They're bugs to me as they reduce the speed and ease of use compared with the PVR160.
No I'm not + that's not what I want + no I'm not. I'm not "using the Library", I'm watching a recording and I want to switch it off and immediately watch the live channel "underneath", which I will have selected before playing the recording.
That must be a male thing
That's just it: the list does NOT scroll to the beginning, it just keeps scrolling around ad infinitum. Previous model stopped at either the beginning or the end, depending if you were scrolling up or down. So you didn't have to pay much attention if you wanted to go to the beginning or end of the list.
As stated in previous post, it is not a 'feature' of the earlier model.

parthena

I would like to be able to select a program to record and it immediately underline it. For some reason, the T810 worked great with this and didn't wait for the HDD to power up. The T816 now waits, not sure why??

As for recording library, 2 options come to mind.....

a,) a number before each recording.

or

b) not sure if this is possible, but an idea for a future software update... give the user an option to create folders (ie films, soaps etc), and then organise their recordings into the appropriate folders. You soon fill up the HDD and are left with 1 nice long list of recordings(which all work tho )

A question of teminology I guess. I would define a bug as something the programmer didn't intend to happen. In this case I think the programmer intended it to happen this way.
I tend to watch most programmes at my convenience after they have been recorded and a lot less live TV, so I would on average access several recordings on each visit to the Library. Probably a whole evenings viewing delayed by an hour or so at the start but approaching real time towards the end as adverts are skipped through.
Is it? :sleep: (Ref numerical recording numbers)
Ah I understand now. I had not accounted for holding down the "down" button. I agree it would be nice if it stopped at the bottom if the button was held down. I'd still quite like the next press to take it back to the top though, as it does now if you are at the bottom.

Colin

After 2 weeks of impeccable Accurate Recording I had my first major failures last Saturday, 13 Oct. Using the Guide I set Strictly Come Dancing (6.15pm - 7.30pm), The National Lottery.... (8.15pm - 9.05pm), and Casualty (9.05pm - 9.55pm) to record. All on BBC1.

I first noticed something was amiss when at 6.45pm Strictly Come Dancing had failed to start recording, so I immediately set it to record using instant record whilst on live TV. I then went out for the evening so was unable to monitor future activity.

The subsequent day when I entered the library I noticed that Strictly had recorded a programme length of 28min 48s (should have been approx. 45min). The National Lottery had failed to record at all and Casualty had recorded a programme length of 28min 49s (should have been approx 50 min).

Playback of Strictly showed that the first 3min after I pressed instant record and the last 2min of the programme recorded correctly. The rest of the recording was of The Sweeney which was on at the same time on ITV4 (confirmed by the ITV4 logo on the screen) with just brief snatches of Strictly. So as well as recording nothing for about 16m during the programme the majority of the rest was of the wrong channel.

Playback of Casualty started OK on time and was OK for the first few minutes and for a few approx. 1m or 2m periods in the middle. The rest of the recording was of another episode of Sweeney on ITV4. The end of the recording showed the credits at the end of Sweeney which coincided approximately with the what would have been the end of Casualty. So the behaviour for this recording was similar to Strictly with about 21m missing and most of the remainder of the wrong channel.

Since then Accurate Recording has been just that, accurate.

What is interesting is that this behaviour is very similar to occasional "corrupt" recordings I have had on my Tevion PVRs even to the extent that these have often (but not exclusively so) been on Saturday afternoon and evenings on BBC1. Both the Vestel and Tevion (Technotrend) PVR use the same Cabot dual record "middleware" suggesting it is this software that is at fault?

Is this a new bug, I don't recall seeing it reported before?

I'm not sure if it is relevant but I had had several occurrences of the "picture and sound freeze on live TV" bug during the hour or so prior to the above, so it seems likely more of these may have occurred during the subject period.

Colin

I was bored and checking out what was on BBC4 the other night and a few minutes into it the sound went and there were adverts. It took a few moment to realise the adverts weren't from this channel and were another merging in, so I swapped channels and back to BBC4 again. Was fine for a few minutes then the same again, the other channels picture with no sound. After turning the box to standby and on again it didn't happen further. Does this sound similar to the recording error you had?

I think I've seen reference to this at some point, although I've never actually experienced it. Are these 2 channels on the same mux? I'm presuming you are on 3.7.
I had a previous box on version 2.4 and that did experience that problem. When watching live, it changed channels by itself!!

As for the picture freeze, I experience this, but only after using the EPG search. Did you use the EPG search feature at some point earlier??

