Originally posted by artshotwell
You miss audio during the switch to DD5.1? It drops out briefly? I haven't had that problem.

Yup.. When watching say 105 L&O in 5.1 and the commericals go to 2 Channel Digital. Then when it comes back to 5.1 my H&K switches and during the switch the audio mutes on the reciever.. Really weird. Tried the Toslink and Coxial digital connections same results.

Now once the show starts I just pause it and let it lock on the 5.1 and then unpause..

My new problem is my DVR is 33% FULL and there are no shows in the list? GO FIGURE? Maybe I got Spyware?
lol

Originally posted by jstockamp
I had a weird problem pop up last night. I noticed my unit wasn't recording "Lost" when it was supposed, so I hit the "My DVR" button and got a message that I was "not subscribed to DVR features". This was the first time that I had ever seen that message. I tried to turn it off and on, but that didn't help. I had to unplug it and once I plugged it back in it started recording like it was supposed to.

This was the first time I had used it since Monday night, when the unit shut itself completely off at 10:15PM (no clock, no nothing) and eventually came back on about 5 minutes later. I thought maybe this was for a firmware upgrade.

Anyway, seems to be working now. Just wondering if anyone else had this strange behavior. YES!

This happened to me Saturday night, and nearly 30 minutes on the phone with Comcast (they were very nice about it) and several attempts at a reset have not solved the problem.

Update:

After another support call and more reset attempts with patient Comcast techs, the final resolution was to swap the unit out.

I'll never know, but since I could not hear the HDD and the unit would 'click' 5 or 6 times on reboot, then stop. I suspect a failed drive.

I have had this unit for 3 weeks now and have been experiencing a problem that I have not read about on this thread (in addition to the FF bug).

I will be fast forwarding through a commercial and sometimes the machine will go into lock-up and black-screen. In order to get out I have to hit the guide button. Then my only option is to start the program over (or erase, go to TV, etc.) but NOT resume. So I do what any normal person would do and start over and FF4 up to the place where I left off. Then POOF.. blackscreen again! Only after turning the machine off and back on, then going through this whole process again I may get lucky and be able to finish what I was watching.

It is getting so bad that my wife is starting to use the VCR again! WAF is at an all time low.

She just reminded me that it sometimes happens when watching something (no FF or RW) that we recorded.

Ok I gave up my HD TIVO :eek: got two boxes....this is what I have problems with any sugestions will be appreciated. Issue 1. audio drops, I tend to listen to the music channels while I work at home and I get drops in the several a minute range. To the point its very very annoying. Doesnt matter what channel it just drops. I am using optical to my Denon receiver. I also get a lot of drops/freezes/pixelation no matter what type of HD programming I am watching. Network, HBO, HDESPN all of them. This happens to both my boxes. 2. When I set a season pass (tivo lingo..lol) to like say the Simpsons, I went in did a search for Simpsons picked the Sunday date clicked record. I now get the Simpsons everyday at all different times on the one network. So I went back and set it to "new" only and I still get them all....so then I took it out ...and reset it and it still does this. Same with King of the Hill, Malcom etc etc. World Poker Tour. Is the only fix to set it for a day and time recording. 3. Also other programs I set to record dont. As TIVO person for 4 years I never had these problems. The TIVO was excelent at doing what it was suposed to ..to the point of almost being flawless...if it wasnt for the fact I cant get the bird from new apartment I would have given Comcast this crap back I miss my TIVOs!!! ok guys help me out here...I am trying to be Comcast friendly here! But this is getting to hard to do! Thankfully I dont have the WAF to deal with anymore :o

Here we go again! Either we have high expectations or this box is a dud. If we do any FF, DVR, Pause activities at the top of the hour or when there is a second tuner change taking place... the unit just LOCKS UP!

I feel as if the processor cannot keep up with us or something. Any recommendations?

I wish someone (besides me) had the guts to open their box up and see if they could do anything to improve it. Replace the memory with something better, or put in a better hard drive for example.

My opinion of the 6412, having had two of them since the first week they were released here in the Seattle area:

1. Overall - good (not great) - it's excellent having two HD tuners and 120 GB of storage space per box (although the disk space should be doubled, or expansion options provided), and the UI is decent (not TIVO quality like I've had in the past, but passable).

2. Stability - it started out strong, but my rating now is equivalent to what I would give to a typical beta release of software - usually works, but some annoying (and obvious) bugs that still need to be fixed. I get hit with the "FF stuck" bug every 2-4 weeks, and had one episode where all of my recorded shows newer than a month were deleted (hard drive glitch? ... no clue as to what happened). One show didn't record as expected, although that might have been a schedule issue rather than a problem in the 6412. There's some obvious load related problems that need to be solved ("FF stuck" and any others that might be due to high loads), and the general reliability should be rock solid (to compete with other settop boxes and DVRs).

Bottom line - would I give it (6412) up or switch back to satellite? Nope - having local channel HD and not having to mess with a satellite dish will keep me on Comcast for a while (even when the satellite providers roll out enough bandwidth for local channel HD, which won't happen for at least a year or two, it would take quite a bit more for me to switch back). When I have the ability to buy a HD DVR that works with Comcast, I might consider ditching the 6412's and making the purchase, but the purchase price had better be reasonable (I've already bought too much equipment that I end up giving away or ebay'ing because it's quickly obsolete).

Cliff

Good opinion...that pretty much sums it up. There are some things I definitely liked about TIVO, but working TIVO with cable was not fun and satellite with 8 TV's in the house is a bit much for me. I can live with a few glitches from time to time and try to be patient for fixes/upgrades.

Getting free equipment vs. having to spend $500 to $1000 for comparable equipment on satellite is worth a few glitches, but I have had relatively few glitches on the DVR.

Originally posted by cliffg
...and the UI is decent (not TIVO quality like I've had in the past, but passable). Hopefully all areas will have the additional choice of Comcast's version of TiVo on the 6412 by mid 2006.

Well, having the 6412 stick at the top of the hour is about my only complaint. Or, at least the only one that bothers me.

When I know I've got two recordings starting at the top of the hour and I'm watching an older recording, I try not to do anything from :58 to :02. But, last night I wasn't watching the clock until I hit FF while watching CSI and it stuck in FF mode for only about a minute, then responded to my pushing the play button. I had to roll back, but oh well, that CSI, the season finale, was great. It was written by Quentin Tarantino.

Does anyone know what this cryptic entry on the bottom lines of my Menu/Settings/Cable Box Options/Diagnostics page means?=>

Tuner Health: xxxxxx @ 3:11 pm Sun
05/22/2005

So I had like 33% stuck in open files on the HD with nothing showing in the DVR list.. Weird..

SO I called comcast and they gave me the command for wiping the hard drive..You need the DVR remote to do that.. Something like power off the DVR press menu then OK.

the the following
LIVE-MY DVR-MY DVR-MY DVR-REPLAY

Curious through why 33% of the space was lost or full..

Friday night @ 08:00 PM PST, I happen to catch Joan of Arcadia playing on CBS while switching channels. The DVR was not in recording mode. My wife asked me if it was recording it for her and I said no. I have the program as a series, and it wasn't recording.

Ok, maybe this is a good thing?

You see, normally when you have a series set to record, you get all episodes even if you only want first runs. What struck me as odd was that this show is a series, and it wasn't recording, and it was a rerun. Wow, could they really have fixed the software?

I then reviewed my software and it has been changed; BACKWARDS?

05/05/05
Guide Build: 1.7.6500 (25066S)

Checked on 05/29/05
Guide Build: 1.7.6400 (25066S)


Don't get me wrong, I would prefer the software behave like it just did on Friday night. It's a rerun, I don't need to record it, all is good. It is just that I have not seen the software actually behave like this since I have had it and it was strange to see this. So when I checked the software version to see if this was an update and this has been fixed, I actually see a 'decrease' in the guild build number; that is odd?

Anyone else notice if this part of the software (record only new episodes) is now working properly?

Tim

Well Comcast might have gone backwards in software to take care of an issue until it could be bug-fixed.

05/05/05
Guide Build: 1.7.6500 (25066S)

Checked on 05/29/05
Guide Build: 1.7.6400 (25066S)
Tim

As far as I can tell, the Guide Build # is 25066S, 1.7 refers to the MSFE, and 6400 indicates the type of Motorola box it's for. Mine has been 1.7.6400 (25066S) for quite some time so I doubt that yours ever had a 6500 number.

I have bands of green and a pinkish/red color that slowly scroll up the monitor display when watching most channels most of the time. I'd be grateful for any suggestions on how to fix this. I recently upgraded my whole system (switching video through a new high-end receiver, new amp, etc.) and still have the problem. Is this an issue with the Motorola box?

Anyone else notice if this part of the software (record only new episodes) is now working properly?



Well, if the software has not been upgraded to fix the problem; then it is a terrible thing. The show 'did' not record at all. :eek:

Can you delete a manual series?

I setup a manual series (specific day, time, duration, channel, etc.) and now I want to delete it. However, there is no option to "Cancel Series" like there is with regular series.

Am I missing something or is this a major design flaw?

Can you delete a manual series?


Select the recording under either "Scheduled" or "Series Manager" and then "Cancel" and "Cancel Recording" -- much simpler than setting one up in the first place.

I got a phone call (from a machine) telling me I may have to reprogram my parental code and favorites due to a software update. I also got the same message as a "email" on the cable box.

I also noticed a news/info section of the guide which I had never seen before. Did I just miss that before? Anyone know what else changed?

I also noticed a news/info section of the guide which I had never seen before. Did I just miss that before?

The "Info/News" section seems to come and go. It was there for quite a while, then disappeared and reappeared within the past couple of weeks, before this "event". I notice when it's there because it causes the "Settings" selection to scroll off the bottom of the main menu. I've been checking the number of EPG files in the diagnostics recently because they seem to be getting sparse (now only 15) before being refreshed. There's only about a week's worth of guide data at the moment.

I've been checking the number of EPG files in the diagnostics recently because they seem to be getting sparse (now only 15) before being refreshed. There's only about a week's worth of guide data at the moment.

How is your guide data now? My guide data only goes till Thursday at 6am. Its Tuesday at 1am now, so I've only got like three days...

Should we start to panic?

How is your guide data now? My guide data only goes till Thursday at 6am. Its Tuesday at 1am now, so I've only got like three days...

Should we start to panic?

It got down pretty low, but it's been updated a couple of times since then. Right now it goes up to Friday morning, June 24. The diagnostics show 22 files (was down to about 14 at the lowest).

An interesting side effect of digital simulcast should be that the non-HD programs you wish to record would only take up about half as much disk space as their analog equivalents.

I've never quite understood why an analog program converted to digital by the 6412 should take twice as much space as one from a digital (SD) channel, so it may turn out that Comcast will figure out a way to make their digital simulcasts just as inefficient.

Probably the MPEG converters at the main office are more efficient then the ones in the 6412, so the compression ratio on the digital transmissions from Comcast are much better then those the 6412 can apply to analog signals.

Probably the MPEG converters at the main office are more efficient then the ones in the 6412, so the compression ratio on the digital transmissions from Comcast are much better then those the 6412 can apply to analog signals.

Does more efficient imply lower quality of the end product?

Does more efficient imply lower quality of the end product?

Usually the opposite, since the more powerful encoders can do a better job of maximizing quality. This explains why the 6412 analog recordings suffer more quality-wise then the digital channels broadcast (which the 6412 does not bother to re-encode, but just records as is). Comcast is better able to encode the original analog signals to digital at their end before they transmit them to us.

When the local affiliates go digital simulcast, I expect they will look much better then the current analog ones digitized by the 6412.

Besides big, expensive studio-quality encoders (vs. the single consumer-quality chip in the 6412) -- Comcast also has a VASTLY cleaner signal to start with than we do. Compressing a slightly-noisy picture would result in much worse picture quality, even given similar encoders.

Besides big, expensive studio-quality encoders (vs. the single consumer-quality chip in the 6412) -- Comcast also has a VASTLY cleaner signal to start with than we do. Compressing a slightly-noisy picture would result in much worse picture quality, even given similar encoders.

OK, I have one more question -- after the conversions from analog, why does the lower quality digital signal require twice the disk space as the higher quality one?

OK, I have one more question -- after the conversions from analog, why does the lower quality digital signal require twice the disk space as the higher quality one?I don't know that it does. Looking back a few posts, it seems that you were the one making that assertion. Where did you get that info from?

I don't know that it does. Looking back a few posts, it seems that you were the one making that assertion. Where did you get that info from?

The lower efficiency of the 6412's MPEG enecoder probably results in much larger compressed files then the MPEG encoder Comcast uses to compress the files on their end before they transmit them over the digital channels.

The lower efficiency of the 6412's MPEG enecoder probably results in much larger compressed files then the MPEG encoder Comcast uses to compress the files on their end before they transmit them over the digital channels.I understand that. They could even get better quality & even smaller file size with an offline encoder vs. real-time. It's a matter of how much CPU power & time you can afford to throw at it.

But I was trying to understand the assertion that recording SD digital programs will take 1/2 the space of 6412-encoded analog programs. Where did that data point come from?

To be honest, I do not know. As I understand it (from other posts in this forum and the Seattle HDTV one) that the 6412 does not compress/encode the digital or HDTV channels, but records them "raw" at whatever bit rate Comcast is sending.

I am assuming that the analog signal, which would be more bit-heavy then the digital one (but not nearly as much as the HD one), even when converted into digital by the 6412 and thus "shrunk", still takes up more room then the "pure" digital signal sent by Comcast in terms of space per unit of time.

I understand that. They could even get better quality & even smaller file size with an offline encoder vs. real-time. It's a matter of how much CPU power & time you can afford to throw at it.

But I was trying to understand the assertion that recording SD digital programs will take 1/2 the space of 6412-encoded analog programs. Where did that data point come from?

My recordings of SD channels consistently take about half as much disk space as analog channels. I'll see if I can find documentation of the expected relative capacities and will post any reference I find, but for now it's based on observation.

I recorded 5 hours of simultaneous programming from 9 and 109 today, then deleted the recordings by channel to compare the disk usage. Channel 109 is a bit of a strange bird, and I'm not sure how it compares to what we will see with digital simulcast (it's 16:9 and originates from KCTS rather than being converted by Comcast), but I don't have access to any other comparable output. The results of my test:

Ch. 9 ---------------------15%
Ch. 109 --------------------8%

From this, it appears that the DVR should hold about 33 hours of analog from 9, or 62 hours of digital from 109.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The FAQ for this thread has the following:

"• How many hours of content can I record?
From http://broadband.motorola.com/dvr/dct6412.asp , 90 hours of SD and 12-20 hours of HD – but this all depends on the bit rate of the content and there’s a wide range of bit rates in use. Real world use tends to be more around 60 hours of SD and 15-20 hours for HD."

