Please see video:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24kw6SdV4y0

What can be causing this, my software on the box has recently been upgraded OTA to v3.4?

Do you really mean Toshiba T835 or is it a Technika T835 PVR made by Vestel and sold at Tesco?

Colin

What else was the box doing at the time? They do stutter occasionally, particularly when working very hard. Particularly if you are recording two things while playing back another and using FF/RW, or monkeying with the EPG a lot.

If you search for posts by creddish and futaura on these forums and AVforums you will find lots of helpful comments.

Also creddish says (and I now agree with him!) that the stuttering settles down after a while.

I have had my T835 for about 3 weeks now and I will typically see 1-2 stutters in an evening's TV watching (say 2-3 hours). The worst I have seen was last week's Gardeners' World where we had 3-4 stutters in a half hour. One or two had picture break up as well. The box was recording 2 and playing back 1 at the time.

Stuttering may be a bit worse on live TV, but not sure about this.

The T835 picture is not perfect, unfortunately. But IMHO the ease of use and the reliability do compensate to some extent. I also have a Sagem box which has a near perfect picture but is diabolical to use. So the trade off is worth it for me.

I would suggest doing what creddish suggested to me - stick with it for a week or two. If still annoys you, send it back after then. Of course, if you really think it's unacceptable, get shot of it now!

That's interesting that your unit is settling down now. Do you associate this with that you are maybe not "playing" with it so much?

Freeview_Viewer seems to imply he has had his unit for a while so may be a different issue, if indeed he has a Vestel PVR and not a Toshiba as quoted in the thread title.

Colin

Hmmm. Some of it is psychological, it still stutters but I tend not to notice so much. But yes, I do play with it less. Also since I've been looking I have noticed a few stutters on my Sagem as well . There seem to be 3 levels of stutter
1 - tiny video stutter, audio is fine. Several of those per evening
2 - similar sized video stutter, lose audio for perhaps 1/2 second. 1-2 per evening
3 - breakup of picture for perhaps 1 second, audio stutters as well. every couple of days.

Category 1 I think I just tune out now. I find small video glitches less distracting than small audio glitches, for some reason. The second & third category are annoying & disappointing. But rare. I did get in trouble with my OH because we got three "Category 3" glitches on Gardeners' World last week, for no reason I could determine. Quite annoying, in part because I had convinced her it's miles better than the Sagem - now she's not so sure

Also it glitches about 1 second after you stop fast forwarding and return to x1. That's usually Category 2, sometimes 3. Annoying.

It hasn't crashed in 3 weeks now, and it hasn't missed a recording (the Sagem has locked up once and missed at least 3 recordings for no good reason). I probably have >60 timers in total set over the 8 day EPG. I do reboot it every few days as you recommended.

Yes I am playing with it much less which helps. I think I am more cautious about thrashing the EPG while recording, that really messes it up. I spent a whole Sunday afternoon trying to make it glitch - very limited success, the swine won't do it when I want to!

I notice it fairly repeatably glitches when it starts and stops another recording. Often there is a Category 1 or 2 glitch say 1 minute from the start and end of a recording, when the box started/stopped another recording.

I wish Vestel could get the glitching down a bit more, I have high hopes for V3.4 but it doesn't look promising. Other than that the box is IMHO brilliant, does what it says on the tin, no fuss.

Good points all these. But it seems pretty clear he has a Vestel T835 of some description, otherwise he wouldn't be talking about V3.4 software (which I installed this morning). Thought it worth making a reply anyway, he might find it helpful

Interesting stuff. You have obviously analysed this in more detail than I have. You have what I would describe as a large number of Timers set so I would expect slow response to start building up over a one day period after re-booting (that would be the case on my T825). Presumably you are watching and deleting recordings at a similar rate to that at which new recordings are being made? Would you care to measure after 3 days of use before re-booting how long it takes to access the Timers list, how long it takes to set a new Series Timer event and how long it takes to skip 24 hours in the EPG after pressing the Blue button. I find these actions produce the most significant delays when it starts slowing down.


I did reply to Freeview_Viewer in post #2 but he/she has not responded.

