BUG REPORT: OTA Digital Recording Problems

Scott Greczkowski

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Cutting Edge
Sep 7, 2003
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Ok here is a wierd one.

I have set my 921 to record the Tonight Show, Monday - Friday from 11:35pm to 12:35am.

The first night this timer went fine.

The second night this time only recorded 45 minutes.

The Third Night it recorded only 15 minutes.

It's the same timer for each night.

Why is it not recordning the length I told it to record?

Also I have noticed that when you are recording OTA Digital and there is a breif interuption pf the signal the entire rest of the recording is pixalated and studdering.
 
Scott- This could be a real problem as it sounds exactly like the way the 169Time AVX-1 system first reacted to a momentary glitch in the sat signal. They had to do alot of work on the conversion software to get it to reset (resync) automatically, Their latest version seems to do recovery fine now. Based on this it may be that if you ever have a margin of error in the inbound sat signal it could mess up the recording to HD for the balance until it is reset.. Hopefully this is a fluke and not a bug.
I would recommend you do all your watching now in the delayed - off hard drive from the buffer mode now as opposed to live so you can be on the lookout for more instances of this happening. I assume the buffer will react the same if it is a bug. As I said, hopefully you won't see it again as it may be a fluke.
 
I had this same problem with pixellation.
I tried to record the Mask of Zorro OTA. It started fine for about 5 minutes then went pixel spastic as well as lost sound. I actualy had 1 1/2 hours of this waste!!

Also, today my OTA timer did not bother to start.

Of course the worst part is once you lose an OTA channel, it does not want to tune in any of them.

I have been able to have 8vsb recovery after switching to another sat channel for 5-10 min. without rebooting. When I come back to the OTA channels that I know have good SS, it seems to be able to retune.
 
Alright...got an OTA recording to work...finally.
Also, I did the timer an easy way.
FIRST: went to 8000s for local info in guide. ex. Yes, Dear on CBS.
I pressed it to make an instant timer.
SECOND: edited timer to place OTA channel number. No problem. In the timer info it kept the program info (for now)
THIRD: timer fired & recorded correctly
FOURTH: checked DVR list & saw event but was called "Unknown Recording" instead of ptogram name.
FIFTH: it played back CORRECTLY!!!!! No pixel hell. Nomal sound!!

This method proved very easy to use existing locals in 8000 range to setup timer & then edit.
 
Thats what I did with my tonight show timer, it worked GREAT the first time (other then nameing it Unknown Recording) the 2nd, 3rd etc it went down hill from there.
 
The reports of OTA recording BUGS are very concerning. I've been following the threads very closely in hopes of NOT hearing of deal killer problems such as having been reported.

That being said, my question is Dish Network's Adv. Tech support's response.....

I assume that Dish is now aware of this serious problem? So have they provided any expectation as to how soon they'll have a patch/bug fix???

I've been seriously considering moving from DirecTv to Dish for this specific receiver.. (Don't want to wait till end of Q1). This, however, remains a deal killer if no quick resolutions are realistically anticipated, (i.e how soon they'll have a patch/bug fix)???

I've been serioulsy considering moving from DirecTv to Dish for this specific receiver and making the year committment. (Don't want to wait till end of Q1). This, however, remains a deal killer if no quick resolutions are realistically anticipated.
 
Ok last night my Tonight show timer fired (which it has not done the previus two days the shows aired) and it recorded the entire show....

However...

It looked really wierd, the audio was good however the video looked like it was in slow motion, when jay moved his arms you seen them in slow motion floating through the air. Almost like instead of it being 30 frames a second it was 15 frames a second.

It looked really wierd.

Well at least it recorded I guess.
 
BTW a followup on my above message, the video almost now appeared like an NBC problem, because the local commercial inserts the video was fine, but when it flipped back to the NBC HD feed the video was wacky again.