Nothing is mentioned about analog, but the SD figures are consistent with what I observed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I found the following in http://www.midcocomm.com/editable_content/guides_and_forms/MC_iGuideBK.pdf (an i-Guide document for the 6412):

"Analog TV Shows (not digital) - ... Recording capacity is up to 25 hours.
Digital TV Shows (compressed) - ... Recording capacity is between 30 and 60 hours.
High Definition TV Shows (HDTV) - ... Recording capacity is up to 15 hours."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Moxi system uses a different Motorola box, but they have some interesting documentation at http://users.adelphia.net/~ksoltmann/SPLMoxiFAQ.htm which should be comparable to ours:

Single-room BMC9012 (80 GB)
HD 7-11 hr
digital SD 35-51 hr
analog 21 hr

Multi-room BMC9022D (160 GB)
HD 14-23 hr
digital SD 73-107 hr
analog 44 hr

Pure Digital channels are usually compressed at a 12:1 ratio. Meaning that 1 Analog channel requires 6 MHz of bandwidth. In that same 6 MHz of bandwidth Comcast is able to compress 12 Digital channels through QAMing and Muxing. The 12:1 is an average. Some Systems/Plants have less headroom and may compress as high as 16:1.

Digital Simulcast channels are most likely at an 8:1 ratio.

Pure Digital, meaning Comcast receives these channels in Digital form the source. These channels will be at the highest compression and the least amount of Hard Drive real estate is used. Digital Simulcasted channels in most cases are Analog to start and must be converted to Digital in Comcast's Headend/Headends. These channels will use less Hard Drive real estate over Analog but more than Pure Digital channels.

Some Analog channels are received Digitally and are converted to Analog.

Hi Def channels require the most real estate due the amount of information/resolution and their inherent high bit rate.

Analog channels will buffer for 45 minutes. HD channels will buffer 15 minutes. All Pure Digital channels buffer for more than 2 hours.

Digital Simulcasted channels, since received and compressed differently, will typically vary from 75 minutes to up to 105 minutes of buffer.

The buffer variation is due to how the DS'd channel is received (by Comcast) and the amount of compression (Comcast applies) determine the amount of Hard Drive real estate is used.

A few weeks ago I was setting up a new HDTV for a relative, using a Samsung OTA/QAM HD receiver. While scanning for digital (QAM) channels on Comcast cable in Kent, I saw digital versions of most of the analog channels 2-32. I was disappointed to see heavy pixelation issues on most channels, and the appearance of very heavy compression. Hopefully, Comcast was in the very early stages of setting up and optimizing the performance of those channels. If not, I would consider the channels bordering on unwatchable for me.

I have not been back there to check again for any improvements. I do not have a QAM HD receiver at my home, so I cannot look from here. I am lucky to get nearly all major Seattle digital channels OTA with a $20 Radio Shack UHF antenna.

A few weeks ago I was setting up a new HDTV for a relative, using a Samsung OTA/QAM HD receiver. While scanning for digital (QAM) channels on Comcast cable in Kent, I saw digital versions of most of the analog channels 2-32. I was disappointed to see heavy pixelation issues on most channels, and the appearance of very heavy compression. Hopefully, Comcast was in the very early stages of setting up and optimizing the performance of those channels. If not, I would consider the channels bordering on unwatchable for me.

Perhaps Markjrenna, who posted just before you, could provide some insight as to the quality of the Comcast digital simulcast channels, since the process in his area is further along -- with digital output actually mapped via the stb to replace their analog equivalents.

Perhaps Markjrenna, who posted just before you, could provide some insight as to the quality of the Comcast digital simulcast channels, since the process in his area is further along -- with digital output actually mapped via the stb to replace their analog equivalents.

Sure thing. We have about one third of our Analog lineup now Digitally Simulcasted. The channels look great as a whole. I'm not noticing any MPEG artifact or tiling at all.

I had poor Analog quality until I installed a Motorola Signal Booster a short while back. That has helped a lot on the two thirds of my remaining Analog channels. The signal booster has made no difference what so ever with the Digital channels. They just look great, period.

markjrenna,

Your experience with digital simulcast channels is encouraging. To my knowledge, Comcast has not announced availability of those channels in the Seattle area yet. That's why I was hoping that they are still tweaking and improving.

markjrenna,

Your experience with digital simulcast channels is encouraging. To my knowledge, Comcast has not announced availability of those channels in the Seattle area yet. That's why I was hoping that they are still tweaking and improving.


I imagine they are doing just that -- but don't hold your breath expecting Seattle Comcast to announce anything. It just isn't the way they work here (if anywhere).

Sure thing. We have about one third of our Analog lineup now Digitally Simulcasted. The channels look great as a whole. I'm not noticing any MPEG artifact or tiling at all.

I had poor Analog quality until I installed a Motorola Signal Booster a short while back. That has helped a lot on the two thirds of my remaining Analog channels. The signal booster has made no difference what so ever with the Digital channels. They just look great, period.How did you know when they enabled the digital simulcasts in your area? Did they announce it? I assume one day our Moto boxes will just silently switch the channel mapping for 2-32 (or whatever) from analog frequencies to their digital equivalents. Unless we're specifically looking for better PQ or smaller recording sizes (or unless we're a real geek & keep checking "current channel status" in the diagnostics) - we probably won't even notice the difference.

How did you know when they enabled the digital simulcasts in your area? Did they announce it? I assume one day our Moto boxes will just silently switch the channel mapping for 2-32 (or whatever) from analog frequencies to their digital equivalents. Unless we're specifically looking for better PQ or smaller recording sizes (or unless we're a real geek & keep checking "current channel status" in the diagnostics) - we probably won't even notice the difference.

The easiest but unreliable way is to watch for the "DD" Dolby Digital symbol in the Channel Information area while changing channels.

The most reliable is to yes, check the Diagnostics - d04 In Band Status. It will clearly indicate "256 QAM" and "Digital".

I can point you to three links that may be of interest to those looking forward to Digital Simulcasting...

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=5052697&&#post5052697

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,12403857

http://www.d v r c h a t t e r.com/viewtopic.php?id=24 *** delete the spaces.

[QUOTE=markjrenna]The easiest but unreliable way is to watch for the "DD" Dolby Digital symbol in the Channel Information area while changing channels./QUOTE]

As far as I know (unless I have something set up wrong) our MSFT guide doesn't provide that info.

[QUOTE=markjrenna]The easiest but unreliable way is to watch for the "DD" Dolby Digital symbol in the Channel Information area while changing channels./QUOTE]

As far as I know (unless I have something set up wrong) our MSFT guide doesn't provide that info.Good point. You know, I never realized until now that the MSTV guide doesn't seem to display any DD info. Guess I can always open up the cabinet & look at my receiver front panel to see what kind of audio it's receiving.

[QUOTE=markjrenna]The easiest but unreliable way is to watch for the "DD" Dolby Digital symbol in the Channel Information area while changing channels./QUOTE]

As far as I know (unless I have something set up wrong) our MSFT guide doesn't provide that info.
Sorry I have the i-Guide. I just assumed FE would indicate Dolby. Strange that it doesn't.

[QUOTE=wareagle]
Sorry I have the i-Guide. I just assumed FE would indicate Dolby. Strange that it doesn't.

Yeah, I only noticed it a while back when I first saw a similar suggestion on the i-Guide site and tried to use that technique. We also don't have a 30-second skip, but we do have a nice filter to keep from having to deal with unwanted channels (guide data and up/down tuning).

Someone was kind enough to post a link to this manual on the "other" DVR forum:

http://*******.com/dh4jv

It is much more informative than anything I've seen before, and also includes references to a model 6416. It includes estimates of recording capacities for different models for analog, digital, and HD programs on page 1-3:


DCT6412 --- 30 to 37 hrs analog, 75 to 90 hrs SD, 12 to 20 hrs HD

Guide lacks any information

For the past few days my guide has had no information for any of the stations. Anyone have a quick fix for this problem? Thanks.

Guide lacks any information

For the past few days my guide has had no information for any of the stations. Anyone have a quick fix for this problem? Thanks.

First, check to see how many files of guide data your system thinks it has:
Menu
Settings
Cable Box Options
Diagnostics
(5th line -- EPG Files)

Mine says 26, which is at the high end. It gets down to about 14 as it's used, so a normal situation is to have a number in that range. Knowing this will be useful in checking before/after trying to reset it.

To prime the guide reload process, unplug the cable box for a few minutes, then plug it back in. The guide should start loading again. Periodically check the listings and the number of EPG Files. If nothing happens, try leaving the box unplugged a bit longer, then if that doesn't work call Comcast.

ld first try a simple reboot- unplug the 6412 box from the wall for 30 seconds.- then plug back in.

Good luck...

ld first try a simple reboot- unplug the 6412 box from the wall for 30 seconds.- then plug back in.

Thanks, this worked great. I forgot to check my box for how many files I had, though -- too anxious to get it working right.

This has happened to me several times. I'm channel surfing (weird, I know) and start watching a show. Then the commercial comes on, so I decide to record the show and watch it later. Problem is, after I tell it to record it, and then try to change to another channel, it tells me I have to stop recording the show if I want to change channels. And no, the other tuner is not recording something else.

It seems that when you want to record the live buffer, you can't use both tuners. Annoying bug. Anyone else experience this?

It seems that when you want to record the live buffer, you can't use both tuners. Annoying bug. Anyone else experience this?

I just tried that, and it worked fine.

ANNOYING RED MESSAGE LIGHT

The annoying red message light appeared on my 6412 box yesterday. Then using MENU->NEWS/INFO to attempt to read this important message, I first receive a blank black screen, followed about 20 seconds later with a screen that displays an error message:

ERROR: "This information channel is currently unavailable (MCS-B)"

Anyone else experiencing this?

ANNOYING RED MESSAGE LIGHT

The annoying red message light appeared on my 6412 box yesterday. Then using MENU->NEWS/INFO to attempt to read this important message, I first receive a blank black screen, followed about 20 seconds later with a screen that displays an error message:

ERROR: "This information channel is currently unavailable (MCS-B)"

Anyone else experiencing this?

Not the error -- but the message was another of the equally annoying PPV non-events; overpriced, undesirable, but at least this time also available in HD.

I finally called Comcast today to find out how to get rid of messages. I was going to the wrong place in the menu. The correct path is: Menu->Settings->Messages from Comcast. Then DELETE :-)

FF Problem with Digital Cable

When Fast Forwarding through programs recorded from digital cable (ie. NBATV), the fast forwarding doesn't work too well. It stays frozen on frames and s-l-o-w-l-y moves down the timeline. After a l-o-n-g time on FF4, it eventually will show the frame you want. When you hit play at that point, it will play at the frame being displayed, which is usually several minutes behind what the timeline is displaying.

For example, you want to start at 45 minutes into a 90 minute recording. You start FF4, and it slowly moves down the program. At 45 minutes, you hit play, and the recording will start playing at 37 minutes into the program. However, the segment of the program that starts playing will match the freeze frame that was showing when the play button was hit.

Backward scanning through the program is just as crippled as fast forwarding.

This started happening back in May after a round of updates, I believe. If anyone at MS or Comcast is still looking for bug reports, I would really like to have this one looked at.

Hopefully, the digital simulcast channels won't have this problem. None of the analog or HD channels have this problem.

I just received my 6412 cable box yesterday, and have been having issues ever since trying to get the DVI connection to work with my 42WE655. I get about 2 seconds of video when using the DVI/HDMI connection, and then the screen goes blank. The component connection works, but my component inputs are all used by other hardware.

I've tried resetting the TV to factory settings, unplugging both the TV and the cable box for over 1 minute to reset that way, as well as a new DVI/HDMI converter and cable, and the problems continue. Has anyone else experienced something like this? Any suggestions on how to fix it?

Edit: After talking with Comcast, it turns out the DVI port on my 6412 was disabled. A tech is coming out with 2 more boxes to make sure that both the DVI port is enabled and there are no HDCP issues with the new box.

Thanks,
Aaron

I just started watching World Team Tennis on INHD1 and saw there was an hour left so I pressed Record to watch it later. It acted like it was going to start recording but it never did. Nothing else was recording at the time, so I tried short recordings of several other HDTV channels (one at a time of course). They all started recording just fine. I cycled the power and it still wouldn't record. I tried loading up the buffer before pressing record and it still wouldn't start recording. Each other channel I tried recorded fine but not this one. Anybody see this before or have an idea what happened?

Thanks,

Tim

Same here. It's going on for couple of weeks now. It looks like it is prohibited to record World Team Tennis.

I tried schedule a recording all right, but when the time comes, recording does not start. I tried to schedule recording of a program before the WWT and WWT. Next morning, the program before was there in the recorded programs list, but not the WWT.

If I press record button when the program is already in progress, the record indicator goes on for couple of seconds, then goes off again, just like tluxon described. It is as if something cancels recording of a program with this particular name. Everything else records just fine.

I can still record the program via manual recording. This way, the prohibited name is not mentioned anywhere, so it records just fine.

Both of our 6412s have cycled off and back on a lot recently. Anyone else having this happen? Also, we often get error messages while trying to access On Demand with the 6412s, but not when using the standard cable box with their different software. Anyone else have this problem?

Well, messages have slowed down here in the past few months (I spent several hours reading the entire thread so I wouldn't ask a redundant question). It appears Shannon quit responding a while ago. I laughed out loud at one of her last comments: "programming is hard." Please.
As the founder of a telecomm SW company that produced SW running on Windoze 2000 that ran at 99.999% reliability (five nines - the requirement of telecomm SW), I know how to design a UI and work with programmers so that end-user reliability is delivered. MSFT has never made reliability in applications a priority. The FF bug is still there, and it is now Sept., 2005. The 6412 is quiet and the picture is beautiful on my new HDTV. The MSFT interface is incredibly poor considering where the state of the art (Tivo) was two whole years ago.
To have shows not record, to have FF lock on, to have the remote not recognized periodically, these are all MSFT SW issues. My guide build on a box I received three weeks ago is still 1.7.6400 (25066S), so I guess this is it until someone else takes over.
BTW, my laptop HD crashed last week after a failure in XP's hibernation SW. According to the HP help desk person, this is a known SW bug and has been for a long time. Typical MSFT. I had to reformat, reload, and curse myself for not backing up more frequently. Funny how we blame ourselves because someone else's SW screwed the pooch.
Rob

... BTW, my laptop HD crashed last week after a failure in XP's hibernation SW. According to the HP help desk person, this is a known SW bug and has been for a long time. Typical MSFT. I had to reformat, reload, and curse myself for not backing up more frequently. Funny how we blame ourselves because someone else's SW screwed the pooch. RobYeah, funny how HP blames MSFT. In your case of course MSFT would blame faulty HP hardware/BIOS.

