Bug Report L187/L188: Can't Trick-Play on local NBC OTA (KXAS Dallas)

dishbacker · 08-13-04, 09:25 PM

I'm trying to research this some more, but I wanted to see if anyone else is having this problem. I set a timer on my 921 to start recording my OTA HD channel starting at 6:58p till 11:55p (KXAS, Channel 5.1 in DFW). Went to go do some stuff, wife watched some other stuff, etc. Sat down about 9p and my wife wanted to tape 20/20, so I setup a timer for 8400 (WFAA via Satellite). Then, I went to DVR, selected my KXAS recording, and selected start-over. I was able to FF-WRD, Skip, etc.

About 2 minutes into my recording, the local NBC station decided to flip the switch from the digitized retransmission of the local channel to the NBC-HD feed. From this point forward in my recording, all of my trick play functionality would cause my program to go back to the beginning of the recording. I could hit FFWD, but as soon as I hit Play, it would go all the way back to the beginning.

So, I went back to DVR, selected a different program, showed it, went back to DVR, selected my Olympics recording and instead selected View. This took me to live, so I tried rewinding a bit, hit play, and once again it took me all the way back to the beginning of my recording again. At least its being consistant.

Next, I stopped my Olympics recording, setup a new timer to start at the current time, and it started recording. Then, I went to go watch some of the 1st OTA recording, same issue, no trick play after the first 2 minutes of the recording when it switched to the NBC-HD feed. So, we watched it for a while, got bored with the the Winter Olympics and decided to miss the first hour and go to my second OTA recording. What is weird is that my trick play functions worked correctly with my second recording just fine. FFWD, Skip Forward, Pause, Play, etc.

Anybody got any ideas of what might've happened when the switch was made from the from the digital re-broadcast of the SD channel and the NBC-HD feed. I know the quality obviously changed from 480 to 1080i. Does that confuse the 921?

Did anyone else have any problems like this? I've seen a couple of threads talking about similar problems, but it seemed that trick play either worked or didn't for a specific channel, not off an on like this.

Guess I'll be recording off of the SAT-HD channel overnight and watching the first hour of the ceremony tomorrow.

SimpleSimon · 08-13-04, 10:30 PM

It sounds to me like you found a new bug - change of broadcast format (480p/1080i - and maybe 720p) during recording causes corruption of the recording.

Mark Lamutt · 08-14-04, 12:09 AM

I had no trouble using the trick play functions watching tonight on my NBC-HD station. I had a timer recording, and was watching about 45 minutes delayed. I didn't have a format/resolution switch during the recording, though.

dishbacker · 09-24-04, 06:31 AM

Well, to my surprise, I had this crazy problem happen to me again last night. I have a weekly timer setup for ER on my local NBC OTA channel (KXAS, Channel 5-1, www.nbc5i.com in DFW). Watched the first 20 minutes just fine (delayed a couple of times, but for the most part was live).

Did have Simon's funky number problem on the counter line, where it left an extra digit because the counter got messed up and said something like delayed 1306:12 seconds (don't remember the exact number, but it was a 4 digit minute).

Anyhow, I paused for a couple of minutes, came back to watch, and got to the commercial just before the bottom of the hour. Went to fast forward through the commercial, and it took me back to the beginning of the recording that was going on. Tried to fastforward back to where I was, and every time I hit play, it would take me back to the beginning of the recording. I quickly hit stop, setup a new timer to record the last 30 minutes (still at commercial break), and everything seemed to be back to normal on the new recording.

So, my similarities with the previous one are:
1) NBC-HD OTA watching an HD event (both times)
2) Did a start-over to watch the event after it had started to record (even though I caught up to live about 2 minutes into the show last night).

Its really weird. Since its a lot shorter than my Olympics Openning Ceremonies recording (about 30 minutes total), I'll watch it through and see if I can find anything that jumps out in the recording that looks funny. I'll also mess around with recording some other NBC shows (this is about the only HD I watch on that channel) and see if it is somehow reproducable.

Any ideas?

Mark, any chance of updating the thread title to something like: 'Can't Trick-Play on OTA NBC-HD'?

ocnier · 09-24-04, 08:55 AM

I have had the exact same problem with my local stations in HD (ie. recording smallville). I can watch the rebroadcast just fine, but when I go to ffwd through commercials, I get a crazy time number of somewhere on the order of 1502... etc., and reset to the beginning of the program, for just a hours worth of data. I can watch the program just fine, i just can't use any of the advance functions like rewind, ffwd, or skip 30secs. I can post a pic of what this looks like later if anyone wants proof.

Dish 921 with DP 44 sw, sats 119 110 (twin), 148(sgl), 61.5(sgl)
Boot Ver: 120B
Flash Ver: F051
SW Ver: L188HECD-N
REV: DNASP103 Rev306

KKlare · 09-24-04, 01:20 PM

Last week's X-files had the 2 part (unlabeled) finale and in the first hour at ~58 min left (possibly of 63) the time left changed to 950 or so. Then any trick play (pause, skip, back, ff, rewind) caused it to start over. This lasted for the next 10 or so minutes. The time left then reverted to normal provided I did not go back to that part.

