Digital Stream DHR-8203/5U HD-PVR Master thread - [Part Nine]

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Gavtech

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Thread Announcement.


Please note that Part Eight of this thread is now closed and all further posts should continue here in Part Nine.


For reference,

Part One can be found here

Part Two can be found here.

Part Three can be found here.

Part Four can be found here

Part Five can be found here.

Part Six can be found here

Part Seven can be found here.

Part Eight
can be found here.


Thank you.

 
Ebro said:
Hi guys. I mentioned this a few weeks ago. Wondered if any one else is seeing the same.

When I use the remote and choose "Schedule" and chose the "All" tab I see all the programs I have ever recorded, including future list (currently 69 items in the list). When I look at "Group" I see all groups schedules I have ever recorded (currently 67 items)

How can I delete / remove items from the Schedule list that have not only been watched but have also been deleted from the local hard drive?

It's a bit of a pain having to scroll through as the list gets longer.
If I delete from the schedule it would also delete any future recordings, which I obviously don't want to do.
Not sure if I quite follow what you are trying to explain.

As rip82 has already stated, ALL or SINGLE should only contain future recordings, neither of these should contain the details for recordings that have already occurred.

GROUP contains all the Series Links and these will persist even after a series has finished, it's defined by the Freeview+ spec that PVR's must remember Series Links for 90 days after the last program it saw as part of the series. This has been defined by the specs to allow for breaks in series runs, thus when the series returns after a break it will automatically pick it up for recording.

If anything is different from what I've or rip has said then could you post a photo a of your Schedule so we better understand what is occurring.
 
Is there a way to re-initialize the time shift buffer? I have paused a program on a number of occasions, but if I try to use it again for a following program before it has filled the pause will only last until the original buffer space is filled, at which time the DS reverts to live TV, losing whatever time I have been paused for. Very annoying.
 
Is there a way to re-initialize the time shift buffer? I have paused a program on a number of occasions, but if I try to use it again for a following program before it has filled the pause will only last until the original buffer space is filled, at which time the DS reverts to live TV, losing whatever time I have been paused for. Very annoying.
So are you viewing a HD program, pausing for 30 min then continue watching into the immediately following program, then pausing for another 30 miin thus filling the 1 hr HD buffer? If so then it's operating entirely as expected, if buffer becomes full then PVR will revert to live, that's the same for all makes I believe.

Can you describe more precisely the circumstances this happens? it maybe you have to do things in a different way, as the only way to re-initialise the buffer is to press stop to return to live so the buffer starts over.

Perhaps what you should be doing is once you've hit pause on the first program, when you come to resume enter Guide and select following program to record.
 
So are you viewing a HD program, pausing for 30 min then continue watching into the immediately following program, then pausing for another 30 miin thus filling the 1 hr HD buffer? If so then it's operating entirely as expected, if buffer becomes full then PVR will revert to live, that's the same for all makes I believe.

Can you describe more precisely the circumstances this happens? it maybe you have to do things in a different way, as the only way to re-initialise the buffer is to press stop to return to live so the buffer starts over.

Perhaps what you should be doing is once you've hit pause on the first program, when you come to resume enter Guide and select following program to record.

Yes, that's pretty much what's happening. Previous PVR's I've had have had a rolling buffer, recording the last hour and then dropping off the earliest recording to make way for new, or recording from the start of the buffer to the end of the program. A much better way of doing things than only recording a certain time from a fixed point. Sort of screws things up if you are watching a program and get an interruption that when added to the remaining run time of the program is longer than the buffer has left, especially as you can't save the buffered recording and watch it all later. If you know that at some point it will just throw away what you haven't seen and skip forward to real time you might as well accept that watching live TV is just too uncertain as there is no way you will see the end of the program. Sort of takes away the benefit of pausing.

Oh well. Can't have everything I suppose.
 