Same deal with the cable box. MSFT blames Motorola. Motorola blames Comcast. Comcast of course blames MSFT.

But seriously - this is a COMCAST product. I don't care who wrote what parts of the software or built what parts of the hardware. You are paying money to COMCAST for this product. I suggest you complain loudly and continuously to COMCAST about it. Threaten to cancel your service if they don't fix it to your satisfaction. And please stop whining about your laptop....

I just got my new HD DVR from Comcast. I am in the Seattle area so I assume that it is running Microsoft FE 1.7.

I have a couple problems:

1) Digital optical out doesn't seem to be working. I checked that the volume and it looks like some signal is being shot through the line. Has anyone else had this problem?

2) Analog channels look horrible. Much worse then they do through the normal cable box. Is there any tuning I should do?

Thanks,
cyrus

I can't help with the digital optical, but the 6412 is notorious for lousy analog. Part is due to the signal being split to feed the dual tuners, and then there's the analog/digital conversion which the box does because of the DVR. If you don't have a strong signal, the effect may be pretty bad. My signal is strong, and the TV relatively tiny (30"), so the analogs don't look too bad to me. Digital simulcast is coming, rumored to be this month, which may improve that situation. And the software is indeed MSFT FE1.7.

As for bad analog PQ - that's unfortunately the way this DVR is designed. Two reasons:

1) dual-tuners, so the input signal runs thru an internal splitter. If you don't have a really strong signal to begin with, it'll be really crappy after it's split.

2) It's a DVR with "trick play" (pause live TV, etc) - so you're never seeing the actual live picture. You're always watching the MPEG2-encoded version, delayed by a couple seconds. An an MPEG2-compressed version of a crappy signal can be almost unwatchable. Digital channels are already MPEG2-compressed, and don't have to be further compressed by the 6412's encoder - so you see those "as is".

Other DVRs - like my ReplayTV - have a "DVR Bypass" button so that you can watch the actual live analog picture when PQ is more important than trick play. No such feature on the Moto/MSFT combination.

The solution to the bad analog PQ is for Comcast to get rid of all the analog channels & make them digital, too. Digital simulcasts of 2-99 are supposed to be starting later this month around Puget Sound.

If you hook the 6412 (or even a plain TV) directly to your drop (eliminating all the cabling and splitters and any other devices inside your home) is the picture significantly better? If so, then a drop amplifier would likely help. Most people have enough splitters on the signal to weaken it substantially.

Of course, with digital simulcasting coming soon, you may decide to just do nothing and see if it is sufficient. If you have splitters then an amp isn't a bad idea even with digital signals, IMHO.

Oh, by way of my own report, I recently got a 6412. I asked the CSRs taking the order whether it would be a phase II or III box, and they all assured me it would be the latest, althouigh I was not really convinced they even knew what I was asking. The installer had a phase II box and had never heard of the phase IIIs.

It mostly works OK. I had signal trouble on a few channels, both figital and analog, which went away when I removed my Panamax surge protector from the signal path. The digital audio outputs, both optical and coax, sometimes produce buzzing when changing channels and such. But it works well enough for me to reluctantly retire my auto-commercial-skipping ReplayTV to the bedroom.

I just ordered the DVR service on Tuesday (I'm in Renton, WA). So I am assuming I am getting the Microsoft DVR service.

Guess the install time is 3 weeks right now because the next available date was on 09/20. Rep told me that is the lead time required for the DVR service.

I just ordered the DVR service on Tuesday (I'm in Renton, WA). So I am assuming I am getting the Microsoft DVR service.

Guess the install time is 3 weeks right now because the next available date was on 09/20. Rep told me that is the lead time required for the DVR service.

Yes, it's MSFT. Did you ask if you could pick up the box? Other than availability of the box or the truck, I can't think of any reason for lead time.

I just ordered the DVR service on Tuesday (I'm in Renton, WA). So I am assuming I am getting the Microsoft DVR service.

Guess the install time is 3 weeks right now because the next available date was on 09/20. Rep told me that is the lead time required for the DVR service.

I placed an order on Sunday and had my service installed this morning. I'm in Renton as well.

I haven't seen a worthwhile show in HD yet (just crap on DHD/INHD), but I'm pretty impressed by the VOD and the DVR itself (dual recording, unmodified streams being saved, etc). And analog quality does suck pretty bad, but the only channel I might watch in analog is Speed whenever they have F1 or WRC on.

I've noticed an interesting issue.
The Microsoft Guide is not smart enough to distinguish between a pay per view event, and a pay per view package.

Case in point. I have ESPN Gameplan, the entire season package. However, when I look in the guide and try to set up games to record for a coming week, each entry shows "Order $19.99" I have to actually order the game, then go back in via the guide and set up recording. You have to do this for every game.
Also, if a game runs long, you will miss some games, due to the fact that you cannot alter your recordings to extend the end time.
I've tried setting up a manual timer to record, but get the message "You cannot set up a manual timer for a pay per view event."

Needless to say, this is a pain in the rear. When I own the ESPN Gameplan package, I expect that I can turn to any one of those channels at any time and see what's there, even if there is no game at all. I would also expect to be able to extend recordings for any game I want (3 1/2 hrs isn't always long enough to watch a game). I'm considering contacting Comcast and demanding a discount on this package unless they fix this issue quickly.

Who else has experienced this issue?

I'm a long-time Comcast analog subscriber in the Seattle area, and just switched all of my A/V equipment over to Hi-Def two weeks ago. I just sent the following e-mail to Comcast support, and thought I'd post it here too, hoping that Comcast monitors this thread, and maybe others will voice their agreement to Comcast:

"I just upgraded to Digital Cable with the HD-DVR, and was disappointed to learn that by Comcast policy, the 30-second advance feature of the DVR software was disabled. I had been using a ReplayTV DVR with full Commercial Skip features. You know what? I DIDN’T LIKE IT, and didn’t use the ‘skip all ads’ feature at all. I liked seeing the commercials that applied to me, and could simply skip over the commercials that didn’t.

Now, with the Comcast DVR, I have to use the fast forward to skip over the commercials I’m not interested in. Once I start the fast forward process, it’s too much trouble to stop for any commercials that look interesting – I continue fast forwarding until the show comes back on.

The result is that without the 30-second skip, I watch LESS commercials.

I understand that a large chunk of your income comes from advertising, and it is important to be able to promise advertisers that viewers will watch their ads. But trying to force all ads on all viewers has the above unintended consequences.

With a 30-second advance, I feel more in control of the ads I see, and I’m more likely to watch the ones that actually apply to me. I can skip over the ads for medical conditions I don’t have, and skip over offensive, inappropriate, and insulting ads, instead of taking offence at Comcast for forcing them on me.

Please reconsider the ‘no 30-second advance’ policy; I don’t believe it has the effect you desire. DVRs with a 30-second advance still deliver the beginning of each ad to everyone, but giving the viewer the option to move to the next ad means we pay more attention to the ads that we do watch. That’s got to be a ‘win’ for your advertisers.

Thank you for your time."

You realize that being rational and presenting a logical argument will get you absolutely nowhere dont you?

Cheers,

Rich

Probably -- but not doing anything will definitely get me nowhere.

Probably -- but not doing anything will definitely get me nowhere.

A logical argument isn't likely to get you anywhere per se, but communicating the specific issues that you're unhappy with is of some (albeit limited) value. At some point a group of marketing people will sit down and try to say what they can do to get more money, and whatever customers have been complaining about should at least get consideration even if it won't happen as quickly or directly as we might like. It's very easy for a marketing person to say "Nobody has complained about X, therefore there's no need for us to try to improve it."

Oh, and when ordered my 6412 (in North Seattle, not Roosevelt) I was told pretty clearly that there was no way I could come in and pick it up, I had to have a tech come out to the house (after going through the famous "your appointment status in the computer mysteriously changed to cancel" bug.) But it only took about a week, not 3.

So I had my equipment installed yesterday.

I have a non HD tv (Sony 36" CRT, awesome picture... just no HD). However I have noticed something that is driving me nuts.

The analog quality is bad (picture looks better sub 100 on normal cable then going through the cable box), however the local DT 104 (KOMO) - 113 (KCPQ) have terrific quality. Tonight I was watching E-Ring which is broadcasted in wide screen format and there is no way to turn off the HD format. Figure I try pressing the HD zoom button on the remote... nothing.

Cable box is plugged in via the component plugs.

Am I just out of luck or is there a way to get the black bars across the top & bottom. I'd rather have that then have the sides of the picture cut off.

Might be some new firmware/features downloaded last night.

I noticed this morning that when you stop fast forwarding, it now jumps back a few seconds like TiVo does, which is nice (since I used to have to hit the "jump back six seconds" button).

Someone in the Seattle Comcast forum noted their box is downloading something.

The firmware version has changed to 9.19 and the guide build to 25108S, so now we can look for new bugs (and hopefully solutions to old ones).

So I had my equipment installed yesterday.

I have a non HD tv (Sony 36" CRT, awesome picture... just no HD). However I have noticed something that is driving me nuts.

The analog quality is bad (picture looks better sub 100 on normal cable then going through the cable box), however the local DT 104 (KOMO) - 113 (KCPQ) have terrific quality. Tonight I was watching E-Ring which is broadcasted in wide screen format and there is no way to turn off the HD format. Figure I try pressing the HD zoom button on the remote... nothing.

Cable box is plugged in via the component plugs.

Am I just out of luck or is there a way to get the black bars across the top & bottom. I'd rather have that then have the sides of the picture cut off.

power of the box, then press menu , then select 4:3 instead of 4:3 P&S

The firmware version has changed to 9.19 and the guide build to 25108S, so now we can look for new bugs (and hopefully solutions to old ones).

Yeah I was going to say Thursday around 3am my boxes were "dL" for like 30 minutes.. So I am assuming this is the update..

Anyways, I like what they did with the fast forward feature.. It's much better now.. Now when you FF through the commercials and then see your show and hit play it backs up like 10-12 seconds and places it right at the start of the program.. Which I like much better, I haven't noticed anything else other than that..

power of the box, then press menu , then select 4:3 instead of 4:3 P&S


Tried that, I get 4:3 P&S or 4:3 Wide Screen.

So if I select the 2nd option I get the bars on wide screen broadcasted programs such as ER, CSI and such, however during commercials the picture is smaller and centered on the screen and now do I not only have horizontal black bars, I have ugly vertical boxes. I guess it is a trade off.

Maybe I should just connect via svideo as I'd imagine that program goes away. Right?

I love the new "jump back" feature after fast forwarding.

So September has come and gone, and still no digital simulcast channels for the analog channels. Would really love to have the digital channels, because they take up much less disk space on the DVR. Anyone heard an update on those?

__________

SeattleBrad
www.adonisphotos.com (http://www.adonisphotos.com)

I'm a long-time Comcast analog subscriber in the Seattle area, and just switched all of my A/V equipment over to Hi-Def two weeks ago. I just sent the following e-mail to Comcast support, and thought I'd post it here too, hoping that Comcast monitors this thread, and maybe others will voice their agreement to Comcast:

"I just upgraded to Digital Cable with the HD-DVR, and was disappointed to learn that by Comcast policy, the 30-second advance feature of the DVR software was disabled. I had been using a ReplayTV DVR with full Commercial Skip features. You know what? I DIDN’T LIKE IT, and didn’t use the ‘skip all ads’ feature at all. I liked seeing the commercials that applied to me, and could simply skip over the commercials that didn’t.

Now, with the Comcast DVR, I have to use the fast forward to skip over the commercials I’m not interested in. Once I start the fast forward process, it’s too much trouble to stop for any commercials that look interesting – I continue fast forwarding until the show comes back on.

The result is that without the 30-second skip, I watch LESS commercials.

I understand that a large chunk of your income comes from advertising, and it is important to be able to promise advertisers that viewers will watch their ads. But trying to force all ads on all viewers has the above unintended consequences.

With a 30-second advance, I feel more in control of the ads I see, and I’m more likely to watch the ones that actually apply to me. I can skip over the ads for medical conditions I don’t have, and skip over offensive, inappropriate, and insulting ads, instead of taking offence at Comcast for forcing them on me.

Please reconsider the ‘no 30-second advance’ policy; I don’t believe it has the effect you desire. DVRs with a 30-second advance still deliver the beginning of each ad to everyone, but giving the viewer the option to move to the next ad means we pay more attention to the ads that we do watch. That’s got to be a ‘win’ for your advertisers.

Thank you for your time."

Just on this topic, I noticed that the 30 second skip button actually puts an arrow on the screen as if it were actually going to work. it doesn't skip ahead, but I think the arrow popping up on the screen is new with the latest firmware. Hopefully they are considering enabling it.

Just on this topic, I noticed that the 30 second skip button actually puts an arrow on the screen as if it were actually going to work. it doesn't skip ahead, but I think the arrow popping up on the screen is new with the latest firmware. Hopefully they are considering enabling it.

I see this with the "Move" button (there really is no 30 second skip button), and it actually skips back slightly. This leads me to believe that it has something to do with the implementation of the new feature which backspaces slightly when play is activated following FF.

I'd just like to report that my household upgraded to HD. I walked into the north seattle comcast store, handed them my old box and got a new Motorola 6412 (with Microsoft guide of course), dual tuner and remote. There was no wait at all and the whole thing was done in about 5 minutes.

I'd like to thank the person who wrote a letter to Comcast about 30 second skip. I think I will do the same. Being an ex Replay-TV user , I'm also going through massive withdrawls and of course the "994" modification doesn't work. All I get is the little arrow in the upper right and a slight skip backwards. I do have to say that the DVR skipping back 10-15 seconds after a fast forward makes things more bearable.

So far, my impressions are that this unit blows away Replay TV in almost every aspect. I no longer need an Ethernet connection, the dual tuners rock, the guide is not bad, no more 6 second lag while channel surfing. In fact, I haven't channel surfed in 2 years because of RTV.

Anyway, my thoughts on this. I've learned a lot from you all, so thank you!

I love the new "jump back" feature after fast forwarding.

So September has come and gone, and still no digital simulcast channels for the analog channels. Would really love to have the digital channels, because they take up much less disk space on the DVR. Anyone heard an update on those?

__________

SeattleBrad
www.adonisphotos.com (http://www.adonisphotos.com)

OH? Is that a feature. Dang... All this time I just thought I was the master of stopping FF at the right time. LOL

So far, my impressions are that this unit blows away Replay TV in almost every aspect. I no longer need an Ethernet connection, the dual tuners rock, the guide is not bad...