Mulder entered the underground base a lot of times until I just let it work thru that patch. So it looks like this may happen to satellite as well as OTA.

Do you think it got a negative time left so any motion set me to zero time?

boylehome · 09-24-04, 05:53 PM

I've been experiences this probelm too. Usually what happens is when I do more than one skip forward, it will take the program back to different times. May pop back 10 minutes sometimes 20 minutes. I don't know the exact time frames but it is very annoying. This doesn't happen with every recorded program, but it seems that OTA channels are at fault.

Robert_S · 09-24-04, 07:36 PM

I am having the exact same problem with the same station as described in the original posting by dishbacker.

You will see the time indicator show something like 1549:09 and then as you skip forward, it jumps to a small number like 2:03 or so. And then it goes to the beginning of the DVR event - sort of like an infinite loop.

If you just let the event play, then it will work correctly through the material. Just seems to be the time skip function.

On one event, I let it play about 10 minutes through a spot where I could not skip past (without getting into the loop), and then hit pause. The numbers then looked normal: 23:01 remaining and I could use the skip functions again.

Do we need to post this over in the BUGS forum or has it already been logged?

dishbacker · 09-27-04, 07:14 AM

Now that I got 3 different people in DFW stating this problem, I'll go ahead and post it. Robert_S and ocnier, do either of you know of a specific program that has caused you problems on KXAS? Mine are:

Olympic Openning Ceremonies
9/23 ER Season Premiere

dishbacker · 09-28-04, 07:09 AM

I was able to re-create this twice last night just doing some trick-play while watching Leno live. Didn't have the time to put my finger on it, but here is my guess:

1) Make sure to be watching during a comercial.
2) Wait for the HD to start up again (btw, my audio was really screwy during each return from commercial).
3) After a little bit (say 30 secs), start rewinding back into the commercial.
4) Eventually the timer gets jacked up (i.e. 1530.38 secs remaining... not the exact number, but a large number like that). Doesn't always happen as soon as you get back to a commercial, but eventually it does get messed up. I know Simon posted a bug about the timer getting messed up and there might be more details in that one.
5) Play during the messed up timer and pause.
6) Then try to fast-forward a bit and hit play, it takes you back to the beginning of the live buffer.
7) Only way out of it is to fast-forward all the way until live mode.

Like I said, not an exact science, but it didn't take much fast-forward / rewind / pause to get it to happen, but it is definitely related to how NBC / KXAS is doing their 1080i broadcast.

I went to my everybody loves raymond recording last night (also in 1080i) and didn't have any of these problems... forward, backward, etc. timer never got messed up. My 2 ER recordings from last week (30 min tricked-played while recording, 30 min just recorded with no trick-play involved) and both of them had this bug when I went back to watch it.

I do believe if you are watching something and get back to live mode, it fixes the problem, but it will get messed up if you try to do it again.

Don't know who the beta tester is in the DFW area, but I'll leave the rest of the fact finding to them... just don't have the time to spend hours watching shows and waiting for commercials to test this out right now.

dishbacker · 09-28-04, 07:26 AM

Here is the bug that Simon posted a while back on incorrect time remaining:

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=31553

I find it interesting that he is getting it on the SD NBC channel... maybe its something that NBC is doing in their broadcasts... maybe a broadcast flag setting?... on SD, it just messes up the timer, but in OTA HD, it messes up trick-play completely?

Robert_S · 09-28-04, 07:06 PM

For me, it has happened every time I tried to record LAX, which is twice as of this posting. I was not even doing anything with the unit during recording, I came to watch the show later.

I had an audio problem with the first recording also. Seems I only received the background sounds and nothing from the central channel where all the speech was.

kmcnamara · 09-28-04, 10:23 PM

Well, it happened to me tonight when watching Leno (also on Dallas KXAS NBC). It seems to occur either between commercials or when returning from a commercial to the program. The video will briefly repeat itself, then the audio will drop out for a couple of seconds. When that happens, I rewind and immediately get Delayed 1535.5 or something similar.

