TiVo Community Forum banner
  • TiVoCommunity.com Ambassador Program Now Open! >>> Click Here

Overlapping recordings cause glitch?

19K views 111 replies 37 participants last post by  mattack 
#1 ·
I had several recordings scheduled with start/end set to 1 minute extra at either end. Two of these (at least) were on the same channel (BBC America, Doctor Who specials), and I noticed both recordings have a brief glitch with video pausing and pixellating at just about exactly the 1 minute mark where the Roamio would have been cranking up (or finishing, depending on how you look at it) the next show on the same channel.

Is this merely a coincidence, or have others seen the same thing with overlapping recordings on the same channel?

I guess I should experiment with explicitly recording some stuff that will overlap and see if it happens every time.
 
#2 ·
People have speculated that TiVo is trying to implement single-tuner overlap for recording consecutive programs with time extensions on the same channel, a great feature if it works. The straightforward way of doing that would be to just copy the blocks of video data that represent the overlapping minutes. That copying code should run at a lower priority level, but maybe they just wrote it into the high-priority recording code, and glitches occur because there isn't enough buffering around (programmed or on-drive) to cover the extra time needed. I think this has been mentioned before.
 
#3 ·
I have season passes for such things as football and basketball games. I have set these to add 1 1/2 hours at the end. My experience is that when there's 2 end to end games on the same channel that it fails to record the second one entirely.

It shows the second one in the todo list until the first one completes and then the second one disapears and does not record with a history item saying failed to record - no longer in guide.

I've now had to keep checking the todo list for these sorts of situations and create a manual record to get both and then cancelling the others in the todo list.
 
#4 ·
People have speculated that TiVo is trying to implement single-tuner overlap for recording consecutive programs with time extensions on the same channel, a great feature if it works. The straightforward way of doing that would be to just copy the blocks of video data that represent the overlapping minutes. That copying code should run at a lower priority level, but maybe they just wrote it into the high-priority recording code, and glitches occur because there isn't enough buffering around (programmed or on-drive) to cover the extra time needed. I think this has been mentioned before.
So they have 6 tuners, and *now* they are trying to minimize the number in use? :). I could have used it on my 2 tuner premiere.
 
#5 ·
I'll confirm what you are saying; in my case overlapping recording of two consecutive MSNBC shows is a certain way to lock up the Tuning Adapter.

I have the tuning adapter on a lamp timer to give it a reboot once a day. That way, a lockup doesn't kill a weeks' worth of shows when I'm out of town.
 
#6 ·
I have season passes for such things as football and basketball games. I have set these to add 1 1/2 hours at the end. My experience is that when there's 2 end to end games on the same channel that it fails to record the second one entirely.

It shows the second one in the todo list until the first one completes and then the second one disapears and does not record with a history item saying failed to record - no longer in guide.

I've now had to keep checking the todo list for these sorts of situations and create a manual record to get both and then cancelling the others in the todo list.
I just had something like this happen with the football playoff games. A tough way to find out you didn't get the 2nd game. I came here searching for answers. I scheduled both to record, with extra time for each in case they ran over. The second game didn't record, with a not in the history section saying failed to record - no longer in guide. Any answers on how to prevent this would be greatly appreciated.
 
#7 ·
I just had something like this happen with the football playoff games. A tough way to find out you didn't get the 2nd game. I came here searching for answers. I scheduled both to record, with extra time for each in case they ran over. The second game didn't record, with a not in the history section saying failed to record - no longer in guide. Any answers on how to prevent this would be greatly appreciated.
I just spoke to TIVO Customer Service. They have nothing on record about this problem. It's been escalated. I'll repost when I hear back from them.
 
#8 ·
I have season passes for such things as football and basketball games. I have set these to add 1 1/2 hours at the end. My experience is that when there's 2 end to end games on the same channel that it fails to record the second one entirely.

It shows the second one in the todo list until the first one completes and then the second one disapears and does not record with a history item saying failed to record - no longer in guide.

I've now had to keep checking the todo list for these sorts of situations and create a manual record to get both and then cancelling the others in the todo list.
Happens to me as well, but not all the time, so it is not easily repeatable. I had decided to record a series marathon, and had a 5 minutes padding at the end. 3 out of 15 or so episodes did not record with "no longer in guide" item in History. Last one I cought not recording, and manualy switched to that channel. It was showing OK, so I hit the record buton (it was just 15 minutes into the show). Possibly worth noting is that the buffer started at 5 minutes after the beginning. After that, I removed the padding from the SP, and no issues so far for the rest of the marathon.
This must be related to their effort to handle 2 consecutive overlapping recordings on the same channel using only one tuner. Odd that they started doing this after offering 4+ tuners.

