DVICO TViX R3310? - Page 3

In the Toronto area, we receive Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario, Grand Island and Buffalo NY, sometimes Rochester NY and Syracuse NY depending on weather. There are roughly 10 channels from Canada, all 1080i with no sub channels. They mostly broadcast widescreen HD format. Out of the 10, 2 are CBC from Toronto, one English, one French. These are the ones v1.6.8 and v1.4.2 have problems with. Most of NY channels are 720p or 1080i with sub channels. I'm not sure what CBC does differently but they do have a nice 7 day EPG. I also think they have a higher bit rate as recorded programs have a larger file size. Other than that, I don't know any other specifics.

Thanks. It may be necessary to send DViCo a short sample of one of those to fix this.

I updated to the pre-release firmware 1.6.8 last night and came away pretty impressed. Channel surfing was generally much snappier than in the last firmware version, and the EPG now performs the way I expected it to from the beginning (scrolling channels in the EPG does not simultaneously change the channel, making the guide much more...well, guide-like).

The scheduled recording setup is now in a wizard format which is nice. Caution to all though: the scheduled recordings I had saved were apparently wiped out when I did the firmware upgrade. I only had two saved so for me it wasn't a big deal, but that may impact others more.

Some of the other features I haven't had a chance to test out yet. The Record List looks interesting, but as I had just emptied my DVRed shows out from over the weekend this had nothing in it. As time passes and I record stuff I'll see how this fills out. Also, my box did an immediate channel scan when I flipped to HDTV mode after the upgrade. Just an FYI there.

Like Kaxkid, the GoTo function is still busted for me. I am also using QAM.

The major fix for me would be if they took care of the FF/RW issue where these buttons flip out on a recording that is over 80 minutes long. I plan on recording some basketball soon and will test this out. The posted release notes for this firmware do not mention this bug at all, but Dvico has confirmed to me that it is a known problem.

I have reported to DViCo the QAM GoTo list bug as well as the problem of the QAM EPG table's not showing the correct timeframe (for those few QAM channels that have any EIT info). They're just coming back from a long weekend holiday now in Korea, so it'll probably take a few days for any fixes to happen.

bananaslug, where do you find the pre-release firmware?

Thanks

Read above: PM Kei Clark.

Does anyone else use digital ATSC portion of the tuner or does everyone use QAM? I'd like to compare if others get macroblocking distortions and problems with 480i upconverted material when viewing in 1080i.

RustyHD--

I have tested the tuner with both OTA and cable signals and I have watched captured 704x480i files, all using 1080i60 output, but I haven't observed yet any more macroblocking than the fairly minimal amount is typical for my other devices. I've certainly not noticed any unusual problems with it. If you're seeing a lot of problems, I suspect that it's either a problem with the broadcaster's up-conversion or a specific issue with your R3310. Do you see this on more than one station?

Edit: I just reviewed your previous posts on this and see that there are two problem channels with no video and problematic audio. Does the macroblocking occur on the others?

I've had the audio stop when making changes to settings, but not spontaneously. This is evidently a known DViCo issue. Again, if you're seeing a lot of macroblocking on all channels you may have a hw problem, but if it's limited to certain channels I'd suspect the source instead.

Macro blocking I see is on all channels regardless of signals. I even tried an indoor antenna directly to the unit and seen as well. Let me define what I see. The screen image will freeze for a moment then a portion of the image will kind of blur with little boxes of the image. Kind of like they're misplaced. These are not white blocks or green blocks that you see when the signal is weak. Sometimes this happens frequently (couple of minutes) or infrequently (1x per hour). Sometimes it's a small area, 10% of the screen, sometimes it's the whole screen. After a second, everything returns to normal. Happens on Live TV or recording, and if you play the recording again, in the exact same spot, so from the tuner.

On the upconverting issue, it's not all the time. For example, I recorded Hometime on PBS HD, it is 4x3 upconverted with black side bars. I turned on the unit and played, audio/video kept going off/on until I switched to 480i output, and then fine as long as I left 480i. I was watching another program a week later and noticed it was working fine on upconverted commercials. Played Hometime recording again and no problems with 1080i output.

Both these problems occur with firmware v1.3.8, v1.4.2, v1.5.4 and beta v1.6.8. Channels black no audio v1.4.2 and v1.6.8 only.

Another note, I popped out the tuner to reseat and notice the label is T431 not T411. I'm assuming a T411 and T431 are the same with a different program flashed.

What you describe sounds very suspiciously as though it could be bad hw, such as a flakey solder connection or similar. I suggest that you try an RMA exchange if you can.