I agree the use of T835 seems fairly conclusive. However, there is at least one the Top Up TV PVRs which has recently had a Version 3.4 software. No connection with the Vestel/Cabot software of course. From memory I think it was one of the Thomson TUTV boxes.

Colin

Hi and thanks for your replies.
I did make an error on the model, it is in fact this DTR in Argos http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Produc...3EFREEVIEW.htm.

I have come to the conclusion that it is a signal problem on the BBC channels as even though the signal bar in the menu is almost full, its says "poor" strength. This may be a faulty tuner or a wrong reading of the strength?

I am running the box off a communal aerial with my box connected and my Samsung LCD Freeview TV too.

As for the stuttering its is unwatchable most times in the evening, even when clear weather outside but again only on the BBC channels, so surely its a weak singnal strength matter?

I am going to try running a single feed to my box from a separate aerial and see how it performs over the next few days.

Hope this sheds some light.

Thanks again to all!

Re glitches

Last night it was recording Gardeners' World and QI back to back, while we watched Mock The Week. I have to fast forward over Jack Whitehall's hair as it disturbs me , so we were putting a lot of strain on the box. We got 2x Category 3 glitches and 1x category 2 glitches in GW. Bad, but that's a worst case scenario I guess. We rarely do so much FF. Haven't checked QI yet.

Re speed of response

timers
- lots of dross, eg I series linked local news so we can watch the weather. That's 9 timers on its own, 1x bulletin on weekdays + 2 on each weekend day. We rarely watch them.
- lots of repeats. For example Jamie's 30 Minute Meals seems to be about 8 timers even though it's only on a few nights a week. V3.4 is supposed to sort this, I will try resetting the J30MM series timer
- "hangover" timers where the series has ended but the timer remains, for example Mock The Week. I guess the BBC never told the box it was the last episode in the series
- The rest is stuff which tends to build up and get deleted when the disc gets full. Our principle is record everything that looks vaguely interesting, then delete it when it turns out not to be! We probably only watch half the stuff we record

I will have a timer clearout now I have V3.4. Something Futaura suggested.

I wonder if more timers = more glitches. The box obviously has to work hard, presumably comparing the broadcast Now & Next table with the internal Timers table. I would guess the CPU load to do this goes up linearly with number of timers, but maybe it's worse than that. You say it affects EPG speed, maybe it affects glitching too when the CPU overloads.

I will do some more scientific checks, but I have noted that if the box has not been rebooted recently, in the EPG
- setting a series timer can take up to 30 seconds, worst for programmes where there are about 10 instances in a week (for example Quest often does 2 episodes a day for 5 days). For a normal once-a-week series, usually 5-10 secs
- sometimes it doesn't detect key presses on the remote, you have to press twice
- skipping 24 hours is never onerous, perhaps it takes a few seconds, ditto accessing the Timers list

The EPG definitely slows down, but it never gets as slow as my Sagem which is astonishingly slow, like using a spreadsheet back in the 1980s. You have to count key presses "do 8 presses along and 2 down, wait 10 seconds for the cursor to move, then see where we are, repeat until you find the right programme". The Sagem always takes 30 seconds to set a series timer. If it finds a conflict smoke comes out the back and it can take up to a minute to resolve it.

I did note last night that with V3.4 and a fresh reboot the Library list was quite slow. Pressing Play resulted in a significant delay before playback started, similarly deleting a recording. Worrying. But no sign of that this morning, it's all fast.

So it looks like V3.4 hasn't significantly affected glitching which is disappointing but not surprising. I guess Vestel isn't monkeying with the MPEG firmware too much for fear of regressions creeping in.

@ OP outrageous thread hijack - sorry!

The more entries there are in the library, the slower the library gets, especially when opening the library or deleting programmes. I used to use mine in this mode, never deleting anything (and marking stuff I really wanted to keep) and letting the box delete the old stuff automatically, primarily to avoid repeats being recorded, but not I find this is not necessary (although a handy fallback when I don't get round to watching stuff and the HDD fills up ).

Regarding timers hanging around after a series ends, that's a feature. In fact, IIRC, a box is supposed to hang on to the timer for 3 months after the last event, although I think the Vestel software never removes the timer at all - could be a feature if it starts recording the next series for you when it comes on . The complaint I have in this area is that these dead series timers often tend not to show up in the timer list at all, so you can't delete them -sometimes they show up blank after rebooting though.