Oddly, I find myself often wishing that ReplayTV or Tivo would come out with an HD Cablecard-equipped unit so I could switch from this buggy 6412. I have had it simply skip scheduled recordings (though usually it gets the first minute, the minute BEFORE the show actually starts), and recently I have found it started recording two different shows half way through. Interestingly, it seems to have known that it goofed up, as it displayed a legend to the effect 'recording started late'. And, of course, I'm still missing the 30-second skip I have on my FIRST-GENERATION/no-Ethernet Replay!

Although it's kinda fun to blame Microsoft for the 6412's shortcomings (the buggy software), it's no doubt almost entirely Comcast's doing (no rush to roll out bug fixes or permit user-desired features like 30-second skip).

It got a second 6412 w/MSFT for the bedroom (SD TV), because I was running out of room on my main HD one. I had forgotten the fact that I can't sleep with any disk noise at all. So, even though I know it's probably not a good idea, I've taken to unplugging it from the power every night.

I'm not recommending anyone else do this, but it's *usually* not a problem. About once per week, many of my Series Recording settings get corrupted, though. The entries are still there, but they say "No upcoming episodes" (even after the schedule re-downloads and for days after).

Just wanted to give a heads-up in case anyone else is thinking of doing this.

The HDD noise drives me batty, as well, so I just started wearing ear-plugs.

Problem solved (along with all the other noises inside and out that used to awaken me). :)

Aviator, try selecting a music station before turning off. It is not constantly cached. Works unless you are taping a show.

Art

Aviator, try selecting a music station before turning off. It is not constantly cached. Works unless you are taping a show.

Art

Thanks, Art, but the HDD spinning is enough, even if it's not recording.

I find ear plugs to be uncomfortable, so unplugging seems to be the best option for me.

Thanks, Art, but the HDD spinning is enough, even if it's not recording.

I find ear plugs to be uncomfortable, so unplugging seems to be the best option for me.

So, how is the Seattle OTA reception in Pembroke Pines, Florida?

So, how is the Seattle OTA reception in Pembroke Pines, Florida?

I don't believe the 6412 does OTA.

I don't believe the 6412 does OTA.

That must be one long cable you have then. Hope you used quad shielded.

On another note, my 6412 decided not to record anything I had scheduled for wednesday. Including the new 'Lost' which isn't being re-run this week. Thankfully do to some teenage hackers I can get the episode off of **********, since, unlike Comcast and Microsoft, they actually have their act together. I'm wondering why I pay comcast for a non-working DVR every month.

I don't believe the 6412 does OTA.

I don't think he got it.

I don't think he got it.

I got it.
I don't think you got my response!

I was tired when I asked the OTA question, which should have been a Seattle Comcast cable question, but I just let the response go since it did not really matter.

I was just curious about why aviators99's profile shows a location of Pembroke Pines, FL, yet he is apparently watching Seattle HDTV using a Comcast 6412 with MSFT software.

I was tired when I asked the OTA question, which should have been a Seattle Comcast cable question, but I just let the response go since it did not really matter.

I was just curious about why aviators99's profile shows a location of Pembroke Pines, FL, yet he is apparently watching Seattle HDTV using a Comcast 6412 with MSFT software.

Since it seems to be so important to you (I believe you asked in another thread too...at least someone did), I'm spending a bit of time in Seattle for business reasons, so I keep a house there too. But I live in Pembroke Pines, FL.

If you or anyone else need more specifics (although I can't imagine why anyone would care), feel free to PM me.

I’ve got my DVR set to record any new episode of ‘Lost’, typically on at 9pm Thursdays. Last night, before 9pm, I looked, and ‘Lost’ was marked with three red dots, and the description did not say ‘repeat’.

At 9:07pm, I realized the record light was not on. I jumped to the channel, and, just as NBC had been telling me all night, ‘Lost’ was a repeat.

So how did the 6412 KNOW? Does it get more information from somewhere than what’s in the channel lineup?

I'm still getting used to the new snap-back feature introduced in the past couple of months (I mean the feature which will rewind slightly after a FF). Generally I like the new feature though I had gotten so good at pressing the buttons QUICKLY that I still find I need to force myself to wait because otherwise it rewinds too far after a FF, especially at speeds FF3 or FF4. But on to my real question...

Because sometimes after a FF the new feature puts me back a little too far or not quite far enough, I often try to do a quick adjustment with a very short FF or very short RW. However many times when I do this, especially if it is a VERY short FF or RW, suddenly the video restarts from the beginning and I need to FF back to the point in the video where I was currently at. I assume this is a bug introduced as a result of the new feature.

I should probably take the time to see if I can reproduce it myself reliably. I think the way to do it is to push a button sequence like FFx2 + PLAY relatively very quickly.

Has anyone else seen this "restarting bug"?

Has anyone else seen this "restarting bug"?

Yes. It doesn't happen often but it does happen.

Oh, as long as I'm posting, a minor bug I don't think I've seen anybody mention: when creating a new series recording, the on the display to choose whether to record the show only at a specific time or any time it's on, the channel number display is wrong. It displays the channel number of the previous series recording you set up. If you exit the display and go into it a second time the display is correct; looks like the code first uses a variable to make the display, and then updates it too late.

I’ve got my DVR set to record any new episode of ‘Lost’, typically on at 9pm Thursdays. Last night, before 9pm, I looked, and ‘Lost’ was marked with three red dots, and the description did not say ‘repeat’.

At 9:07pm, I realized the record light was not on. I jumped to the channel, and, just as NBC had been telling me all night, ‘Lost’ was a repeat.

So how did the 6412 KNOW? Does it get more information from somewhere than what’s in the channel lineup?

The guide service provides a couple of important features that allow this to occur.

1) Each and every show or series gets a unique code.

The first part of the code never changes and the last part is used to indicate the episode number if appropriate. Software can then depend on this code to find shows, you don't need to know the shows name to determine if it is in your list of shows to record.

2) Shows have an original air date. This is the date the show was or will be first shown.

If a show has an original air date that matches the date the show is actually shown, the show is new, not a repeat. What happened in your case is that the original air date for the Lost episode was for several weeks back. Dates didn't match, repeat detected, therefore it was not recorded.

3) Shows that change dates can be found and recorded automatically.

For example, every year Survivor which is normally broadcast on Thursdays goes for a 3? hour finale on Sunday. These shows retain the same unique show code and if the software is written appropriately, it will find these "additional" shows and schedule them to be recorded.

It's also handy when a show changes nights. I am a big fan of Boston Legal. I set the 6412 to record all new Boston Legal shows. At the time I set it up, the show was being shown at 10:00 PM on Sundays. The show went into hiatus and was subsequently moved to 10:00PM Tuesdays (I think thats right). My trusty 6412 detected this and with any intervention from me began recording the new season shows.

For the most part this setup works very well and personally I would not want to change it. But, it can lead to some missed shows. For example, in the first season of Desperate Housewives, there was a show added mid season that was a recap of what had happened up to that point. The show wasn't really another episode of Desparate Housewives so for some reason the show was given a different unique code from the main series. The 6412 could not detect this since it does not use show titles for finding recordings and this particular showing was missed by many. IMO, not a big deal.

The guide service provides a couple of important features that allow this to occur.

1) Each and every show or series gets a unique code.
2) Shows have an original air date. This is the date the show was or will be first shown.
3) Shows that change dates can be found and recorded automatically.


Wow, that explains a lot, thanks! I did notice on this particular lost episode of 'Lost', about 1/2 hour before it was due to record, the description for the episode in the channel guide described a new show, even though the show that actually aired was different. Does the show ID/air date information come with the show on the digital signal, as well as in the program guide? If so, that could explain why this box seems to drop shows sometimes.

Does the show ID/air date information come with the show on the digital signal, as well as in the program guide? If so, that could explain why this box seems to drop shows sometimes.

I don't believe so but I can't state that with 100% certainty. I'm guessing that MSFT software gets it's guide data from Tribune media Services since the listings on the box match the listings I get with my software exactly.

That said, a normal way to get show information is to download it from a central location and store the information in memory. It's not dynamic as far as I know. Updates probably occur just once a day. Otherwise, I think the servers at TMS would be overwhelmed by all of the requests from the cablcos and satellite providers. I'm not including all of the nuances in this, but hopefully you get the idea.

Jim

Any Sonics fans out there?

I'm VERY disappointed to find out that the opening-season game is being broadcast in HD on the dish, but not on comcast. Based on my phone conversation with the CSR I'm not the only one either.

Any Sonics fans out there?

I'm VERY disappointed to find out that the opening-season game is being broadcast in HD on the dish, but not on comcast. Based on my phone conversation with the CSR I'm not the only one either.
disappointment doesn't even explain it. I was mad last year when they didn't add TNTHD for the Sonics playoff run, and I'm still mad about that today. Now they're continuing on their roll of idiocy in not carrying the FSN feed (which was also available for the whole mariners season). It's so frustrating that there is not one single provider you can go to to get all HD channels. I would sign up tomorrow. Unfotunately, the only way to get everything is to subscribe to cable plus both of the DBS services. I can't afford it.

I had to go out of town this week and set up the DVR to record my usual slate of HD programs so I could watch them when I returned home. When I got home, not a single program from Monday to Thursday had been recorded. This includes first run stuff like Commander in Chief and Bones, etc.

WTF? This thing needs to be reliable, but it has been anything but lately.

I had several programs fail to record this week, too. They were on the list to record right up to the minute the recording was to start. Then, as I watched, they failed to record. Art

A few weeks ago, I noticed the same thing. When you record a series, this Motorola box defaults to "9 pm only" (or the actual time of your show) so if the network moves the time slot, or does the ole 9:01 thing, then it doesn't record.

I changed all of my series to "record anytime" and it solves this problem.

I'm not sure if this will solve your problem, but it's worth a try.

I was surfing around the guide and noticed that my "commander in chief" did not have a red dot by it. I just pushed the record button and was able to get it but that was a lucky break. I don't know if they moved the time or what... I never watch it live.

A few weeks ago, I noticed the same thing. When you record a series, this Motorola box defaults to "9 pm only" (or the actual time of your show) so if the network moves the time slot, or does the ole 9:01 thing, then it doesn't record.

I changed all of my series to "record anytime" and it solves this problem.

I'm not sure if this will solve your problem, but it's worth a try.

I've seen the opposite. I've got "Malcolm in the Middle" set to record only new episodes on Fox at only 8:30 PM. It still gleefully records all the syndication episodes at 6:30 PM.

I also recently enjoyed seeing the program listing screen with THREE sets of triple-dots, all visible at once (no Xs in any of them). Since there were only two tuners, I had to investigate: one of the three series was a repeat, and it didn't record. But it still marked it! Sometimes it does what you expect, sometimes it doesn't. :mad:

Interesting comments. I never had any problems with alternate times. I have one recording set to record KOMO local news at 6:30 and on Mondays when they have football at that time, the box records the 5pm newscast. The box kept getting all 9pm showings of something (I forget now) and when I set it to record only New ('sted of new and reruns), it stopped recording all of those shows.

Had another problem last night. I had set up two shows on WB, 8-10pm and ER for my wife at 9:59. When I tried to add CSI at 9, the box refused and reported a conflict. Far as I can tell there's absolutely no way to get two simultaneous recording in front of ER. I can't set ER to start 1 minute late. I can't set CSI to end recording one minute early. We tried watching CSI live last night, but the box switched away at 9:58 to get ER so we lost the finale of CSI. I have just set a manual recording of ER to run from 10-11pm. But, again there appears no way to record, say 9-9:59. Or, even 10-10:59. Both are something my old VCR let me do, I could start or end a recording one minute early or late. In other words, I could manually make adjustments to weekly recordings.

Microsoft must think we're watching too much tv. We probably are...but I tend to save some series for those nights when nothing new is on, like Saturday nights lately.

Looks like I got everything with the possible exception of "Lost" yesterday (was it new?).

I was in Bellevue and we lost power from about 5:15pm to 8:15pm on Wednesday, but "Lost" is at 9... The 6412 did record "Law and Order" at 10.

I think Lost was a repeat this week.

Cool. Then my 6412 would have been set to ignore it. :cool:

Desperate Housewives was also a repeat last Sunday, 10/30.

I have always/frequently lost shows that are set to record. They'll be in the "scheduled" area and just don't record. I frequently have to delete the "series" and reset it. I admit this frequently has happeend with my kids shows so I haven't been too upset, but it has happened a few times with others. I do notice that on ABC you have to have the shows set to record at any time as they often start at time+01 and if your set for 10:00 and it starts at 10:01, it won't record. I just figure the box is unreliable..... Anybody ever complain about it and get an answer?

Who to complain to??? I guess I've been hoping that some Microsoft person is still watching this thread and would offer to fix their software. I was looking at my recording schedule a few minutes ago and noticed a conflict notice... Hah! One network's show runs to :01 bumping into a show that starts at :00. Funny thing here is that I've got one recording at 9pm for 60 mins, another recording at 10pm for 60 mins. When I tried to add another 9pm recording for 61 mins, I couldn't. Microsoft's software reports a conflict and refuses to sked the second 9pm show. Even though the 9 pm recording already in place will end in time for the 10 pm show to start. Glad I've got my trusty old VCR as a backup. Wish it were an HD VCR. Or, wish I could manually shorten show times by one minute at either front or rear.

The 6412 and/or software pads at each end, so if you have two shows that end at x, you cannot record a third show that starts at x, as both tuners will be in use.

The 6412 and/or software pads at each end, so if you have two shows that end at x, you cannot record a third show that starts at x, as both tuners will be in use.
Not from my experience. I have found that I can have two shows set for 9pm, two shows set for 10pm with no problem as long as the 9pm shows are 60 mins. If one is :61, then something fails. The software will simply remove the padding.

I only wish I could manually shorten the recording to make up for those times when the networks are so greedy as to lengthen a popular show's time slot by one minute in order to get one more minute of commercial time inside the show (at a higher rate).

Well, there's always been the odd program or two that doesn't record for mysterious reasons, but this is the first time I've seen it F-up an entire week's schedule.

Somebody I mentioned this to said this was the week of the time change to Standard Time, and that might be behind it, although the fact that Sunday's recordings all worked kind of blows this theory. I did get one non-HD program on Monday, but Tuesday's through Thursday's recordings were all missed.

I'll monitor tonight's scheduled recordings and if they don't launch, I'll do a power cycle reset to see if that wakes it up.

Naturally, the thing will start working properly once you get home and are watching to see if it screws up. It recorded all the scheduled Friday programming properly, without having to unplug/replug the box.

I'm starting to look forward to that new Tivo box Comcast is developing. Perhaps that will be more reliable and have more capacity than the 6412 with MS.

I'm kinda looking forward to whatever DirecTV has in mind once they get Seattle locals in HD.

