Hello all,

I have a Durabrand T816 running the V3.7 software. Recently, the box has started to delete some Mux 1 channels. The strange thing is, is that it's only losing BBC Three, CBBC and BBC News. BBC 1 and 2 don't seem to get deleted. A rescan always brings them back. Is anyone else experiencing this problem/bug?

Thanks.

My T816 has died, unfortunately, so I can't compare it.

My T825 is showing the red out-of-transmission time BBC3 screen, but I can't test CBeebies because I've deleted all kiddies' channels.

I don't suppose there's transmitter work going on in your area? Don't even know what could have that effect though Hope an expert will come along for you soon.

I don't think there is any real explanation for Vestel PVRs losing channels from the channel list with no user intervention, because these boxes do not automatically update the channel lists when there are changes.

My advice is to perform a first time installation to reset the box to factory settings (recordings will remain and won't be deleted), and then it'll do a rescan. It may be that simply rescanning alone was not enough and maybe something got corrupted in the nvram causing the channels to disappear. Fingers crossed it will do the trick otherwise the problem could be something more serious .

I was quite relieved to see your posting as first one then the other of my Vestel T816 machines (V3.7 also) started to lose BBC1. I thought I was going bonkers!! It happens when they are powered down completely then powered up again. They are used as additional occasional recording capacity when my main T825 units get a bit full and I use them in a flip flop pair using the aux feature. A few weeks ago I noticed that one of them would lose BBC1 (and possibly other channels as well) when powered down and so I carried out a manual scan for the mux in question (49 for my Waltham transmitter) to re-install BBC1 each time this happened. Now the other T816 has started to do this so this is a bit worrying. I also believe it might also happen when they're left in standby for a while as well though I need to do further research on this point. Incidentally, a Tevion 1620 I also use does the same thing - loses channels that have previously been installed when powered down and since it is very unstable I'm always rebooting it!! Cabot firmware glitch perhaps? Futaura, can you have a word with your contacts at Vestel to see if they have any experience of this phenomenon and have any comments/suggestions to make? Anyone else getting this problem?

Solution and a possible explanation to this problem found. Thanks to b1o2b3 and his/her post in the "Digihome PVR80 post-switchover" thread I have the solution which has also been confirmed by user StoppingService.

b1o2b3 wrote this:
We have a PVR80 (v5.7 updated) with a similar problem. After a scan all channels were found and saved but after putting into standby then disconnecting at the mains BBC1+2 were missing. It had me beat for I time then I thought let's try a scan and delete everything except BBC1+2. After turning off at the mains and powering up again BBC1 and 2 remained saved. I then scanned again but this time I deleted all the unwanted channels (QVC etc), problem sorted. I am guessing here but I think that there are so many channels to store now that the PVR80 can't save them all in the memory that is used when disconnected from the mains. It saves as many as possible dropping the lowest channels first."

I went through and deleted all the shopping, scrambled, Top up TV and porn and chat channels, then did a scan on the mux for BBC1 (49 in my case) and BBC1 was then installed. When I powered down the unit (mains off) then powered on again, BBC1 was still there! So, it does appear there is a finite number of memory locations for storing channel information when the power is removed and as b1o2b3 postulates, the unit can only store so many and must therefore lose some (in my case BBC1). Well done b1o2b3 - you've solved what was a major pain for me. Now I'm going to try my Tevion 1620 to see if that solves it's problem as well.

Limited to 100 (or 99) channels perhaps? I'll test with my T816 later.

With my box, and now my GF's, it's always the same channels that seem to vanish. BBC Three, CBBC and BBC News. It seems very random when it occurs, and theres not a pattern to it at all. What I have concluded is that it does appears to happen overnight. So I'm thinking that it's somehow related to the 3am software check. So, I'm going to disable it, see how it goes and let you know if this solves it.

Thanks for everyone's input.

Yes, as it reboots at 3am every day, this is effectively the same as unplugging it. It seems there is a problem with the channel list stored in NVRAM which is where the channel list will be read from after a reboot. I shall investigate this further with my T816 tonight. I don't think my T835 suffers from this problem, but then again I delete a lot of the channels to make the EPG stay faster longer.

Ok, I can confirm that the T816 (and T810) software is limited to 100 channels maximum. The box has no trouble with more than 100 channel in the channel list while scanning and the box is left powered up or in standby, but when it is switched off at the mains or reboots (i.e. 3am every day to check for updates, if not disabled) it will reread the copy of the channel list in NVRAM and this will lose channels if there were over 100 (and they'll be channels from the first mux scanned - i.e. the mux with the lowest UHF frequency if autoscanning).

So, the solution for now, as previously stated is to delete unwanted channels after performing an automatic scan, so that you have 100 channels or less in your channel list. Then all will be fine. I am now about to e-mail Vestel about this issue.

Fortunately for me, I'm pre-switchover and Mux A is the first one scanned, which means the TopUp TV Anytime channels are the ones that disappear which is useful . I should add that with the option in the setup to not scan encrypted channels, I only have 97 anyway, so no trouble normally. I had to switch this on to bring my channel list to 104 or so and then I saw the disappearing channels problem.

I can also confirm this has happened on my PVR80 since last Tuesday when we had to retune in the West Midlands area. In my case, I kept losing channel 301, which I was using to watch the snooker on red button. It kept disappearing overnight and required another retune to get it back. I didn't notice any other missing channels, but I can't say I actively went looking.

Anyway, I followed the advice here and deleted the adult channels and the Top-Up TV stuff. I also turned off automatic scanning. I've had channel 301 ever since.

Thanks for working out what was wrong!