[Wiredprairie]

We've encountered this a number of times recently with a show not fully recorded. It varies somewhat, but the Hopper often only records a few minutes of a show. I don't believe the weather is causing it -- we've had nothing but sun for far too many weeks. We had one last night where it recorded 9 minutes of an hour long show from Food Network.

It's of course really frustrating as we don't always notice this has happened. Worse is when it's a show that isn't repeated frequently after first run (and we may not notice for a few weeks as we often are several weeks behind on current shows). This is not with the PTAT feature, it's just normal scheduled shows. It doesn't appear to be any particular channel or time of day.

As this is the one core function of the DVR/Hopper, we often want to drop-kick the unit out of the window. :nono2:

The shows are clipped on the Hopper.

Any advice or similar documented experiences would be helpful.

 

[James Long]

That isn't normal ... either your particular Hopper is defective or someone is stopping your recordings.

 

[P Smith]

Gremlins in the house ! :eek2:

 

[bigdog9586]

I've had that a couple times too. I thought maybe a conflict do to programs overlapping.

 

[James Long]

I've had that a couple times too. I thought maybe a conflict do to programs overlapping.

Normally a conflict will lead to a program not recording at all ... not a partial recording.

 

[Wiredprairie]

Other than the other normal quirks of the Hopper -- I don't understand how it could be a defective unit? Seems more like a software bug unfortunately.

There isn't anyone stopping the recordings, unless our cat has learned how to work the remote.

Unfortunately, I can't imagine spending time on the phone with customer support is going to be very fruitful as it isn't a problem we can reproduce on demand. We record quite a few shows that we may end up watching (and lots that just expire due to settings), so I'm sure there's more than a few that are currently in this state on our DVR right now that we just haven't noticed.

(It's annoying you have to start the program, then pause it, just to see the recording length on the Hopper -- the 722 would show it).

 

[James Long]

Other than the other normal quirks of the Hopper -- I don't understand how it could be a defective unit? Seems more like a software bug unfortunately.

A software bug should affect more machines. When oddities like this have cropped up in the past DISH has replaced the machine. It isn't always the answer but when something is wrong in one setup that isn't seen elsewhere it is worth a try.

 

[Wiredprairie]

Having written software for many years, I know how unfortunately easy it is to create a bug that only affects a minority of users (been there, done that). So, I can still see how this might impact some, yet not be something widely reported. And if it doesn't happen too frequently, it would be ignored I'd imagine by many consumers. We thought it a fluke the first couple of times, but now it's happened at least 10 times since we got the unit about 8 weeks ago.

While it's possible that replacing the unit my work, given the failures of many shows to transfer successfully using an external HD from my 722 to the Hopper, I don't have a lot of hope that it will work well enough to make my better half happy if we needed to do it again (and oh, setting up dozens of recordings is such a drag!!).

I just chatted with 2 levels of tech-support and they immediately suggested that they send a 'tech' out to check things out. I imagine this will be a great way to spend a work-day afternoon. :nono:

 

[James Long]

It certainly is not going to get fixed without DISH's help ... and replacing the unit has been a common attempt.

In any debugging one looks for the differences. Why does one unit fail and another unit work? One could spend hours trying to fix the bad unit on site but what a tech can change in the menus is limited - and "everything looks right but I don't know why it stops" would be common diagnosis. The on-site tech will not have access to the one line of code that may be causing a problem.

I expect them to check the dish, perhaps some stats on the receiver that show if the unit has lost reception, check cabling and may find something other than the receiver to blame. Or may not. At that point a different receiver that somehow isn't affected by the bug might be the "solution".

The key to a permanent solution is figuring out what is different between your unit and one that works all the time. Trying a different receiver is part of that process. If the new receiver works DISH can scratch their heads and figure out what is wrong with the old one ... while you watch TV on a working receiver. If the new receiver also fails it just adds to the challenge - especially when other receivers are working.

 

[Wiredprairie]

James -- I understand that the tech doesn't really have a lot of tools to do proper debugging, nor the time to do so. That makes their options limited. Sometimes, you need to cut your losses, especially when dealing with the many moving parts of technology.

