[Wilhite]

Finally sat down last night as I had an hour or so to catch up on a couple of shows recorded on Monday & Tuesday.

Fired up the HR20-700.

Press the "List" button.

Nothing there.

Checked the "History".

How I Met Your Mother - Partial. Started at 7:29pm and ended at 7:29pm.
Worst Week - Partial.
Antiques Roadshow - Partial.

Partial. Partial. Partial. Partial.

Everything that was supposed to have recorded since Monday was "Partial" in the History, but didn't show up in the Now Playing list at all.

I'm so tired of having to baby-sit a device that shouldn't require it.

And D* "customer support" was a joke - "Are all the cables tight?"

I only hope that the last half of 2009 comes sooner....

 

[bobbyv]

I feel your pain . . . it hasn't happened to me in a while, but it is very aggravating when it does.

 

[ziggy29]

Is this with release 0x0254? I and quite a few other folks seem to be having issues with going back to watch what should have been recorded. In my case we haven't lost anything that a reset couldn't fix, but some have reported being less fortunate.

 

[keith_benedict]

Finally sat down last night as I had an hour or so to catch up on a couple of shows recorded on Monday & Tuesday.

Fired up the HR20-700.

Press the "List" button.

Nothing there.

Checked the "History".

How I Met Your Mother - Partial. Started at 7:29pm and ended at 7:29pm.
Worst Week - Partial.
Antiques Roadshow - Partial.

Partial. Partial. Partial. Partial.

Everything that was supposed to have recorded since Monday was "Partial" in the History, but didn't show up in the Now Playing list at all.

I'm so tired of having to baby-sit a device that shouldn't require it.

And D* "customer support" was a joke - "Are all the cables tight?"

I only hope that the last half of 2009 comes sooner....

I'm with you. I haven't had the partials, but I've had a number of black screen recordings. I plugged in our old Directv Tivo box last night for redundancy. While setting it up and adding my season passes, I kept thinking how long it was until the last half of 2009. Ugh.

 

[Wilhite]

Is this with release 0x0254?

Yes, the most recent National Release of software. I don't have enough time and don't want to risk messing with the Cutting Edge stuff. I feel like I've beta testing the DVR for the past year anyway.

Thankfully, I have the HR10-250 still available and hooked up. I've duplicated all my Series Links as Season Passes on it. At least I'll have the show -- even if it's not in HD.

Fortunately for me, each time this has happened, a reboot of the unit seems to bring it back. I'm thinking that I'm going to start doing a therapeutic reboot of the D* DVR every couple of days and try to stay out in front of the times when it decides to go brain dead and either record a bunch of black or record nothing at all.

 

[tcusta00]

Have you all checked your signal levels?

 

[ziggy29]

Fortunately for me, each time this has happened, a reboot of the unit seems to bring it back. I'm thinking that I'm going to start doing a therapeutic reboot of the D* DVR every couple of days and try to stay out in front of the times when it decides to go brain dead and either record a bunch of black or record nothing at all.

It's pretty bad when you have a "wish list" that includes the ability to automatically reboot at, say, 3 AM every day. That would deal with the clock drift, too.

 

[Wilhite]

Have you all checked your signal levels?

90's on most channels. 100 on the CBS channel that HIMYM and Worst Week was on. Some levels are high 80's, but nothing lower than that (except for the spot beams that I'm not supposed to get). No weather issues. No trees blocking the signals. No dish alignment issues (it was just realigned by D* a couple of months ago after we had a new roof put on).

 

[tcusta00]

90's on most channels. 100 on the CBS channel that HIMYM and Worst Week was on. Some levels are high 80's, but nothing lower than that (except for the spot beams that I'm not supposed to get). No weather issues. No trees blocking the signals. No dish alignment issues (it was just realigned by D* a couple of months ago after we had a new roof put on).

Not trying to be smart, but do you know which sats and transponders your locals (which seem where you're having the issues) are on?

 

[Wilhite]

Not trying to be smart, but do you know which sats and transponders your locals (which seem where you're having the issues) are on?

Yep. As I understand it, the CBS spot beam for Dallas is on 101 - transponder 20.

http://www.tivofan.com/directv/channels.html

http://www.tivofan.com/directv/dfw.html

 

[jhindmon]

This stupid partial business just hit my hr20 also.

Here's what happened:
(Nothing was scheduled to record the rest of the night -- I checked the todo list).

1) Around 9:15pm we were watching something that was previously recorded.
2) I used the guide to set a recording for the replay of Sanctuary at 10pm on scifi.
3) Right on time the orange record light lit up.
4) About 10:15pm I noticed south park was on screen, so I tried to back up to watch Cartman fart some fire (very mature, I acknowledge). The DVR was fairly unresponsive, and a few seconds later just "beeped" at me. I tried a few times, but was never able to back up, but I could get "Info" to pop up and the now showing list.

