Shows on EHD are erased after watching! Known problem?

[BobMurdoch]

Been seeing this for at least a month. It is predictable on my machines.....

1. When watching a program on the EHD, the first recording plays back and stops fine. No issues.
2. IF you watch a 2nd show BEFORE the unit reboots in the morning, and then press stop at any point in the recording OR you let it go to completion and the "done" screen pops up, it pops up a title screen with the content of the First program OR a screen with blank spaces with some gibberish. Your 2nd program is toast at this point.
3. The 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. programs are fine and are unaffected.
4. The cycle resets after the morning reboot. I'm not sure if a manual reboot will achieve the same result, or if it has something to do with the EPG download, but each day it kills the 2nd program without your consent.
5. You can delay the ax by directly keying in a channel number and pressing enter (ie. press 200 to jump to CNN when in the middle of the 2nd program) which will spare the program. However, your NEXT program is vulnerable as the "glitch counter" is waiting to kill the next program you watch off the EHD and then press the stop button or watch until completion.

 

[8bitbytes]

Lost a movie last night. I think I will stop using the EHD until this issue is repaired. I wonder if the software engineers are to busy with a new Tivo workaround to worry about this issue?

Dish just doesn't care. Their response to emails to DishQuality, Tech, and CEO are less than helpful and indicate that the customer is unimportant. Their behavior is much the same way as a studio cancelling a show because the viewing audience dips below 12 million. All they care about is selling ads, not where anyone actually wants to see that show continue. Dish doesn't care if you leave since there are more suckers right behind you coming in the door.

I don't expect to see this problem solved any time soon.

 

[long_time_DNC]

Been seeing this for at least a month. It is predictable on my machines.....

1. When watching a program on the EHD, the first recording plays back and stops fine. No issues.
2. IF you watch a 2nd show BEFORE the unit reboots in the morning, and then press stop at any point in the recording OR you let it go to completion and the "done" screen pops up, it pops up a title screen with the content of the First program OR a screen with blank spaces with some gibberish. Your 2nd program is toast at this point.
3. The 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. programs are fine and are unaffected.
4. The cycle resets after the morning reboot. I'm not sure if a manual reboot will achieve the same result, or if it has something to do with the EPG download, but each day it kills the 2nd program without your consent.
5. You can delay the ax by directly keying in a channel number and pressing enter (ie. press 200 to jump to CNN when in the middle of the 2nd program) which will spare the program. However, your NEXT program is vulnerable as the "glitch counter" is waiting to kill the next program you watch off the EHD and then press the stop button or watch until completion.

I've found this to be true as well, Bob, and so having a program to sacrifice to the counter is a seemingly functional workaround. Some useless short program (or several of them, like those trailer shows) seems to help get around the 2nd show death bug.

I agree with 8bitbytes though, Dish doesn't seem to care about this issue regardless how many people complain and I also don't expect to see it fixed anytime soon...

 

[navychop]

Been seeing this for at least a month. It is predictable on my machines.....

1. When watching a program on the EHD, the first recording plays back and stops fine. No issues.
2. IF you watch a 2nd show BEFORE the unit reboots in the morning, and then press stop at any point in the recording OR you let it go to completion and the "done" screen pops up, it pops up a title screen with the content of the First program OR a screen with blank spaces with some gibberish. Your 2nd program is toast at this point.
3. The 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. programs are fine and are unaffected.
4. The cycle resets after the morning reboot. I'm not sure if a manual reboot will achieve the same result, or if it has something to do with the EPG download, but each day it kills the 2nd program without your consent.
5. You can delay the ax by directly keying in a channel number and pressing enter (ie. press 200 to jump to CNN when in the middle of the 2nd program) which will spare the program. However, your NEXT program is vulnerable as the "glitch counter" is waiting to kill the next program you watch off the EHD and then press the stop button or watch until completion.

Nice catch, nice post. Should really help the Dish engineers working on it. Maybe they should send you a thank you note.
Attached to a free ViP922.

 

[gdarwin]

Just discovered it has happen to me.... Recorded The Best 25 Years of Pop last weekend. Looked grainy compared to what I had recorded. Checked my spreadsheet, hooked up the drive I had it on, it was gone....