Not sure if I get you, it is a rolling buffer however it is of fixed size depending on your Preference selection :confused:

For example:

8pm Start watching BBC HD

8:30pm Pause live

9pm Resume watching BBC HD in timeshift from time mark 8:30pm, 30min behind live so period 8:30pm to 9pm in buffer

9:30pm Pause timeshift, you are now at time mark 9pm in buffer with period 9pm to 9:30pm already in buffer, so period post 9:30 is added to buffer

9:50pm Resume watching BBC HD in timeshift from time mark 9pm, now 50min behind live with period 9pm to 9:50pm in buffer

10:00pm Pause timeshift, you are now at time mark 9:10pm in buffer, period 9:10 pm to 10:00pm already in buffer so period post 10:00pm is added to buffer

10:11pm Buffer exceeded, DS drops to live.

So are you saying previous PVR's would somehow still maintain the buffer for the previous 1hr? even if so that would still result in dropped time unless I'm misunderstanding.

Let's say PVR maintains 1hr buffer so

10:20pm Resume watching BBC HD in timeshift, as 1hr buffer is full so resumes at 9:20pm so period 9:10pm to 9:20pm you haven't watched has been dropped.
 
I don't know if this has been brought up before, or put on the wish list, but I have noticed that when I sort the Group Schedule into Name order then put the DS into standby, when I bring the DS out of standby and return to the Group Schedule it reverts back to it's original numerical order.

Ideally, I would like the sort order to be maintained. Is this possible?
 
Hi Jeff,

I think the point of difference, from your example, is the 10:11pm "drops to live".

For example, my old PVR 'auto-plays' when the buffer is full, so you would see a 1h shifted feed on-screen, and you no longer have the ability to pause because you're at the start of the buffer and there's no more room. This is handy, for example, if you paused in some adverts, and you return 1h 3mins after pausing - nothing important lost, just 3 mins of adverts :) If you then FF through parts of the shift thereafter you can pause once more, until the pause point in the buffer matches the start point once more.

I haven't tried pausing for a full buffer with the DS; I wasn't aware it dropped to live when the buffer was full - that doesn't seem to make sense.
 
Hi Jeff,

I think the point of difference, from your example, is the 10:11pm "drops to live".

For example, my old PVR 'auto-plays' when the buffer is full, so you would see a 1h shifted feed on-screen, and you no longer have the ability to pause because you're at the start of the buffer and there's no more room. This is handy, for example, if you paused in some adverts, and you return 1h 3mins after pausing - nothing important lost, just 3 mins of adverts :) If you then FF through parts of the shift thereafter you can pause once more, until the pause point in the buffer matches the start point once more.

I haven't tried pausing for a full buffer with the DS; I wasn't aware it dropped to live when the buffer was full - that doesn't seem to make sense.
Ah ok, so if paused when buffer gets filled up it unpauses itself and starts playing again from start of buffer.

I rarely watch live tv so don't use Pause much, for me it's normally used for short breaks, like going to toilet, if it's a phone call or something else that might take more time I'll go into Guide and set it to record. You guys are aware that you can use the Guide to start recording a program that is already part way through? personally I find this the best way to deal with interruptions as I can come back to it anytime I want which can be much later or another day.
 
Ah ok, so if paused when buffer gets filled up it unpauses itself and starts playing again from start of buffer.

I rarely watch live tv so don't use Pause much, for me it's normally used for short breaks, like going to toilet, if it's a phone call or something else that might take more time I'll go into Guide and set it to record. You guys are aware that you can use the Guide to start recording a program that is already part way through? personally I find this the best way to deal with interruptions as I can come back to it anytime I want which can be much later or another day.

Yes, this can be done, but if you have already paused for a while when you decide on the need to record it you will lose everything in the buffer and only pick up from the time you started to record. This has caught me out a number of times.

I am still trying to get my head round your previous message and will come back to that when I have. Your explanation is fine in theory I think, but it makes my head hurt :) and doesn't seem to quite fit with what is actually happening. All I know is I was watching a film, and when the buffer was full there was still 10 minutes of the film left when it jumped to a point 10 minutes after the film ended. ( I had paused for 20 minutes 1 hour earlier).

This isn't the first time this has happened, but on previous occasions the pauses and amount lost was less so I didn't actually miss much.
 