The problem was nothing was listed as recording even though the orange light is on. I manually switched chans over to scifi and the progress bar is orange indicating it's recording. Then I check the history list and notice that almost all my shows since thursday morning are just listed as "Partial" and none of them show up at all in my now showing list.

This sucks.

 

[jfosut]

I feel your pain! Mine has gone 'partial' quite often these days and it seems like more and more it's locking up, especially trying to come out of standby. In fact my HR20 is rebooting right now because it wouldn't come out of Standby. What a joke! What's funny is that it's been totally reliable for a year! Now out of the blue it's totally worthless and like you I have everything duplicated on my old HR10-250 because I can't count on this HR20 anymore...

 

[rudeney]

This stupid partial business just hit my hr20 also.

Here's what happened:
(Nothing was scheduled to record the rest of the night -- I checked the todo list).

1) Around 9:15pm we were watching something that was previously recorded.
2) I used the guide to set a recording for the replay of Sanctuary at 10pm on scifi.
3) Right on time the orange record light lit up.
4) About 10:15pm I noticed south park was on screen, so I tried to back up to watch Cartman fart some fire (very mature, I acknowledge). The DVR was fairly unresponsive, and a few seconds later just "beeped" at me. I tried a few times, but was never able to back up, but I could get "Info" to pop up and the now showing list.

The problem was nothing was listed as recording even though the orange light is on. I manually switched chans over to scifi and the progress bar is orange indicating it's recording. Then I check the history list and notice that almost all my shows since thursday morning are just listed as "Partial" and none of them show up at all in my now showing list.

This sucks.

This sounds like something was causing the receiver to be very busy and lock-up. Do you have it plugged into your Ethernet network? If so, that could be the cause. It seems that a failure to communicate with UPnP services can cause the receiver to get stuck in a loop and start spewing IP packets and pretty much lock-up. Also, intermittent signal problems can cause the same symptoms. Even though the signal test can show great numbers, you could have a bad connector, BBC, multiswitch, LNB, etc. that can fail sporadically.

 

[jhindmon]

This sounds like something was causing the receiver to be very busy and lock-up. Do you have it plugged into your Ethernet network? If so, that could be the cause. It seems that a failure to communicate with UPnP services can cause the receiver to get stuck in a loop and start spewing IP packets and pretty much lock-up. Also, intermittent signal problems can cause the same symptoms. Even though the signal test can show great numbers, you could have a bad connector, BBC, multiswitch, LNB, etc. that can fail sporadically.

Strange. Yes, I do have it plugged into my local network. No multiswitch (straight to the dish), but as far as the others go, if I had intermittent bad signal, I should have seen a blip in the "live" show I was watching, right? It was rock solid -- the box just wouldn't really respond too well.

 

[rickeame]

Interesting...my HR21-700 had a few like this this week. These are not the "gray" screen ones (which I have had on my other receiver), but these are shows that just stopped recording. One even says on it that I stopped the recording 5 mins before the show ended. Which I did not as it was 3 AM and nobody was awake.

I have also had some weird recordings that started late into the program. Not a few mins late, but REALLY late.

I am hoping it's just a momentary glitch, but it's pretty unreliable right now.

 

[rudeney]

Strange. Yes, I do have it plugged into my local network. No multiswitch (straight to the dish), but as far as the others go, if I had intermittent bad signal, I should have seen a blip in the "live" show I was watching, right? It was rock solid -- the box just wouldn't really respond too well.

Try unplugging the network cable. If that fixes he problem, then could be a UPnP issue. Some people have been able to fix this by turning on or off UPnP support on their routers. Some have never fixed it. As for bad signals being the cause, it might only be affecting one tuner so you might not always see it on live TV. Also, it could be the multiswitch (the dish has one built-in) or BBC not reacting properly to the signals to change LNB's.

 

[PicaKing]

Are the cables tight?

 

[dcowboy7]

marsha marsha marsha !!!

 

[Redlinetire]

Strange. Yes, I do have it plugged into my local network. No multiswitch (straight to the dish), but as far as the others go, if I had intermittent bad signal, I should have seen a blip in the "live" show I was watching, right? It was rock solid -- the box just wouldn't really respond too well.

It's in either the software or hardware of the box. Back when I had DirecTV in January it was doing this - with no network hooked up, no photos, no nothing. Rock solid signals and brand new cable. (Same cable now being used by Dish with no issues BTW).

I could watch a program live, but the simulataneous recording I was making would be blank.

 

[jhindmon]

Are the cables tight?

All the cables are tight. Since I rebooted it's been fine for several days now. Before that, it had never happened.

Now I don't trust it, though.