 

[David_Levin]

Looks like they messed up Adding Support for Larger HDD's

I'm getting ready to setup a new media server and figured I'd pop the Hitachi 2TB onto the 722 to see if they worked on the 1.5TB limit with SW version L625.

Low and Behold:

So, it looks like they probably created this bug when adding the larger HDD support.

 

[gdarwin]

Dish CSR's have no clue about this problem... Tried to blame the EHD...

 

[long_time_DNC]

Reply I received from Tech said to reboot the receiver after each viewing of a program stored on the EHD to avoid erasure bug. Great workaround...why not just plug in a different receiver while I'm at it? Give me a break...

 

[Totoro]

I thought I had a defective receiver, because I was losing every movie on my EHD when I pressed stop in the middle of the movie. Now I know that all the receivers are defective. I don't know if that makes me feel any better though. I often don't have time to watch an entire movie before it is finished. Maybe I will have to transfer the movie back to the IHD before watching.

 

[gdarwin]

I thought I had a defective receiver, because I was losing every movie on my EHD when I pressed stop in the middle of the movie. Now I know that all the receivers are defective. I don't know if that makes me feel any better though. I often don't have time to watch an entire movie before it is finished. Maybe I will have to transfer the movie back to the IHD before watching.

Quit hitting stop and enter a channel number to stop. Been working for me...

 

[long_time_DNC]

That's one (annoying) way around the bug also. I keep trailer programs out there to "sacrifice" to the bug...which is annoying too, but saves the time of moving files back and forth...

 

[gdarwin]

I just sent this thread to tech at echostar.com and dishquality at echostar.com at a CSR request... Let them know it is still an issue.

 

[long_time_DNC]

Good deal! Hopefully they'll do something about it SOON!

 

[Totoro]

Quit hitting stop and enter a channel number to stop. Been working for me...

Thanks. I will try that next time. Too bad I lost some great movies that I never finished watching.

 

[long_time_DNC]

Quit hitting stop and enter a channel number to stop. Been working for me...

Unfortunately, I've lost programs that way too... The only two ways I've had success in not losing programs is to either turn the drive off while the program being viewed is either playing or paused (don't ever stop it if it's the second program you've watched!), or after watching the first program, have something to feed to the bug, watch a minute of it, stop it (it'll have the info on-screen of the first program you watched, or no description at all) and the bug will have eaten (deleted) that 2nd program (I just feed it trailer program and keep recording more of them to have out there as bug fodder) and then go on to the 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. without any problems.

This bug just seems to affect the second program you watch on any EHD you watch it from (if you have more than one EHD).

 

[rcm2525]

I'm new to this forum and would like to add my name to the list of people loosing programs from my EHDs. I first noted the erasure problem right around the first of the year. I've noted the workaround but would rather they fix this soon.

 

[Totoro]

I'm new to this forum and would like to add my name to the list of people loosing programs from my EHDs. I first noted the erasure problem right around the first of the year. I've noted the workaround but would rather they fix this soon.

The worst part is that the movies I am losing are my favorite movies, the ones I want to watch more than once (obviously).

 

[KyDave]

Yep, and also some treasures that can't be replaced - from channels that no longer exist (ie Voom). This sucks!!!

 

[inazsully]

Sorry if this has already been mentioned but is this problem also present with the new WD DVR Expander series?

 

[long_time_DNC]

Sorry if this has already been mentioned but is this problem also present with the new WD DVR Expander series?

Yes. It doesn't matter what brand of EHD you are using...this bug will delete programs from your drive unless you feed it a recording you don't mind losing as the second program you watch from any EHD you use.

Example: if you're watching a movie and you stop it anytime after starting it, do not resume it! Feed the bug some other useless program (I use trailer programs from HDNet) so that the "second program viewed" bug is satisfied. Then you can safely resume the movie you were watching as the 3rd program. The 4th, 5th, etc. should be safe as well.

Essentially, the process looks like this:

1st program: safe
2nd program: unsafe (feed the bug something or lose what you want to keep)
3rd program: safe
4th program: safe
etc.

Agreed, this is an extremely annoying bug and Dish needs to fix it ASAP. The more people that contact Dish and complain about (and they'll tell you to reboot your receiver in-between programs to prevent the 2nd one from being deleted - also extremely annoying) this bug, the more it will stay in their field of view and hopefully they'll feel the pressure to get this issue fixed.