Also of note is that this happens to premieres as well:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=9957431#post9957431
 
#10 ·
Happens to me as well, but not all the time, so it is not easily repeatable. I had decided to record a series marathon, and had a 5 minutes padding at the end. 3 out of 15 or so episodes did not record with "no longer in guide" item in History. Last one I cought not recording, and manualy switched to that channel. It was showing OK, so I hit the record buton (it was just 15 minutes into the show). Possibly worth noting is that the buffer started at 5 minutes after the beginning. After that, I removed the padding from the SP, and no issues so far for the rest of the marathon.
This must be related to their effort to handle 2 consecutive overlapping recordings on the same channel using only one tuner. Odd that they started doing this after offering 4+ tuners.

Also of note is that this happens to premieres as well:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=9957431#post9957431
I think it happens when the padding goes over 1 hour, which is why it started for you after 12 eps were padded 5 minutes each.
 
#12 ·
I think it happens when the padding goes over 1 hour, which is why it started for you after 12 eps were padded 5 minutes each.
Doubtfull. The episodes missed were #7, #10, and #13.

Also, I had Saturdays's football games paded by an hour (seems to be a common thing to have a padded NFL Football wishlist), and it recorded the second one OK, so I can not reproduce the issue reliably, it seems kind of random.

By the way, I do have a tuning adapter.
 
#13 ·
I've never run into this overlap issue since I rarely pad recordings. So I purposely setup a recording after one of the football games. The football games are one of the SPs I have that extend one hour. But i never have any recordings directly after. So I setup a recording for one of the shows that was supposed to occur directly after the game. The game and the extra hour was recorded fine, but the show, The OT, says in the History, that it was not recorded because the power was lost. Which of course it certainly not true.

In the past something like this would have just used another tuner to record. WHich makes more sense to me anyway. Especially since I only had three tuners out of six recording at the time.
I don't know if the problem was because the show was a full half hour long instead of a few minutes or what. But I had never run into this before so I figured I would intentionally force my TiVo into this situation. Fortunately I don't need to worry about this in normal use.
 
#14 ·
I've never run into this overlap issue since I rarely pad recordings. So I purposely setup a recording after one of the football games. The football games are one of the SPs I have that extend one hour. But i never have any recordings directly after. So I setup a recording for one of the shows that was supposed to occur directly after the game. The game and the extra hour was recorded fine, but the show, The OT, says in the History, that it was not recorded because the power was lost. Which of course it certainly not true.

In the past something like this would have just used another tuner to record. WHich makes more sense to me anyway. Especially since I only had three tuners out of six recording at the time.
I don't know if the problem was because the show was a full half hour long instead of a few minutes or what. But I had never run into this before so I figured I would intentionally force my TiVo into this situation. Fortunately I don't need to worry about this in normal use.
We pad 60min 1 hour and the Good Wife 1 hour, at the end of the first hour two tuners are recording CBS, one for the extra 1 hour of 60min and the other starting to record the Good Wife, so this type of padding takes up two of my six tuners, but if you had a conflict with programs you might knock out the 2nd program.
 
#15 ·
These are serious issues that I thought would have been taken care of with the last software update. There are all sorts of bugs with overlapping programs. Another one is when a second manual program is overlapped, the overlapped portion will be lost from the manual program.

While an overlapped portion is recording I've had the info button and recording lights indicate that no recording was occurring at all.... but once the overlapping is done the 2nd program shows up as being recorded. There are other tuners available.... so just use those!
 
#16 ·
These are serious issues that I thought would have been taken care of with the last software update. There are all sorts of bugs with overlapping programs. Another one is when a second manual program is overlapped, the overlapped portion will be lost from the manual program.

While an overlapped portion is recording I've had the info button and recording lights indicate that no recording was occurring at all.... but once the overlapping is done the 2nd program shows up as being recorded. There are other tuners available.... so just use those!
I do overlapping all the time but I have never had to use the manual record to do this overlapping so I have never had the problem you talking about.
 
#17 ·
Had this issue appear again tonight with shows I have setup as season passes with 2 minutes of padding on each end. I was set to record The Goldbergs on ABC after Agents of Shield. I checked 10 minutes after the Goldbergs was set to start and the history shows that it wasn't being recorded because it was 'No longer on guide'. Same thing with New Girl which was set to record on FOX after Brooklyn 99. Luckily I caught that both weren't recording and they were still in the buffer so I was able to manually record them. Really irritated that this behavior is back. Previously this issue was present but it went away after an update when Tivo decided not to try to use a single tuner on back to back recordings. The most recent update brought back the single tuner back to back recording 'feature' and issues. Having to babysit the Tivo rather defeats the purpose, I'd say.
 
