Time Warner Cable Navigator - Page 574

More missed recordings due to piss poor conflict resolution. Now I'll have to wait until it's on VOD or Look Back. Time to have "The Talk" with the wife. Time Warner has got to go. It has just gotten so bad that I think I can forego the missing HD content. I've been patient and forgiving for a long time, but I'm pretty sure I can go through an entire 2 year satellite contract and TWC won't make much progress in that time.

So, I just went out front to analyze the missed recording and supposed conflict. The DVR didn't report the conflict or that it missed the recording either. Even though the online app grid showed it recordeding it still failed miserably. Here's whats worse - the show third in the Series Priority recorded instead which was placed there because it airs numerous times later anyway. Hawii Five O was just completely forgotten about at Priority number two. Now, no matter what, the first two shows should have gotten tuner priority. I didn't even pick up on the issue until I was in bed and happened to bring up the List which Whole Home shows all active tuners. I saw it wasn't recording.

I never used to have problems like this. They address one issue with an update and break two others.


ADD ON UPDATE 2:

Also noticed the bedroom DVR missed The Factor tonight at 8pm with no reported conflict and no log mention. I was able to record it during it's 11pm replay.
Edited by BenJF3 - 9/24/12 at 8:59pm

BenJF3:

I don't have 5.2 yet, but here's one situation that may have affected your Hawaii 5-0 recording.

I find that if I have a high priority item starting at 10pm and 2 lower priority items that the Networks love to start at 10:01 pm, all 3 items will show that they will record when you look ahead of time because it's not detecting the overlapping correctly since they're one minute off. Then when 10pm rolls around the 10pm recording fails, and the 2 10:01 pm recordings will usually recorded.

I don't know what you're recording conflicts are with Hawaii 5-0, but it's worth nothing that H 5-0 stated at 10pm tonight and both Castle and Revolution started at 10:01, so if either or both were set to record for you, it may have fell into the same trap.

What ever the cause, it didn't even report anything in the log. The DVR assumed all three shows recorded. Also, if that's the case, the shows scheduled for 10:01 should have reported a conflict because H-50 should have already been recording. Is it a huge ordeal, not by itself. It's this coupled with multiple other issues. I try to stay on top of the Series Manager to make sure first run network shows have priority and cable channels that show the same thing 6 times a day don't so they can be picked up later. Something is goofy in this division. My levels check out fine, my drop and pedestal tap have been changed, I've had box swaps and my end always checks out fine. The issue has to be software related or so flaw in how the update is delivered that is corrupting something.

Guide Tips- Working With The TWC Navigator Keyboard

At this time, only those boxes and subscribers that have Signature Home and Multi-Room (a.k.a Whole House DVR) may have the Advanced Search filters. Eventually legacy boxes will get these filters. However, I would estimate that because 75% or more of TWC's general population just has the Keyboard, and it is Title Based Only at this time.I will give you some tips on how to search for Titles that aren't so obvious:

Remember, you can filter the guide by Title, Rating, or Theme. Theme is my favorite choice and with regards to non-keyboard category searches, the organization works well:

Title Searches are easy for the specific names of shows and movies and you're good to go. Use the Theme filter and you can select Movies or type of show. Than use the keyboard to find the name. NOTE HOWEVER THAT IF A SHOW STARTS WITH THE LETTER "A" OR THE WORD "THE", THE FIRST LETTER IN THE SECOND WORD OF THE SHOW IS HOW YOU BEGIN YOUR SEARCH!

When you see on the left-hand side your movie or show name as you type on the keyboard, press B to navigate to that side and you can find your shows.

However, if you want to search for Sports, the guide, using the regular (non-advanced keyboard) shows NAMES of Sports. Here is how to make your Sports Searches a little better. Follow these tips if you want to search for specific sports shows using the on-screen keyboard:

1.) Press the B button to Search
2.) Press the B button again to Category Search
3.) Select Sports
4.) Select desired sport for which you want to see games and times
5.) Now, using the Keyboard, key in the following to get to your sport faster:

****************************************

1.) Type "MLB" for a list of Major League Baseball games.

2.) Type "NFL" for a list of Pro Football Games

3.) Type "College Football" for a list of College Football Games. (You'll see the listings as you start to type "college" in the Sports/Football category.)

4.) Type "PGA" for a list of Professional Golf Events.

5.)Type "NBA for a list of Pro Basketball Games.