I'm kinda looking forward to whatever DirecTV has in mind once they get Seattle locals in HD.

Yeah, me too. Any idea when this might be? I think DirecTV now has HD locals in other markets. Can anyone confirm that?

DirecTV is currently testing their MPEG-4 capabilities with subscribers in the Detroit area. They apparently still have some debugging to do. They have already implemented one STB software upgrade since the initial deployment.

Seattle is NOT among the top 12 markets they plan to deploy either late this year or early next year.

But, Seattle is #13 and is expected to be served by MPEG-4 next year, perhaps mid-year. Timing depends a lot on stabilizing the Detroit service first.

There is also an apparent shortage of the new dish required to receive a total of 5 satellites. It is somewhat bigger and heavier than current dishes, and typically requires an installer with a meter to get proper alignment.

The current STBs (H20 receivers without DVR) are made by Humax. LG electronics will be making H20 receivers also, and will include their superior fifth generation ATSC tuner which is much better at dealing with OTA multipath problems. No one seems to know whether the current Humax STB has the same design or not.

The MPEG-4 local station HD rollout includes only 4 channels: ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. I have seen no public announcements or rumors about when they will add more HD stations in each local area.

The MPEG-4 HD DVR receiver is slated to be available mid-year 2006. It will NOT be a TiVo-based product, but rather an NDS software implementation on an LG and/or Humax hardware platform.

There is also a Home Media Center (HMC) coming later that supports one HD output and several SD remote STBs that all share a single DVR server with multiple satellite and OTA tuners. This is made by Motorola, who recently bought out Ucentric, the company that first introduced the HMC platform for cable TV companies.

The HMC reportedly supports viewing of live or recorded HD programs, at 480i, on the remote SD STB's (i.e. in other rooms of the house). A single HMC will only support one HD-resolution output, but two HMC's can work in tandem, with recorded content sharing between them, to provide a second HD output. These HMC features and limitations are definitely subject to change before the HMC hits the market.

Existing MPEG-2 receivers, including the HR10-250 HD TiVo, will still work with the new dish and multiswitches, but obviously for MPEG-2 reception only from satellite and OTA. The few national HD channels from DirecTV will stay available as MPEG-2 until the HD MPEG-4 transition is complete.

So, a subscriber like me, with 2 HD TiVos and excellent OTA reception of local digital channels, can still use the HD TiVos for a few years. DirecTV has a history of grandfathering but still supporting their older receivers. For example, UltimateTV SD DVR receivers are still supported, although without any significant upgrades.

Hopefully that summarizes most of what I have learned reading numerous threads here and at the other satellite forums.

I'm kinda looking forward to whatever DirecTV has in mind once they get Seattle locals in HD.Not me - not since they recently dumped Tivo in favor of their own semi-home-grown DVR technology (from fellow Rupert Murdoch-owned company, the NDS Group). So much for DirecTV having mature, stable DVRs...

Was anyone else's audio screwed up tonight? We were watching it timeshifted at about 9:45. Every 20 seconds or so would be a very loud blast of static that would last for 5 seconds. It was definately cyclic. After watching it with my wife for about 2 minutes, we couldn't take it anymore. I fast-forwarded into it about 20 minutes and it was still doing it. I will be interested to find out if this audio problem occured on the west side as well or if I should pin the blame on our local head-end.

I'm losing my faith in Comcast HDTV since two weeks ago Desperate Housewives didn't record at all because our ABC HD was totally out here in Spokane for two days. Also, our local HD feeds always seem to have the audio slightly off from the video. I can accept the occasional technical glitch, but it's a lot harder for my wife to accept. To her, it should just work. I'm starting to agree considering the incredible amount of money we pay Comcast every month for two HD DVR's and high-speed internet. Our bill is about $140 and we don't have any premium channels. I know if I call them tomorrow, they will give me a days worth of credit, but I'm getting tired of the problems.

The audio went bad for me just during the last five minutes of "Desperate Housewives," right when Terri Hatcher runs out of the house in a wedding dress. I've had this same sound problem before, lots of distortion particularly with any background music. The sound was fine for the beginning of "Grey's Anatomy."

The audio went bad for me just during the last five minutes of "Desperate Housewives," right when Terri Hatcher runs out of the house in a wedding dress. I've had this same sound problem before, lots of distortion particularly with any background music. The sound was fine for the beginning of "Grey's Anatomy."
I noticed the same thing with Desperate Housewives. I haven't watched Grey's Anatomy yet. Audio got kinda garbly after the last commercial break.

Was anyone else's audio screwed up tonight? We were watching it timeshifted at about 9:45. Every 20 seconds or so would be a very loud blast of static that would last for 5 seconds. It was definately cyclic. After watching it with my wife for about 2 minutes, we couldn't take it anymore. I fast-forwarded into it about 20 minutes and it was still doing it. I will be interested to find out if this audio problem occured on the west side as well or if I should pin the blame on our local head-end.

I'm losing my faith in Comcast HDTV since two weeks ago Desperate Housewives didn't record at all because our ABC HD was totally out here in Spokane for two days. Also, our local HD feeds always seem to have the audio slightly off from the video. I can accept the occasional technical glitch, but it's a lot harder for my wife to accept. To her, it should just work. I'm starting to agree considering the incredible amount of money we pay Comcast every month for two HD DVR's and high-speed internet. Our bill is about $140 and we don't have any premium channels. I know if I call them tomorrow, they will give me a days worth of credit, but I'm getting tired of the problems.Why do you assume it's Comcast's fault? I don't know about Spokane, but here in Seattle, these audio problems have almost always been traced to technical issues at the local network affiliate - usually KOMO, the local ABC affiliate. The same audio glitches are usually present on KOMO's over-the-air HD transmission as well. I'd suggest targeting your threats at the most likely culprit - your local ABC-HD station.

In any case, these audio glitches are not specific to the 6412, so I'd also suggest this is the wrong forum/thread for this post. Probably best served posting this in a Spokane local HD thread somewhere.

Why do you assume it's Comcast's fault? I don't know about Spokane, but here in Seattle, these audio problems have almost always been traced to technical issues at the local network affiliate - usually KOMO, the local ABC affiliate. The same audio glitches are usually present on KOMO's over-the-air HD transmission as well. I'd suggest targeting your threats at the most likely culprit - your local ABC-HD station.
You evidently did not read my post completely. I was asking if any of you elsewhere in Washington experienced the same problem so I could either pin the blame on Comcast or start to look at the problem locally - either with local Comcast or the local affiliate. Also, I don't recall threatening Comcast at all in that message.............. You're right though, I did jump to the conclusion that it was Comcast's fault in my pissed off rant.

In any case, these audio glitches are not specific to the 6412, so I'd also suggest this is the wrong forum/thread for this post. Probably best served posting this in a Spokane local HD thread somewhere.

Thanks, I found the Seattle and Spokane HD threads, I'll post this kind of stuff there instead. FYI, Comcast treats Seattle and Spokane as essentially the same market with the exception of the local HD feeds. We have the MSFT 6412 over here as well.

I've got "Malcolm in the Middle" set to record only new episodes on Fox at only 8:30 PM. It still gleefully records all the syndication episodes at 6:30 PM.
And last night it decided to record the 7:30 PM syndicated showing, and not bother with the actual new episode at 8:30 PM.

I hope Microsoft picks up bug reports from here, since all Comcast does when I complain is to verbally pat me on the head. :mad:

And last night it decided to record the 7:30 PM syndicated showing, and not bother with the actual new episode at 8:30 PM.

I hope Microsoft picks up bug reports from here, since all Comcast does when I complain is to verbally pat me on the head. :mad:

I went out and checked the episode numbers and original air dates for MITM last night. The guide data is correct. A few posts back, I showed a way that you can gaurentee that you get new shows and the like. Turns out after further investigation that the 6412 MSFT DVR does indeed have a serious problem.

Since I am mostly recording new shows that have not yet gone into syndication and movies I have not noticed the problem. The bug in the DVR has serious consequences but should be easy to remedy. Someone at MSFT decided to make recording options or'ed together. For example, if you choose new shows as an option and also choose any time as an option, the results are or'ed together.

In other words, using MITM as an example, you get all new MITM and all MITMs broadcast at any time. This means you get all scheduled MITMs. WRONG! It's a simple fix and a rookie mistake in the programming (don' t these guys have any sort of QA group?)

The options should be and'ed together. For example, using the options above you should only record new MITMs at anytime, allowing for day changes and time changes. You should not get any repeats.

This is a definite bug in the software.

BTW: Check out my software if you really want to know what is new for a two week period. You might want to use this list to produce in advance single recordings of your favorites, especially for those shows that are in syndication.

I went back to play with your 'OR' theory, and discovered that MITM was actually set to record at 7:30 PM, not 8:30 PM. Since I was very sure I had set it to 8:30, I looked around a bit more -- ALL my timed recordings had been moved forward an hour!

I suspect the change from Daylight Savings Time.

What I see from playing around is that when a specific record time is set, if there's a show at the requested time, it records that. Otherwise, it records the first instance of the show it finds on that channel each day. There weren't appropriate shows available in the listing to test whether 'new' vs 'new & repeat', etc., had any effect.

I went back to play with your 'OR' theory, and discovered that MITM was actually set to record at 7:30 PM, not 8:30 PM. Since I was very sure I had set it to 8:30, I looked around a bit more -- ALL my timed recordings had been moved forward an hour!

I suspect the change from Daylight Savings Time.

What I see from playing around is that when a specific record time is set, if there's a show at the requested time, it records that. Otherwise, it records the first instance of the show it finds on that channel each day. There weren't appropriate shows available in the listing to test whether 'new' vs 'new & repeat', etc., had any effect.

Ain't Daylight Savings Time a bitch :) I also went back to make sure about my previous post. As far as I have been able to determined, if you do not select a time to record a series, you get all episodes of the show. This is regardless of what you have set in the New, New & Repeats. This, IMO, is wrong. If all you want are all new shows for a series, by and'ing the results with time you can can get it all. If you want all showings regardless, select it by setting all shows and any time. If you want only new shows, even on different nights and times, you can get it by setting new shows only and any time. If you want all showings at a specific time only, you can get it setting all shows and a time.

You can't get it by or'ing the results. The way it's setup now, they don't really need the New, All, etc setting. It is basically useless. By time overrides all. :mad:

Well, I just checked tonight's schedule for me. I have Rome set to record new every Sunday evening at 9. HBO reruns the previous week's episode at 8pm and tonight the Comcast DVR is set to record the 8pm repeat and not the 9pm new episode. Obviously, this is not trustworthy software.

Well, I just checked tonight's schedule for me. I have Rome set to record new every Sunday evening at 9. HBO reruns the previous week's episode at 8pm and tonight the Comcast DVR is set to record the 8pm repeat and not the 9pm new episode. Obviously, this is not trustworthy software.

I checked all of my recordings and I have to agree with Doug. The change in Daylight Savings Time has move all of my timed recordings forward one hour. Is it any wonder that the MSFT software is only being tested in one market? Time to reprogram.

Are you folks recording by program title or by time?

All of my recordings (chosen by program title) successfully migrated from PST to PDT and I have not missed anything.

Most of my recordings moved from daylight time to standard time.

As far as I have been able to determined, if you do not select a time to record a series, you get all episodes of the show. This is regardless of what you have set in the New, New & Repeats.
I find the 'New/New & Repeats/...' setting works properly with 'Record Anytime'. I've even got a few conflicting series recordings set, with some set to "New only" and others set to "New & Repeats" with a lower priority setting. When a repeat of one of the main shows comes on, it doesn't record it, and properly switches over to the lower priority show.

Are you folks recording by program title or by time?

All of my recordings (chosen by program title) successfully migrated from PST to PDT and I have not missed anything.

Having access to the same guide data MSFT has (raw format) and complete understanding of the datamodel used in the dataset, I can think of easy alogorithms to set up series recordings that as long as the data is correct would be foolproof. I can say that the data I get is indeed in very good. Whenever I though I saw a porblem with the data, whan I researched it, it turned out to be a bug in my program.

There are some devices (i.e. ReplayTV) that appear to use show titles to identify shows, but from what I've read there are other devices that use the unique code assigned to each series to set up series recordings. This is the correct way to do it.

Recording by title is the old way to do it. It doesn't allow for a program to change titles (poor example, but say that a show "The Simpsons" went to "Simpsons"). This would not be caught by most software. However, using unique codes, "The Simpsons" and "Simpsons" would still have the same unique code and you would not lose a show based on title change.

I have no inside knowledge of how MSFT sets up series recordings, but I would be surprised if it was based on titles. That's just wrong.

I strongly recommend that everyone at this time check their upcoming recordings as I just found another major mistake. I have Desparate House Wifes set up as a series. Nothing special about how I set it up at the beginning of the season and it's been working well until now.

Looking at what is schduled for DSPHW, I have two recordings, and I swear this is what it says:

Sun 9:00 PM 11/1
and
Sun (Yes, Sunday) 9:00PM 11/2.

Neither date is a Sunday and they are both in the past. Since all times from the guide service are in GMT times, I suspect they have a big bug in their GMT to local time conversions, especially related to DST.

In addition to the above, there is not a recording of DSPHW scheduled for tonight on my DVR even though series record is still on and tonights episode is indeeed a new one. The scheduling of series recordings is in very bad shape. I'd say that was just my opinion but it seems so bad now that I claim this as a FACT.

You out there MSFT? If you are, contact me, I'll teach you how to write proper series recording software. :D

BTW: I forgot to mention that when I tested my theory, I based it on what the scheduler said was scheduled to record. I did not actually wait to see if the scheduler actually skipped repeats when set to New and Anytime. My first test of that will come on Monday when I am showing in the scheduled shows that MITM will be recorded at 6:30 and 7:30. I have it set up as New only and use any time on 113. If they don't record, then the problem may not be as serious. The bug would be in what is shown as scheduled to record.

Also, it will be interesting to see how the DVR handles the final shows of Survivor where the show changes both times, length and the day of night. All of the these shows should have thesame unique code, same original air dates, different titles (maybe) and different episode numbers. If this works, then maybe things aren't as bad as they same. The problems could then be pinned down to a bug in converting GMT to local time around changes to PST and DST, and a display of what is scheduled to record not looking at the preferneces set up for the series recordings.

I'd love to know the real algorithm Microsoft uses to select shows to record -- it would make my job of setting the parameters a lot easier, and I'd have a higher degree of trust in the box to actually record what I want to watch.

You out there MSFT?
I'm beginning to think that the answer to this question is a resounding "No."

My wife and I (previously happy TiVo users for four years) have resigned to just deal with the awkward interface, the completely stupid recording algorithms, and the overall inferiority of the Microsoft product and patiently count the months until these boxes (or their replacements) run TiVo software.

