I've had this problem a couple of times and I'm wondering if it's something I did.

Had the Toppy set to record Survivor (Ch9 7.30pm), CSI NY (Ch9 9.30pm). At 10.30pm I saw that CSI NY had finished so I pressed STOP as I had set it to run 15 mins over in case Eddie Maguire appeared on screen and delayed every show that night.

I checked to make sure that Enterprise was set to begin recording at 11.50pm on Ch9 (which it was) so I turned off the Toppy confident in the knowledge it would power on and record as always.

Anyway I check this morning and no Enterprise!!!

Could it be something to do with stopping CSI NY and powering off? I've never had a problem with the Toppy doing this before unless the time stamp was stuffed up, which it doesn't appear to be in this case.

I'm using the latest Australian December firmware.

If you're anything like me you set the timer using the TED EPG, then brought the start time forward because ENT often starts a bit early. When you do this, the date doesn't tick back from Wednesday to Tuesday, it stays on Wednesday, and thus you have just set a timer for 11.50 Wed night. (Check your recordd schedule and see).

Well, that's what I did. Fortunately i noticed at midnight it hadn't started recording and immeditely realised why. I think this is one for the firmware guys to look into.

I dont use the EPG but set it manually to start ten minutes early so that shouldn't have been an issue.

Hmmm... is it still showing in the record schedule or did it disappear?

Agree with Timmy that the Wed / Tues 00:00 mistake is probably you're most like likely cause (EPG aside its an easy thing to overlook). If it was then you should have Enterprise booked to go off toinght.

Are you on manual time?

Do you have the Timer Extend TAP to fix future timers?

It may well be a faulty timestamp if the answer to these is no.

Regards

Peter Gillespie

The timer still exists and it has worked every week for the last 5 weeks recording Enterprise. I do not use any TAPS or record of the EPG.

The ONLY thing I did different last night was power the unit off after CSI NY. I usually leave it running and then turn it off the following morning, but I've been a little concerned about the heat generated by the HDD in my latest rack configuration.

Sorry you didn't mention it was a weekly event so I assumed it was a one-off.

When I was away in India I set it to record Survivor, it missed random episodes for no apparent reason (April 04 firmware). The ones it did record were mostly an hour out because my friend didn't know how to adjust for daylight saving, but that's another story.

My Topfield failed to record any of my shows on monday night (which is the only decent viewing night of the week). Upon investigation all of my timers had advanced to August, 2018 - must have been fed a dodgy timestamp. Had to delete and reenter all the timers as it is not feasible to hold down the left cursor to move through 13 years to bring them back to present. Have had these "temporal anomalies" in the past but it has generally only moved timers by a few days. Have now set time mode to manual as I don't want to risk it again.

Interesting; I also had a recording failure (first one) on Monday night on WIN. I was recording Eddie McG's Millionare show (via timer) while watching 4 corners at the same time. The message "rECo" showed on the T/F display the whole time, but when I went to view the show later that night even though it was present in playlist, showed 0 Mb used and would not play!! I also use autotimer but am not clear why that should be the problem.

Any clues?

KTF

Actually now that I recall I had one of those temporal disturbances on Monday night. Partway through a DVD I realised that Desperate Housewifes wasn't recording and had to do it manually. That's why I went to such lengths to double check Tuesday night's programs.

Mmm, I wonder what would happen if the Toppy got a dodgy timestamp in the middle of a recording so that the new time was actually in the past.... It might do some sort of "abort" which could end up as being a 0Mb recording. If you look at the directory with Altair is it also showing 0Mb?

cheers,
John

Are all you guys missing recordings ensuring your Tuner is et to Tuner 4 (which tells Toppy to use any available Tuner at the time of the recording) for timed recordings? Tony's TimerExtend TAP allows you to set Tuner 4 as the default. I had the same problem as you until i did that. I also suggest you go to the March 2005 Firmware update.

How do you set it to tuner 4? Using the December FW it automatically sets the tuner.

I had the same problem until someone pointed it out to me. Use Tony's TimerEXtend TAP and set the default Timer to 4, then sort all Timers and it should reset them to 4. That should resolve all existing timers. The March Firmware, which i have downloaded and am using with no problem, should stop this from happening when you set future timers. Let me know if you need any more explanation.

I was missing programs intermittently before that just as you described - very annoying to put it mildly! Since then, not a problem.

You're right - with the Dec firmware you can install one of several taps that can do thsi automtically for you (eg PBK, TimerExtend) or you can set it manually using timer extend. BUT, this is unlikely to be your problem unless you had another timer scheduled at the time that Enterprise was recording, because it only affects dual recording / watching one channel recording the other situations.

<rant mode on> Actually, I wish we'd move away from this "tuner 4" nomenclature to "auto tuner select" - the Toppy instructions never refer to "tuner 4", and as far as I can tell, "tuner 4" only came into being because the variable 4 was used to tell the Toppy to autoselect the tuner in the TAP and firware interface. Using the name "tuner 4" is confusing!!! In any case, the March firmware does away with it entirely<rant mode off>

Cheers

Zed

I also had a problem with Desperate Housewives this week. Started recording manually and stopped it manually 1hr 51min later. Shows in recorded services list with correct duration but only 3MB file size and only runs for about 1 second.

Running March 05 f/w, Timer Extend, PBK and all timers set to Tuner 4.

Any ideas?

i've had that a few times in the past - all with Channel 7 recordings. i never worked out why. after upgrading to the Dec 04 firmware, i haven't had it occur again.

one problem i did have regularly is with Channel 7 was; if i wanted to overlap a recording (e.g. record Lost and Amazing Race as seperate recordings) - by setting one program on 7 Digital, and the second on 7 Digital 2, with a few minutes of overlap. that would produce on of those 0MB files, and run for about a second.

i managed to use this overlapping method without any problems on Channel 10, but 7 would f**k up every time. (although i haven't tested this on the March 05 firmware yet.)

unfortunately for me, i only get the one Channel 9, so can't do it with programs on 9

Never thought of overlapping via sub channels. Nice idea but only do it with 10?

missed timers could be from a faulty time stamp
change to manual time ... and reset every few days as it looses a little amount of time - as apposed to years if you get a faulty time stamp from the broadcastor

small or 0 file sizes are broadcast faults

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