# R15 freezes sometimes



## dgib (Nov 16, 2005)

Twice now watching shows from the list, I have seen the audio/video freeze for a second and then it rewinds and replays the same bit 2 or 3 times. It gets past it and plays normally again. 
Anyone else had this problem?


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## LockMD (Nov 16, 2005)

Not me, anyone else?


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## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

I have had that happen to me more then once. Especially on day one.
It is not a cronic problem, but it has occured.


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## eengert (Nov 16, 2005)

[crossing fingers] Never had a single freeze in 3 days. But I only have 7 or 8 SLs at this point and haven't been load testing it like some of you have been. I have, however, done all the normal functions related to setting up recordings (setting the recording, adjusting priorities, viewing/deleting programs from MyVOD, etc).


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## Mike770 (Mar 1, 2004)

All has been ok for me as well. No freezes. 

However, the fact that "Series Link" is recording ALL episodes instead of first run is a problem for me. I have tried every option to try to fix this but so far all has failed. 

Case in point if you Series Link The Simpons on Fox for first run only you will get every episode no matter how old. Here in NYC they show repeats of the Simpsons everyday so it is recording all of them. Also, If I look at the To Do list they are all there. I am Thankful for the Batch Delete but I would rather not have to do this.


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## Clint Lamor (Nov 15, 2005)

No freezes here and I have all of my SeriesLinks setup just as I have my season passes on Tivo plus about 5-6 new ones. Everything seems to be working just fine so far.


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## zortapa (Nov 16, 2005)

I did notice one "hiccup" last night, but it turned out to be a problem with the original signal. To confirm this, I rewound the show several time and saw the same hiccup each time. I guess some of the problems that we see on the R15 might not be due to the R15!!!


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## cabanaboy1977 (Nov 16, 2005)

Mike770 said:


> All has been ok for me as well. No freezes.
> 
> However, the fact that "Series Link" is recording ALL episodes instead of first run is a problem for me. I have tried every option to try to fix this but so far all has failed.
> 
> Case in point if you Series Link The Simpons on Fox for first run only you will get every episode no matter how old. Here in NYC they show repeats of the Simpsons everyday so it is recording all of them. Also, If I look at the To Do list they are all there. I am Thankful for the Batch Delete but I would rather not have to do this.


I know with my UTV that the "don't record repeats" will only not record shows the actually say in the guide that they are repeats. I think with the old Simpons repeats they don't list the word repeat in the guide unless it's normal sunday night time slot. Has anyone looked to see if when you tell it not to record repeats if the repeats they are recording say repeat any where in the guide data? Just a thought.


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## dgib (Nov 16, 2005)

For me, the guide said repeat and it recorded it incorrectly.


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## ronw41 (Nov 17, 2005)

Mine has done sort of a "Max Headroom" shudder a couple of times


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## frogg (Nov 18, 2005)

dgib said:


> For me, the guide said repeat and it recorded it incorrectly.


I've had mine for 5 days, and so far no freezes, and no problems recording repeats or duplicates of episodes. Everything seems to work fine for me. But I'm not sure what the guide uses to determine "first run"-does it look for the word "repeat", or use the year, or what?


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## fergiej (Nov 16, 2005)

I get freezes fairly often. It doesn't play the same 2 or 3 seconds again, but it looks like a signal issue for about 1-2 seconds, audio cuts out for about 3 seconds. It also seems to jump ahead a second or 2 when it recovers. I cannot imagine I am having this much signal problem. Al of my transponders are showing mid 90's. This pretty much happens on every show I watch. No problems like this on the R10 with the same 2 lines.


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## Mike770 (Mar 1, 2004)

5 days and still no freezes. I probably jinxed myself now. :grin:


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## zortapa (Nov 16, 2005)

I finally experienced a freeze. Two nights ago I listened to an XM channel
for about 1 hour. I then wanted to go back to the beginning of the buffer
and listen to it again. So, I used RWx4 to get back to the beginning. During
the RW the R15 froze. About 30 seconds later it rebooted. The R15 seems to
have saved all my settings during the reboot, but it has taken nearly 2
days to repopulate my guide and To Do list.


