DVR Chatter

Unfortunately, it's all gone. It appears your box thought the drive was corrupt and reformatted it. The drive contains the DVR related settings such as recorded and scheduled programming, along with the priority list. Favorites and other guide-related settings are stored in NVRAM.

Do you have the new software (where the MyDVR button goes to a DVR menu and not directly to recordings?) If so, I'm getting worried about this. I've been seeing more and more of this loss of programs after power loss since the new software was rolled out. Maybe one of the fixes for the 12/31/89 bug was more aggressive error checking on bootup, and it's gotten TOO aggressive.

That sucks.  Assuming that:

1. The drive is being scanned and reformatted upon boot
2. The TiVo software will be on the hard drive (I think we've pretty much determined it's too large to be stored in NVRAM)

It sounds like this issue will exist in that software as well. In fact, it may be that *everything* (including the TiVo interface) will be purged and reloaded in this situation.

"So the power went off today for an hour or so.  I start up my 3412 DVR this evening and all the pre-recorded shows are gone.  100% empty.  The series prioritys and scheduled programs are gone too.  Favorite channels are still there.  Power has gone out before and all that happens is that a show that is recording at the time is split into two segments, I've never lost everything like this."

This happened to me a week ago.  Box HD was at approx. 55% capacity.  Lost all.
I am not certain if there was a power outage - but like you I have only ever lost any portion of a recording scheduled at the time of the outage...
Very annoying.
Box has performed flwalessly since then....
Strange.
I hope this does not happen again.
- Ray
Comcast Atlanta
Fingers crossed...

So yesterday, about 5 days after the problems I related above, my 3412 stoped doing anything but showing current programs.  It showed the directory of recorded programs but wouldn't play them.  It would pause a live show but not restart.  If I changed channels, live programming would resume.  The hard drive DVR part of the box appeared to be dead.  I called it in to Comcast at around 8PM last night and by 12 noon today the repair guys were here and I have a brand new 3416 box working corectly and no cost to me.  I guess there are advantages to renting rather than owning the box.  On this one, the Comcast service was outstanding.   

PS: The service guys said that Comcast is about to come out with a bunch of DVRs abvailabel to buy.  They didn't know much more than that.  Just scuttlebut I suppose.  I wonder if they will be TIVO boxes.

jganyard wrote:

Maybe they were referring to external storage devices?  If so, I can't wait.  I probably won't buy one from the though.  I'll just wait until someone reverse engineers one and posts how to build your own (I've already got an external FW/USB 2.0 enclosure that I'm not using).

From your mouth to God's ears, and then to my living room.

Excitableboy wrote:

Now I'm wondering if leaving the DVR on all the time is such a good idea.  My 3412 was about a year and a half old and left on all the time and it acted like the  hard drive died.  When you leave a computer on, the drive is allways spinning but it isn't writing on two tracks all the time like the dvr is.  With the mute problem solved, I am wonering if turning it off when not in use may extend the life of the drive.

All turning it off does (by off, I mean with the power button) is put it in standby. It just stops buffering data, but the drive is always spinning. This will help a little bit as it reduces wear on the head movement and a bit of heat. You can get a similar effect by putting both tuners on digital music channels, although any recordings will obviously change that.

There are still occasional glitches when powering on. I've had it lock up several times. Before, the only glitch was the occasional loss of video and audio, which you could get back by playing a recording (or rebooting.)

I'm on my 2nd DVR from Comcast in Atlanta (Buckhead - Vinings Headend I think). Well, I typically am gone on the weekends and when I show back up on Sunday, the recordings are GONE! This is my 2nd box that I've been on and I do admit - I turn the box off when I leave - I'm a electricity conserver.

I'm going to try and keep the box on, but the reality of it is that it's getting more annoying as it goes on. I'm close to switching to DirecTV where my old TIVO unit NEVER lost anything. So much for "rental" equipment.

It's COMCASTIC!

FYI - I'm a former TW/Comcast executive in the Florida region. I was in charge of marketing and most customers in the system I worked in that had issues like this were readily taken care of.

I'm the one who measured power usage.  Search didn't find it because it was before the Great DVR Chatter Extinction Event back in aught 5.

I don't have access to the watt meter right now, so this is only from memory.  The 6412 used about 40 watts at all times - didn't matter what is was doing.  On, off, recording, not recording, power usage was the same.