I should NOT have to babysit the DVR.

[Pepper]

I am in hot water tonight. My wife told the ViP622 (L449RBDD) to record a movie on Hallmark Channel, an original movie "Thicker than Water" which of course is not scheduled again for at least the next month.

The timer is there in the history, shows start and stop times, but the two lines "AV Recorded" and "AV Stopped" are missing, and of course there's nothing recorded. There were no conflicts, and plenty of space available. Every other scheduled recording was normal. What's up with this crazy machine?!

 

[tempVAdish]

I am in hot water tonight. My wife told the ViP622 (L449RBDD) to record a movie on Hallmark Channel, an original movie "Thicker than Water" which of course is not scheduled again for at least the next month.

The timer is there in the history, shows start and stop times, but the two lines "AV Recorded" and "AV Stopped" are missing, and of course there's nothing recorded. There were no conflicts, and plenty of space available. Every other scheduled recording was normal. What's up with this crazy machine?!

I have never seen those two lines on either my 622 or the old 921. Has she in the past set it up to record to VCR & not DVR?

 

[TNGTony]

The VCR/DVR thing was my first guess. My second is that she may have told it to record a "new" item and the description may have said 1/1/08. So it dutifully skipped the "old" movie.

 

[tempVAdish]

The VCR/DVR thing was my first guess. My second is that she may have told it to record a "new" item and the description may have said 1/1/08. So it dutifully skipped the "old" movie.

It took me a long time to remember to do that after switching from a 921. I messed up several times, especially when I get in a hurry to leave the house and think "oh crap, my timers"

 

[Pepper]

Look closely in history details, successful records show Start Time, AV Recorded, Stop Time, AV Stopped. Unsuccessful events such as the one in question just show start and stop time.

We've never had a VCR attached or used that feature. I am pretty sure she didn't "accidentally" do that. She didn't "accidentally" tell it to Auto Tune either, those events are listed as such in the history details.

 

[tempVAdish]

Look closely in history details, successful records show Start Time, AV Recorded, Stop Time, AV Stopped.

I'll have to check this out, you know, I've had this thing almost a year & have never picked up on it...

 

[8bitbytes]

One other oddity that could kill a recording - Sticky pause. If you have one tuner on pause and the other tuner on pause and swap between them on commercials, when a timer fires since you have both tuners locked up, it will skip the recording whereas if one channel is live, it will tune to the recording channel and start the recording.

I come home in the evening and frequently find the dvr paused and I hit the swap button and find the other tuner paused as well.

 

[Thor263]

This actually reminds me of a problem I had with my old 942 early on. The same thing would happen, events would be scheduled to record and then would be skipped -- the history would show the start/stop times, but no "AV Recorded" or "AV Stopped". This problem was caused by leaving the 942 on an OTA channel. For some reason, it would prevent events from recording on non-OTA channels. It was fixed in a subsequent software update.

It's highly unlikely this is the same problem though.

 

[Need]

Is it possible that your receiver is powered off during the recording time? Plug into some kind of energy saving power strip with a timer?

 

[Pepper]

Nope, quite the opposite in fact, it's plugged into an APC UPS that will keep it running at least 10 minutes if the power's out.

 

[Pepper]

Here we go again.

Wonderful. More hot water for me. I didn't notice that 24 (currently Mrs Pepper's favorite show) was not recording until 7:36pm. So I have a 23 minute recording where I changed channels and hit the record button, and no other evidence in the history that the timer ever existed, which I remember seeing in the guide with a record dot on it as recently as this morning.

The properties of this timer are "Weekly - Mon", channel "010-00 WALA" (satellite HD not OTA) "7:00 pm - 9:00 pm" as I created it in week 1 when there was a 2-hour premiere. It shows it's scheduled for 8pm next Monday.

The only other thing that's changed since the last time is the software is now L618 and it was L449 a year and a few weeks ago when this last happened. At least it doesn't happen "very" often - but apparently only on events for which there is no repeat scheduled.

I guess now I get to figure out how to connect the computer to the entertainment center (surprisingly, don't have one there yet) to watch the online episode.

 

[sajoc]

Somebody can make $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Why doesn't somebody invent a DVD player for women???? It has to have only two buttons and do everything automatically!

No options for settings... just record and play.

The voice command would be nice too, except if she got mad and started yelling at it, that would just slow things down and make her even more angry!

OK, this a challenge for every engineer out there!

If you do it... you'll be like Bill Gates... you'll have your own island.

 

[GaryPen]

I realize you are mostly joking. But, CE companies really do need to concentrate more on usability. It has nothing to do with gender. The overwhelming majority of people would like their stuff to be easier to use. (Myself, included. And, I'm an audio-visual professional.) The brilliantly designed ergonomics is the number one reason for the iPhone's success.