DBSTalk Forum banner

Buffer vanishes before my eyes!

3K views 24 replies 13 participants last post by  Laxguy 
#1 ·
So, twice in the past, oh...3 months...I've had this happen:

I watch Cartoon Network West (297) as I fall asleep on the couch. I'll turn off everything and go to bed. Suffering from occasional insomnia, I'll get up and turn the TV back on. Then, I rewind all the way back to the beginning of the buffer.

So, I'm watching TV, and the screen goes black for 2-3 seconds. Then the channel comes back on (still 297), and the info banner pops up, like I just changed to channel 297. And it IS like I just changed to 297, as the buffer is gone.

It's only happened twice, and it's always in the wee hours. This morning was at 4:12am. Last time was 3am or 4am-ish. Could have been 4:12 as far as I know. (The last time it happened, the first thing I did was check to see if I'd had a SW upgrade. No, I hadn't).

Anyone else ever get the weird changing-but-not-really-changing channel thing?

Yeah, I got first world problems. :blowout:
 
#2 ·
let me guess, you have a Genie, right?
 
#7 ·
Laxguy said:
I had that a long time ago on an HR20. My "cure" was to hit Record in the bleary eyed middle of the night if I thought I was interested.
Meh, it happens rarely. Don't know that I'd have the presence of mind to think of that. I'll try to think of that, though, thanks.

carl6 said:
Do you have any series links set to record? If you happen to record two different programs, that will take the tuner away from the live buffer.
Nope, nothing recording at that time. Thanks, though.
 
#9 ·
A lot of maintenance happens in the wee hours. Believe me, I am bleary-eyed this very moment for performing some for my company.

Sometimes this means disconnecting, reconnecting certain connections briefly, or preventatively rebooting servers that maintain some of what we get on DBS, or any other number of brief, mildly destructive procedures. We break eggs at midnight so that you can have your omelets the next morning.

Also, things happen outside the maintenance windows, including brief interruptions of service, such as an airplane fade or other anomaly, and that can happen at any time.

These sorts of things can be interpreted by the DVR as a command to flush the buffer, which is the command executed when you change sources (channels). If the signal is even briefly interrupted, this can be interpreted as a channel change and the DVR then dutifully flushes. So if you want it but don't record it, you are whistling through the graveyard and really have no one to blame if it isn't there when you go looking for it. The buffer is a service that is normally there, but it is not guaranteed to be there 100% of the time. Stuff happens.

Bottom line, if you want it, press that little red button (orange on the remote, I guess). Then, the DVR interprets that as a "pause recording and wait" if the signal briefly goes away, and it typically resumes when the signal comes back. Also, setting a "keep one ep" SL for repeating occasions such as this, is a pretty good workaround.
 
#10 ·
I came to this forum looking for an answer to this exact problem. Really though, I have my own answer.

Happening on one of my HRs about every other week. I watch lots of sports and pause a lot. I'll be watching an event with buffer, then screen goes black for about 5 seconds then banner pops up and picture comes back and buffer is gone. I have 4 HR24s and have had many other HRXX DVRs and when they do this I will insist DTV replace it. Tried resets, BISTs, power downs, etc.

To me it's not a "glitch" but an internal issue with the unit and it should be replaced. Hate to lose all my recordings though.
 
#11 ·
In addition to the external matters TomCat recites, there's frequently the possiblity of a kid or pet changing the channel, or your own hand or leg or it falls on the floor, or.....

In short if you're watching something you really care about, hit the R button. Case solved. Oh, yeah, forgot to mention in takes a keystroke and at least one second.
 
#12 ·
Sounds like you're experiencing basically the same thing I do when I transfer a DVR recording to DVD in the middle of the night. It will just all of a sudden abandon playback of my recording and go to live TV (I know it's doing it because I have a recording of it). No one is touching the remote because everyone is sleeping and we have no pets.

