# Recording unavailable, DVR in use



## woj027

So over the last couple weeks my wife and I have had issues watching a recorded program from another DVR in the house. we get the unavailable icon

Our set up is 2 HD-DVR's and 1 HD Receiver. We primarily record shows on the DVR in the basement, watch TV on the DVR in the living room, and occasionally watch a show on the Receiver in the bedroom.

what happens is that the LIST function shows a whole bunch of unplayable shows "red circle with white line through it" which are all on the basement DVR.

The thing is, we are in the same room, no one has been watching TV all day. So i have to go downstairs and reboot the basement DVR (wait 10 minutes, now thats whole other issue with DirecTV, LOOOONG reboot time) and things are fixed.

I know this is like taking the car to the mechanic, but we can't put our finger on what prompts it.

The thing is, we were not downstairs watching TV. We were not watching TV in the bedroom, it just happens.

Is there something wrong with my network? It's been working great since May of 2010. The only other change in our system is that we got the new GUI on all the machines.

Any help or suggestions would be great.

Also, thinking about it, it would be nice to have the DVR tell us what show is being watched and on what machine so we know what show to go find and unpause. Instead of it just saying "too many streams in playback" or something like that.


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## carl6

Are your units connected via SWM and DECA, or are you using an ethernet network for whole-home? If you are not sure, and it was installed by DirecTV, then it is almost certainly SWM & DECA. But if you set it up using ethernet, then your problems may be related to that.


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## woj027

It was SWM DECA…I was in on the first round of installs way back in May of 2010.


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## lugnutathome

woj027 said:


> It was SWM DECA&#8230;I was in on the first round of installs way back in May of 2010.


This happens from time to time. How do you exit the remote viewing stream? do you toggle through the menus to back out or do you just hit exit? Either should work but. . .

Instead of a reboot go to the "busy" DVR and bring up on it's list a program it has on it's own disk and play it locally for a minute and stop it. Then see if the busy icon goes away.

I have an HR23-700 with a rather insidious Ethernet card that sometimes leaves other DVR's used as servers to it's client showing busy when they are not and the above solution clears the problem for me.

My HR23-700 does this after a undiscovered period of heavy use (several weeks to a month) my solution is weekly reboots every Friday night Not seen the issue for a long while now.

This may or may not work for you but worth a try I'd imagine.

Don "it's all good till somebody breaks a nail" Bolton


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## woj027

lugnutathome said:


> This happens from time to time. How do you exit the remote viewing stream? do you toggle through the menus to back out or do you just hit exit? Either should work but. . .


we typically either "delete" recording because we are done. or Pause. Exit.



lugnutathome said:


> Instead of a reboot go to the "busy" DVR and bring up on it's list a program it has on it's own disk and play it locally for a minute and stop it. Then see if the busy icon goes away.
> 
> Don "it's all good till somebody breaks a nail" Bolton


I'll give this a shot.


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## socal404

woj027 said:


> So over the last couple weeks my wife and I have had issues watching a recorded program from another DVR in the house. we get the unavailable icon
> 
> Our set up is 2 HD-DVR's and 1 HD Receiver. We primarily record shows on the DVR in the basement, watch TV on the DVR in the living room, and occasionally watch a show on the Receiver in the bedroom.
> 
> what happens is that the LIST function shows a whole bunch of unplayable shows "red circle with white line through it" which are all on the basement DVR.
> 
> The thing is, we are in the same room, no one has been watching TV all day. So i have to go downstairs and reboot the basement DVR (wait 10 minutes, now thats whole other issue with DirecTV, LOOOONG reboot time) and things are fixed.
> 
> I know this is like taking the car to the mechanic, but we can't put our finger on what prompts it.
> 
> The thing is, we were not downstairs watching TV. We were not watching TV in the bedroom, it just happens.
> 
> Is there something wrong with my network? It's been working great since May of 2010. The only other change in our system is that we got the new GUI on all the machines.
> 
> Any help or suggestions would be great.
> 
> Also, thinking about it, it would be nice to have the DVR tell us what show is being watched and on what machine so we know what show to go find and unpause. Instead of it just saying "too many streams in playback" or something like that.


I have had the Whole Home system for about 10 days, and I, too, have noticed this. Here's my take on this. I have a DVR in bedroom, family room and office, while a HD receiver in the living room. If I watch a program recorded on the office DVR from the family room, all of the programs recorded on the office DVR will have access blocked to all other receivers. Is this your situation, too?


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## Shades228

WHDVR (MRV) only allows you to output 1 show per HD DVR. If you're streaming a show already from that HD DVR then you cannot access any other programs that are on it.

To clarify it's a limitation of the HD DVR just in case someone wants to get technical that WHDVR allows you to stream more than 1.


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## pfp

I've found this happens when the DVR I'm trying to access is currently tuned to a channel I don't get. For example - I was watching a hockey game on an RSN which is not in my market (I have NHL:CI). When the game ends I leave the DVR on that RSN channel but I also loose access to watch that channel. At some point in the future I try to access shows on that DVR from another room and I get the error you describe. I go to that room change the channel to one I get and now it works as expected.


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## Dtech1

Whenever you are done watching a show on a reciever other than the one it is recorded on, you should always use the stop button to stop the stream. Ohterwise, the stream may still stay active even though you are not actively using it. 
Also be sure that there are no non-DTV pieces of equipment plugged into the ethernet ports. H/HR24s should not have anything plugged into their ethernet port as this will disable the MRV. This particluar issue may just be a symptom of that. If you do have things plugged into the ethernet ports that shouldn't be, you may need to do a full reboot of your system to restore the MRV.

If this does not clear it up, put in a call to D for service as you may well have a box with a bad deca or ethernet port.


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## veryoldschool

Dtech1 said:


> Whenever you are done watching a show on a reciever other than the one it is recorded on, you should always use the stop button to stop the stream. Ohterwise, the stream may still stay active even though you are not actively using it.
> Also be sure that there are no non-DTV pieces of equipment plugged into the ethernet ports. *H/HR24s should not have anything plugged into their ethernet port as this will disable the MRV*. This particluar issue may just be a symptom of that. If you do have things plugged into the ethernet ports that shouldn't be, you may need to do a full reboot of your system to restore the MRV.
> 
> If this does not clear it up, put in a call to D for service as you may well have a box with a bad deca or ethernet port.


While yes MRV may not work, what is really disabled is the internal DECA.
This can be reactivated by removing the ethernet cable and if a reboot doesn't work, re-running the SAT setup [yeah strange, but once it sets up the SWiM again, it then turns on the DECA].


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## Laxguy

Easiest of all is just turn off those receivers which are not being watched. Then your one currently used for viewing should be as free as can be. Doesn't matter if it's paused, stopped, recording or never started.


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