My first encounter with "Toxic" recording - NBC HD The Office [Text View]

moyekj

10-19-2006, 11:28 PM

Well tonight I had an encounter with the dreaded "Toxic" recording. Had overlapping recordings scheduled:
Survivor 8:00-9:00pm from CBS HD OTA source
Office 8:30-9:00pm from NBC HD OTA source

I was watching Survivor about 20 minutes delayed from live while it was recording. Exactly at 8:30 as soon as "The Office" displayed on the front panel the S3 spontaneously rebooted.

So I sat through the reboot and as soon as the Tivo recovered and displayed Survivor and the Office on the front panel it rebooted right away again.

Sat through the reboot cycle and this time as soon as possible I navigated to To Do List and cancelled Survivor and just managed to cancel it before The Office recording kicked in again and immediately the Tivo rebooted.

Next reboot cycle I managed to then cancel The Office recording and the reboot cycle stopped. Now Playing had 2 segments of Survivor and only 1 0-length segment of The Office so it's pretty clear The Office was the toxic one.

What's weird is after all that I tuned to NBC HD OTA channel again to see if it would immediately reboot the Tivo again but from then on everything was OK and no more reboots.

I seem to recall at least 1 post in the past of someone having trouble with The Office before? Anyone else had trouble with The Office tonight?

P.S. My cable DVR recording from the cable NBC HD channel had no trouble at all and recorded The Office in full. So it's definately Tivo that has poor error handling on these "Toxic" broadcasts. What's weird too is this problem seems very show-specific.

NJChris

10-20-2006, 02:00 AM

I had the Office and Smallville recording and no reboots, but not OTA. Cable High Def.

moyekj

10-20-2006, 02:23 AM

I checked my signal strength on NBC HD OTA channel and it wasn't that great - 76. Manual doesn't say what a "good" signal should be for OTA so don't know if that's marginal or not for OTA but it probably doesn't help the situation. Though I doubt it's the problem since ER recorded fine from 10-11 on the same OTA channel. I switched all my season passes on NBC to the cable channel version of NBC HD (signal strength of 96) just the same.

Also, performing a search there was a prior report of problems recording The Office in this very forum (though not Toxic symptoms):
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=319384&highlight=The+Office

snathanb

10-20-2006, 06:27 AM

Recorded The Office off OTA HD last night, watched it this morning, no problem.

austing

10-20-2006, 10:47 AM

In Austin, TX. I did the same thing. Had Tivo record Survivor and The Office. Did not watch them until late last night, after the recordings were done. Seemed to work fine for me.

My S3 is set up only for OTA.

AbMagFab

10-20-2006, 11:44 AM

Same recordings here, OTA, no issues at all.

cwoody222

10-20-2006, 12:44 PM

I recorded Ugly Betty and Office/Earl - both on HD OTA. All recorded just fine.

moyekj

10-20-2006, 01:03 PM

Hmm OK so based on feedback so far:
1. This may have been a localized phenomenon to Los Angeles NBC HD OTA broadcast that was somehow temporarily toxic to my S3
2. Maybe a signal strength of 76 is too marginal and the S3 can't deal with it properly in some situations. Would be nice to find out from Tivo what they consider "adequate" signal strength for OTA.
3. It definately points to very poor error handling of the S3 leading to a fatal segmentation violation of some sort akin to BSOD in Windows. The fact that a different DVR in same household and recording a re-transmission of the same show had no problems recording it furthers that point.

I don't believe it could have been a bad sector on the hard drive as the reboot happened exactly when The Office recording first kicked in. Don't think there is anything wrong with NBC HD OTA local transmission in general as I've recorded many things from that channel before and after this incident.

Anyone else that has had "toxic" recordings in the past ever get any feedback from Tivo?

tluxon

10-20-2006, 03:55 PM

moyekj

10-20-2006, 04:02 PM

I don't know if there's any connection, but numerous users of the Motorola DCT-3412 in the Seattle area had problems of this exact nature occur several times a night when a firmware update was pushed out to us. Kills would happen coincident with the second tuner beginning or ending a recording. Reverting back to an earlier firmware version corrected that particular issue.

I know it's not the S3, but I thought I would mention this in case you weren't aware of it. Perhaps it's possible that symptoms such as you described could be firmware related.

