Bug Report 180: Stopping an OTA timer recording, DOESN'T

[pculley]

Had a timer set to record KHWB last night. The unit was displaying a sat channel prior to timer firing. I was not present when the timer went off, but when I saw the set shortly afterword, it was displaying a black screen. The first thing I tried was to go to Menu 6,8 add DTV, ch 38 (to attempt to rescan the channel). I got a dialog that said something like "can't do this now, do you want to stop recording; yes, no cancel". I selected "yes" to stop the recording and try to add the channel. However, the OTA tuner seemed to be locked up or something, I could not get it to indicate or "lock" on 38 or any other OTA channel.

I backed out of menu, tried to change to another OTA channel, and got the message something like "OTA tuner in use for recording". I checked the PVR menu and there was no recording going on. The front panel record light was off. I could change to sat channels, or play back recorded shows. I tried a 5 sec power button reboot, and the unit came back up into the same state. I tried to rescan the OTA again, got the same message as before tried to cancel REC again, with no luck. Also tried just pressing "STOP" hoping that the "stop kills all current recordings" bug would clear it, also no luck. At the end of the original recording time (1 hour), I was able to do an "Add DTV" and get the unit back to (sort of) working condition (but that is the subject of the next bug).

[Mark Lamutt]

To get out of this loop, you either (as you found) have to wait until the timer end time has past, or you need to edit the timer to end sooner, and then wait until that end time has passed.

[Cheezmo]

One of the prerequisites for proper timer firing is to never leave it displaying live anything. Always turn off the power (or pause a recorded program) so that both tuners are "available" to the timer mechanism.

Another one is to check the timers list periodically and make sure none of them have decided to skip this week and be listed down at the bottom, change their day of the week, etc.

[pculley]

While the above suggestions are potentially useful --workarounds--, the purpose of writing up the issue was, hopefully, for Eldon to get this fixed! The sooner the better.

Frustratedly yours;
PCulley

[Mark Lamutt]

That goes without saying, pcully. Just trying to give you a workaround until it does get fixed.

[the_tx_dude]

I am still trying to find a pattern and pin down why I get the 0 second recordings sometimes. However, at least a couple of them happened when I tuned to a recording while it was still recording. One of these was on an OTA station in which the DVR functions do not work. So I would add the general rule of not trying to watch the program until after the recording has been completed.