Hi,
How do you guys set up your external HD drives for DIVX films?
I have a WD essentials 640mb portable drive formatted in NTFS and with around 30 films in 2 directories but the DS menu's are soooooooo slow!!
Every button press takes seconds to respond, so long that you try again then have to wait while it moves 2 spaces and press again to get it back!!!
Also which USB port is the best to use?
If I use the lower rear port the data light on the drive stays on constantly when the DS is in standby.
If I use the upper rear port the data light on the drive flashes constantly when the DS is in standby.
I both cases the drive does not go into sleep mode and gets very hot which can't be good for drive life.
Any advice greatly accepted.
Cheers.
 
Yes, this can be done, but if you have already paused for a while when you decide on the need to record it you will lose everything in the buffer and only pick up from the time you started to record. This has caught me out a number of times
Yep fully understand that, just goes to show how difficult this PVR design business is, as we all use the same set of functions in slightly different ways.

Another reason I've got into the habit of always recording if I need to take a phone call or there's some other interruption, is that I had something in the past to cause the buffer to be lost (can't remember the circumstances but it wasn't buffer full) losing a chunk of a program, so recording gives me a more secure feeling that nothing will be lost.
 
......If I use the lower rear port the data light on the drive stays on constantly when the DS is in standby.
If I use the upper rear port the data light on the drive flashes constantly when the DS is in standby
Tried the front one? I dabbled with an external drive but gave up due to, as you've pointed out, the dire access speeds. If we want to watch anything that way now I just drag it across to a USB stick and use that (truth to tell, I don't even do that now, preferring to use the DVD player instead for it's upscaling)
 
NTFS access seems to slow down the system so better to use FAT32. No problems with access speeds on a FAT32 Stick.

I think power is enabled on the USBs when in normal standby but not if Low Power SB is used - not tested extensively.
 
Another reason I've got into the habit of always recording if I need to take a phone call or there's some other interruption, is that I had something in the past to cause the buffer to be lost (can't remember the circumstances but it wasn't buffer full) losing a chunk of a program, so recording gives me a more secure feeling that nothing will be lost.
I find it annoying that if I am watching a program on timeslip and have forgotten that the next program on that channel is set to record it exits timeslip to start the recording. Has happened to me a few times now, guess I'll learn one day :facepalm:
 
I find it annoying that if I am watching a program on timeslip and have forgotten that the next program on that channel is set to record it exits timeslip to start the recording. Has happened to me a few times now, guess I'll learn one day :facepalm:

Yep, been caught by that one too. I think being able to press the record button and have it start at the beginning of the buffer is about the only reason for having sky. In every other way I find sky boxes rubbish, so can't a decent PVR manufacturer manage to achieve this?
 
NTFS access seems to slow down the system so better to use FAT32. No problems with access speeds on a FAT32 Stick.

I think power is enabled on the USBs when in normal standby but not if Low Power SB is used - not tested extensively.

FAT32 limits maximum file size to 4GB. So if you're recording a large program that will exceed this, will the DS split the recording into multiple files? Do you have to play these back individually, or is the DS intelligent enough to flow through them on playback? Just wondering, as our 500GB internal disk is hovering around pretty full and was considering an external drive to boost capacity.

In case anyone has problems formatting larger USB attached drives (both flash memory and hard drives in caddies) using standard Windows format tools, found a good, free solution with the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool.

Finally, upgraded to latest software about a week ago - easy peasy and no problems spotted so far. Only real gripe these days is that it would be nice to be able to delete stuff quicker (both a quick selection and quicker file deletion). But it's great that we keep getting updates, fantastic service from DS.

Cheers
MarkA
 
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I find it annoying that if I am watching a program on timeslip and have forgotten that the next program on that channel is set to record it exits timeslip to start the recording. Has happened to me a few times now, guess I'll learn one day :facepalm:
It may have been something like that which happened to me, thus if it's anything more than a quick break I'll record rather than pause.
 
FAT32 limits maximum file size to 4GB. So if you're recording a large program that will exceed this, will the DS split the recording into multiple files? Do you have to play these back individually, or is the DS intelligent enough to flow through them on playback? Just wondering, as our 500GB internal disk is hovering around pretty full and was considering an external drive to boost capacity.

Unless I have lost the plot with this query, external hard drives used have to be pre-formatted by the DS before they can be used as storage for programming and DS playback. The filesystem is ext2 or ext3 (I cannot quite remember which). This gets round the 4GB issue.

