187 replies to this topic

[fossicker]

This has happened to the last two recordings that I made on channel Seven Melbourne.
Recording "LOST" on Thursday, froze 34 minutes in. Recording "Category 7" tonight, froze 20 minutes in.
Had to switch off and on at the power point to reset.
This is the first time the bug has struck. PVR is 12 months old running Grobi 3.40.
Anyone else have the problem lately?

[remi]

Nope, and I've recorded a LOT of winter olympics lately. Is it overheating maybe? Hard drive almost full? Bad TV reception?

Hard locks are normally pretty rare, so sounds like something a little strange is happening.

[bobster05]

we had this happen a couple of times in a two week period when the misses was recording prime between 5-8pm so I put a 120 gig wd hdd I had laying around and there hasent been a problem since (touch wood). I think it is a hdd problem dont know why it happens thou.

[Neon Kitten]

remi, on Feb 26 2006, 10:31 PM, said:

Nope, and I've recorded a LOT of winter olympics lately. Is it overheating maybe? Hard drive almost full? Bad TV reception?

It's none of the above. The channel 7 lockup bug with the Digenius clones is well documented on this forum, and happens to me on (fortunately rare) occasions. My theory is that 7 is doing something wrong with their transmission; some have suggested it might be the time clock sent with the signal.

But believe me, it happens with a near-empty hard disk, with perfect reception and with the PVR running at a normal temperature.

Out of curiosity, could the original poster let us know which city this happened in?

[fossicker]

remi, on Feb 26 2006, 10:31 PM, said:

Is it overheating maybe? Hard drive almost full? Bad TV reception?

No, not overheating, it's in an open rack. Hard drive is almost empty, and reception is good.
I've read that others have had the same problem, on occasion, when recording Seven.

Neon Kitten, on Feb 27 2006, 12:34 AM, said:

Out of curiosity, could the original poster let us know which city this happened in?

It's channel Seven Melbourne.

[angelrose]

I had never seen this problem UNTIL I updated the firmware to the latest on the Wintal site a few weeks ago.  Then I started seeing it in about 50% of the channel 7 evening recordings.  I have since installed the firmware from GDRGuy and the problem has not yet recurred.

I am also in Melbourne.

When the problem was occurring there did seem to be more heat coming from the HD, but this may be a result of the freeze, not the cause.  My hard drive was nearly empty and I have excellent reception.

[Neon Kitten]

fossicker, on Feb 27 2006, 12:47 AM, said:

It's channel Seven Melbourne.

And so far, the ONLY reports I've seen of this bug occurring have related to channel Seven in Melbourne.

I've long hoped that someone who knows their transport streams may have seen something odd in Seven Melbourne's broadcast when they recorded it on their PC, but to date nobody seems to. If we could figure out exactly what it is they're transmitting that's causing this, we could let Seven know and hope they fix it.

One other thing: it has only ever happened to me between the hours of 7.30pm and 10.30pm. Prime time.

It has happened with every firmware I have tried. Currently I'm using Grobi's 3.41 (the only English language version of that one) and it's happened a few times over the past few months.

[angelrose]

A couple of weeks ago it happened just after 7:00pm on my wintal.  The other freezes were all between 8:30pm and 9:30pm.

Is it possible that someone else is transmitting a signal too close to channel 7's frequency, which is occasionally being picked up and causing a conflict?

[fossicker]

I wonder if this occurs on any other brand, other than Wintal.
I know that it doesn't happen to my sisters' Topfield, or my brothers' Eye TV.

[Neon Kitten]

fossicker, on Feb 27 2006, 07:44 PM, said:

I wonder if this occurs on any other brand, other than Wintal.
I know that it doesn't happen to my sisters' Topfield, or my brothers' Eye TV.

I would think it's a problem that specifically affects Digenius-based boxes (Wintal, Supernet and Digicrystal)

[bobster05]

Neon Kitten, on Feb 27 2006, 04:13 PM, said:

And so far, the ONLY reports I've seen of this bug occurring have related to channel Seven in Melbourne.

this is not the case. we live in central victoria and have had our wintal 'lockup' on two occasions in the past month while recording prime.

[Neon Kitten]

bobster05, on Feb 27 2006, 11:52 PM, said:

this is not the case. we live in central victoria and have had our wintal 'lockup' on two occasions in the past month while recording prime.

Okay, interesting. Isn't Prime affiliated with and using feeds from Seven's broadcast centre in Melbourne?

