Fast-forwarding screwy? [Text View]

natallica

05-06-2005, 11:12 AM

Hello all -

I've noticed that every once in a while when I'm fast-forwarding a show, it will all of a sudden jump to a random part of a show.

For example, let's say I'm trying to get from minute 8 to minute 11, it will be fast-forwarding and then suddenly when it is on minute 10, it will jump to minute 20!

This has become more frequent since I've been updated to 7.1b.

Tivo: 80-hour Tivo-branded series 2

Has anyone else had this problem?

Thanks...

-- N

wscannell

05-06-2005, 11:24 AM

Try looking at the show in normal speed in the area where the problem occurred. It may be that there is a portion where the signal was lost or pixelization occurred. This seems to affect how fast forward works.

natallica

05-06-2005, 11:40 AM

I have tried that and I didn't notice anything. If I then move back to the time before the skip happened and try fast-forwarding again, the skip doesn't happen.

-- N

tivozealot

05-26-2005, 12:35 AM

I see the same behavior with one of my new Tivo2 units. While in FF, not touching any other buttons the Tivo will jump ahead to a random spot in the show. It seems to be around a 10 minute jump, and not to any tick mark necessarily. It seems to happen randomly (ie. you may not see it happen at all, or it might happen 2 times in an hour show).

Others haven't seen this? Any hints as to a fix?

Thanks

jlb

05-26-2005, 01:16 PM

This has happened a couple of time with my AT&TiVO Series 2. Not too big a deal, unless you are watching something like Lost, Alias, 24, Idol, etc....and you jump ahead to a reveal. That sucks when that happens.

BunkerBob

05-26-2005, 01:36 PM

You are not alone on that one I also expeirinced this when my wife and myself were watching the contender finale and my 540140 unit did this(has 7.1b). I went back to recreate the problem and couldn't. I'll report back if more problems like this occur.

natallica

05-27-2005, 01:36 PM

MiakioAmy

06-11-2005, 10:44 PM

I just got this same thing for the second time in about a week. Strange. I hope it doesn't mean my TiVo is dying.

slants

06-26-2005, 03:54 AM

I am seeing the same thing. I will fast forward and the show will suddenly jump 10-15 minutes ahead. This really sucks when you are watching sports.

martin1

06-26-2005, 07:08 AM

This could happen if the (advance button) was getting push while fast forwarding seeing as how it is right below the fast forward button.

natallica

06-28-2005, 02:31 PM

I am seeing the same thing. I will fast forward and the show will suddenly jump 10-15 minutes ahead. This really sucks when you are watching sports.

Right on...

I just spoke to Tivo tech support and the guy on the line had never heard of the issue.

He said that people experiencing this issue need to call in to report it so that it does get escalated.

You can refer to my case #: 3177767 and just tell them you're having the same fast-forwarding problem.

-- N

mccub

06-30-2005, 10:52 AM

I also have this probelm. The problem seems to happen to me while the program is still being recorded. For example, I will start watching a baseball game one hour into its actual start time while the rest of the game is still recording and I get the annoying fast forward glitch. I haven't confirmed that this is the case 100% of the time.

Has anyone else noticed this or have you had it happen after the program is finished recording??

natallica

06-30-2005, 11:39 AM

Has anyone else noticed this or have you had it happen after the program is finished recording??

I've had it happen in both situations.

I do urge you to call Tivo and tell them that you're having this problem. I think this is the only way that they'll actually look into it.

-- N

Cader

06-30-2005, 01:21 PM

I have seen this too.
I see is mostly when a show is still recording like mccub.

When I see it I usaually go back to the beginning of the show.

I have also seen it when rewinding.

mccub

07-01-2005, 12:42 PM

I've had it happen in both situations.

I do urge you to call Tivo and tell them that you're having this problem. I think this is the only way that they'll actually look into it.

-- N

I called Tivo today and was told that there will be a software update coming out in the next month or so that will fix a variety of bugs. He is not sure that this problem will be one of the ones fixed, but there is a good chance it will be.

So...we'll see.

bosox18

08-24-2005, 10:28 PM

I'm glad I'm not the only one. Thought I was crazy. I get the skip all the time when watching baseball games I've recorded (or am recording). Haven't noticed if it happens only when I'm still recording.