This does not apply to USB sticks used for firmware updates though, it is here where FAT32 seems to be required.

I'm happy to be corrected if I have got that wrong.
 
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Unless I have lost the plot with this query, external hard drives used have to be pre-formatted by the DS before they can be used as storage for programming. The filesystem is ext2 or ext3 (I cannot quite remember which). This gets round the 4GB issue.

File system is XFS which is great for linux users. Interestingly recordings on an external drive seem to delete pretty much instantly.
 
FAT32 limits maximum file size to 4GB. So if you're recording a large program that will exceed this, will the DS split the recording into multiple files? Do you have to play these back individually, or is the DS intelligent enough to flow through them on playback? Just wondering, as our 500GB internal disk is hovering around pretty full and was considering an external drive to boost capacity.

In case anyone has problems formatting larger USB attached drives (both flash memory and hard drives in caddies) using standard Windows format tools, found a good, free solution with the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool.

Finally, upgraded to latest software about a week ago - easy peasy and no problems spotted so far. Only real gripe these days is that it would be nice to be able to delete stuff quicker (both a quick selection and quicker file deletion). But it's great that we keep getting updates, fantastic service from DS.

Cheers
MarkA

Unless I have lost the plot with this query, external hard drives used have to be pre-formatted by the DS before they can be used as storage for programming. The filesystem is ext2 or ext3 (I cannot quite remember which).

Hi

My original answer was to a query about playing back DivX/Xvid AVI files and I have never had a file anywhere near 4GB in AVI format !

For archiving or moving recorded programs then the HDD must be formatted by the DHR to XFS.

Pete
 
File system is XFS which is great for linux users. Interestingly recordings on an external drive seem to delete pretty much instantly.
Thanks for the correction, I think that my EXT2/3 reference is for the Humax HD-Fox with external hdd (a unit which I started off with prior to the DS) - I told you that I was losing the plot (it's an age thing :()
 
Not sure if I quite follow what you are trying to explain.

As rip82 has already stated, ALL or SINGLE should only contain future recordings, neither of these should contain the details for recordings that have already occurred.

GROUP contains all the Series Links and these will persist even after a series has finished, it's defined by the Freeview+ spec that PVR's must remember Series Links for 90 days after the last program it saw as part of the series. This has been defined by the specs to allow for breaks in series runs, thus when the series returns after a break it will automatically pick it up for recording.

If anything is different from what I've or rip has said then could you post a photo a of your Schedule so we better understand what is occurring.

I attach a pic of my current ALL list. You will see the start of the list. As you suggest, there should be no reason to see older recorded programs, but they are definately there. I have also attached the groups list.
Would deleting older series Link programs such as my Springwatch or Magacities help?
 

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I attach a pic of my current ALL list. You will see the start of the list. As you suggest, there should be no reason to see older recorded programs, but they are definately there. I have also attached the groups list.
Would deleting older series Link programs such as my Springwatch or Magacities help?
Thanks for that, confirms there is definitely something wrong, never seen or heard of that happening before :confused:

Perhaps speak to MIT as you might have a faulty unit and enable System Logging as that might give them some insight into what is going on, see http://www.avforums.com/forums/14802379-post37.html

Unless anyone else can think of anything better, in case it is a software corruption my suggestions would be:

1. First of all try a Restore Default from Others > Mainenance. This will cause you to lose all your config included schedule timers so make a note of these before doing this.

2. Reapply latest software.

3. If above does not work, then Restore Default again but this time also do a Format Disk from Others > Disk. This will wipe all your recordings so either watch as much as you can or copy recordings to a external HDD before doing this.

Edit: Just looked at your post history and noticed you had a missed recordings issue and did a format of disk at start of July, so maybe something is not right with your unit. Has this saving of old timers always been there or has it only recently been happening?
 
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I attach a pic of my current ALL list. You will see the start of the list. As you suggest, there should be no reason to see older recorded programs, but they are definately there. I have also attached the groups list.
Would deleting older series Link programs such as my Springwatch or Magacities help?

Ebro - have you had any power cuts recently? I've noticed this happen every time we get a power cut - in fact , it's how I know if we've had one overnight. If I subsequently switch the unit off using the remote and then switch it back on again, it loses all the old timers.
 
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