Last night the programme tags were completely wrong! The football on ITV1 was labelled Coronation Street (for 2.5 hours??) and the Wife Swap on E4 was a repeat, despite the info saying otherwise.
I have had mixed experiences with accurate recording on my T816, usually it manages to cut the end off recordings, even though they're BBC channels (see my other post). Shame as this box is brilliant otherwise.

No, not on the same MUX. BBC1 is on MUX1 and ITV4 on MUX2. They are not even on adjacent FM Frequencies. The Live TV tuner was on BBC1 so I'm assuming the other one was being used for recording so should have been on BBC1 also.
I had used the EPG search at some time before and after doing the recordings but I don't remember how long before.

I don't recognises it in the bug report here. Maybe it should be added?

Colin

Several weeks ago I had an instance or two of ITV4 intruding on a BBC recording (I think it was those channel)s. I've had a look thru my posts but it must be some time back and I can't find it. In any case, it was before I got the T816

parthena

I too get ITV4 switched into BBC1 sometimes when watching live tv. BBC1 also freezes alot.

I've had this occur on my Daewoo on about 3 occasions. I wouldn't have mentioned it but the last one uncannily also involved The Sweeney on ITV4. I think they had just started the rerun. I'm fairly sure the other channel was also BBC1. The recording kept flipping between channels just as you describe. I think I might just set it again tonight to see if it's repeatable.

The prime suspect here of course would be the Cabotware common to both machines.

Using the search function can seriously mess things up. It certainly is responsible for the software freezes on 2.4.

If you use guide search, when you've finished put your box into standby. When you bring it back out it should be fine. You need to do this every time you use search. I Can't wait for the firmware update...

If you use 3.7 though, turn off favourites mode. I am told that 3.7 is far worse for favourites mode causing dodgy station changes than 2.4 which doesn't do this in most circumstances (except for reminders).

Yes indeed, as I have had it on the Tevion PVR's (also uses Cabot) but only since the dual recording updates. The only examples on non-dual record software are on parthena's T810, so maybe it is on the single record Cabot middleware also but only on certain configurations. It's a small comfort that I'm not the only one getting it.

Colin
,

Thanks for the tip, I'll try that. I don't use Favourites or Reminders so I just need to put it in Standby. I do find the Search facility very handy. I was able to do a search for "Stric" and get all 7 occurrences of Strictly Come Dancing for the whole week and quickly set them to record in the Search Results screen. Much quicker than navigating through each day in the Guide.

Colin

Following on from my Post #54 I repeated last night (Sat 20 Oct) the same three programmes as last week with similar results. Strictly Come Dancing recorded correctly and exactly at the start of the programme which was about 1 min ahead of scheduled time. So far so good. However, the following programmes, National Lottery failed to record. It seems the man at the BBC1 who presses the Now/Next buttons pops out to the pub on a Saturday evening.

Today (Sunday 21 Oct) revealed something new about this problem or maybe it is a different problem? . At about 12.20pm I set to record, using the Guide, every programme on BBC1 between 1.45pm (Diagnosis Murder 1.45pm - 3.10pm) and Strictly Come Dancing (6.50pm - 7.35pm). I went out to lunch and returned at about 3.30pm. At this point Diagnosis Murder should have finished recording and Eastenders (3.10pm - 5.05pm) should have started recording. However, neither of these were in the Library so has obviously not recorded. However, both were still showing in the Timers list and with Red bars in the Guide. I then noticed on exiting to live TV that the Now/Next info for ALL channels was showing programmes that were current at the time I set up the recordings i.e. around 12.30pm. So I assume that as the Now/Next info had not been updated this was the reason the recordings had not started. I put the box in and out of standby but the Now/Next info remained at around 12.30pm. Power cycling restored correct operation. From then on, although I have not yet looked in detail at the recordings they appear to be OK. I can't say whether the "freezing" of the Now/Next info was as a result of my actions whilst setting the recordings or just coincidence that it occurred at around the same time. Has any one else had anything like this? If so is there any preventative action? Maybe the suggestion by BongMong of doing a standby cycle after using Search would help in this case. All a bit worrying. I'm now a bit anxious each time I set something to record wondering if it's going to work or not. I've even taken to recording important programmes on my Tevion as a backup

Colin

I haven't had anything quite as catastrophic as the now/next freezing, but I've just found out that yet again, my 250DTR missed the last minute or so of the Sopranos from E4 last night. It happens on BBC channels too, increasingly, and is getting very annoying. I have only ever had one instance of the start of a programme being missed, and usually, at eats on BBC channels, the start of the recording is lined up exactly with the continuity announcement at the start of the programme. So in that respect, Accurate Recording is great. But missing the ends is getting to be a consistent problem

