Replay Problems/Oddities

Hi odie34,

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This has been reported in the forum recently by several people (myself included). It appears to be a problem on the server end, not your end, and there's nothing YOU can do about it. I believe Replay is looking into it (if I remember the response correctly). When it fails like this, it will wait until the next scheduled time to try again. You might want to force a connection by doing a net-connect (243zones - choice 4), or selecting "keep all settings" in the "change dialing or input settings" in setup.


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From what you said, it appears that your power went out for about 2 minutes. When the unit is recording and the power goes out, the unit will start recording as soon as power is restored and place the remaining time in a new Replay Guide channel. Replay is pretty efficient that way!

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This has also been reported several times. Some networks are lax about timing. I have this problem on a regular basis with Disney at midnight. Zorro can start anytime between 3 minutes BEFORE midnight and 10 minutes AFTER midnight. If the show is important to you, you should also schedule the preceeding show and/or following show.


-ken

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Odie, I believe we've all seen something like this lately. May have been a temporary server problem, I think I read. Probably blame it on "Quake".


As for the Little Bear thing, I'm unable to offer a suggestion. Maybe a "Preserve this Episode" choice might have made somehow, since you saw that new show-based channel in your Replay guide.


Who discovered the problem... was it the kids? (Or are you secretly addicted to Little Bear?) Kids sometimes press buttons and don't always 'fess up... I know I NEVER admitted it! Ken had that idea about the power going out, did you have to reset anything else, like clocks?


It's been a couple of days since your post... any more Little Bear problems?

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I thought about this too, but I'm unaware of how to make "Preserve this Episode" save only part (the last 23 minutes) of the episode.

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Okay, you got me... I don't really have kids. I'm actually 58 and still live alone with my mother.

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I thought about that too, but I can't think of what buttons they could have pressed to "split" the episode in this manner. The only thing I could think of is if it was manually stopped and restarted while recording, but I know that didn't happen because no one was home when the show was recorded.

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No other indication of a power failure... I wonder if a brown-out could have caused the machine to shut down for a minute? Even so, I'd like confirmation (no offense Ken) that the machine would actually begin recording again (in a single record channel) if the power returned while a show should be recording.

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I haven't removed the 5-minute episode yet, and I doubt any problems will occur until after I do. I had a problem with this channel about a week ago (there was 3-minute episode), but I didn't think much of it at the time. I just assumed there was a problem with the channel guide and erased it. (I don't recall seeing a one-time record channel associated with that event, though.) By the way... the only (unexplainable) problems I've had have been with this show.


Other than the power-failure theory (which seems unlikely since there was no other indication of a failure), the only thing I can think of is if I hit some sort of boundary condition: The Little Bear channel was set up as a 3-hour guaranteed theme-based channel. In looking at the unit I see that there are currently 6 episodes in the channel. Five of them are 30-minutes, and the other is the 5-minute "oddity."


I'm thinking that Little Bear might not compress as well as other (normal) shows such that 2 hours and 35 minutes occupies what the recorder considers to be 3 hours worth of disk space. In that case, when the show began, the recorder might have thought it had 30 minutes available in the channel and started to record. But because of the (presumed) poor compression characteristics of the show, the channel filled up after 5 minutes. At that point, the recorder would have had 4 options. It could have deleted other content from the channel, stopped recording, continued recording in the channel, or stored the remainder of the show in a newly created channel.


I think the best thing to do in this case would have been to enlarge the channel and store the entire episode there. (After all, I set it up to hold 3 hours worth of content.) I can understand, however, that the nature of how the unit deals with guaranteed space might make this difficult, and perhaps even disadvantageous.


So the question is: Am I just grasping at straws here? Is it possible that this is what caused the problem? If so, what would the unit do if it ran into this problem in conjunction with show-based channels? If not, what other possibilities are there? Any input would be appreciated.


One other thing... The Little Bear theme was created based on the show title rather than a keyword, yet the show "Little Bill" is also recording in that channel. I think this is caused by incorrect listings in the channel guide. (The show Little Bill is being listed as Little Bear in the program guide for Cablevision of Connecticut.) Could one of you Replay folks forward this information to the appropriate place (or tell me where to forward it)?

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no offense taken. Living in New Hampshire, the power goes out ALL THE TIME (thanks Public Service of New Hampshire http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/frown.gif ) I have had this situation happen and have gotten the split episodes. Also, I believe ReplayMike has mentioned it in the forum at least once before. I don't know if this would happen on a brownout though. Maybe Mike can update us on this.


Or, better yet, maybe Mike can send me the code and I can research it for myself... http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/wink.gif

-ken


[This message has been edited by ken.kipnes (edited 10-02-2000).]

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Hey, maybe if you guys paid taxes or something, you'd have a better infrastructure! http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/tongue.gif


(...says the neighbor from taxachusetts)


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-=- Glenn -=-


[This message has been edited by riker (edited 10-02-2000).]

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jealous? http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif


I had a "conversation" with PSNH management two weeks ago when the power went out for 12 hours. A squirrel jumped on a "bushing" and his tail hit another bushing, so a substation was fried. I said in all the time I lived in massachusetts that never happened - are the squirrels different there? I also found out they don't pay damages caused by "act of squirrel".


-ken