I suspect that Comcast has made the same decision.

I also noticed the odd schedule for Desperate Housewives (I have it set for series record), but when I did a little further exploring, it turns out that the upcoming episodes are scheduled for 11/13 and 11/20 (which is correct). I think the GUI has a display truncation problem, and was not displaying the last digit.

Still misleading, but at least in this case the episode scheduling is correct. I've only had one time (I can remember) that the 6412 didn't record something, and there was no reasonable explanation.

Cliff

I called Comcast. They said $15/month for a 2nd DVR. That's more than I thought. Is anyone else paying less?

Thanks.

I called Comcast. They said $15/month for a 2nd DVR. That's more than I thought. Is anyone else paying less?

Thanks.

they told me the same. $5 "credit" is included in the digital package for first one, and then $10 more for the first HD dvr (total comes to $15). $15 for each extra.

$5 per extra SD digital receiver
$10 per extra HD digital receiver
$15 per extra HD DVR

Well, it took a while to hit me, but I noticed last night that all of my series recordings were showing as "No upcoming episodes" because they were set to record 1 hour early. The series recordings worked fine last week after the DST time change, so I think at some point over the weekend something changed.

I used to have this problem with my old Dishplayer Dish Network DVR (which also used Microsoft Software) after every DST switch. Hasn't Microsoft figured out how to handle this yet?

Anyone else have any problems after the switch?

I had no problems caused by the change to standard time. I have had other problems, but nothing that happened over that weekend.

Well, it took a while to hit me, but I noticed last night that all of my series recordings were showing as "No upcoming episodes" because they were set to record 1 hour early. The series recordings worked fine last week after the DST time change, so I think at some point over the weekend something changed.I had the exact same problem. This is the first major bug I've noticed in the DVR software. As a workaround, I went through the Series Manager and changed all of my series from "Record only at X:XX" to "Record at any time".

I had the same thing happen. All the shows I had set to record only at 8:00 pm were set to record at 7:00 pm and thus I had no scheduled recordings come up. This must have happened in the past few days because everything was working fine post daylight savings for the past few weeks.

It's got to be a recently introduced bug.

The same thing happened to me, but in my case it's because they either moved the day of the show (Threshold) or cancelled the show (Night Stalker).

I had the same thing happen. All the shows I had set to record only at 8:00 pm were set to record at 7:00 pm and thus I had no scheduled recordings come up. This must have happened in the past few days because everything was working fine post daylight savings for the past few weeks.

It's got to be a recently introduced bug.

I have the problem all my 8:00pm or 9:00pm or whatever times all switched to 8:02pm or 9:01pm and therefore didn't record since they started 2 minutes later.. I was like WTF? So I just changed them to ANYTIME.. So when is the next Moxi or whatver the BMC boxes coming to the washington area? Anyone hear?

I just posted a reply in the Seattle, Comcast thread - a number of people have seen this bug, which seems to have appeared within the last two days. "Surface" didn't get recorded for me last night, and a couple of other show I had scheduled for this week would not have been recorded if I didn't check. I changed all series to "record at any time" to lessen the chance of this happening again.

Very irritating - my "mostly stable" rating of the 6412 software has just decreased by a couple of notches.

Cliff

I check my Scheduled Recordings every week (mainly to weed out repeats since, even telling the 6412 to record a series only at a certain time, it still records at other times), so I haven't missed anything yet.

Fortunately, watching "CSI" I found out about CBS moving "Threshold" from Fridays to Tuesdays, so we shall see tonight if that works (I am often up around the time shows record, so I listen for the unit to come on).

I guess talking about the problem invokes it. :eek:

Sometime Wednesday the bug hit my 6412, so I missed "LOST" last night ( :mad: ). My most recent additions to my "Season Pass" were unchanged, but anything in there more then a few weeks was rolled back an hour.

I wonder if Microsoft/Comcast rolled out a firmware/BIOS update that has the bug, so as machines are updated, the bug manifests itself? Because all my shows on Tuesday recorded fine.

I guess talking about the problem invokes it. :eek:

Sometime Wednesday the bug hit my 6412, so I missed "LOST" last night ( :mad: ). My most recent additions to my "Season Pass" were unchanged, but anything in there more then a few weeks was rolled back an hour.

I wonder if Microsoft/Comcast rolled out a firmware/BIOS update that has the bug, so as machines are updated, the bug manifests itself? Because all my shows on Tuesday recorded fine.

The whole problem would go away if they merely "and-ed" the season pass settings. You could then set season pass for new shows only at anytime. Wouldn't matter what day or time the show was on, it would get recorded. As is, you can still set it for anytime, but since the results of the search are "or-ed" together you get all of the series shows including repeats. The new shows only setting is overridden by the anytime setting. Very problematic if you're recording a series that has gone into repeats or is in syndication (i.e. The Simpsons).

What would really work is if they just licensed TiVo's Season Pass interface.

Even with my 6412, I still keep my TiVo to handle all non-HD/digital shows because SP is so much more intuitive and, well, useful.

My earlier joke aside, it appears this did happen to me as well. My box is now attempting to record shows at 7 pm that I had scheduled for 8 pm. I noticed it on Survivor. So it happened to me sometime after last Thursday when it was working correctly.

Yup - if anyone is listening, the time switch happened to me on Sunday night - the 20th. The weird part was it recorded Desperate Housewives fine, but then didn't start recording Gray's Anatomy - I went to check and all the times for all my series' were off.

I just posted a reply in the Seattle, Comcast thread - a number of people have seen this bug, which seems to have appeared within the last two days. "Surface" didn't get recorded for me last night, and a couple of other show I had scheduled for this week would not have been recorded if I didn't check. I changed all series to "record at any time" to lessen the chance of this happening again.

Very irritating - my "mostly stable" rating of the 6412 software has just decreased by a couple of notches.

Cliff

I also noticed this problem, but only with a couple of series.... At the time it didn't occur to me that it had anything to do with DST, so I just chalked it up to some random bug and fixed the series impacted. Not sure why only some of the series were off by an hour. Weird.

I recommend not setting a time for series recordings of network shows. Even without the current one hour shift problem plaguing some, the tendency of networks to change scheduled start times by one minute will do you in.

Unfortunately even setting it to "Any Time" doesn't seem to do the trick. We missed grey's anatomy last night. I went a verified that it is set to record at any time, and it still says "No Upcoming Episodes" so I searched for Grey's in the guide, and noticed it is on at 10:01 next sunday - I added that to the list, and now I have 2 listings for grey's in the series manager - one set to record at any time that says there are no upcoming episodes, and one that is set to record at 10:01 next sunday. This is crazy. The worst part is my directtivo box seems to have died on me, so I no longer have an SD backup...

OK, well it looks like the issue is that I set it to only record new shows. When I go in and tell it to record new shows and reruns, it is picking up the episodes. To be clear, the shows I'm trying to record are in fact new episodes, so comcast/msft seem to think they aren't for some reason...

My series recording of Grey's Anatomy is for new shows any time, and it has the one for next Sunday at 10:01 on its list of programs to be recorded. I don't know why yours would be different.

OK, well it looks like the issue is that I set it to only record new shows. When I go in and tell it to record new shows and reruns, it is picking up the episodes. To be clear, the shows I'm trying to record are in fact new episodes, so comcast/msft seem to think they aren't for some reason...
Cameron, I've had the same problem you got. I had series recordings set to new only and the software reported no new episodes. When I add a new series recording event, upcoming episodes are in view there.

Seems as though we all hafta keep a close watch on these recording schedules.

Any signs that Microsoft or Comcast are even reading this thread?

Any signs that Microsoft or Comcast are even reading this thread?

Comcast -- none.

Microsoft -- thread created by shannonv last November, but no postings since early January.

I found out I've been hit by this bug too. My wife checked the scheduled recordings this morning and almost nothing was set to record, even though there is a new 'Lost' on tonight in the guide data. I have nearly all of my series recordings set to all episodes and all times, but still nothing was set to record.

There was just one thing scheduled, an episode of 'American Chopper' at 11:00 PM. I checked the series options and at it was set to record all times. I went to the time option, and the other choice was 11:00 PM. It's interesting that of 19 showings in the guide, the only one set to record was the one at 11:00 PM, even thought I had selected "anytime". It's as if the series settings were all secretly changed to one time only.

I checked my 'Lost' series recording, it was set to "anytime" of course, but the other time option was record at 8:00 PM only. Lost is never on at 8, always at 9 here. The recording options used to be 9:00 PM only or anytime! The stupid buggy piece of $!@# MSFT software changed all the times back by an hour! It also changed all 'anytime' recordings to one time only, and since this time was moved back an hour, nothing recorded.

I changed the option from anytime to 8:00 PM only, saved changes, then changed it back to anytime, and saved changes again. Now the two upcomming episodes appear in the series recordings.

According to the Cable Customer Bill of Rights for Seattle:

The Bill also specifies that if you experience an outage on the TV or Internet, no matter the length of time, you are entitled to compensation for the day on which you had an outage.

I think a buggy DVR failing to record everything it's set to record consitutes an outage.

I also wonder why Comcast can send us urgent messages about their upcomming PPV events. But why can't they send something like this, "Dear Comcast sucker, er, customer, Comcast's defective DVR software, provided by the largest producer of defective software in the world, Microsoft, has messed up all your series recordings. You will need to redo all of them or your DVR will fail to function, but we will still charge you for it."

Why would microsoft or comcast care enough about customers to read a thread at avsforum??

Personally, I sent them off an email with some suggestions but I'm not holding my breath.

There are some rumors that Apple might jump into the pvr market with their mac mini in January. Perhaps, if it has HD support, a huge hard drive and dual tuner I will bet many will give comcast the heave-ho.

It's not bad, but I do miss my Reply tv 5000 badly.

On another note, I'm noticing that advertisers are getting more clever about ads that look right in fast forward. I saw a great example of one of these ads yesterday, not sure who it was for, but it was basically in slow motion so you saw the whole thing in fast forward. It sort of freaked me out.

Why would microsoft or comcast care enough about customers to read a thread at avsforum??

Maybe because a Microsoft developer started this thread for that very purpose?

Add me to the list of angry people who missed 'Lost' because the stupid DVR failed to record.... grrrr. Was this product even tested before release?

Also, when is somebody going to hack this thing and let us hook up some external SATA drives so we can record a decent amount of HD?

Was this product even tested before release? ?It worked fine for a year. This problem has just happend the last week or two - so it's got to be something recent that's changed. Either a set-top upgrade (Moto firmware or MSFT software) has screwed up its handling of TZ/DST adjustment, or something in the EPG data food chain (Tribune data services to Comcast to us) is no longer correct.

Has anyone tried something like this?

http://www.smarthome.com/971016.html

Only one tuner, but it is CableCard compatible.
HDMI output, and you can customize the length of the replay and advance buttons (2, 5, 15, 30, 60, or 300 seconds) as well as "Smart Cue Adjust" time (the fast-forward to play, jump-back time).

Yup, we got bit by this too. Exactly as tap describes, all of our shows were set to record only at one hour before their standard broadcast times. What's worse is that we were away for Thanksgiving and just now noticed that we haven't been getting recordings for the last week and a half.

Thank goodness for **********.

Interestingly, while visiting friends and family during the Thanksgiving holiday I got to use a 6412 with the Passport software. Now, it's not perfect either, but man did we get the shaft in Seattle.

How many more months until TiVo?

There are some rumors that Apple might jump into the pvr market with their mac mini in January. Perhaps, if it has HD support, a huge hard drive and dual tuner I will bet many will give comcast the heave-ho.

I've read this rumor too, and I have to say I'm a bit dubious that it will come in the form of a PVR. I have a feeling that when Apple says "TiVo-killer," what they mean is iTunes Music/Video Store with a huge increase in available shows -- more like on-demand PPV. A PVR is actually pretty complicated, and I could see Apple finding it too "messy" and "backward-looking."

ArsTechnica wrote an opinion piece saying they thought an Apple DVR was highly unlikely.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051129-5643.html

I've had this happen now too, but in a different way it seems. I've had the box for almost a year and it has been quite stable (other than a number of months ago when I had the stuck on FF problem). But today I came home and tried to pull up NFL Primetime, which should have been recording for the last 45 minutes. Nothing. The show is on, but it didn't record. My guide data is there, my existing recordings are there, my series are still there, but for each series, it says no upcoming episodes. All the options are still set as inclusively as possible--record at any time, type is still "all & duplicates." So this doesn't appear to be the one-hour time shift others have experienced. I've unplugged the box and repowered it up a couple times, no success. I'm also getting some problems with unresponsiveness and commands buffering.

Some of my info:
Guide build: 1.7.6400 (25108S)
Platform ID 607
GIOS: 09.19
EPG Files 20
Return Path: RF
EPG Region 1503 (2007)

Suggestions? How did those of you with that one-hour shift resolve your problems (or did you)? Thanks.

I scheduled Desparate Housewives and Pope John Paul II to record at 9PM. When I got home at 9:30PM, nothing was recording. I turned on the box and the record light lit up right away. I had to clear one of those "Tune to the channel" messages, but both programs started recording at 9:30 after I powered up the box.

This is a new problem for me, but in the future, I might just leave the box on when recording more than one program at a time and see if that works better.

We the customer shouldn't still be encountering problems like this, and there should be a faq somplace documenting all of these bugs and workarounds.

I strongly advise not turning off the 6412. It will prevent a lot of problems.

Launch 6412 box started freaking out last night. Stuck in a neverending cycle of front display lighting up all 8s followed by a reboot.

Powering off with the remote didn't stop the cycle. Unplugging the device and re-plugging did.

However, it no longer boots up. I hear a quiet noise (CPU fan?) upon inserting the power plug, though.

1. Any recommendations?

2. What is Comcast Redmond replacing broken 6412s with these days?

3. What's their policy on compensation for downtime? Any luck getting credit from them for similar hardware failures? :)

I scheduled Desparate Housewives and Pope John Paul II to record at 9PM. When I got home at 9:30PM, nothing was recording. I turned on the box and the record light lit up right away. I had to clear one of those "Tune to the channel" messages, but both programs started recording at 9:30 after I powered up the box.


Odd. Pretty much the same thing happened to us last night. We hadn't turned on the box all day, and at around 11:15PM I turned it on to watch The Boondocks. Same thing: started recording as soon as it came on (thus missing the first 15 minutes of the show). It entirely skipped Grey's Anatomy at 9PM.

Odd. Pretty much the same thing happened to us last night. We hadn't turned on the box all day, and at around 11:15PM I turned it on to watch The Boondocks. Same thing: started recording as soon as it came on (thus missing the first 15 minutes of the show). It entirely skipped Grey's Anatomy at 9PM.

