HR34 DVR recorded material pausing/freezing

[Keekz804]

Ugh, so first of all thought I'd come here as I don't have a protection plan and was hoping to get some assistance and see maybe if there is a fix to this.

I have been having this problem lately where DVR recorded material is pausing during playback. It occurs at certain points in the show/movie and in order to get past it I have to fast forward in order for it to continue. If I rewind 15 seconds or so and let it run it will again FREEZE at that same exact point it did before. It doesnt matter what channel it is it still occurs, doesn't happen with live TV. It's extremely frustrating trying to watch a show and it locking up constantly and having to ff. What could be causing this is my unit going bad? Is it the hard drive maybe? If I don't have a protection plan how much would I get charged for them to check it out?

I have not had DirecTV for long maybe about 6-7 months. FWIW my unit was brand new out the box.

 

[Jimbo]

Ugh, so first of all thought I'd come here as I don't have a protection plan and was hoping to get some assistance and see maybe if there is a fix to this.

I have been having this problem lately where DVR recorded material is pausing during playback. It occurs at certain points in the show/movie and in order to get past it I have to fast forward in order for it to continue. If I rewind 15 seconds or so and let it run it will again FREEZE at that same exact point it did before. It doesnt matter what channel it is it still occurs, doesn't happen with live TV. It's extremely frustrating trying to watch a show and it locking up constantly and having to ff. What could be causing this is my unit going bad? Is it the hard drive maybe? If I don't have a protection plan how much would I get charged for them to check it out?

I have not had DirecTV for long maybe about 6-7 months. FWIW my unit was brand new out the box.

IF you want to play around and try to figure it out, find a esata External HD , hook it up and record and see if it happens then ... If it doesn't then I would say it's a going bad hard drive. (that would be my guess actually) you said it happens with ALL your recordings ?

 

[zim2dive]

How useful/informative are the options if one hits select during the startup checks? (I haven't done this.. only heard about it).

FWIW, my playback freeze-ups seems less frequent than they were.. I dunno.

Bottom line.. we should expect better. More and more folks starting to report this. Bad batch of HDDs from after the floods?

 

[Jimbo]

How useful/informative are the options if one hits select during the startup checks? (I haven't done this.. only heard about it).

FWIW, my playback freeze-ups seems less frequent than they were.. I dunno.

Bottom line.. we should expect better. More and more folks starting to report this. Bad batch of HDDs from after the floods?

That should offer you a TON of other tests .... Be careful because some of them can take hours to run.

 

[zim2dive]

That should offer you a TON of other tests .... Be careful because some of them can take hours to run.

Question would be which (if any) are relevant to this freezing that I and others are seeing (altho maybe in different flavors)... is the freeze caused by SW bugs, or HDD issues?

The fact that once my HR34 gets in to unhappy mode.. I can't play ANYTHING back (but can view Live TV), suggests some general IO issue/bug, not just bad blocks within a single recorded program... ie. once I reset I can play the recorded program no problem.

Unless playback actually has the material go thru some intermediate cache... ie. what single point of failure can explain lockups on playback of any/all material?

 

[cparker]

My HR-34 is doing this as well. Seems to have just started recently. Was watching a recorded episode of "Under the Dome" and it would freeze very frequently. You could skip back and it would freeze again in the same place. Skip forward and then skip back to get as close as you could to where it froze, but you still ended up missing stuff. Very frustrating.

 

[Graygeek]

Same HR34 Freeze issue here Seems to have arrived with the last firmware update.