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  • #1

    Recording Problem

    We have a Sony SAT-T60 DirecTV TiVo we've been using for probably five years now, which is exhibiting an annoying behavior, which I'll try to describe.

    The initial discovery of this problem was witnessed when trying to Play an item from the Now Playing List. The play function would start, with the progress bar at the bottom, but no video/audio would play, and the progress bar would not move or automatically hide. I believe the rotating film reel background is still visible in these cases, but we believe the film reel is not moving.

    This issue was limited, but seems to be occurring more often. We can now catch this situation while a program is trying to record, but the screen is black with no audio. Trying to play the item from the now playing list results in what I described in the previous paragraph. Even though the live TV feed is black, I don't believe its recording black, based on what we see from the now playing list.

    Going back to live TV, for a program attempting to record, but is stuck, switching to the other tuner works as expected, along with all other functions. We can stop the recording that isn't working, then change the channel on the "stuck" tuner, then change back to the desired channel, video/audio appear, and we can start recording successfully.

    I'm wondering what's causing the the recording buffer to get stuck in this manner. Could this be a hard drive issue, a file system issue, or tuner/hardware issue.

    Anyone have any ideas? Is there any other information I can provide that would be useful.
    Tags: None
  • #2
    Have you tried unplugging the unit, waiting 30 seconds, and then plugging it back in?

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    • #3
      I haven't tried a complete power off recently, and I don't recall when our last power outage was. I've only performed restarts in response to this condition.

      Since this issue is sporadic its difficult to determine quickly what actions generate a positive result, but I will try a power down and unplug for 30 seconds tonight, since my wife reports she has been seeing the problem almost once a day now, but never for something really critical.

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      • #4
        Problem Still Occurs

        After a power off (unplug for 30 seconds) just over a week ago (4/11), this problem occurred again with a 4/19 11pm recording.

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        • #5
          Reviewing Description of Problem

          Since we have this "bad" recording still on our "Now Playing List", instead of immediately deleting these, which we'd normally do, I can review the behavior.

          Everything is normal, until the "Now Playing List" item is played.

          Selecting "Play" brings up the progress bar at the bottom for a few seconds, which then goes away, like playing any other item from the "Now Playing List".

          What's different is that the green background with the spinning film reel, remains visible, but the film reel stops spinning. The TiVo guy is still visible standing on the upper left of the text area, but his antenna are not moving. The white text area frame is still visible, but all the text is no longer visible; the frame title text is also not visible. 20-25 seconds will pass, and then the "Delete this recording?" comes up, as we would expect at the end of any playback.

          I guess no one else reviewing issues in this forum has seen this annoying behavior before.

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          • #6
            That's almost definitely a bad hard drive. You should try a "replace" kit for your model; I'm pretty sure that'll fix this:

            http://www.weaknees.com/tivo-upgrade.php
            Been here a long time . . .

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            • #7
              Validating Drive is Bad

              Can I take the drive out of our TiVo, figure out what brand it is, and use the manufacturer's drive diagnostic tool to validate this presumption of a bad drive? The bootable CD diagnostics usually don't change anything on the drive, so I'm assuming this should be safe.

              Could our issue be coming from a bad sector on the disk that the TiVo keeps trying to reuse? A drive diagnostic might be able to, or want to, mark such sectors as bad. Would the TiVo stop using sectors marked as bad?

              Assuming our drive is in some pre-failure state, can I clone it to a new drive, retaining the existing settings and content? Can I clone it to a larger drive? I'm guessing our factory 35-hour unit only has a 40-GB drive, and 80-GB is really the smallest new drive one can acquire today, as is obvious from the "replace" kits.

              I assume a Sony SAT-T60 can't be software upgraded so that the "Now Playing List" has the folders option, which we'd really like to have, especially if we upgraded to a larger drive.

              P.S. I'm a systems administrator for a University department by day, dealing with all kinds of computing and hardware issues, and I haven't yet gotten into TiVo hacking, but if I'm going to open ours up anyway...

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              • #8
                Yes, you can test the drive in a non-XP PC.

                We don't recommend any "fixing" by drive manufacturers; it is rarely a long-term solution.

                You are correct--the SAT can't get folders. To clone the drive you need Linux and TiVo software tools to modify the drive.

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