I thought it was something I had done! Friday afternoon, OnDemand stopped working -- didn't show up in the Main Menu and going to Channel 1 resulted in an "error 14". Comcast sent a tech out the next day to replace the unit and I spent a good part of Saturday evening scheduling the shows I wanted to record. 10pm last night, I turn on the set and find that Desperate Housewives did not record. Grey's Anatomy was recording, though. I figured I just didn't program DH... I was pretty sure I did, though.

(I still can't bring myself to unplug and eBay my ReplayTV - it's just so damned reliable! If only it had two tuners and HD.)

Launch 6412 box started freaking out last night. Stuck in a neverending cycle of front display lighting up all 8s followed by a reboot.

Powering off with the remote didn't stop the cycle. Unplugging the device and re-plugging did.

However, it no longer boots up. I hear a quiet noise (CPU fan?) upon inserting the power plug, though.

1. Any recommendations?

2. What is Comcast Redmond replacing broken 6412s with these days?

3. What's their policy on compensation for downtime? Any luck getting credit from them for similar hardware failures? :)

I had that happen to me when there was an attempt to update the box a while ago. I called Comcast and they ran me through a couple of procedures and re-sent the update, it fixed the problem.

Launch 6412 box started freaking out last night. Stuck in a neverending cycle of front display lighting up all 8s followed by a reboot.

Powering off with the remote didn't stop the cycle. Unplugging the device and re-plugging did.

However, it no longer boots up. I hear a quiet noise (CPU fan?) upon inserting the power plug, though.

1. Any recommendations?

2. What is Comcast Redmond replacing broken 6412s with these days?

3. What's their policy on compensation for downtime? Any luck getting credit from them for similar hardware failures? :)
Update: Picked up a replacement this morning. Working great.

After a second call to customer service, Comcast credited me for two days of service outage.

They had tried resurrecting the dead 6412 over the phone by having me hold in Power+Select while plugging in the power cord: Didn't work.

I scheduled Desparate Housewives and Pope John Paul II to record at 9PM. When I got home at 9:30PM, nothing was recording. I turned on the box and the record light lit up right away. I had to clear one of those "Tune to the channel" messages, but both programs started recording at 9:30 after I powered up the box.

Happened to me for a couple shows a few weeks ago.

This box is taking more baby-sitting than a VCR!

Now, the 6412 simply decides there are 'no episodes to record'. Last night, it failed to record both The West Wing and Grey's Anatomy. It said it wasn't going to record the upcoming NUMB3RS, etc. etc. either. I had set them to 'record anytime' per earlier discussions here--to no avail, it seems.

The Comcast rep said, on hearing the words 'no upcoming episodes', they are 'working on the problem' and the workaround is to delete the series and re-add it. Did that, now it says it is going to record them. How can I trust it? This has been happening for weeks, even with deleting and re-adding (this makes the third time I've done that). I expect it will happen again. The box has to be watched like a hawk!

I'm about to dig my first-generation Replay (with upgraded hard drive) out of retirement, throw this unreliable 6412 back and save the money. Even if it means not enjoying any more HD (since we almost never watch anything live). My wife is also bitterly complaining about this lousy box. I don't think she really cares about the HD either.

Man, if only Tivo or Replay would just come out with an HD PVR (and NOT to Comcast crippled specifications). I'd be on it in a minute. Even ONE tuner that worked reliably would be a huge win.

Happened again!

Came home at 9:30 and powered up the box in time for it to catch the last half hour of Amazing Race and the last minute of My Name is Earl (gee! thanks!).

So are people avoiding this by leaving the box on?

I'm thinking to do that and to dig out the old Series 1 TiVo (5 years old and it works better than this thing) as a backup.

Any other advice?

last year I got a UPS for each 6412 and have had zero problems since. These things really mess up with power blips.

Happened again!

Came home at 9:30 and powered up the box in time for it to catch the last half hour of Amazing Race and the last minute of My Name is Earl (gee! thanks!).

So are people avoiding this by leaving the box on?

I'm thinking to do that and to dig out the old Series 1 TiVo (5 years old and it works better than this thing) as a backup.

Any other advice?

Instead of thinking about leaving it on, why not just do it?

Instead of thinking about leaving it on, why not just do it?
Because "leaving it on" meant reprogramming my Harmony remote to leave it on. It's done now. We'll see how/if things improve.

It worked fine for a year. This problem has just happend the last week or two - so it's got to be something recent that's changed. Either a set-top upgrade (Moto firmware or MSFT software) has screwed up its handling of TZ/DST adjustment, or something in the EPG data food chain (Tribune data services to Comcast to us) is no longer correct.

Just for the record, I've had exactly the problems most of you have reported up in Bellngham/Ferndale. (One hour shift, losing programs, no problem until recently, etc. etc.)

I went into the Bellingham Comcast office asking if anyone has reported this as a problem. The woman there said "no", but offered to swap out my unit if I bring it in. In the meantime, I'll try leaving it on all the time. (Actually, I think it is virtually on all the time anyway, but I'll leave it "officially" on.

I recently had the problem with it not recording until I powered it on. Good thing I turned on the Victoria's Secret show only a few minutes in (I would have been upset if I missed it in HD). It seemed to record CSI: NY fine last night without being powered on, so I'm not sure what the deal is. Maybe I'll just start leaving it on again, but it's been fine for months not doing so.

Digital simulcast finally arrived in Bellevue this morning. I recorded the same two-hour program on 46 and 746 in order to determine the disk usage difference. Since two hours isn't enough time to get a good reading from the % remaining data, I used the disk space (PVR Content) from the PVR/HDD STATUS page of the diagnostics before and after deleting each program. For that particular channel, it seems I could get 35.62 hours of the analog or 49.86 hours of the DS equivalent on the 6412. This represents a 40% improvement -- not as much as I had hoped for, but not too bad.

My analog performance has been quite good, so there isn't that much quality improvement for me, although I'm sure it will be for most.

Digital simulcast finally arrived in Bellevue this morning. I recorded the same two-hour program on 46 and 746 in order to determine the disk usage difference. Since two hours isn't enough time to get a good reading from the % remaining data, I used the disk space (PVR Content) from the PVR/HDD STATUS page of the diagnostics before and after deleting each program. For that particular channel, it seems I could get 35.62 hours of the analog or 49.86 hours of the DS equivalent on the 6412. This represents a 40% improvement -- not as much as I had hoped for, but not too bad...Ch. 46 is CNBC, right? 40% might be a pretty good improvement for professional head-end encoder vs. consumer set-top encoder, since CNBC-style "talking head" material is probably the easiest thing to encode efficiently. Action or sports might show even greater difference?

what is the advantage of the digital simulcast other than smaller recording size? There was a basketball game on espn yesterday and the digital simulcast was lousy compared to the analog broadcast - lots of blocking and artifacts due to the movement...

I thought there was supposed to be better image quality - no?

Probably depends on the source material and the compression ratio.

Also, fast-moving scene changes tend to confuse MPEG2 encoders.

I am assuming Comcast controls the amount of bandwith each channel gets, and not the stations like on the HD feeds. I really wish KCTS would allocate more bandwith to their HD station. Watched a great "Nature" last night, but man, the pixelation was so obvious in almost any scene with rapid movement.

On the flip side, FOX always seems to transmit solid, as does NBC, for their high-speed sports feeds (like NASCAR).

Ch. 46 is CNBC, right? 40% might be a pretty good improvement for professional head-end encoder vs. consumer set-top encoder, since CNBC-style "talking head" material is probably the easiest thing to encode efficiently. Action or sports might show even greater difference?

The same thing occurred to me, so I've set it up to record some racing and a movie late at night, when I'm willing to devote both tuners to SD channels.

what is the advantage of the digital simulcast other than smaller recording size? There was a basketball game on espn yesterday and the digital simulcast was lousy compared to the analog broadcast - lots of blocking and artifacts due to the movement...

I thought there was supposed to be better image quality - no?No - digital is not always better than analog. Unless there's a lot of bandwidth (like HD) action & sports will tend to show motion artifacts which obviously you won't see with analog. Also, it's not clear if Comcast is using the same encoding/compression parameters for all simulcast channels; I just know the local network affiliates look better than before.

IMHO - the main reason for digital simulcasts is improving the picture quality when viewed thru the 6412 or similar DVR box. If you have a 6412, then you haven't actually been watching analog channels anyway! Instead, you've been watching a digitally-encoded version of the analog channels, compressed via the cheap MPEG2 encoder in the 6412, and played off the hard disk delayed a couple seconds. I call that CRAPPY DIGITAL. Doing the compression in the studio instead with heavy-duty encoders should result in DECENT DIGITAL. So there - that's my summary: the purpose of digital simulcast is to replace CRAPPY DIGITAL with DECENT DIGITAL!

But of course the true ultimate purpose of digital simulcast is simply marketing. To stop those DirecTV & Dish bozos from repeating their mantra: "Digital cable really isn't digital! Digital cable really isn't digital!..."

It has also helped people (like me) with crappy Analog. My Digitally Simulcasted channels by in large are far superior than my Analog counterpart.

Comcast does control the amount of compression and thus the amount of mpeg artifact.

With Statistical Muxing and QAM256 the ability to squeeze 16 channels into the same 6 MHz space one Analog channel required exists. The downfall is the more channels crammed into one 6 MHz slot, the more mpeg artifact present.

ok silly question. what channel are these digital simulcasted channels? how do I know if I have them? do you have to subscribe? I don't recall the exact package I have, but I have hbo, and hd, via the DVR.

thanks.

The formerly analog channels 2-99 will be digital when tuned with your box after DS is implemented. The simplest way to tell this has happened is that you will have analog equivalents of most of them on 708-799.

Anybody else experience a similar bug to the one we had a couple of months ago where all series set to record were changed to record an hour earlier than normal? We noticed this on our 2nd 6412 so my wife set them all to record anytime. I also noticed on our first box (which I set everything to record anytime after the first bug) that all of my series were set to record New and Reruns when I am positive I had them set to New only.

On another note, I'm very happy that Fox in HD is now on Comcast here and that they seem to be digitally simulcasting everything that was once anolog (although the channel numbers remain the same). The new picture quality on these channels is so much better than before.

[QUOTE=amorsell]Anybody else experience a similar bug to the one we had a couple of months ago where all series set to record were changed to record an hour earlier than normal? We noticed this on our 2nd 6412 so my wife set them all to record anytime. I also noticed on our first box (which I set everything to record anytime after the first bug) that all of my series were set to record New and Reruns when I am positive I had them set to New only.QUOTE]

(REPLY EDIT - probably not worth reading the reply below - I went back to previous posts and found out lots of people have been having this problem. At least I know it's not me or my DCT6412) - Jimster

That happened to me too - in fact, something else did, too. I changed my recording settings to record "at any time" on the correct channel. That worked for a week or two, but then I noticed no new recordings were scheduled. I went back and did a Search for some of the series and found there was indeed an upcoming show scheduled on the correct channel that the series recorder was not picking up. Anyone know how to fix this?

For instance (and I don't have the right channels or times in front of me, so this is an example), my Series Record was set for My Name is Earl; All Episodes (new, repeat, etc); at any time; on Channel 105. Nothing was scheduled to record. I Searched for My Name is Earl, and found an upcoming show on Channel 105 at 9:00pm in two days. I even had a second Series Record set for My Name is Earl on Channel 105 for that same day At Any Time, and it wasn't finding the upcoming show either.

This has only been happening the past few weeks since all my shows slipped an hour. Anyone have any idea what's going on?

If I can't figure anything else out, I'll try re-booting the machine (just gotta remember how - sigh) and resetting everything.

- Jimster

I just joined the forums here due to my frustration with having to reprogram all my series for the third time within the past couple months. I see I'm not alone.

I called Comcast today and was told that it is a known problem, but they haven't figured out why it's happening yet. He also mentioned that it was an "addressability issue".

Here's the funny part... I asked if there was a new DVR available with HDMI output, and was told it would be out sometime in 2006 - they were currently "Beta testing". I bit my tounge and thought to myself 'Gee, are they going to test it to the same high standards as the current unit?'.

I called Comcast today and was told that it is a known problem, but they haven't figured out why it's happening yet. He also mentioned that it was an "addressability issue".

That's interesting. I called a couple weeks ago, and the CSR I spoke to said it was a one-time occurrence, not related to daylight savings time, and the problem had been resolved...

I just checked for scheduled recordings and had none! I looked at my series entries, and all said "anytime". I had to go to every single one, change it to the specific time (which was wrong - at least an hour off in every case) and back to "anytime". Then the scheduled shows appeared. I'm glad I checked this - it is the SECOND time I know it happened. I had already run through this once after daylight savings time.

Hadn't noticed a problem the last couple weeks because I didn't expect any new shows!

Did anybody else get a message about "DVR Subscription Required" over the weekend? This is the second time it's happened to me in the past 6 months. I called comcast and they had me pull the power from the box and reboot it. That seemed to fix it, but i missed a few scheduled shows. Anyone else have a problem like this?

Did anybody else get a message about "DVR Subscription Required" over the weekend? This is the second time it's happened to me in the past 6 months. I called comcast and they had me pull the power from the box and reboot it. That seemed to fix it, but i missed a few scheduled shows. Anyone else have a problem like this?

This has happened to me several times following an unprovoked reboot of the box. After a very short period, full capability returned without my having to remove power -- just cycled the on/off button.

In the process of FF-ing through the recorded football game last night I became increasingly aware of the presence of that annoying status bar (the huge display at the bottom telling you the name of the program and how much time you've processed from the file). Has anyone discovered a way to disable that display, or temporarily remove it? The main problem is that it persists for a while after normal play is resumed.

Not during FFing/RRing. Once you're done, hitting Exit will clear it immediately.

Not during FFing/RRing. Once you're done, hitting Exit will clear it immediately.

That's interesting. For me, Exit during FF/REW clears both that status display and the small FF/REW bug in the upper right corner, and leaves the current transport mode active. Great!

My guide data is there, my existing recordings are there, my series are still there, but for each series, it says no upcoming episodes. All the options are still set as inclusively as possible--record at any time, type is still "all & duplicates." So this doesn't appear to be the one-hour time shift others have experienced.


This sounds like the same thing that happened to me and everyone else. While the DVR says that it is set to record at all times, really it's not. What it is really doing is recording at just one time, which is off by an hour. What you can do to fix it is change the setting to one time only, save changes, then change it back to all times, and save again. This will set it to all times for real, and your show will (supposedly) record without having to re-do all your series.

In the process of FF-ing through the recorded football game last night I became increasingly aware of the presence of that annoying status bar (the huge display at the bottom telling you the name of the program and how much time you've processed from the file). Has anyone discovered a way to disable that display, or temporarily remove it? The main problem is that it persists for a while after normal play is resumed.pressing Exit gets rid of it, but it would be nicer if it was semi-transparent while it was being displayed so you could see both your progress and the running scoreboard bug (on many broadcasts).

