Choppy Fast Forward?

[nycdan]

Hi folks.

I'm new here and hope you can help shed some light on my biggest HR20 issue.
I moved from DirecTivo to the HR20 when I got an HD set last year and the biggest letdown for me was the smoothness of the fast forwarding.

On the DirecTivo, it's very smooth and I can usually nail the end of a commercial break on the nose. With the HR20 it often takes a second or two to even start showing the fast-forwarding (although I think it is more the display not keeping up with what's happening on the disk). Then it continues to stutter and I end up trying to anticipate, rather than react.

I hope I'm describing this well enough for you all to tell me if this is normal for the HR20 or if I possibly have a defective unit.

Thanks to all in advance!

-Dan

[gully_foyle]

Hi folks.

I'm new here and hope you can help shed some light on my biggest HR20 issue.
I moved from DirecTivo to the HR20 when I got an HD set last year and the biggest letdown for me was the smoothness of the fast forwarding.

On the DirecTivo, it's very smooth and I can usually nail the end of a commercial break on the nose. With the HR20 it often takes a second or two to even start showing the fast-forwarding (although I think it is more the display not keeping up with what's happening on the disk). Then it continues to stutter and I end up trying to anticipate, rather than react.

I hope I'm describing this well enough for you all to tell me if this is normal for the HR20 or if I possibly have a defective unit.

Thanks to all in advance!

-Dan

Have you been getting updates? What version does it show?

[Racer88]

Fluidity of FF and REV is all but non-existant and always has been on this clunker. More of herky-jerky slide show than anything. Doesn't appear that anyone is capable of getting it to do any better given the vast amount of time they've had to work on it.

[nycdan]

Fluidity of FF and REV is all but non-existant and always has been on this clunker. More of herky-jerky slide show than anything. Doesn't appear that anyone is capable of getting it to do any better given the vast amount of time they've had to work on it.

Wow...I was hoping to hear anything but. Going back and forth from my Tivo to this is like chewing tacks. 'Herky-jerky slide show'....sounds about right. Good description.

kcmurph, I'll check my version and compare to the latest but it sounds like it's not going to matter for this specific issue.

[Eich]

This was one of the first things I noticed also, coming from the HR10-250 TiVo. This, and the poor response / feedback using the remote. And in RF mode, the remote is utterly useless.

With TiVo, each ffwd or rew button press would be immediately followed with the TiVo "sound effect" and the on-screen reaction was smooth and watchable. With the HR20, when I hit ffwd or rew, it often freezes the picture and appears that nothing else happens. Then you see the progress bar / tick marks, then the picture jumps several frames later, then you see some ffwd or rew progress. Sloppy to say the least.

[Alpione]

It's unfortunate. Hopefully they'll be able to improve it, at least. This was the first thing I noticed moving from DTivo to the HR20 about six months ago. I had gotten used to it to some extent but yesterday I played around with the FF'ing of a friend's Comcast installation. Much smoother.

Luckily that and OnDemand are the only features of Comcast that I prefer to the HR20. After the multitude of updates I feel the HR20 is in pretty good shape. Improvements are definitely still needed, but it's now a good product. Just waiting for the new HD channels!

Adam

[gully_foyle]

This may be one of those things that never gets much better.

Since all HD is compressed, it's not just a matter of displaying every (say) 10th frame, but you have to decompress and decode the entire stream of data and THEN pick out every 10th frame. This may be more than the hardware throughput can handle, as it would have to be operated at 10x normal speed.

So, instead they may decide to show 30 frames every 300 or some such, reloading and resynching the decompressor with a later snippet of the incoming compressed stream. This would allow them to run the decompressor at a more normal speed, but it would look "choppy." Especially with motion.

I'd expect it to be better at SD, as the throughput needs are less extreme.

Just a guess, based on 30 years engineering this kind of thing.

[Racer88]

Umm let's see. The HR10 is what?......3 or 4 year older technology than the HR20....and it does this quite well....so....it is acceptable for newer technology to perform worse than it's pedecessor then I guess?

BS!!

The passivity, acceptance and excuse making for the glaring flaws in this damned thing makes me ill.

[csgo]

Now let's get our priorities in order here. Why would DirecTV work on things like choppy fast forward, channels I receive, and actually recording programs when they can do things like play with the menu colors, and video on demand?

You guys just don't understand what's important here.

Just to make you feel better, DirecTV is not charging extra for choppy fast forward... yet.

-Joe

[csgo]

Forgot to mention... I spoke with DirecTV about a 30 second skip instead of slip. They straightened me out... there's no such thing. It's a figment of my imagination.

-Joe

[Doug Brott]

Hmmm .. to each his own, I guess. I don't typically watch thing in FF so that's probably part of the issue. I use it to get through commercials and occasionally to get through slow parts of shows.

I've gotten very, very good at hitting the sweet spot even in 4x now that FF Correction has been enabled.

I guess the bottom line is that I don't even notice this, but don't doubt for a second that it's there.

[PCampbell]

Is the HR10 MPEG4? MPEG4 might need more work to get it right if it can be done at all

[Eich]

In the past week or so, when I hit rewind, the picture completely freezes for about 4 seconds before it starts showing rewind progress. But even during the freeze, the DVR is rewinding because if I hit play during the freeze, I've backed up in the recording.

I tried to replay a specific replay on a Pre-Season football game the other night and it was nearly impossible to get to the point on the recording that I wanted. VERY annoying.

[Stuart Sweet]

I'll agree that sometimes it can take practice, but honestly I think it's not that big a deal. Could it be smoother, yes. But it's never so choppy that I miss the point I'm aiming for.