# Unusual Rash of Recording Glitches



## Rovingbar (Jan 25, 2005)

I've had 4 recordings with glitches in the file lately. These glitches have several common characteristics

1. The recordings are all OTA (different stations, FOX, ABC, CBS)
2. In the DVR menu, the recordings are the normal length (usually 63 min)
3. When I pause the recording it shows a very long record time (like 180 hrs)
4. The video&audio drops out for a brief second somewhere in the recording
5. If I skip past the bad spot, the DVR freezes and reboots itself

This is probably just some interference in local signals. I noticed it first on a FOX recording and figured it was thir signal. I was surprised when it showed up on ABC, and then on a CBS show.

Jeff


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## jim98604 (Nov 18, 2004)

Rovingbar,

You are not alone! I have had the exact same trouble. For me it started on the 15th. OTA recordings (FOX NASCAR Race) . Now I am afraid of touching the skip forward button.

Some has happened since L270.

Anybody else? Anybody know why?


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## Allen Noland (Apr 23, 2002)

How full are your DVR's?


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## rkh (Mar 18, 2005)

I've had similar problems the past two nights. I'm watching a recorded program (usually an OTA HD show), while recording a current OTA HD show (for time management purposes). When I hit the "skip ahead" button to pass a commercial, the DVR freezes for about 10-20 seconds, then auto-reboots itself. This happened once two nights ago and twice last night. I've done this alot over the year I've owned the box, but never seen this before. I've also had the issue where the DVR controls are sloooow to respond (usually the "enter" command to start a recording), but never this auto-reboot issue. My hard drive is only about 1/4 full (15 hours of HD recording available). I typically erase a show as soon as we have watched it, but I do have a few shows that have been on the drive for a while (since July). Any ideas?


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## zer0cool (Nov 24, 2004)

Recorded Veronica Mars on the UPN OTA affiliate on Wednesday. When I tried to play the recording, about 10 minutes in, the screen would go black, at which point the 921 would freeze up. The first time i had to pull the power. The second time, I just pulled the smart card. Damnit, I should have watched VM instead of Lost. Oh, and i had about 10 hours of Hi-Def space left when the recording started.


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## jim98604 (Nov 18, 2004)

Allen,

We have around 10 to 12 hrs. of HD Recording time remaining.

We normally record nightly OTA-HD at the same time we watch what was recorded the previous evening. We watch, then delete. So the space remaining stays around 10 to 12 hours, with dips to 4 Hrs remaining. We have done this for months. 

The Skip forward (through commercial) , Screen Freeze/System Lock-up, Self-Reboot only started earlier this month. :scratch:

We are going to watch and delete all the shows remaining. Once the disk is empty we will see if the problem continues.


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## Rovingbar (Jan 25, 2005)

I can't remember how full our DVR was at the time. Fragmentation may definitely be an issue. I've got about 10 SD programs that have been on the box for a couple months, and a recording of HD Net's test patterns that are about 8 months stale. Usually our system has about 8 to 12 hrs of HD available, but we were down to about 2 hrs in August. We were just too busy to watch shows that month.

When it first started, I thought it was a problem with local broadcasts. There was a severe thunderstorm one day after the problem started and I had similar problems with the recording made during the storm. But other times the sky is clear and I get bad recordings.

*New Symptom*
Sometimes when a program has this recording bug, I can't do any trick plays. I pause or FF, rewind, or skip foreward or backward the recording will automaticaly go back to the start. I can do any of the 'trick play' actions up until the point where the recording is damaged. After that point the recording time shows hundreds of minutes and I have to start from the beginning if I do anything to the playback.


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## ErinKG (Feb 2, 2004)

Rovingbar said:


> *New Symptom*
> Sometimes when a program has this recording bug, I can't do any trick plays. I pause or FF, rewind, or skip foreward or backward the recording will automaticaly go back to the start. I can do any of the 'trick play' actions up until the point where the recording is damaged. After that point the recording time shows hundreds of minutes and I have to start from the beginning if I do anything to the playback.


This has been happening to me for several weeks, if not a month or two. It was driving me crazy. Then, the receiver started rebooting itself instead of just jumping back to the beginning of the program. Even worse. Now I know to pause the show before fast-forwarding to see how many minutes are remaining. If it is some crazy number (either 1800 or a negative number usually), I know not to touch the trick play functions.


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## Rovingbar (Jan 25, 2005)

So is this related to the 'trick play' bugs that folks are talking about or is this a distinctly different bug?

Should I add a bug report on this?


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## rkh (Mar 18, 2005)

rkh said:


> I've had similar problems the past two nights. I'm watching a recorded program (usually an OTA HD show), while recording a current OTA HD show (for time management purposes). When I hit the "skip ahead" button to pass a commercial, the DVR freezes for about 10-20 seconds, then auto-reboots itself. This happened once two nights ago and twice last night. I've done this alot over the year I've owned the box, but never seen this before. I've also had the issue where the DVR controls are sloooow to respond (usually the "enter" command to start a recording), but never this auto-reboot issue. My hard drive is only about 1/4 full (15 hours of HD recording available). I typically erase a show as soon as we have watched it, but I do have a few shows that have been on the drive for a while (since July). Any ideas?