Speaking of the football game. I was planning to archive it to my PC by quarters. During the break before the 4th quarter I set up a 1-hour manual record because it went over a program break. When I went back to the saved shows guide, the time indicator showed "1:00" like it usually does for a manually recorded hour. However, when I played it back it was only 1 minute and 46 seconds long!!! So I don't have the 4th quarter, which was the best quarter of football this decade! :mad:

Tim

Is there any way to extend recording time while a program is already being recorded? I realized that I had forgotten to add extra time to the game today, but it was already in progress -- so I just set it to record the following program, too. This works, but it results in two files.

The only way I found was if you set the show you are currently recording to "record series", then go into series manager > find your show > series options > stop: on time > select change and you can add from 5 minutes to 120 minutes to the end of the show. And remember to select "Done" and "Save Changes" when you are finished.

Has anyone had recordings get cut off part way through? This hasn't happened too often for me and previously the only indication was that the recorded time was shorter than it should be. However, I tried recording Saturday Night Live this week and only about 22 minutes was recorded. Also, in the description of the recording it says something about there being an error caused by either a power outage or programming error.

I've also had some recordings just be completely missed, but it looks like other people have had that issue and gotten around it by just leaving the box always turned on, so I'll try that.

Definitely leave the 6412 on. There's really no benefit to turning it off, especially since it doesn't really turn off unless it's unplugged (and you shouldn't leave it unplugged).

I also leave my 6412 on all the time now, just to be sure. I figured it never hurt my TiVo to be on 24x7, so why should it bother the 6412. :)

Has anyone had recordings get cut off part way through? This hasn't happened too often for me and previously the only indication was that the recorded time was shorter than it should be. However, I tried recording Saturday Night Live this week and only about 22 minutes was recorded. Also, in the description of the recording it says something about there being an error caused by either a power outage or programming error.


Comcast sometimes does an emergency broadcasting system test (or some such thing) at roughly midnight on Saturday night; it seems to mess up recordings in progress (and sometimes live viewing in progress.) It cut off both of the things I was recording as well. Fortunately I was also recording the show with my old ReplayTV, which recorded it fine although the weekly test clobbered the sound and ran a stupid text banner across the screen for a couple minutes.

ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE...

I'm on my third time reprogramming all our recordings. They keep going to "no upcoming episodes". I've missed more shows that I can count, including numb3rs, west wing, family guy, simpsons, american dad, drawn together . . . oh, the list goes on, I lost pretty much everthing over and over.

I weep over the disconnection of my Reply TV. This thing is a piece of crap.

redwoodtree:

Try changing the Series Options to "Record at: anytime" and see if upcoming episodes appear. You'll know immediately if this fixes your problem. If it does, then you may have to prune out some upcoming duplicate programs, but it looks like most of yours are once a week, so perhaps not.

Comcast sometimes does an emergency broadcasting system test (or some such thing) at roughly midnight on Saturday night; it seems to mess up recordings in progress (and sometimes live viewing in progress.) It cut off both of the things I was recording as well. Fortunately I was also recording the show with my old ReplayTV, which recorded it fine although the weekly test clobbered the sound and ran a stupid text banner across the screen for a couple minutes.

Comcast ran such a test on Sunday morning around 12:30am on Channel 42 (Cartoon Network) and while it did indeed clobber the sound on "Full Metal Alchemist", the recording was completed as scheduled with no glitches.

Is there any way to extend recording time while a program is already being recorded? I realized that I had forgotten to add extra time to the game today, but it was already in progress -- so I just set it to record the following program, too. This works, but it results in two files.Once a program's recording has begun, the Record Options button is no longer available. The only way to get content beyond the program's time slot is to record the subsequent show or set up a manual recording.

Tim

Has Comacast come up with a good explanation for loosing shows in the "record anytime" series options?

When I reprogram after a series stops recognizing future shows, it will find the shows that are currently in the guide, but it won't pick up any later shows and I have to start the series record all over again. Extremely frustrating.

They should just go back to an earlier software build version. I could live with all the earlier quirks much better than this one.

Apparently, they have given up on this "trial" that I have the pleasure of paying for both in cash and wasted time. Anybody heard anything on its replacement?

Mark

Apparently, they have given up on this "trial" that I have the pleasure of paying for both in cash and wasted time.
Mark

Why do you think so? And which part of the "trial' are you referring to, the 6412 or the MSFT guide?

It's the MSFT guide. I am assuming it is a trial because Comcast has limited the MSFT guide to Washington state. It's been running for well over a year and they haven't introduced it anywhere else. Until they start rolling it out in other markets, I'd consider it a trial.

Given their slow response to resolving issues, I am also assuming that it's not the platform they are interested in pursuing and they are focused now on alternatives. The current problem with the guide not recognizing future program (now about 2 months old) is a major blow especially since it used to work reasonably well.

The 6412 is probably a fine machine but could use more capacity.

Mark

It's the MSFT guide. I am assuming it is a trial because Comcast has limited the MSFT guide to Washington state. It's been running for well over a year and they haven't introduced it anywhere else. Until they start rolling it out in other markets, I'd consider it a trial.


I never understood why they had it here.


Given their slow response to resolving issues, I am also assuming that it's not the platform they are interested in pursuing and they are focused now on alternatives. The current problem with the guide not recognizing future program (now about 2 months old) is a major blow especially since it used to work reasonably well.


These problems are not limited to the MSFT guide, and some others have different problems, but in no case have they been very responsive. Maybe they aren't serious about keeping any of these guides.


The 6412 is probably a fine machine but could use more capacity.

Mark


Definitely needs more space. Some Cox customers have recently obtained 6416's, but expansion capability is the real answer.

A friend of mine got this answer from Comcast regarding the "no upcoming episodes" problem: Record each series by selecting it in the Guide, not by using Search By Title. Apparently, Microsoft is working to fix the problem.

"A friend of mine got this answer from Comcast regarding the "no upcoming episodes" problem: Record each series by selecting it in the Guide, not by using Search By Title. Apparently, Microsoft is working to fix the problem."

That's what I've been doing. It still doesn't pick up future episodes not currently in the guide.

Mark

TNT-HD on 662 is nice, but the guide data are still missing. Only manual timed recording is possible until the guide gets populated -- so far 662 is anonymous.

TNT-HD Guide on 662 is now populated.

Has anyone had success in getting to record from 6412 to the PC. My PC does not seem to recognize the DVR ... in the thread about recording via firewire, there is some talk about needing a (minimum ?) version number.

SO, are our version numbers same as the ones comcast 6412 uses in other cities ? ANyway, what minimum version # do I need ? How do I check it ? And how do I update it ... if I don't have the required version ?

Yes, I have it working fine, for some time now. Version numbers on the 6412 were an issue long ago, but I don't think you'd have anything old enough to be an issue.

I'd suggest you print out that thread, or at least the first post- it is essential to follow the installation steps PRECISELY in order to get a recognizable driver into the system- and you're not going to have anything that says Motorola 6412, or anything like it. But if you do exactly what the thread says, it does work, and work well with CapDVHS.

Thank god, because 120 gigs doesn't hold much HDTV!

I've hunted around a bit but I'm still unclear on what's possible for my newly installed 6412 (Seattle area).

Specifically:

I know the 30 second skip is disabled in the remote but do *any* codes work? I have a Harmony 680 and I'd love to program buttons that bring up the HDTV program guide, DVR recorded list, etc.

Anyone know if this is possible or still deep in the MS black box?

If your remote can learn, you can map any of the buttons on the remote that came with the 6412 to your remote. I have buttons on my MX-500 that do all of the things you want- except, of course, the 30 second skip, which Comcast and advertisers don't want you to have.

I've heard that you can even get a 30 second skip programmed if your remote has macro capability, but it's not important enough to me to mess with it.

My remote can certainly learn anything I can point at it. I've programmed the MyDVR button but I don't see anywhere on the stock remote where there is a HDTV program list button. Right now, the only way I know access it is by hitting Menu->HDTV to bring up the list of HDTV-specific programming. I'd also love to have a mini-guide button too but don't thing there's a direct way to it on the original remote.

Am I missing something?

Thanks!

My remote can certainly learn anything I can point at it. I've programmed the MyDVR button but I don't see anywhere on the stock remote where there is a HDTV program list button. Right now, the only way I know access it is by hitting Menu->HDTV to bring up the list of HDTV-specific programming. I'd also love to have a mini-guide button too but don't thing there's a direct way to it on the original remote.

Am I missing something?

Thanks!AFAIK, you'd need to program macros for MENU->HDTV and SELECT->UP to access HDTV Listings and Mini-Guide, respectively. I haven't seen any mention of direct codes that map to these features, although I suppose it's possible they exist.

I thought that recording from the MSFT software versio of the 6412 via firewire to the PC was not possible? At least according to the FAQ at the top of this board, it isn't. I haven't tried it, but would really love for this to be true. Can someone point me to the thread you guys are talking about?

Yes, I have it working fine, for some time now. Version numbers on the 6412 were an issue long ago, but I don't think you'd have anything old enough to be an issue.

I'd suggest you print out that thread, or at least the first post- it is essential to follow the installation steps PRECISELY in order to get a recognizable driver into the system- and you're not going to have anything that says Motorola 6412, or anything like it. But if you do exactly what the thread says, it does work, and work well with CapDVHS.

Thank god, because 120 gigs doesn't hold much HDTV!


Thanks in advance,
Randy

I don't know what in the thread gave you the impression that it wouldn't work with the MSFT version of the 6412. I don't think I've read every message in the thread, and some beyond the top one discuss out of date information.

All I know is that I just did an HTPC build last weekend, starting with a fresh XP install on a formatted disk. I followed the instructions in the first post of the first (sticky) thread on this board, and it all works fine.

What won't work, of course- ever- is recording of things like premium channels which have the 5C flag set.

All I can say is do try it, but be very careful to follow the instructions precisely, especially when installing drivers. It matters what you cancel and what you install, and that the name of the thing you install is exactly what's set forth in the thread. Improvisation is not a useful skill in this instance. Good luck!

My 6412 screwed up twice tonight.

First, I had set it to record the Louisville-Villanova BB game on ESPNHD which was on from 4:00PM to 6:00PM. When I got home after 6 it showed only :01 recorded and when I tried to Play it nothing played.

Next, I have it set to record the one show I NEVER, EVER want to miss - 24 - on a repeating basis. After we got the kids to bed we sat down to watch 24 at about 9:57. First of all, I went to MyDVR and saw that it reported 58 minutes recorded and counting. I selected Play and only 35 seconds of the previous show played before it apparently reached the "end" of the recording!!! I was unable to even switch the DVR to Live and watch the end of 24. I waited till the recording stopped and tried again. It showed 1:03 recorded but when I "played" it, there were still only those 35 seconds. Finally, in a last-ditch effort, I hard booted the 6412 to see if it would NOW play the show. No dice!

Thank goodness, I still have the chance to have someone send the show to one of my ReplayTVs! I guess I'll have to setup backup recordings for everything I really hope to see.

Has the firmware been screwed up or something for these kinds of things to occur? Is anybody else experiencing these symptoms?

Tim

Hmm, well, in spite of the various advice I've gotten on my series recordings constantly going to "no upcoming episodes" I've really had no success. I've played with all the setting and everything.

The one thing that seemed to work is leaving the unit on all the time, at least for a week it worked. Last night we lost all our sunday night recordings and all upcoming series had "no upcoming episdoes" so I deleted and re-added all of them, for the fifth or sixth time now.

Then tonight I went to check it and the DVR was only showing about ten channels. The guide didn't work, MyDVR didn't work, etc.

To make a long story short, I called Comcast and was greeted with a 30 minute hold time. I knew something was wrong. Once I got on I was told that thousands of DVRs had gone on a flyer of some sort and needed to be reset. They send the signal but the operator mentioned that about 2000 people were ahead of me in line to get the signal.

Looks like something major horked up the system. My faith in this device is rapidly and dramatically shrinking. At this point, I'm just going to start counting down the days until the new tivo HD dvr comes out. If I set $25 a week aside I'll have enough by then I figure....

::sigh::

Its being reported in the Seattle thread (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=253006&goto=newpost) that there was another software rollup-- and that many people had issues. But, once issues were resolved, all were very happy with the new digital upgrades tp channels 2-99. But here in Magnolia we ahve not been upgraded yet :(

Another (minor but irritating) reliability data point (I think others have run into this a few times) ...

Last night one of my 6412's reset itself (picture disappears, LED display shows all dashes, after a couple of minutes picture resumes, LED displays time, recordings resume, etc). It was recording two HD shows (Lost and Bones, I think), and me and the SO were watching a recorded show (Medium). While FF'ing through commercials, the box first froze and then reset itself. Lost 3-4 minutes of recording. Not major, but irritating.

It seems to be activity related - I've noticed when the box is recording two shows (and sometimes even one show), remote control commands respond much slower. Obviously a lot was going on inside the box when it reset last night. I don't know if there's just not enough horsepower, or if there's a resource / performance related software bug somewhere (either in the low-level Moto software or in the MSFT software). Nothing seemed to be corrupted - recordings resumed, scheduled shows still seem to be scheduled, etc.

Cliff

It seems to be activity related - I've noticed when the box is recording two shows (and sometimes even one show), remote control commands respond much slower.

yes. I see the same thing. Last night I tried to use the box while it was recording two shows, one of them in HD. It was a good 30 seconds before the "Menu" key would respond.

I got a new DCT3412 delivered last week and have already seen the "stuck FF" bug. Usually, it just appears as a very slow response to hitting the Play button after trying to skip commercials. But last night, it locked up and ran through the last 10 minutes of a program. Based on skimming through previous posts, I thought this bug was fixed some time last year.

I'm going to call Comcast, but I'm not expecting much help. This bug is so bad that it really makes the whole product almost useless. We have a DVR so we can skip commercials but now every time I hit FF, I wonder if this will be the time it locks up.

And who do I blame? Microsoft for the software? Motorola for the device? Comcast for how they configure it? It reminds why I have an iPod instead of Windows Media device--all the parts come from one company and actually work together.

And who do I blame? Microsoft for the software? Motorola for the device? Comcast for how they configure it? It reminds why I have an iPod instead of Windows Media device--all the parts come from one company and actually work together.

I think it's Motorola's problem, unless Microsoft has figured out a way to infect all those boxes that have iGuide s/w.

I don't think Apple makes all the parts, but they do have only one name on it, and one company to complain to.

I just noticed that UHD guide data are now listed on 665 -- certainly will make recording those 4AM events easier.