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## morgantown (Nov 16, 2005)

zortapa said:


> I finally experienced a freeze. Two nights ago I listened to an XM channel
> for about 1 hour. I then wanted to go back to the beginning of the buffer
> and listen to it again. So, I used RWx4 to get back to the beginning. During
> the RW the R15 froze. About 30 seconds later it rebooted. The R15 seems to
> ...


The R15 buffers the "audio only" channels?!? :eek2:


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## Malibu13 (Sep 12, 2004)

5 days with no "freezes".......only minor "audio hiccups" and short "video delays" on some channels..........no recording issues either, but i have not yet loaded it up as some have. at this point i only have 40 items in the "To-do list" and 10 SL's.


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## fergiej (Nov 16, 2005)

I tried a couple of tests to see if I could induce the problem. I had a recoding going and at a certain time, I went into the guide and moved around. Then I waited a minute or so and went into the ToDo list, moved around a bit. I even deleted a few shows. I was hoping I could reproduce this by invoking some disc activity through the UI. Didn't seem to affect it. So, the answer is still out there. Still a mystery. But, too many of us here in our small sample are having this problem to be a negligible glitch.


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## Malibu13 (Sep 12, 2004)

frogg said:


> I'm not sure what the guide uses to determine "first run"-does it look for the word "repeat", or use the year, or what?


bumping this one up  ............i'd like to know the answer to this one myself.


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## nabsltd (Nov 18, 2005)

frogg said:


> But I'm not sure what the guide uses to determine "first run"-does it look for the word "repeat", or use the year, or what?


I posted a way in another thread, but I can't post a link to that because I'm too "new".


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## nabsltd (Nov 18, 2005)

db54 said:


> bumping this one up  ............i'd like to know the answer to this one myself.


Hopefully, I'll provide an idea in the next couple of posts.


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## nabsltd (Nov 18, 2005)

It's annoying to be "new" here when the only reason we are here is because TiVo Community kicked us here because the R15 isn't a TiVo.


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## nabsltd (Nov 18, 2005)

Test how the R15 decides about first run/repeats by doing what I said in this post.

This, of course, assumes that the logic isn't completely broken and every episode always records.


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## walters (Nov 18, 2005)

zortapa said:


> About 30 seconds later it rebooted. The R15 seems to
> have saved all my settings during the reboot, but it has taken nearly 2
> days to repopulate my guide and To Do list.


I keep seeing mention of something along these lines. Does this happen for all restarts or just crashes? In other words, are they storing the program guide only in RAM, or is their some corruption that happens to the program guide on disk at the time of the crash that requires acquiring it again?


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## zortapa (Nov 16, 2005)

morgantown said:


> The R15 buffers the "audio only" channels?!? :eek2:


That was my initial reaction too. While listening to the audio channel, I accidently pressed the play button and noticed that it appeared to have been buffered. So, I decided to RW to the beginning to see what I had. And that is what led to it freezing and rebooting.


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## zortapa (Nov 16, 2005)

walters said:


> I keep seeing mention of something along these lines. Does this happen for all restarts or just crashes? In other words, are they storing the program guide only in RAM, or is their some corruption that happens to the program guide on disk at the time of the crash that requires acquiring it again?


Excellent question. I suspect (but cannot confirm!) that the Guide info is stored in RAM.


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## frogg (Nov 18, 2005)

walters said:


> I keep seeing mention of something along these lines. Does this happen for all restarts or just crashes? In other words, are they storing the program guide only in RAM, or is their some corruption that happens to the program guide on disk at the time of the crash that requires acquiring it again?


OK-I finally had a crash. The R15 locked up while trying to "find by". I appears that the guide info was not populated, and this caused the lock up. I pressed the reset button and got it going again, but repopulation is very slow. Lockups do seem to be related to guide info, or lack thereof. Also, the caller id feature is weird. Sometimes it doesn't register, even though all my telephones and my D10 seem to work OK. (The D10 gave me trouble until the last update)


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## morgantown (Nov 16, 2005)

zortapa said:


> That was my initial reaction too. While listening to the audio channel, I accidently pressed the play button and noticed that it appeared to have been buffered. So, I decided to RW to the beginning to see what I had. And that is what led to it freezing and rebooting.


