/98 days) to use one partition for the system (C, and a second partition for my own files. When I fill up, the system works just fine, because the system drive isn't filled up.

Yes, some programs break when program files is not on the same drive as the windows drive. Heck, some even hardcode "C:\Progra~1", and I've once seen "\Programf" (at least it didn't force C

My first XP system was set up that way; after the first reformat, I didn't rebuild it that way again.

===
Unix is actually HARDER to set up on a second partition, because the "system" is spread out over many directories, and the standard kernel layout code only permits one directory sub-tree per additional drive; realistically, that means "/Users" or the equivalent is the only viable choice. Which still puts user installed applications, etc, on the root. It would be so *niiiiice* if a unix system would have the entire directory tree as a union of two file systems -- tree one is the vendor supplied system, patches, updates, etc., and tree two is the user additions, which then can be trivially placed into a seperate partition, or extended into an additional drive.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

Nargh. Not new, just again. Symptoms: Recorded Wolverine and the X-men at 12:30, started recording 1:00, filled up. I watched the 12:30 show, found that it was a repeat, hit fast-forward 4 to go the end, went to the display list. The list of xmen episodes went from 2 (the 12:30 and the 1:00) in a folder to only the 12:30 one. Deleting it, and bringing the list back up now shows a 1:07 one. Playback shows that everything from 1:00 to 1:07 is now gone.

The 1:00 episode is also a repeat.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

This one is new. Yesterday's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer recorded for 32 minutes. "This episode was recorded at 4:00p and stopped at 4:31p."

It actually has the LAST 32 minutes, not the first 32 minutes. Recording stopped at one point, I cleared up some space, and recorded more. It looks like the first partial recording got replaced by the second partial recording.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

When I go to record a show with multiple showings, if the time I indicate has a conflict, it will tell me when the next available showing is.

But it always claims that the date is 12/31.


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## Keybounce (Jun 19, 2009)

Video recorder issues:
There is no difference between "This series is supposed to record, but this episode is not. Record this episode" and "Stop recording this series". Both are press "record" on something marked with "Double-record" state.

Yesterday, Total Drama Action recorded (good). While watching the first two minutes (the "Last time" summary), I realized that last week's episode only recorded 5 minutes because of a full disk, and did NOT make any automatic attempt to re-record it.

So, I went and tried to manually add it. More info -> Episodes -> look down the list. All of them have the double-record icon, indicating a series recording. No special indication is given as to which showings will or will not record.

I find a repeat showing of last week's episode, and press record. A pause, and the scheduling conflict screen comes up. I say "Record next". All is good; a later showing this weekend is scheduled.

I continue to look over the list of episodes; an episode from about 4 weeks ago was also missed, and is reshowing. I hit record on that.

It has no time conflict. Instead, the entire series is deselected.

Problem #1: There is no "Are you sure you want to delete this series recording?" warning.
Problem #2: The same keystroke does two very different things.

Problem #3: When I re-added the entire series (double-click to turn it back on), the DVR has forgotten all about what has, or has not, been recorded. There is a marathon of the whole season this weekend, and every episode is now on the "To Record" list.

We have already determined that the recording software cannot handle marathons properly during low disk space situations.

Problem #4: There is no visual difference between "This episode of the series will record" and "This episode will not record". There is only "I want to record this episode, but a prioritizer conflict prevents me".


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