I've never seen a T431, the DVB-T tuner model, but from photos I had concluded that they use a different r.f. connector. So if your tuner has the standard F-connector, I think that the labeling is erroneous.

I sent a .ts clip to tech support showing the macro blocking. We'll see what they say. I'm in agreement that either something shook loose in shipping or there is a bad board or chip. At least they'll understand what I'm seeing.

Greetings all,

I am using OTA for the 3310. I own the box for three months, give or take.
There has been some blocking on channels or lost channels. I have tried to scan the channel again, only to lose half. At present, channel 2-1 (CBS) no longer received; channel 3 is listed as 2.1, a religious station. I have lost 13 & 21 PBS stations.

I have the 3310 sitting along side my Samsung TV (Year old) - the cable is on a splitter. I isolated the box and received same results. The Samsung tuner pulls in more stations, with none of the above problems.

Should I give the beta firmware a shot?

Thanks,
LJ

For the different firmware on the R3310, I get different results with channel scans. For Buffalo/Toronto, best compatibility is v1.3.8 and v1.5.4. This gives me the same channel selection as built in TV tuners do. I have problems with v1.4.2 and 1.6.8 beta. I'm using v1.3.8 right now which seems the most stable for me. There are improvements in v1.5.4 and I like alot of the changes in v1.6.8. Try each for a few days and choose what works best for your location. I have them all on my HD and can switch in a few minutes.

Rusty

Thank you for the information.
Will checkout each firmware. I changed the splitter I was using.
I picked up at Home Depot a Ideal 5Mhz - 2.3Ghz splitter, this helped. pulled in a few more stations - CBS is not coming in.

I'll continue to play!

Thanks again.
LJ

Try changing out the rf cable from the splitter to the TViX also. If you found that changing the splitter made a difference then you almost certainly have a marginal signal condition. How do the analogs look? If they're snowy, that confirms low signal strength.

I changed the cable from rg59 to a 6. Little effect. I down converted to 1.36 firmware - This has cleared up the channel problems. I am receiving all the channels, there is some blocking that is present at times. As for the analog signal, I have the 411 tuner - it will scan the analog station, however it will only display digital station. I called Digital Connection to check and they confirm the tuner will not display analog channels.
I am HDMI connected.
I look forward to the next firmware.

A Thank you to all for the help.
LJ

T411 tuner is analog, digital and cable. You select cable or air when you scan. If air, to switch to analog, press the TV/HDTV button under the power button on your remote. This switches from analog NTSC to digital ATSC. You just don't see both together like a TV tuner would be. You can also go to your scheduled recordings and select to record an analog channel. For recording you can choose from digital channels, analog channels or AV input. By connecting a VCR to the AV input, you can digitize any VHS tape and save to your hard drive. You can also do this with any AV input source. Copy the file to your PC if you like and burn a DVD.

They are mistaken. (Perhaps the person you spoke with was thinking of the M-series TViX) The R-3310 and R-2210 units do play NTSC as well as ATSC stations. {Edit: RustyHD is right--and probably hit the nail on the head about your not realizing how to navigate between ATV and DTV, since it's not so very intuitive, IMO}
Are you using an HDMI switch or directly connected to the HDMI display device? If you use a switch, try connecting the R-3310 directly to your HDTV and then do the channel scan again. {Edit: This is a recommendation for anyone who is seeing incorrect/incomplete channel scans on the R-3310 (not the R-2210) because there are some HDMI switches that are incompatible with this unit}

Huh. This is something I never thought of. That's not a bad use of the AV input, I'll have to give it a try some day. Thanks for the idea!

Worked great, switched over to analog with no problem. I am connected directly to the TV through HDMI. I find this a great box. I have tested the recording of some VHS tapes - worked well. I also like the fact that it plays OGG music files.

Thanks for all the help!
LJ

I’m considering an R3310 as a replacement for a stand alone DVD recorder. I’ve read this thread and the User Manual & have a few questions.

What is the “Time-shifting buffer” that is referred to in the manual? I’m guessing it’s a matter of interpretation, but I think of time-shifting as the act of actually recording the program to some type of media. When I time-shift / record with my Panasonic DVDR it records to a DVD disc (mine does not have a HDD). I typically use a DVD-RAM disc so I can use “chase play” as Panasonic calls it. This makes it act like HDD unit where you can pause a recording to answer the phone for example, and then resume watching when you get back to the TV. But the program is still getting recorded onto the DVD-RAM in its entirety.