6.) Type "ATP" for a list of Professional Tennis Matches.

7.) Type "US Open" for US Open Matches. (Under Sports Listings, Tennis Category.)

8.) Type "Wimbledon" for Wimbledon Coverage. (May also appear under the ATP Tennis listings.)

9.) Type "MLS" for Major League Soccer Games.

10.) Type "NHL" for National Hockey Games.

11.) Type "Nascar" For Auto Racing. (Found Under Sports, "Racing" Category.)

**Notes A few sports like Horse Racing do not have a specific category at this time and can be found under the Sports Category of "Other" (After going to the sports category and selecting "Other", find the "Horse Racing" Listings.

** The Year of a sport may also appear within a sports category, and will be first on the list when you narrow down your category search. To illustrate, you might go to do a Search for Tennis, (B Search) than B Category Search-Sports-Tennis- and and the left side of the screen might show 2012 US Open Championship as the first item in the category list. This is because the guide system organizes numbered listings before letter listings.

As you start to key in the words, watch how the results on the left-side of the screen change. If you spend some time in the Sports Category, you can add to this list. Your goal is to type in the name in the Sports Category that the Guide shows on the left-hand side.

Once you know how the Sports Titles are represented, you won't get so lost thinking, "Why do I type the word "Football" or the word "Baseball" as the only word on the keyboard and there's nothing there? TWC's Navigator Standard Keyboard goes by searching of the Title for each category. Using my above examples should help immensely!

(Feel free to save and print this information for reference.)

 

Jack

 

Another night, another unreported missed recording. However, for no reason this show was recorded at a later airing. There was no conflict reported. It just decided to record it later. Now, the box REC light was on when I got there to and attempted to turn it on. Turn it on, no pic, no sound - guess the TWC tech knew what he was doing by installing those component cables! LOL. So, I waited for it to finish, it was close enoung to the hour and forced a reboot from the service menu. I could still access that. Reboot to find it recorded nothing. The good news is the wife was the one trying to watch TV at the time and is beginning to get equally pissed. Maybe, I can convince her to forego some of those channels an make the switch! Keep digging your own grave Time Warner.

this happens to me fairly regularly, it locks up at least once a week (usually while recording, or when attempting to delete a recording), recordings disappear after that usually....

supposedly the engineers were going to be watching my box, and have put calls in to have to managers of some kind call me back, guess how many calls i've gotten

Sup All?

 

For the people who have had so many non-stop problems with their cable TV service, (Like a year or more of crap service, where you have gone through box-swaps, line drop changes, amplifiers, node signal assessments and they say everything is fine.)  Than the problem keeps coming back no matter what.  Have you considered filing a complaint against your TWC division with your local Better Business Bureau?  I honestly think that there have been more than a few isolated cases, especially in the Rome/Syracuse, New York areas, where everyone's cable TV in those nodes has been $hite.

 

I would do a summary of all the negatives you have gone through and problems have never gotten resolved.  Maybe if enough people in Ben's division, for example, complain through the BBB, that TWC will launch a full investigation of all the nodes in that region and find out what the problem is in that area.  How can things been great in one part of the country with TWC TV service, good in another part, and hideous in another area?  The poor guys who have gone through this for a year or more with no help or resolution, I would hope could get this resolved through their local BBB.  The reasoning in these divisions with so many problems, nothing is getting fixed, you are getting run-arounds, and you're not getting what you paid for.

 

Jack

What's wrong with the States PSC?? The BBB looks out for themselves, they are self serving. NYS has far more pull when it comes to utilities. Been there, done that and it works!

All the following are for New York State, but other states should have similar;

Consumer Rights Regarding Cable Television Service;
http://www3.dps.ny.gov/W/PSCWeb.nsf/All/0E2474A06D5A31AC85257687006F3960?OpenDocument

Complaint Filing with the Public Service Commission;
http://www3.dps.ny.gov/W/PSCWeb.nsf/All/0E2474A06D5A31AC85257687006F3960?OpenDocument

Dispute Resolution;
http://www3.dps.ny.gov/W/PSCWeb.nsf/ArticlesByTitle/3D20EFE44AE6AF4F85257687006F396A?OpenDocument

Cable Company Listing;
http://www3.dps.ny.gov/W/PSCWeb.nsf/All/D06BB00D3799FB7F85257687006F393F?OpenDocument

I would have reservations about all these 'quirks' with their lame firmware for their DVR's if the above would apply. Wording of the complaint would be important as would the number of issues. Missing a program every once in a while, I doubt would matter much to them.