Part of what could make the Dish experience better would be acknowledging that the customer's time and money is important -- little things like being able to transfer: existing recorded shows, the schedule, and settings, so that the customer's experience is just a small time investment in inviting a tech into the house for some troubleshooting and product replacement. Considering our Dish bill exceeds $1200 a year, it doesn't seem that much to ask.

 

[James Long]

Part of what could make the Dish experience better would be acknowledging that the customer's time and money is important -- little things like being able to transfer: existing recorded shows, the schedule, and settings, so that the customer's experience is just a small time investment in inviting a tech into the house for some troubleshooting and product replacement. Considering our Dish bill exceeds $1200 a year, it doesn't seem that much to ask.

In general, that stuff can be transferred. External hard drives can be used for saving content and at least some settings can be backed up and restored via the remote control (although I have not tried that). PTA programs would not be transferable.

I don't work for DISH but I do get to take care of internal customers at work. While most wouldn't mind if I spent the entire day staring at their broken equipment trying to figure out the problem what they really want is working equipment ... so often a replacement is the best offer for them. It also allows me to move on to the next internal customer and take care of their needs. Every hour I spend staring at "customer A's" broken whatever is an hour where "customer B" is waiting for me to help them.

As far as fixing your actual problem, DISH has the ability (if your receiver is connected to the Internet) to upload logs from the receiver to their developers. This will help people more qualified than an installer to see more of what is going on inside the unit - and perhaps identify what is different about your machine or usage that is leading to the problem. That is probably what is happening now. Hopefully they will find the error and the cause.

 

[Wiredprairie]

How do you transfer the DVR schedule from one unit to another? It would be great if there was an developer API available for that. I'd guess though there isn't as they don't want to make it easy to switch from Dish to the alternatives.

We did successfully move some shows from our 722 to an external HD to the Hopper. Some shows wouldn't play though and were lost unfortunately. Only some error was shown. It was disappointing.

I'm sure your internal customers appreciate it when their new hardware is setup much like their old hardware, so they don't have to spend time on "setup" and instead can just get back to work.

Our Hopper is connected to the Internet. I too hope they can find the issue.

 

[RasputinAXP]

How do you transfer the DVR schedule from one unit to another? It would be great if there was an developer API available for that. I'd guess though there isn't as they don't want to make it easy to switch from Dish to the alternatives.

We did successfully move some shows from our 722 to an external HD to the Hopper. Some shows wouldn't play though and were lost unfortunately. Only some error was shown. It was disappointing.

The DVR schedule is transferred out to the remote and then restored to the new DVR from the old remote.

If the error was the 'not subscribed to channel' error...DIRT has been indicating that it's a feature, not a bug.

 

[Wiredprairie]

The DVR schedule is transferred out to the remote and then restored to the new DVR from the old remote.

Are there instructions for how to transfer the schedule/timers to the remote? I saw others suggesting there isn't a way to transfer the timers/schedule, except manually.

 

[RasputinAXP]

Hold 0 on the remote and follow the instructions on the screen. Works on the 722K, 922 and Hopper.

 

[renpar61]

Count me in.
It happened to me first with a movie on demand that I chose to "watch later" but I simply thought something went wrong during the download.
Then it happened again with another movie recorded from Showtime regular programming. I didn't make too much of it, thinking it might have been an isolated episode. Now reading this thread I realize it may be a bug...

 

[Wiredprairie]

FYI -- Backup/restore via the remote does not save timers (as we just tried it).

So, all the hard work of setting up a new Hopper with timers must be repeated. While not difficult for shows that are currently running, it's more difficult for shows that playing right now (off season, etc.).

It's extremely annoying and time consuming. The Dish Online web site doesn't make it easy to print out the timers either as a useful table of information (it's not sorted by priority either like the DVR displays timers).

The tech who came out replaced the unit as there really wasn't any troubleshooting he could do apparently that would have been useful. We'll see if the problem continues for us. If it does, we'll have to stop our Dish service.