Very annoying.

timckelley

08-25-2005, 05:29 PM

I rarely use the FF button because I use the 30 sec skip, and so I guess I'm mostly immune to this problem.

mhalver

11-03-2005, 02:34 AM

I seem to be having the same problem. It seems to jump about 10 minutes when it does it. I had thought maybe that I just wasn't paying attention how far I had fastforwarded, but tonight I happened to be looking at the progress bar when it did it and saw that it just jumps suddenly.

I believe that it has done it to me four times in the past two months.

jlb

11-03-2005, 03:13 PM

I rarely use the FF button because I use the 30 sec skip, and so I guess I'm mostly immune to this problem.

Of course if you have a reboot or power outage and didn't know it, and then went and watch something like sports, or whatever, it really really sucks.

sghogan

02-25-2006, 08:42 AM

Just to update this thread. I have also had this problem.

thenightfly42

02-26-2006, 04:30 PM

Check out this thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=273243) for tracking down the symptoms; I think I figured it out there. Also, from my PMs with TivoJerry, I understand that TiVo Engineering has a unit in-house that has this bug. Whether or not it turns into a fix, we will have to see.

NotVeryWitty

02-27-2006, 08:56 AM

I'm still seeing this issue, too. Two or three times this last week, I was watching something on the Olympics a couple hours behind real time. Went to 2xFF through a commercial, and suddenly the Tivo has skipped ahead about 10 minutes and a new sport is on.

Very frustrating that this bug still hasn't been fixed. :mad:

sghogan

03-10-2006, 05:34 PM

I believe that this problem is occurring more often for me. Happens when watching live TV , behind in the buffer.

zaoliyik

03-11-2006, 03:22 AM

Yes. This is extremely irritating -- especially when watching sports and then you see a final result without seeing the whole game!

Someone at the official Tivo forums posted a thread about this same issue. I am now trying to find out how we can escalate this to a bug with Tivo. Anyone know if we all have to call in to complain about the same issue?

-- N

I use my tivo to record history channel's documantary all the time, when this happen, it really sucks, you learn that such and such actually win the war without seeing the whole show.

TiVoJerry

03-16-2006, 01:54 PM

I'm sorry to say that there is not yet a fix for this. We have been following this issue for some time and the investigation is still ongoing. I've even worked directly with several forum members in order to understand the problem better. Unfortunately, the issue is impossible to reproduce at will and does not seem to generate useful log entries, making this extremely difficult to diagnose.

My personal understanding is that this mostly happens while FF'ing through a program that is still being recorded, which explains why many of the examples I've been given are of sporting events. It may also be the case that it happens during playback of a previously recorded program while another recording is in progress, but that has been even harder to determine at this point.

Has anyone here been able to reproduce this at will?

thenightfly42

03-16-2006, 03:19 PM

Has anyone here been able to reproduce this at will?
Did the first post in this thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=273243) make any sense or not work for you? It worked for me. I could try it again, see if it holds true with the software upgrade (I'm on 7.2.1, requested the update yesterday).

TiVoJerry

03-16-2006, 03:52 PM

I was unaware of that thread. If you could test it again to make sure it holds up, I'll add it to the report. Thank you.

NotVeryWitty

03-16-2006, 03:54 PM

Jerry,

I'm one of the people this is happening to a lot. I cannot make the problem happen "at will", but I *almost always* see it at least once if I'm watching a sporting event that was set to record for at least 3 hours, and I start watching it some amount of time (like maybe a half hour or more) behind the record point.

I am absolutely convinced that a necessary condition to have this problem happen is to watch a show that is still being recorded. I have only seen it happen while doing a 2xFF, but I almost never do 3xFF, so I don't know if it happens then or not. I would guess I've hit this problem at least 50 times over the last year.

I believe it does *not* happen when watching a prerecorded show while recording a *different* show. Very often, I'm recording something new while watching an older show, and I have *never* encountered this problem in this environment.

