[Doug Brott]

Color me impressed. 4xFF and 4xRW are Awesome. It will be much easier to move quickly through a recording now. 30-second slip may become my friend. I'm so impressed with the new 30-second slip that I may consider dropping the 30-second skip from the Wish List as having a suitable workaround. It's really that good now.

Unfortunately, I will not have time this morning to check out the new software, but from what I've seen so far I'd give it two thumbs up. Trick play is now great.

 

[Doug Brott]

Oh, I forgot to mention also. Jump Back is faster now, too. It also appears that Jump Back goes back roughly 6-seconds on each press. I hit it 5 times and bounced back quickly about 30 seconds.

 

[Doug Brott]

I have having trouble with one of the Trick Play (or Cruise Control) features. I'd appreciate if someone else could verify this or prove my ineptitude. I was trying to Skip-to-tick to get to the END of the Live TV buffer. It may be a design decision to NOT do this, but just going back in forth in the buffer it seemed like the right thing to do. I was able to Skip-to-tick to each of the tick marks, but between the last tick mark and the end of the buffer I was only able to use the ADVANCE button to jump forward. Perhaps someone else could just verify that what I observed is true or not.

Also, regarding Skip-to-tick. My remote does not seem responsive enough to easily get it right. It appears that I have to (1) press FF or RW, then (2) press and hold FF or RW for three seconds to get it jump. Is this the correct operation?

 

[Doug Brott]

Are you using the remote that came with the HR20?

Yes, it's an RC24.

 

[Doug Brott]

To get to the end, I think your suppose to press and hold the slip button.

Yes, this is correct, and this does work if I first press ADVANCE, then press and hold ADVANCE. When I was between the last tick mark and the end of the buffer I expect the FF skip-to-tick to take me to the end in addition to the ADVANCE button doing it. Perhaps DirecTV intended this, it just seems awkward to me.

 

[Doug Brott]

I agree!! What good is 4xFF and faster 30sec slip if your box freezes on recordings or doesn't play recordings!

I'll let you know if that happens to me, but so far, so good.

 

[Doug Brott]

One thing, IMO, that would make 30 sec slip seem even faster is if the counter showing you how many times you hit 30 sec slip would count down instead of just remain the same number until it was done.

This is on the HR20 Wish List. It is currently #19 out of 47.

 

[Doug Brott]

I then reselected the same show and I found that the Series Link menus are gone so I took this picture, like this is a one off recording.

You have to choose "Record" to get the Series Link Tab to show. This has always confused me, too. However, I know when I get to this screen now, I'm confused so that's how I remember.

 

[Doug Brott]

Came home this evening and walked in the door and the first thing I see on the screen "Searching for Satellite." The infamous 771 error. I've seen this a couple of times before, so it's not new. However, it is rare for me to see it. I've probably seen it 4 times in the last 6 weeks.

A quick channel change and the problem went away.

 

[Doug Brott]

It was strange, I was only getting the message on a specific MPEG4 channel. None of the other MPEG4 channels, and none of the MPEG2 channels showed the message. But either way, the screensaver still shouldn't have come up.

This was my situation as well. It ONLY showed up on an MPEG4 channel and went away with a channel change. I received it a second time after a few minutes, then with another channel change it went away for the evening. I could not reproduce it with the script from btmoore.

The Screen saver kicked in for me as well. I'm not quite sure why the Screen Saver would start up when something was playing. Even IF the "other" tuner was not working (message on screen), the visible tuner was streaming as expected.

 

[Doug Brott]

Another positive to report. The Live TV buffer seemed nebulous in the earlier releases. On multiple occasions, I was able to create a Live TV buffer much longer than 90 minutes. While in this extended buffer (outside of the 90-minute expected buffer), Trick Play functions did not work properly.

NOW, I paused a show for an extended period. When I returned about 2 hours later, it was playing and it was at the front-end of the expected 90-minute buffer. I tried to rewind and after a short blip, it started to play again - This is expected. In the past, it could remain paused forever, but now it can remain paused for only 90 minutes. Thanks for this fix.