Certainly fast forwarding / rewinding anything whilst recording can often cause glitches in the recording(s) being made - the 30/120 second skip buttons are preferable in this respect.

The amount of timers may well have some affect on glitching - it didn't do it with some early versions, but certainly with v3.4 I can hear mine updating the timers (lots of HDD thrashing) especially directly after a recording stops. During that time of HDD thrashing, the remote does not respond immediately. The worst case I had when setting a timer was when it says "Please wait" and gets stuck at that point forever.

The EPG certainly still gets slow relative to uptime. If you are using low power mode, then this affectively reboots the PVR when you switch it on, thus the EPG will be at its fastest again. Likewise with automatic update checks enabled, as it'll reboot at 3am every night. If you turn both these features off, the EPG will become unbearably slow, certainly after a few days. Also, The more channels that you have in the channel list, the faster the EPG will slow down, so deleting any unwanted channels will help.

So an update on my post above.

I have installed a new aerial and the signal strength is around 90% and its still says "poor" in the menu, not sure why as all channels are getting picked up without problems.

Will see how this works out tonight when I record MOTD without a contiuous stutter.

I'd suggest pulling the plug and plugging it back in again. I once had this too - it was showing "Poor" for no apparent reason, but was fine after a reboot. The behaviour of the signal meter in the T835 software has changed a great deal since the early versions, and this probably just a bug.

If Colin's suggestion doesn't work it sounds like you may have a problem with your broadcaster, or with the tuner hardware in your box.

Signal strength is the power in the signal. Signal quality reflects interference on the signal. So you can have a high power signal, but one with lots of interference/noise on it. That may be what you have. The interference might be
1 at the transmitter end, eg a problem with the tower;
2 at the receiver end, ie a problem with the tuner inside your T835; or
3 in between, eg someone is broadcasting something on the same frequency.

If the problem is 1 or 3, other Freeview devices in your area should be suffering the same problem. Can you ask neighbours, or do you have a Freeview TV you can check on? (many TVs will show you signal quality in their menus somewhere)

If the problem is 2, there's not much you can do except reboot as Colin says, hit it with a hammer or take it back to the shop....

Yes I guess it's useful. The Sagem goes to opposite extremes, it deletes a series timer as soon as it can't find the next episode. Combine that with a bug where often you can't see the 8th day in the EPG, and you lose timers all the time. C4 is particularly cursed, you have to reset timers every week which defeats the object of Series Link!

Now you mention it, so can I. Worrying for the glitch potential perhaps... we shall see

Really? That's great info, thanks. I have this enabled so I now don't need to cycle the power every day.

These beasts are quite complicated. I think making a bad PVR is quite easy. Making a functional, stable, reliable, intuitive one is really hard. I smile when I read on these forums about the HD boxes from the new kids on the block like Fetch and 3View. Users are saying "it can't do chase play properly.... but it's got a calculator widget!!!". IMHO that means these new guys are doomed. Of course they'll fix chase play, but the fact that such a fundamental feature is not baked into the architecture on Day 1 I think means that they will never get the intuitiveness and reliability up to scratch. Vestel does seem to have a lot of man years invested in its stack, and they seem to be quite focused on making it work well, rather than on calculator widgets.

Thanks for the detailed info. Our recording pattern is very similar to yours. We record news programmes and skip through the headlines and only look at the rest if it looks interesting. This is one area in which the Vestel PVRs win significantly over the Humax units. The latter frequently starts late (up to a minute as a worse case) so often the headlines are missed completely.

I think the Library is very appropriately named. It's a place you go to browse around and find something of interest and have a closer look. If you have a closer look and don't find it as interesting as you thought you discard it.

I think futaura has already made any other comments on your post that I would have made.

By the way, the advice to Freeview_Viewer which you accredited to me in your post #12 was actually given by futaura.

Colin

I really must get around to checking the effect of the automatic update checks on the response of my T825. You have mentioned this before. I will test it properly but I have the impression the update check does not restore my unit to optimum responsiveness.