It sounds like the R3310 uses a buffer to pause a live recording. But does the program still get recorded to the HDD?

Can I turn on the R3310 in the middle of a recording & hit Play and watch the program from the beginning, just like a DVDR or HTPC might be able to do?

If I want to save a program and import it into my PC in order to edit & burn a DVD, it appears I just connect the two units with a USB cable & copy the video file. It looks like recordings are saved as a “.tp” file, which I’ve never worked with. Are they easy to edit and/or convert to a DVD compliant file?

Thanks in advance for any help & suggestions.

The Time Shifting allows you to pause, REW, FF, etc live TV. It does this by writing to the hard drive. In setup you set how long you want the buffer to be, 30 min, 2 hrs etc. If you are recording, the unit is on. Since you're recording and not paused, you can't go back to the beginning and start watching. You have to wait until recording is over and watch from the beginning. To transfer files to a PC, you can use the USB connection or setup Netshare. If using Netshare, you set up a shared drive on your PC and copy the files from your TVIX using the remote over an Ethernet connection. If you go to the TVIX website you can download programs to convert *.tp to *.ts or mpg. You can likely convert recordings into whatever format you like to use to burn DVD's.

Thanks for the reply,

You mention the R3310 does time-shifting by writing to the hard drive and also using a buffer. What happens when you are done watching live TV? Does the program remain on the hard drive?

Can you use an external USB hard drive without having an internal one?

Different firmware treats PVR functions differently. It buffers in a file in a separate subdirectory on the harddrive. So depending on firmware and how its configured, may or may not save or be saving the program. You would need to rename the file to save the buffer or it would overwrite when your configured buffer space was full or if you changed channels. You can use an internal or external USB harddrive. All functions work both ways. You cannot use a network share drive for PVR functions. An external drive would give you better portability of recordings.

So I've been getting a lot of freezes lately with my R3310. I've been running f/w version 1.6.8 since Kei sent it out to us, and while I think the general tuning performance is better than 1.5.4 and there are some other nice changes, the stability of the unit has really taken a hit for me. At this point I only have one scheduled recording because the unit will often freeze during recording and not shut itself off at all. If I was recording something at 2PM, I might check in later that night and find the unit frozen and the HDD still running. It's really weird.

The unit will only respond to a power off, either from the remote or power button on the box itself. Over the last few days I've also seen the unit freeze while watching live TV, once while I was time shifting a program (picture frozen and no input response, again except to power off) and again once when we were just watching a show and it froze cutting to a black screen with no input response.

Anyone else seeing symptoms like this with the 1.6.8 firmware? Like I said before, overall the newer firmware seems to perform better with tuning and the like, but the unit freezes are brand new to me and I wasn't getting them before.

Overall, they made some nice improvements with v1.6.8, however, I had odd things happening as well. 2 channels in my area are found with a channel scan but display black screen with no signal found. This occurred with the same channels and v1.4.2 firmware. One other channel south of Buffalo went digital and that one also was picked up on the scan. If you select the channel, it displays for 1 sec. freezes and the unit reboots. I down converted back to v1.3.8 firmware as this seemed to be the most stable for me.

Can you manually add and remove channels if they are not picked up by the scan?

Basically is there a channel manager where you can remove channels from the list it does pickup or add channels not sensed in the scan (by entering the actual channel number, etc.)

With the current firmware versions, the channel scan replaces the previous channel scans and there is no option to append newly found channels to the channel list. You can delete channels that you don't wish and they are removed from the guide. I don't see a way of adding channels other than a scan, so this may be a problem if you're using an antenna with a rotator. I don't see this as an ideal setup anyway, as you'd have to rotate to update the guide and preset the antenna for channels you want to record.

I'll most likely go back to version 1.5.4 soon as the live TV freezes have been happening more regularly. We had two in the span of fifteen minutes the other night on version 1.6.8, one right after the other (the first about 10 minutes in, then a reboot and a few minutes later another). This only seems to be an issue for me with live TV and recordings from the tuner; media files and other features on the unit have not been impacted at all.

Rusty, it sounds like you bounce between firmware versions a lot...? Do you just run the firmware file you want and it overwrites the current version? No issues going back and forth between an older version from a newer one? Thanks.

I keep all the firmware versions on the root directory of the harddrive. v1.3.8 is good and so is v1.5.4. The guide works a little better on v1.5.4. I upgrade and downgrade as necessary looking for the best setup. There is no problem downgrading from v1.6.8 to v1.3.8 or anything in between. Maybe the next version will have the improvements of v1.6.8 and the stability of v1.5.4.