In essence your issue is the same. You are using the buffer instead of watching a DVR program, but it still switched to live TV without your permission.
I've reporting this issue to D* a number of times and they basically refuse to look into it or even acknowledge the issue. So I wouldn't be too hopeful of this issue resolving any time soon.
 
#13 ·
I had a similar issue on an HR22-100 last night watching the Thursday Night football game on NFL Network. I was watching the game live. At around 9:15 ET, the screen went blank for about 4 seconds, then the channel banner appeared, and the game came back on. I was recording one other program at the time from 9 - 10. I thought, "eh, glitch" and ignored it.

Then at exactly 11pm, it happened again, this time without anything else recording. 4 second black screen, channel banner, game comes back on. On a hunch, I try to rewind, and I can't go further back than 11pm. So the live buffer purged itself, almost like the receiver changed the channel to the same channel. Or maybe it switched tuners, but either way it shouldn't be happening. Again, I was watching the game live and this time I had nothing else recording.

I don't mind losing the live buffer, as I rarely use it, but the black screen popping up is annoying.
 
#14 ·
EricTheRed said:
I had a similar issue on an HR22-100 last night watching the Thursday Night football game on NFL Network. I was watching the game live. At around 9:15 ET, the screen went blank for about 4 seconds, then the channel banner appeared, and the game came back on. I was recording one other program at the time from 9 - 10. I thought, "eh, glitch" and ignored it.

Then at exactly 11pm, it happened again, this time without anything else recording. 4 second black screen, channel banner, game comes back on. On a hunch, I try to rewind, and I can't go further back than 11pm. So the live buffer purged itself, almost like the receiver changed the channel to the same channel. Or maybe it switched tuners, but either way it shouldn't be happening. Again, I was watching the game live and this time I had nothing else recording.

I don't mind losing the live buffer, as I rarely use it, but the black screen popping up is annoying.
Wow.. interesting. This happened to me at the same time during the Thursday Night Football game. However, I wasn't watching live - I was in watching in the buffer. Everything went black and then I was up to realtime with no buffer remaining.

This was on an HR-20. Nothing recording. Not in Doubleplay.
 
#15 ·
Wilhite said:
Wow.. interesting. This happened to me at the same time during the Thursday Night Football game. However, I wasn't watching live - I was in watching in the buffer. Everything went black and then I was up to realtime with no buffer remaining.

This was on an HR-20. Nothing recording. Not in Doubleplay.
This happens to me every week during Thursday Night Football on multiple receivers. I have a manual 5 hour recording set up on two receivers to record the game and I frequently end up with multiple partial recordings of the 5 hour block (mind you I don't miss any of the recording, but it is split up into several blocks and the stop times of the blocks appear random (not on the hour/half hour)). Just now, I was watching the game on a buffer with doubleplay active on an HR24 and was somewhere in the third quarter when suddenly the screen went black and jumped to real time in the 4th quarter and the buffer disappeared. Had no other recordings scheduled or active. This is a very strange issue.
 
#16 ·
This just happened to me again. Had about an hour of Aussie Open tennis in the buffer built so I could skip commercials and it just flushed the buffer and went to live while I was watching. I had DoublePlay active and the second buffer remained full and paused where I left it - just the ESPN2 buffer got flushed. Then, while continuing to watch live ESPN2, it happened again just a few minutes later (black screen for a few seconds and skip to live with no buffer). Again, DP buffer in tact. No other recordings active or scheduled at the time.

HR24-100 0X79b.
 
#21 ·
chuck1996 said:
I've had similar buffer problems occasionally. Going back to live TV after watching a recording, I have found the buffer empty. Not a reproducible problem, so I think I just attribute i to internal glitch. to design
 
#22 ·
Interesting data point on this: I am watching World Cup soccer on ESPN 206 on three TVs running from three different DVRs (HR20-100, HR20-700, and HR 24-100). Each was behind in time by a little bit, but each a different amount. At 5:56 PM Eastern today, all of them caught up to real time and the buffers were gone. This leads me to believe there is something in the signal causing this issue and it isn't a glitch in the DVR as it happened at exactly the same time on three units.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top