 

Thanks Bruce for these added agencies,

 

These subscribers not getting the services promised for cable TV in their area, deserve to get some help.  In Ben's case, and others in his New York area, this goes way above and beyond "Once in a while."  It's almost going to have to take a third party to come in and get those cable TV service issues resolved for the subs who have had non-stop problems.

 

Jack

Box locked up again last night. I was looking at the guide, a reminder timer popped up and everything froze. I had to do a reboot.

Well, as of today an ever so slight change was made to the "Advanced Search" Menu. It has been slightly streamlined. However, the boneheads still have a default TITLE search for the keyboard. It still takes a minimum of 6 button presses to open and get the keyboard to do a keyword search.

Another thing I noticed is what appears to be a pre-load for ODN 6 in the service menu. Status is "Not Running", but there are line items on certain pages.

Ben,

As I recall, you used to be one of the core tech support people on this forum. And I don't think that anyone wants to lose you in that role, as is evident from the supportive posts of your colleagues. But if you decide to jump ship, please tell me what hard drive to put in my 8640HDC.

-nony
Edited by nony - 9/27/12 at 1:21am

Ok, anyone want to take a shot at this.
I setup three recordings, one at 9pm, and two at 10pm. The 9pm was two hours, the others one hour, all three ending at 11pm. I had the priority order so the two hour 9pm was 1st, the 10pm's were 2nd & 3rd.
No conflicts were shown.
Come 10pm, the two hour recording stopped and the two 10pm programs started.

Anyone see this happening before?
This "conflicts" entry, this has a entry in the bottom horizontal bar only when there are conflicts??

You rightly would expect that the recording in progress, the Law and Order, would continue and one of the others would be bumped. Failing this, there should have been a warning of a conflict beginning at 10PM. Somehow, and this is true of my setup, the system fails to register this as a conflict. You just have to be hyper vigilant about this from now on and watch one of the three series programs on demand the next day. At least until this "bug" is resolved, if ever.

That would be the logical action, but since I see very little "logic" here or in most DVR's, I guess I can't expect that.

I used a 1TB Western Digital Black Edition when I did my drive transplant. I can't say that it will still work at this stage as the Guide spftware has changed dramatically since I did it. I no longer have an 8640 either. If I make a move to another provider, I will likely still monitor this forum and contribute. The shop I subcontract for has TWC as it's service.

Had these been set up as series recordings? If they were, it sounds like CSI & Revenge had higher priorities than L&O. Usually the last program set has the highest priority. To check, go to "LIST", shift over to "SERIES MANAGER" The list that you see is in Priority order (Highest at the top). You can change the priority of a particular series by selecting that series and then select "Set Priority".

The ":LIST" screen should also have a "RECORDING LOG", it should show your L&O and give a reason for the short recording.

Also, IF there is a recording conflict, the "CONFLICTS" list will appear at the bottom of the "LIST" screen (not the Guide screen) along with the "SCHEDULED RECORDINGS" and "SERIES MANAGER" (I am unsure of the exact position), and yes, only when there is a conflict.

My Cisco 8640 here in Raleigh seems to hold less HD content than previously. It has the 320GB hard drive, and it is 67% full with about 18 hours of HD recorded and 1 hour of SD. That seems like it would fill up with less than 30 hours of HD by extrapolation. I started noticing it sometime this summer, after the end of the network TV season in May. Back in the spring, it felt like my box easily held double this amount of content, and has for the past 3 years since I've had it..

I don't know if a software change has caused this, if the recording codecs have changed, or what... I haven't noticed any unusual errors that would make me think it is a hardware issue (like a failing disk with bad sectors).

I used to have the issue this past spring where deleting shows didn't fully release the drive space consumed by the show, so I had to reboot the box every week or so to reclaim the space and get the %full indicator to fix itself. That seems to have been "fixed"--I wonder if this is what I got in its place...

I currently have ODN 5.2.0_9

Anybody else noticed this?

 

What's up Strkefast?

 

I would cold reboot, and watch your box DVR storage indicate over the next few hours.  I'll bet it goes back down to a low number again.  You may or may not have rebooted since the ODN 5.2.09 update, but a cold reboot generally gets the proper percent on the DVR box.  Hopefully the next release will provide an accurate DVR percentage at all times.