Buffering "audio only" would definately be a plus for the R15 in my book (unless it freezes and re-boots, that is). Not to thread-jack :nono: , but has anyone not rewound completely to the beginning of the buffer with the "audio only" channels and NOT had a stutter/freeze/reboot problem?

Again, buffering audio only would be cool for those occasional times when you'd want to see if you heard what you thought you did... :grin:


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## craiga33 (Nov 22, 2005)

dgib said:


> Twice now watching shows from the list, I have seen the audio/video freeze for a second and then it rewinds and replays the same bit 2 or 3 times. It gets past it and plays normally again.
> Anyone else had this problem?


Nothing yet ( knock on wood )  However I am still playing with the R15, but the real fun will come this weekend when I will have more time to break it in :hurah:


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## Clint Lamor (Nov 15, 2005)

None here either, I hope DirecTV is listening to all of this type of feedback. I stated in another thread you should not use only employees to test things like this box, you need real world people who use DVR's all the time, let them beat them up let them try and mimic what they have their other DVR's doing. THEN and only then are you truely going to find the short comings of these boxes. I mean how likely is it that any of these beta testers found the 50/100 limit, the guide issue with it being in RAM (probably used to the behavior) and so forth. Some of them may have been reported but I have a feeling if it wasn't a show stopper it wasn't going to delay the release any longer. We are a fickle bunch, don't give us our toys fast enough and we will complain, gives us our toys with bugs and we will complain


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## zortapa (Nov 16, 2005)

morgantown said:


> Buffering "audio only" would definately be a plus for the R15 in my book (unless it freezes and re-boots, that is). Not to thread-jack :nono: , but has anyone not rewound completely to the beginning of the buffer with the "audio only" channels and NOT had a stutter/freeze/reboot problem?
> 
> Again, buffering audio only would be cool for those occasional times when you'd want to see if you heard what you thought you did... :grin:


Twice I tried to RW a buffered audio only channel. When I tried RWx1, it rewound and played fine (but I only went back a couple minutes). When I tried RWx4, it froze.

However, I also recorded (GUIDE & press REC) an audio-only channel for 1 hour, and it played just fine for 10 minutes until I stopped it. I did not try to rewind this recording to see if it reacted (i.e., froze) the same as rewinding a buffer....


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## zortapa (Nov 16, 2005)

Last night I was able to replicate a scenario in which both the playback and the recording of a program showed distortion.

*Situation:*

Record Viking vs. Packers 9-1am
Record a second program on PBS form 9-11pm

At 10pm I started to watch the football game from the beginning.
At 10:05 I used Find By Keyword to identify upcoming 007 movies (the game 
was being shown in the upper right corner). Many movies were returned.

At 10:10, when paging through the list of 007 movies, the football game in the
insert window stuttered for a second or two. While paging through the 007
movies a couple more times the football game again stuttered, so I returned to 
watch the football game full screen.

A little while later, when I was 1 hour and 10 minutes into the football game,
the recording "hiccupped" meaning that it skipped some frames and give a relatively
quiet but very high pitched whine. I rewound the game and played this section again with
the same result. (I did not look to see if the PBS recording was also corrupted 
at this same point.)

About 30 minutes later I used Find By again and got the same "hiccup" which was 
captured in the recording of the football game.

The botton line, it seems that the R15 cannot handle recording two shows, playing back
one show, and scrolling through a large number of programs indentified using Find By
all at the same time.


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## Clint Lamor (Nov 15, 2005)

zortapa said:


> Last night I was able to replicate a scenario in which both the playback and the recording of a program showed distortion.
> 
> *Situation:*
> 
> ...


Wonder if things like this is one of the reasons Tivo doesn't show the show thats playing in a window while doing other things?


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