Tim It seems the problem is/was very localized to that one particular show broadcast. Following that incident I had recordings going on both tuners at 10pm and 1 of the tuners was even recording from the same channel as the "toxic" case, and no more issues since. Hopefully it's a rare, freak occurence though had I not been there to cancel recordings no doubt the S3 would have been in a continuous boot/crash loop for a long while. I wish there was a way to instruct the S3 to tune to certain channel(s) upon reboot (instead of tuning to the last channels being recorded) as is possible with the Motorola DVRs.

monkeyboy1010

10-20-2006, 06:27 PM

moyekj

10-20-2006, 06:55 PM

Glad (sorta) to see that I'm not the only one who had this happen. I'm in LA, and it happened when tuning to the OTA 4-1. I was not present to witness this first hand, but the wife gave me the upshot which matches your problems. Let's hope that dosen't happen again. Thanks for the feedback. So this confirms for sure there was something toxic to the S3 about the LA OTA transmission of that particular show.

Is there an easy way to report such problems to Tivo without being on hold forever? Like an email based report of some sort pointing to this thread as a reference?

mrmike

10-20-2006, 11:22 PM

My brand new S3 spontaneously rebooted on three different occasions tonight, recording three/four different shows. Once on the first show, twice on the second pair. It also hung later when I tried to replay a partial recording of the third one. I'd recorded a couple of shows yesterday off the same channel with no issues. All OTA, all signal meters above 80. And I'm not anywhere near LA :)

(The shows were Ghost Whisperer, Close To Home+SomeRandomSuggestion(Men In Trees?), and Numbers)

moyekj

10-21-2006, 02:38 AM

Tonight again the LA OTA feed of NBC HD (4-1) caused a reboot of my S3, so there is something pretty toxic about that channel for the S3 - I've removed in from my channel list for now - the cable channel re-transmission of it seems to be OK.

mrmike

10-21-2006, 10:21 AM

I seem to have localized it to my OTA version of CBS. With the population of folks with well-documented "toxic" channels, one could hope that TiVo would be able to determine the common factor. I'd like to hope it's just a bad hard drive, but this would seem to point elsewhere.

My old LG box had PSIP issues that manifested like this occasionally, but they were related to long-distance channels that dropped in and out. When I removed them from the list of channels it got much more stable. In contrast, my local CBS OTA (58-1) has a signal strength of 92 or so pretty much all the time.

dkroboth

10-21-2006, 03:51 PM

I seem to be having the toxic problem with 4-1 OTA in LA with the UCLA game which is being broadcast.

moyekj

10-21-2006, 05:09 PM

I seem to be having the toxic problem with 4-1 OTA in LA with the UCLA game which is being broadcast. Yup, that's the NBC HD OTA channel that's toxic to the S3 alright.

Desktop Icon

10-21-2006, 10:06 PM

I also had a problem with Survivor on 10/19. I was recording it on CBS-HD along with Earl/Office on NBC-HD, and tried to start watching Survivor at about 8:25pm. The info screen said that it was 25 minutes into the recording, but when I tried to play it, I had a blank screen and the progress bar showed 0 minutes.

I killed the recording and went to live TV and found I could view Survivor just fine. But when I hit the Record button, it blanked out again. We ended up watching Survivor in real time (gasp!)... meanwhile, the NBC shows recorded fine. Incidentally, this exact recording combination has been working perfectly for the past month.

The next day I discovered that my program guide was corrupted and showing numerous duplicate channels. Thinking that this was maybe the culprit, I reran Guided Setup, which cleared out the dupes. I haven't recorded much of anything since then, so I can't tell if it fixed the original problem.

But it certainly is interesting that this one Survivor episode seems to have been problematic for so many people. Maybe it's just Tivo's way of telling us that this season is rather boring and we shouldn't be watching it?

moyekj

10-21-2006, 11:47 PM

But it certainly is interesting that this one Survivor episode seems to have been problematic for so many people. Maybe I'm missing something but where are all the reports of problems with Survivor (which is on CBS)? This thread has revealed that it's Los Angeles NBC HD OTA broadcast that is sporadically toxic for the Tivo S3.

jeffk_1138

10-23-2006, 01:31 AM

I'm in LA (Culver) with OTA only and am experiencing reboots and trouble with CBS in general. This evening, my tivo was recording two streams (The Amazing Race and a suggestion). I turned on the TV, hoping for the best and found a grey screen. Changing the channel from 2.1 (60) to 4.1 caused the machine to reboot.