I posted the above a couple of days ago and since have figured out the reason for our particular problem. All of our feeze and reboot incidents happened during the same recording and after trying to watch it again, I realized (actually it was my wife) that it happened at the same point in the recording. It turns out that during the commericial we were trying to skip, the signal lock was lost momentarily. When we watched it a normal speed, it played through. Apparently if you try to skip ahead through a defective recording, the unit freezes and eventially auto reboots.


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## Rovingbar (Jan 25, 2005)

RKH, did you see the black Acquiring Signal screen for a moment or do you have some other clue that the system lost the signal? Also, have you seen it on any other recordings or just the one recording? I've experienced this on about 10 OTA HD recordings in the last month. I didn't see the Acquiring Signal message on any of the recordings. And they don't always have a visible glitch in the recording. I had an episode of Threshold from last week where the program was messed up 5 minutes into the episode. I didn't see any visual or audio clues that there was a problem. But when I skipped foreward at the first commercial I ended up back at the start of the recording. It took me just a few minutes to find the bad point in the program. I had to watch the entire program straight through as if it were live. How did we ever live without DVRs?


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## rkh (Mar 18, 2005)

Rovingbar said:


> RKH, did you see the black Acquiring Signal screen for a moment or do you have some other clue that the system lost the signal? Also, have you seen it on any other recordings or just the one recording? I've experienced this on about 10 OTA HD recordings in the last month. I didn't see the Acquiring Signal message on any of the recordings. And they don't always have a visible glitch in the recording. I had an episode of Threshold from last week where the program was messed up 5 minutes into the episode. I didn't see any visual or audio clues that there was a problem. But when I skipped foreward at the first commercial I ended up back at the start of the recording. It took me just a few minutes to find the bad point in the program. I had to watch the entire program straight through as if it were live. How did we ever live without DVRs?


Yes, in the offending commercial, there was the black screen with the message "aquiring signal". This is the only program (so far) that we've had the problem with.


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## Rovingbar (Jan 25, 2005)

This bug showed up already in L272. Fortunately it was a rebroadcast of the Threshold season premier. Somewhere in the first 10 minutes is a recording glitch. When my wife skipped past a commercial, the system froze and caused a reboot.


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## jim98604 (Nov 18, 2004)

Rovingbar,

Well, I guess my unit was near it's end. It finally died after taking the L2.72 update. The unit just does a reboot loop :roundandr...Silver HDTV logo, black screen, Silver HDTV logo, and so on. Interesting, the box was 11 mos. 2 weeks old. Dish Support is sending a replacement.


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## Rodney (Aug 22, 2003)

Very interesting observations. In my case there were only two hours of recorded programming on my 921. During the first recording I watched after L2.72 downloaded I pushed the skip ahead button and the receiver jumped to the system information page. I can't begin to explain why this happened.


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## KKlare (Sep 24, 2004)

I think skip ahead is sysinfo on some non-DVR machines. Maybe it is in the ROM? Oops, were you booting or watching?
-Ken


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## Rovingbar (Jan 25, 2005)

Hmmm... could these be early warning signs of an impending hard drive failure? It sure seems likely.

KKlare, what do you mean by "I think skip ahead is sysinfo"? This problem shows up while watching a recorded program if I skip foreward, pause, fast foreward, rewind, etc. In any given recording, the problem happens AFTER some glitch in the recording (Possibly related to a lost signal.) Before the glitch, trick plays work normally. After the glitch, the system locks up after one of these actions and reboots itself after about 15 seconds.

Jeff


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## KKlare (Sep 24, 2004)

I was just mis-remembering the 811 where skip back from normal/play mode gives the sys info screen and was wondering if this could be in the 921 ROM as well and it was confused.

My current griefs include: wipe the disk with ~120 hours of SD recordings, stuck in stretch or normal, stuck in SD from DVD recording -- cannot get back to HD, needing to reboot to fix something but cannot because of a recording in progress, having channel "77" banner because the recording is done and both tuners are in use, etc. Also the long delay on button pushes, pushing more just delays it more.

-Ken


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## penguin44 (Oct 29, 2005)

Rovingbar said:


> I've had 4 recordings with glitches in the file lately. These glitches have several common characteristics
> 
> 1. The recordings are all OTA (different stations, FOX, ABC, CBS)
> 2. In the DVR menu, the recordings are the normal length (usually 63 min)
> ...


I just got number 3 today while recording DHDTheater. It was a show on 2am - 3am EST. The box rebooted around 2:45. When I came back in at 250 tthe record light was not on however it did indeed record the entire show. In the guide it shows 63 minutes, which is correct but when I play, it says 45 and then I get to the end and it shows 15683min and if I ff or rw I loop to the begining of the show. This is on a 2 week old 921, new out of the box.


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