 

Jack

Thanks, Satch. Yeah, that was the first thing I tried, since it had worked in the past, but to no avail now. I also called TWC, who gave the stock answer: no known issues, but we can do a box swap if you like...

I wonder how many hours folks are able to store on these boxes nowadays? I guess it varies so much based on each TWC market and encoding choices it's hard to say definitively, but it sure seems worse of late to me...

Check out this thread, the last two pages especially:

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1219141/cisco-8640hdc-hd-dvr-thread/330

Thanks, grenier. Certainly seems like it is not just me...

I tried the purge option, but that had no effect. It seems the "long" HDD diagnostic test is destructive to your data/settings. And it sounds like once you do the "short" test, the long comes automatically afterwards.

When I was messing around with this a few weeks ago, it seems that I somehow found the Field Tools menu in the Navigator UI itself, but I was too afraid to try any of the options. It seems like it might have had the ability to do the short test only, for example, but I cannot remember how to trigger it. IIRC, it appeared as an additional "tab" within the Settings menu, or something like that. After rebooting it was gone. There was probably some inadvertent key sequence involved beforehand--guess I should have paid more attention
Edited by strikefast - 9/27/12 at 2:32pm

Problem is Dave, that these things are not working. Many times I get no reported conflict and almost always the Recording Log has nothing about the missed show. When it does, it's usually some vague statement like "The Set Top was unable to record this show (20)". It's what I was mentioning in some earlier posts. I have the Series Manager and Priority set and it's as if it is ignored sometimes. Now last night, it properly handled a conflict. It recorded the two priority shows and bumped the Cooking Channel show which it picked up at the 1AM repeat.

From the post I was responding to, it appeared that Bruce was not aware of these features. I'm afraid that your experience in Syracuse does not mirror my experience in Rochester. I've had some recent "issues" with disappearing & missed recordings, but they were all explained adequately in the log.

Part of my problem was due to having 2 DVRs in a Multi-Room set-up and the difficulty of keeping track of both DVRs from the main viewing DVR (like not realizing that the Bedroom DVR was full). Clearly, TW has work to do to facilitate Multi-Room DVR Management.

Yes, but initially, one or maybe two might of been setup as once, then changed.
I actually found a DVR with a worse GUI that the VRX. If this was offered for sale for $50 I wouldn't buy it. Per my original post, Revenge had the lowest priority. That was what I was told. Another problem, the entry should always be there, just empty if there are no conflicts. I'm sure all the other 'tabs' (if you want to call them that) are present even if nothing is listed, namely the recordings list. The tab is there if there are no recording, why should conflicts disappear??

I was aware of series recording since I have managed to use this, but not successfully the 1st or 2nd time. It kept on recording the SD & HD version even after I deleted the SD, but I guess I got it figured out.
I was not aware of this disappearing conflicts entry since it isn't there unless there is a conflict. (see above argument).
I was not aware of the "priority" entry until the other day.
I was aware of the recording log, but haven't gone there yet.

Of course if that was a damn user manual, I probably wouldn't be asking most of this.
But, I received a nice programming piece of paper on the programmable remote I have no intention of using.

And to one certain individual (not it this thread) that made the lamest of statements that enthusiasts here don't need a manual for a DVR (or words to that effect) obviously has no idea what he was talking about.

If they all came with a user manual and give one or two to the CSR's... TWC could save Millions $$ on truck rolls..!!

Just think all the CSR's they could lay off.

Well the "conflict" problem continues. Now, when there was no other recording set for the time period, I missed another program.
I had one set as a series to record from 9-10pm, not one of those plus or minus two minute games these networks are playing (no overlap), then two more at 10pm. The 9pm did not record even though there were no other recordings in progress, but the double recordings did.
To make matters worse my 9pm was set to priority one.

I wasn't using the recorder at the time and didn't notice the very small record light not being lit.

Hey All,

 

I reported to the TWC Direct to Tech Forum about several divisions having that 30-45 day pattern of slowness since the upgrade to ODN 5.2.09.  The keyboard seems to remain at good speed, but the other menus start to slow down after that time.  In my division, they seem to be good up until that 30-45 day cycle.

 

I wonder if ODN 6.0, which is rumored to be the next release will address this?  And of course any new feature improvements?

 

Jack

Did the Recording Log report anything? I know my log rarely shows anything when a missed recording occurs.