The other thing I am sure of is that the amount it skips ahead is not a fixed amount -- I have seen some skips of 8 minutes, and others about 15 minutes. Once, I was watching the "progress bar" at the bottom of the screen while doing 2xFF, and I saw it jump from 30 minutes to 38 minutes.

It happens on both of my 240-series boxes, one is 80 GB and the other is 140 GB (both unmodified). I usually record at medium quality.

If I can help in any way, please let me know.

natallica

03-16-2006, 03:58 PM

I am absolutely convinced that a necessary condition to have this problem happen is to watch a show that is still being recorded. I have only seen it happen while doing a 2xFF, but I almost never do 3xFF, so I don't know if it happens then or not. I would guess I've hit this problem at least 50 times over the last year.

I believe it does *not* happen when watching a prerecorded show while recording a *different* show. Very often, I'm recording something new while watching an older show, and I have *never* encountered this problem in this environment.

Not here. It happens all the time w/pre-recorded shows...

Doing a 2xFF, usually skips 10 min...

-- N

NotVeryWitty

03-16-2006, 04:01 PM

I was unaware of that thread. If you could test it again to make sure it holds up, I'll add it to the report. Thank you.
Here is my current list of threads. I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but I could not find any mention of this problem before January 2005, so I wonder if the bug was introduced as part of the 7.0 release...

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=238582

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=218903

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=237522

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=228910

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=3502153

thenightfly42

03-24-2006, 01:31 PM

I was unaware of that thread. If you could test it again to make sure it holds up, I'll add it to the report. Thank you.
I just hit one on Wednesday accidentally (I wasn't going to do the test until this weekend).

Watching Lost, padded by 2 minutes on both ends. At the moment that the recording ended (I think that makes it 10:05 EST, IIRC Lost was an extra minute), my fastforward indicator hit the 0:30 mark, and it jumped ahead. (Note that there is no TiVo sound effect registring the jump; it just happens.)

Everything from this point forward has been rectallly extracted by yours truly:

I believe that there is something in the fastforward code that is confused by the tick marks in the display code. Perhaps the "make the green line X% of the total bar" code is referenced at the wrong time, and the calculation of "display this frame next" comes up with the wrong result?

mhalver

04-28-2006, 02:50 AM

Still seeing this here, and quite often recently (2 or three times a show for the last few days).

It usually happens when I am watching something previously recorded with nothing else actually recording.

It seems to occur more often if there is a lot of stuff recorded. If I delete till my tivo is almost empty, it is less likely to happen. Maybe it has something to do with the drive being fragmented?

dcahoe

04-30-2006, 09:49 PM

mhalver

05-02-2006, 06:40 PM

I have noted with TiVoPlayList (http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/c/dcahoe/tivo/index.htm) that TiVo pre-allocates a chunk of disk space as it records a show and then as it fills this chunk it pre-allocates another chunk until it fills it and so forth...

I believe that what may be happening is that when people are watching a show that is currently being recorded AND they are fast-forwarding when this new 'chunk' is allocated, their current position skips ahead by the same amount as the newly allocated 'chunk' of space.

That makes since, but I almost never see it when something is recording. Almost always when the tivo is not recording anything and I am watching a pre-recorded program. Maybe less than 10% of the occurances are when it is recording.

I don't know what sort of disk maintanance the TiVo does, but could this have something to do with the disk becoming fragmented? It seems more likely to happen when I have a lot of stuff saved, and others have noted the same phenomenon.

mhalver

05-06-2006, 02:56 AM

Has there been any further progress made on figuring this out?

smith1190

05-08-2006, 12:17 AM

I don't know if this helps, but this used to happen to me when I activated the feature that quickly clears the green bar (blanking on the term). I liked having it disappear quickly when I'm watching sports so it doesn't obscure any action or stats. As long as I keep that "hidden" feature off, it never happens - for months now it's never happened again. And I found that hitting Play again clears the green bar anyway, so I've just stopped using it. If anyone knows that's been resolved, please let me know so I can try it again. Thanks.

NotVeryWitty

05-08-2006, 11:53 AM

I don't know if this helps, but this used to happen to me when I activated the feature that quickly clears the green bar (blanking on the term).

I have never had this feature enabled, but see the problem frequently (when watching a ball game that's still being recorded).