Mark Lamutt · 09-29-04, 07:58 AM

Robert - the audio problem you had was national, and was a broadcast problem, not a 921 problem.

txxsmith · 11-11-04, 03:46 PM

This appears to be an NBC-HD only issue. I live in the Dallas area as well and have not seen it on any other OTA HD signals - only NBC. Same symptoms as listed above. It may not happen in any other markets but Dallas, and likely has to do with something KXAS is doing in switching the signal from SD (for commercials) to HD and vise versa. Hopefully this will be addressed or clear up in the new 921 software push.

zer0cool · 11-30-04, 09:09 PM

I had this same issue tonight watching Law & Order SVU. I didn't actually record it, just switched to the NBC OTA station about 8:30 (SVU starts at 9) and went out to the garage. Came in about 9:15 and backed up to the beginning of SVU. watched up to the forst set of commercials/opening credits and skipped throught them fine. Watched until the second set of commercials and when I tried to skip through them, the recording jumped back to the point where I had originally tuned in the channel.

markcollins · 12-01-04, 05:18 AM

I have this problem every week recording West Wing on OTA NBC in Dallas,when trying to watch the recording..Does seem to be around the second commercial area when it goes from a regular time reading usually About 12 minutes.then skips to a number such as 1500.00 min.I have to then watch without any FF or Skip or it goes completely back to beginning and timer reads the 12 min again.You can FF and Skip during the 12 minutes,but when it counts down past there the problems start again.I too hope 210 willresolve this before calling dish.

DonLandis · 12-01-04, 07:13 AM

Let me offer this about TV broadcast in general-

I would like to know if the stations in question are confirmed to switch broadcast format on the same subchannel from, say 480i / p to 1080i during the broadcast. Is there any way you can confirm this is what happened by calling the station engineer?

I ask this because this is a real no-no from an operational transmission standpoint. Normally the Transmitter would need to be shut down for this sort of change to take place. Not long but just long enough to switch the systems over. Doing a change like that would throw the transmitter into a real tither that may shut down the power circuits due to spike overloads anyway. What most likely happened is that a station signal was switched from 1080i sourced from the up-converter of a 480i program to the 1080i HDTV feed from the network. This does not change the transmitter output as it remains 1080i throughout the switch. Most stations do the up-converter switch often, especially when switching from network feed to local commercial inserts.

Of course I could be wrong and they have some new equipment that makes it possible to do the switch of the signal scan during on air transmission. New stuff is being put into the business so often it is hard to keep up. Stuff like Fox's Splicer technology changed my way of thinking about DD implementation. I state the above just because that was traditional technology so if you can confirm the station makes a scan switch while live I'd really like to know that.

Regarding odd 921 performance of DVR- I have observed over the months of HDTIVO and 921 operation that the 921 is quite sensitive to signal content such as PSIP table construction. HDTIVO seems to ignore these small table errors that stations often have. The 921 is not alone as locally, several receivers have been affected by two of our stations PSIP table errors. Once these errors were corrected, the problems went away. On the other hand, I should state that the HDTIVO is quite sensitive to overall signal quality. If it isn't just within a small range the HDTIVO will not perform well in receiving the signal altogether. Having several Digital receivers here, I come to recognize that there is no perfect box and it seems many of the problems we are seeing cannot be corrected in the receiver but must be resolved at the station. That seems to be the fact of life in this new world of Digital TV.

ocnier · 12-01-04, 09:12 PM

Unfortunately, don I have to agree with you about the digital tv age. As for Dallas, I think it's just screwy in terms of all of the above possibilities.

kmcnamara · 12-14-04, 10:12 AM

Looks like the 211 update fixed the KXAS problem of the rewind jumping to 1500 minutes, etc. I was watching Leno last night and tried FF and REW through a bunch of it and the jump never occurred. Anyone else notice this?

dishbacker · 12-14-04, 11:28 AM

You are correct. Recorded and watched ER last thursday without a hitch on 5-1 in HD. Much better then trying to zoom in the SD feed. Much, Much better.

michaelL · 02-17-05, 07:22 AM

I have started getting this problem on my 921. My ABC programs have this exact problem. (Start show, trick play works. Time left is wrong (ie, 2:00 instead of 60:00). After the 2:00 pass the time goes to something like 1500:00. If you hit FF or skip it will start the program from the beginning).

Did anyone find out why this happens?

This happens to me on WTVD-DT chanel 11.1 (52) in Duhram NC. This happened on both Lost and Desperate Housewives.

Boot Version: 150B
Flash Version: F053
SW version: L211HEED-N

P.S. My guess is the station is doing something bad and the PVR can not handle it. I can watch the recorded show all the way through if I do not use any PVR functions (other than the original play)

Mark Lamutt · 02-17-05, 07:30 AM

Michael - did you try deleting the station and then re-adding it back?

michaelL · 02-17-05, 07:42 AM

Yes, I tried deleting the station and adding it back a couple of weeks ago. The problem did not go away. (I did not try to see if it was "fixed" right after I deleted/readded. I just waited till my show was recored a week later.).

I will try to record before delete/readd and after delete/readd. (just in case the station did something to rebreak the delete/readd that I tried a couple of weeks ago.)

Thanks,
Mike

bhawley · 02-18-05, 08:51 AM

I am seeing the same problem trying to record Lost on the local ABC station, WTVD.
Has been happening for about 4 weeks. No problems with other channels, sat. or OTA.
For what it's worth I also discovered if you let it play without any ff or skip the entire show will play. Maybe this is the network defeating the skip function