#18 ·
My first Roamio stopped working after 3 weeks, so Tivo replaced it. I've had this for 3 months and all was fine until about 2 weeks ago when I could not record back to back shows that overlapped on same channel. From these posts, I understand that this is some new software issue that Tivo installed in our units. The ONLY reason I bought a Roamio was for the 4 tuners. I wanted to record 1 show at a time on the same channel without having to record 2 or 3 hours and then go back and forth to watch what I want. This makes the Roamio worthless for us! It is no better than the old ones. I hope they read this and get it fixed or we may switch.
 
#19 ·
Had this issue appear again tonight with shows I have setup as season passes with 2 minutes of padding on each end. I was set to record The Goldbergs on ABC after Agents of Shield. I checked 10 minutes after the Goldbergs was set to start and the history shows that it wasn't being recorded because it was 'No longer on guide'. Same thing with New Girl which was set to record on FOX after Brooklyn 99. Luckily I caught that both weren't recording and they were still in the buffer so I was able to manually record them. Really irritated that this behavior is back. Previously this issue was present but it went away after an update when Tivo decided not to try to use a single tuner on back to back recordings. The most recent update brought back the single tuner back to back recording 'feature' and issues. Having to babysit the Tivo rather defeats the purpose, I'd say.
Were all your tuners active at the time? In other words....would the Tivo not have been able to record all the shows because of the overlapping?

This bug/feature definitely is back from being disabled previously.

For example, last night my Tivo (Plus) did record all the shows you had set (with padding)....but I'm guessing it's because not all 6 of my tuners were needed at once.

I think this problem occurs because Tivo is trying to share a tuner when it detects the 2nd show can't be recorded because all tuners are in use.

-Kevin
 
#20 ·
Were all your tuners active at the time? In other words....would the Tivo not have been able to record all the shows because of the overlapping?

This bug/feature definitely is back from being disabled previously.

For example, last night my Tivo (Plus) did record all the shows you had set (with padding)....but I'm guessing it's because not all 6 of my tuners were needed at once.

I think this problem occurs because Tivo is trying to share a tuner when it detects the 2nd show can't be recorded because all tuners are in use.

-Kevin
Kevin - I think you're spot on. If everything would have been recording on its own tuner at around 8pm, I would have needed 7 tuners to handle it all, not the 6 on my Roamio Plus.

I'll have to play around and perhaps set manual back to back overlapping recordings tonight and see if the issue appears if there are extra tuners available.
 
#21 ·
Kevin - I think you're spot on. If everything would have been recording on its own tuner at around 8pm, I would have needed 7 tuners to handle it all, not the 6 on my Roamio Plus.

I'll have to play around and perhaps set manual back to back overlapping recordings tonight and see if the issue appears if there are extra tuners available.
That's what I was seeing. When I first got the Roamio Plus I had a Tues. night where I would have needed 8 tuners....but somehow Tivo was using it's overlap feature to share and try to get all the recordings. Of course, it didn't really work :rolleyes:

I'm not sure why they put in back in the production software after taking it out.....seems that it's just far to buggy right now to have in production software.

That's also how I tested in the past......you just need to have all tuners being used to record and setup one back-to-back recording during that time.

-Kevin
 
#22 ·
I've reported this to Tivo several times. Broken 2 months now & the response is "they are aware of it & working on it" which is better than their previous support trying to blame the problem on my tivos. Since I have 2 boxes doing the exact same thing their troubleshooting steps are (were) less than worthless.

Why does it take them 2 months to fix what they broke in one update?
 
#23 ·
I've reported this to Tivo several times. Broken 2 months now & the response is "they are aware of it & working on it" which is better than their previous support trying to blame the problem on my tivos. Since I have 2 boxes doing the exact same thing their troubleshooting steps are (were) less than worthless.

Why does it take them 2 months to fix what they broke in one update?
According to TivoMargret, it's fixed in the next update:


No idea when that update is, or whether they are going to really FIX it or just turn it off again.

I missed 2 shows the last 2 nights because of this.

-Kevin
 
#24 ·
Missed yet another show last night because of this padding issue "No longer in guide"

Really not pleased that we have to wait until March/April to have a fix.

Guess I have no choice but to hit every season pass and don't pad it until the fix comes out.

-Kevin
 
#26 ·
I've been checking out this padding thing lately and it's been working well the last few times I specifically looked at it. Last night it was done with the shows after the Superbowl. It even did it while I was watching something. I rewound live TV and was watching the end of the New girl recording which also was scheduled for 15 minutes of B99. And I had my B99 recording set to start with an extra 15 minutes also. At the end it turned into the B99 recording. Although it did produce a split second glitch in the recording when it did this. Otherwise it worked fine.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top