# L211-- 0 minutes recording



## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

I have joined those who have now seen 0 minute recordings on L211. Never had one in the prior 6 months I had the machine.

In my case the 0 minutes recording was of showtime HD broadcast of pulp fiction.

Perhaps how I got there is significant. Had two recordings set to go at 8PM. 1) pulp fiction and 2) WCBS ny (off satellite). Before they fired I decided to watch a prior recorded program. After that program completed, I immediately told it to erase that program. At this point it said that both tuners were busy and did I want to stop recording pulp fiction (checked) or WCBS. I selected NO and it dumped me into Pulp Fiction that was in progress. I decided I would rather start seeing the WCBS program, and hit DVR and selected it instead. Once I finished watching that, I erased the WCBS program and tried to select pulp fiction. It showed that still recording, and dropped me to real time in it. I tried to backup but it only showed the last few seconds. At this point I was interrupted by a phone call, and decided to turn off the DVR and watch Pulp Fiction later. The red recording light stayed running. Later once the program was over I found the recording marked in my Recordings, but it wouldn't start and showed 0 minutes. Finally told it to erase the recording, which apparently showed as of some length, as it took some time, and the approximation of how much could be recorded WAS increased by about 2 hours for an HD recording.


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## krt (Jan 20, 2003)

I too have had three 0 length recordings with my 921. I believe this has something to do with two back to back timers on the same channel when both tuners are in use. eg: Using the timer defaults, set a timer for 9:00-10:00pm on a channel and then 10:00-11:00pm on the same channel. Also, set a timer for 9:00-10:00pm on another channel. Each timer would have the start one minute early and end three minutes late padding. The 10:00pm timer gets a 0 length recording.

I have seen this issue on my 721 as well, though on the 721 the second timer would result in no recording, rather than a 0 length recording. I will try to play around with the timers on the 921. Let's see if I can find out how to exactly to recreate this.


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## krt (Jan 20, 2003)

Update: 
I did set two back to back timers on the same channel - CBSHD/9484 from 7:00-7:30pm and 7:30-8:00 pm. I also set another timer on HDNET 9422 from 7:00-8:00pm. The second recording from 7:30-8:00 pm on CBSHD was 0 length. So, setting back to back timers on the same channel along with the second tuner being in use is definately one way to reproduce the issue.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Well, not "definately" - I do that all the time and it works about half the time.

I often get the opposite problem - the FIRST recording fails.

*Usage note:* If you want to know if the recording is going to be good, jump into the show and see if 'trick play' is working. If so, you're good. If NOT, you have to stop the recording, change the channel, then go back - this should reset whatever STUPID SOFTWARE DESIGN FLAW is causing the problem. Then hit Record and you're good to go.


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## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

krt said:


> I too have had three 0 length recordings with my 921. I believe this has something to do with two back to back timers on the same channel when both tuners are in use. eg: Using the timer defaults, set a timer for ...


Maybe its one way, however the two I had set were different channels at the same time. The program I watched was recorded two hours earlier from another channel.


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## Jason Kragt (Dec 20, 2002)

Do you guys clean out old recordings manually to free up disk space? I never had any of these dreaded "0 second" recordings until recently. Now I get them all the time. The only changes have been 1) my hard drive has now filled up and 2) the L211 update. I'm wondering if it loses these recordings as it tries to free up space for them.


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

I had pretty good lucky so far. Since L211, I went to my DVR events, MENU 7, and I updated the actual channels for the LIL and the OTA's. I didn't bother with the other satellite channel DVR events. I just confirmed then saved the channel (LIL to LIL, OTA to OTA) for recording.


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## Grandude (Oct 21, 2004)

Jason Kragt said:


> Do you guys clean out old recordings manually to free up disk space? I never had any of these dreaded "0 second" recordings until recently. Now I get them all the time. The only changes have been 1) my hard drive has now filled up and 2) the L211 update. I'm wondering if it loses these recordings as it tries to free up space for them.