Yes, this is the problem I've been having too, if only we could build in a margin of say 5 minutes manually after the end of programmes then all would be well. I have noticed also over the past week that the programme guides are showing incorrect info, especially ITV2. SOmething seems to have gone seriously wrong with the updates as my old Goodmans Freeview box is also showing wrong info. Accurate Recording is brilliant for programmes which are delayed by overruns or schedule changes, but totally hopeless for programmes which are running to schedule but delayed starting due to overlong promos or adverts (and that seems to be most times lately), which is when the end times get cut short as according to the programme guide the next show has already started. Very very frustrating, means that all important recordings have to be done via Timer and risk a delayed start and means no programme info in the Library (if we could enter our own tags that could solve the problem at least). Such a pity as this equipment is otherwise excellent.

I don't think E4 has implemented the Accurate Recording signals yet, so you can expect to lose the end of programmes if they are running late. To prevent this you could change the recording type from "event" to "time" in Timers and add some pading to the end. Slight disadvantage of that is that you lose the programme name in the Library.

I think the way accurate recording is supposed to work is that the recording should run until the "Start" signal for the next programme is received so usually you get all the bits between prorammes on the preceding recording. I'm not sure what is supposed to happen if both tuners are being used for recording and the start signal is received for a scheduled timer on another channel. The box has to make a choice of which takes priority. If it choses the new programme then the end of one of the current recordings would have to be lost.

Colin

I think you may be right!

Bought one of these a couple of days ago, the ONN from Asda. Ever since then I've been using it with varying degrees of success with regard to the accurate recording.

I've tried recording 'In the Night Garden' (for my 2yr old son - honest) that shows on CBBC at 6.20 evenings. It's the last show of the day, and it never stops recording so if Colin is right then maybe because they are not broadcasting a start signal at the end of the day [that the T816 would use]? ie. the length of the show is about 40 mins or so, and I've always come back to see it still recording, sometimes two hours or more, at which point I manually stop it. I've never left it running long enough to see if it would stop by itself. Not that I would mind, if I could edit the recording to trim off the end (is this even possible?)

I also agree with all the other problems, ie. stops recording too early, starts too late, etc., and that changing to a 'timer' and manually padding takes ages and would lose the name of the recording. Aargh!

Are these bugs being worked on does anybody know? I bought this machine and sold it to my wife on the basis of all this functionality, now these bugs are ruining her viewing of 'Criminal Minds', and I'm bound to get it in the neck at some point

(Unrelated to above couple of posts.)

After I've "watched" a radio recording (BBC Radio 4) and press the Stop button, my Evesham T816 displays TV channels on 4:3 instead of letterbox. I can only correct it by going in and out of Guide, the Wide button does not work.

However, when pressing Stop at the end of the radio recording it does not bring up the Guide as it would with a TV recording... so far.


I 'complained' about this earlier in this thread - it's been put down to HDD spinning up, but as you say, it doesn't happen with the T810.

parthena

Yeah - I've started to do this for really important recordings. It makes the process of setting up a timer into a several step operation though (rather than just underlining the programme in the EPG) and the loss of programme name is also annoying.

Looks to me like the best thing would be for the firmware to allow an autopadding setting from the simple EPG method of setting recording, like the older 810 units had. Or give us a choice between using AR or autopadding...

1 Do the T816s allow you to edit the end time of a 'time' recording which has already started? On the Daewoo this allows you to preserve the title and synopsis in the library even though it changes in the timer list. Limited use, but I seem to use it quite often for non-AR channels.

2 On the Daewoo, priority is given to the ends of event recordings, clipping the start of the next recording if necessary.

I had something similar with my Evesham, once last week while I was still playing with it(new toy), I cleared it by a power cycle, and again this weekend. The second time it was only missing Chanel 4 and E4 (or was it More 4). Having confirmed that the Pace was still getting the EPG and Now/Next data for the channels (there have been times when it has missed data - maybe a Transmitter fault?) I did a manual scan by going to C4, then to the menu/Instlation/manual (can't remember the exact sequence). Anyhow it got it sorted.

I also note another coment where someone said that favorites cause problems - on the Pace thigs got better with a reduced chanel list - strange.

Thanks for that. It's always good to know one is not the only one getting a particular problem. Suggests it a software problem rather than a faulty unit. Hopefully these bugs will get sorted with an update sometime.

Colin

I have now got around to testing this on the T816. You can enter the Edit screen for a programme in the Timers list after it has started recording and view the full data for the recording but unfortunately you can't change any of these details at this time. So it's not a workaround for the loss of the title I'm afraid.

Colin