Colin

Once again I put words in your mouth Sorry

V3.4 seems to have slowed down deleting files from the library. It can now take many seconds (up to 10?) to delete them. The disk thrashes, I guess it's writing to a table of stuff-I've-watched-and-deleted to prevent the repeat records. Hmmm, not ideal.

It does, although IIRC (from seeing the debug output) it rechecks all timers at that point too, hence the disk thrashing. However, a large amount of recordings in the library tends to slow deleting them more than anything in my experience - I can't be sure, but I think it reloads the library after each deletion, and as you probably know the library does take a while to open when you have a large list of recordings.

Yes, on my T825 the time it takes to delete a recording certainly increases depending on the number of recordings in the Library. The time duration also increases with the length of the recording being deleted.

Colin

3 days uptime, EPG has definitely slowed down a lot even though I have auto-update check enabled
- scrolling in EPG is painful, 1-2 second to move down or across. 4-5 seconds to change days
- 8 seconds to set a series timer for Whites on BBC2 Tuesday (this does not seem unusually slow)
- 6 seconds to Access Timers list (this does not seem unusually slow)

After a reboot it's night & day, changing days is near instant and scrolling up and down is not painful.

So I think I agree with your earlier comment "I will test it properly but I have the impression the update check does not restore my unit to optimum responsiveness" (this time I'm fairly sure it's you that said it )

Ah, but did you check it at 4am? Of course, if you don't use it until the evening it's already going to have had 15 hours uptime already, and even if you use it after 9am that's 6 hours uptime. Both are enough for it to have slowed down noticably. That is why low power mode is better in this respect as it effectively reboots the box everytime you switch it on from standby - unfortunately this is also an excuse for Vestel not to bother fixing the root cause of the slowdown problem .

It had been 3 days since last power cycle:-
I tested it at about 0800, so 4 hours after auto-update, it was dog slow.
I rebooted it straight after that, that's nearly 10 hours ago now. It's still super fast.
So it seems like the slowness is related to the time since last power cycle, not the time since auto-update, at least for my box running V3.4.
Interested in your thoughts.
cheers

I checked it again this morning, after 24 hours uptime. The EPG had slowed somewhat, taking a noticeable time to change days. Perhaps 1-2 seconds.

I had an old digital time switch lying about, I plugged the T835 into it and set it up so it turns off for 1 minute every day in the early afternoon. That should keep things nice and speedy.

The problem with all earlier model Vestels is "interaction", between the poor power supply design - causing bad disk block buffering - and "garbage" put into the info fields of some Freeview channels (often Dave, Yesterday, etc).

The 835s are ususally free of noticable problems, largely because standby mode effectively resets the pvr each time it starts up (stuttering can often be stopped on 825s by briefly de-powering, although then you've lost the start of the recording!),

It's unusual to have such problems on BBC muxes.

I think they may have changed something in the software which means it doesn't always reboot at 3am every day anymore . It certainly used to, but with v3.4 mine didn't reboot last night with auto updates on and low power off. One easy tell tale sign is that the PIP position resets to the default (top-right) after a reboot - I normally have mine moved to the bottom-right. This morning it hadn't moved back to the top-right so I knew it hadn't rebooted, plus the EPG is a little slow (BTW, the EPG is much faster when you use it while playing a recording!). Also, if the PVR isn't programmed to do anything between 3am and the morning when you first use it, the control panel time is usually blank (again, this may have changed with v3.4, but was the case with earlier versions).

I'm not going to be able to test this again for a couple of days as my T835 will be recording the F1 at 3am the next two nights .

Now you mention it this was a bit of an odd feature, I couldn't understand why sometimes it showed the time and sometimes not. Thanks for your feedback re rebooting.

I got fed up with the T835 last night, had quite a few bad stutters on something I wanted to watch. Bah. But then I went back to the Sagem to find it had failed to stop recording two programmes so had entirely missed recording a third, and had mis-labelled the two it had failed to stop on! So I'm stuffed either way. I do dislike the fact that every time I FF over adverts on the T835 I'm thinking "this will make my recording stutter". And I hate ad skip buttons, I find them disorientating. Ah well, these things are sent to try us.