I am currently fighting this problem and have been in contact with the 921 support team.
Since I talked to them Fri., I have had 19 0 sec. and 6 good ones. This is since 211 and I never had any before. BTW, it is supposed to delete the oldest one(s) when the drive is filled up to make room for new ones. It is NOT supposed to give you 0 sec. recordings.
Brian AKA Grandude


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## Jason Kragt (Dec 20, 2002)

This is annoying!

I got another "0 second" recording this morning. It seems to happen mostly (if not always) with satellite HD channels for me.


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## krt (Jan 20, 2003)

Jason Kragt said:


> Do you guys clean out old recordings manually to free up disk space? I never had any of these dreaded "0 second" recordings until recently. Now I get them all the time. The only changes have been 1) my hard drive has now filled up and 2) the L211 update. I'm wondering if it loses these recordings as it tries to free up space for them.


I usually watch a recording once, and then delete it. So, I guess you can say that I manaually clean out old recordings. There is more than enough space left on the hard drive at any given time ~15hours HD recording time. So, I do not believe that the unit is trying to delete old recordings automatically to free up space.

I have stopped using back-back timers on the same channel as most of the time the second recording seems to fail. I now manually enter one timer covering both the shows. This works most of the time. Though, I have still had one 0 second recording with just one timer set on HDNET. This means that there is also something else causing these 0 second recordings.


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## FarNorth (Nov 27, 2003)

I had one 0 second recording yesterday on an old HD Discovery timer. Seems like this one particular timer has happened before, no idea why.

My timers hit about 98% of the time but all are off sat, a mix of Sd and HD.


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

I've had tons of zero second recordings since the dreadded L211 release.

To clear things up a bit:

My hard drive is empty and it still happens. Why is it empty? Because L211 WIPED MY ENTIRE HARD DRIVE LAST WEEKEND! Blasted release!

It happens to me recording OTA recordings, I have no guide data cuz I don't think I should have to pay for it.

I do not do back to back recordings. I'm not doing parallel recordings either (not two sat, or one OTA and one sat). I'm just doing a single fire OTA recording. The absolute basic case.

You will notice a few things when this happens. If you try to switch to an OTA station that it isn't recording, it doesn't want to let you do it. The tuner is engaged. Secondly, if you tune to the program that it thinks it is recording, then pull up the banner guide, you will see a red rectangle with "REC" inside it. It is trying to record the program, but it isn't getting to disk. Finally, if you reboot the machine before the program has ended, you will find that it will start recording the rest of the show after the reboot occurs. It is not a timer misfire. It is actually trying to record the show, but it just can't write it to disk.

I wrote this up as a bug report:

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=36414


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## Grandude (Oct 21, 2004)

Since the past Monday morning, my 921 seems to be fixed. No 0 sec. recordings since then. I have tried a bunch just for testing and all OK. Of course I am avoiding KRON.
Brian reporting from the left coast...........


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## Jason Kragt (Dec 20, 2002)

I've been talking to Dish about this and the CSR said that no one else has reported this problem to them. :lol:

Another CSR walked me through a series of transponder signal strength checks. My dish is peaked very well, so that obviously wasn't the problem. (At this point, Jason scratches his chin with pride over his well-peaked dish and strong signal strengths.) 

They had me change the inputs to one of my SW21 switches. They wanted me to have 119 go into port 1 and 110 into port 2 on both switches. Let's see if that helps. I doubt it.

Somethings tells me that they might just send a replacement since they don't really know what is going on. If so, it will be my fifth unit in the last 30 days.


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## Jason Kragt (Dec 20, 2002)

I have one more bit of information about this bug.

It happened to me again last night. However, what was curious is that it happened to the exact same show that did not record last week at the same time, "Odyssey 5" on HDNET. Both were "one time only" timers. I noticed three more occurrances of "Odyssey 5" coming up next week. I set up timers to record all three of them.


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## Onawa (Dec 3, 2004)

All of mine have happened on the HD channels, usually trying to record Smallville back-to-back. I'll try and change to timers for that one.


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