[bobster05]

Neon Kitten, on Feb 28 2006, 12:37 AM, said:

Okay, interesting. Isn't Prime affiliated with and using feeds from Seven's broadcast centre in Melbourne?

yes prime is a channel seven affiliate.

[PEEBS]

My Wintal jammed last night recording seven at about 7-45 for the 1st time in months. This has only happened to me on ch7 so it is definitely their problem.

[fossicker]

Neon Kitten, on Feb 27 2006, 12:34 AM, said:

My theory is that 7 is doing something wrong with their transmission; some have suggested it might be the time clock sent with the signal.

When you think about it, this does have some merit.
The Topfields time can be set manually, and the Eye TV on the Mac, gets the time from the Internet, and neither suffer from the Channel 7 problem.

[Mad Max]

Yep I had the same problem last night (Tuesday 7th March).  Had it set to record from 7:00pm to about 10:30pm. Got up this morning and "REC" was in the little window and no buttons worked. Powered off and back on and found it only recorded 1 hour 20 minutes, so the wife missed out on half of "Dancing with the Stars" and "All Saints" and we both missed out on the "Medical Incredible" show after that.

The previous times it happened was when I recorded a section of "Sunrise" on Prime one morning as I had to leave to get to work.  The later recordings for some afternoon shows therefore didn't record.

I've sent an email to OzAuctionBroker to see if they know of any firmware which may fix the X10-A.

Has anyone contacted Prime to see if their technicial department knows anything?

Regards

Max

[bobster05]

since I changed the hdd in the misses wintal there hasn't been a problem...touch wood:) wonder how the stock drive that came with the unit would go if it was formatted in the pc then placed back in the unit and erased.

[Neon Kitten]

Mad Max, on Mar 8 2006, 11:28 AM, said:

Has anyone contacted Prime to see if their technicial department knows anything?

I've contacted Seven's broadcast HQ in Melbourne about it before. They were interested, but needed more information - something that I'm going to try to acquire now that I have a digital tuner on my PC as well

[PEEBS]

My unit locked on seven a couple of times this week and I noticed that when I changed to my HD box it took several seconds to tune into Ch7 or 70. Does this mean ch 7 changed the MUX or somthing, I know this was a problem during the tennis.

[angelrose]

I managed to go a few weeks without locking, but it froze at about 9:15pm Mon. (Desperate Housewives), then again at about 10:30pm Tues. (All Saints).

I had also recorded Desperate Housewives on my PC TV card so I checked the recording at that point, but I couldn't find any glitches in the file.

I did a rescan of the channel 7 transponder Wednesday morning (though it probably didn't make any difference) and then got through Prison Break without a problem on Wed. night.

Edit:  Well it jammed tonight during Lost, at 9:10pm.  One thing I did notice is that all 3 jams were xx mins 58 secs.  Allowing 2 seconds for the recording to start, it seems to be jamming on a time change.

Edited by angelrose, 09 March 2006 - 08:46 PM.

[fossicker]

I have noticed that when I time slip a channel seven program, ie. start watching a program while it is still recording the program, I have never had a freeze up.
Obviously, with the randomness of the freeze ups, it's not conclusive that it won't happen.

[geewhizz]

hi all, I've noticed that channel 7 transmission output goes up and down to the extent that you can c the signal level change on my pvr. i mean up and down in front my eyes with a few seconds. no fault of the equipment. it has 2 be channel 7's transmitter! for a while there channel 7 was dropping in and out on my machine. but hasn't done it for a while. you wouldn't notice on analog tv because it's so quick.

[Munich]

I had exactly the same problem a few weeks ago (Thurs 2/3) while recording Lost and Amazing Race.  It froze midway through Lost and had REC on the Wintal Display.  I had to power down from the outlet to get it out of this frozen state.  It is a shame that I can no longer rely on the unit to record a few shows that I don't want to miss.  Luckily I was able to source the shows elsewhere.

[Munich]

This happened AGAIN during Lost last Thursday.  I am now getting very concerned about the reliability of this unit.

[boric]

Munich, on Mar 27 2006, 11:24 AM, said:

This happened AGAIN during Lost last Thursday.  I am now getting very concerned about the reliability of this unit.

Ring your supplier and complain, this is the only way it will get fixed.

It isn't a reliability issue. It is a bug in the firmware. Something is occuring in the Seven broadcast that the wintal doesn't handle and causes it to crash. No one has ever reported this to occur on chnnel other than Seven.