 

[Doug Brott]

Before I recieved the latest download, I had scheduled Colts vs. Cowboys Ch. 725 this coming Sunday. I recieved 0xEF late last night? I noticed this afternoon that it was no longer on my ToDo List, so I checked the history tab and it was there showing "canceled". I rescheduled it and will keep an eye on it.

This may or may not be because of the update. Sometimes the Guide data gets screwy and causes issues. It could be as simple as them changing the text in the description of the show. The first version is canceled and then a new version pops up. Likely in those cases, the underlying program identification number has changed and as such the DVR really does think that it's canceled.

Edit: avatar230's explanation is another, more likely, reason as well.

 

[Doug Brott]

Another positive to report. The Live TV buffer seemed nebulous in the earlier releases. On multiple occasions, I was able to create a Live TV buffer much longer than 90 minutes. While in this extended buffer (outside of the 90-minute expected buffer), Trick Play functions did not work properly.

NOW, I paused a show for an extended period. When I returned about 2 hours later, it was playing and it was at the front-end of the expected 90-minute buffer. I tried to rewind and after a short blip, it started to play again - This is expected. In the past, it could remain paused forever, but now it can remain paused for only 90 minutes. Thanks for this fix.

OK, I accidentally left one of my HR20s paused last night. Guess what!? It was still paused. Actually, it may have paused itself because it was paused sometime in the 3am hour (I wasn't awake then). Either way, I had to FF (4xRocks) from 3am through until 7am to catch up to LiveTV. The 3 hour buffer should have started to Play @ 90-minutes back rather than remaining paused indefinitely.

 

[Doug Brott]

I just had a thought. My "Extended Buffer" problem could possibly be causing some of the lockups that people are getting - especially the ones that folks have noticed in the morning after they wake up. In my case, I have a fair amount of disk space available. It's unlikely that I have filled up the disk with my buffer recording. When I checked this morning, one of my systems was paused and had the extended buffer problem. I wonder if the software just gets really, really confused if the drive fills up with Buffer data? Once full, either (1) something has to be deleted or (2) nothing else can be recorded.

 

[Doug Brott]

Brand New Problem - This is driving me crazy

1. I am watching soap opera on Local channel for 30 minutes. I try to rewind, using the rewind button, when I do the red bar comes up as usual, but this time it says "Barbara Walters Special" a program I taped last nite, but it didn't work. Then I go to press play- nothing happens, it is still frozen on the last image I saw of the soap. Then I press FF 1x, 2x 3x, 4x : Nothing. To unfreeze this, I have to change channels and then go back to it. I have now lost all my recording.

2. This makes my unit almost 100% unreliable.

Is anyone else experiencing this??????

Could you check your Disk usage bar?

 

[Doug Brott]

I've noticed most of these threads are from CA. and since a majority of us are not seeing the same PROBLEMS. I have to conclude hardware or operator error.
Stop whining!

Hey, I'm in CA and I'm really not seeing these exact problems either, but to summarily dismiss them a operator error is simply wrong. Clearly the two most vocal about this subject are very knowledgeable and are just providing data points. Simply put, it's not their fault that the HR20 is having problems.

 

[Doug Brott]

With both 0xEB and 0xEF I had occasional problems with my HR20 that was connected via Composite. In my case, the Blue wire (of the Red Green Blue) was not working properly. My solution had been to restart the HR20 and it would fix it for a while, but on one occasion when I could not restart the receiver, I simply removed and then replaced the blue cable from the back of my TV. That seems to have fixed the problem completely. I never had this problem with the versions prior to 0xEB. If you are seeing a similar situation, perhaps my problem was software related when I originally concluded that it was my hardware.

In any event, I am now @ 0xF6 and (even with 0xEF), it's been since Monday a week back since I last saw the problem.