I have a roof mounted antenna and strong signal strength across the board. However, in the last two weeks, CBS has dropped in strength and I'm at a loss to explain why. I'll get on the roof and check the aim and perhaps recable to antenna to home run portion of the cabling.

I'm concerned that changing the channel caused the S3 to reboot twice tonight (granted, it's now a low strength signal, but I wouldn't expect the box to die).

Is anyone else experiencing reboots when changing to a suspect channel?

moyekj

10-23-2006, 01:41 AM

jeffk_1138, yes you must avoid 4.1 feed in the LA area with the S3 - you are at least the 3rd person to report reboot problems due to that feed. In my case switching to the cable rebroadcast of that channel worked so I have filtered 4.1 out of my channel list for now. In another thread someone with a similar problem claimed he is working with Tivo engineering on the problem so hopefully the upcoming "November" software update will contain a fix.

jeffk_1138

10-23-2006, 02:55 AM

moyekj, thanks for the response. 2.1 is also problematic for me. As I'm over the air only (and get questionable analogue), I may have to do without 4.1 for a while. Any idea as to the technical reason behind this?

Looking forward to November...

jeffk_1138

10-23-2006, 03:47 AM

Just tried a full sweep of all the channels. I came 'round the horn back to 2.1 (still a grey screen) and then to 4.1 - reboot. I had been watching a show on 4.1 for ten minutes before deciding to test all the channels I could receive. My S3 made it halfway through the THX logo and then rebooted again...

... second reboot was successful to the interface and then rebooted again when I tried to change the channel from 4.1 to something else ...

... back up and running, but can't say I'm thrilled about the relationship between OTA tuner difficulties and full reboots.

infinitespecter

10-23-2006, 05:53 AM

Add me to this list. My S3 rebooted constantly during Heroes and an old episode of Star Trek. This is lame. My relatively ?simple? Sony DVR (which is actually more customizable) didn't even pull crap like this.

moyekj

10-23-2006, 11:20 AM

I think there are enough of us having these problems we need to make sure Tivo is aware of them and working on them. Being new to Tivo I have not gone through the bug reporting process. Does anyone know the best approach to take to report problems?

From tivo.com this is the "Contact support" page:
http://customersupport.tivo.com/ContactSupport.aspx
It states there is no email support at this time which is really ridiculous since that's by far the most convenient way to provide all the details along with links to threads such as these.

jmjerome

10-23-2006, 10:31 PM

I'm having the problem now with 4.1 NBC HD and it's been going on for 40 minutes. I don't know how to stop this. Can anyone help me out here?

jmjerome

10-23-2006, 10:33 PM

It finally stopped rebooting.

dkroboth

10-23-2006, 11:07 PM

Freakin' Heros reboot loop!

Remember, you can always unplug the antenna if you need it to stop rebooting :down:

jodell

10-24-2006, 11:14 AM

I ran into the KNBC 4-1 (Los Angeles) toxic channel problem last night. I was watching my recording of Monday Night Football. As soon as the S3 started recording Studio 60 from channel 4-1, my S3 rebooted. The S3 continued rebooting until 9:25 when all of the sudden it stopped. The S3 then continued to record the rest of Studio 60 on 4-1.

I haven't watched recording to see if viewing causes a reboot as well.

This morning, I used the guide to tune to 4-1 and I started another reboot loop. I found that I had about 3 minutes while the S3 was "collecting program information" after the reboot to make changes before the next reboot happened. I removed 4-1 from the channels list and the S3 seemed stable.

Did TiVo support offer any suggestions? I will call later when I can dedicate the time to sit on hold for a while.

Thanks,
Jeff

moyekj

10-24-2006, 11:28 AM

If someone calls this in about this please refer them to this thread as there is ample testimony here of people in LA area having problems with 4-1 and their S3.

moyekj

10-24-2006, 12:45 PM

Just called this in - there was actually no hold time on the phone and the CSR was very polite and helpful taking down the details of the problem. He put me on hold for a while to talk to others about this and came back a few minutes later with the following news:

Tivo engineering is aware of the "Toxic Channel" problem and are working on it. The upcoming Tivo software update due in 2-4 weeks may have a fix for the problem, but the CSR could not guarantee for sure that the problem would be fixed with the update.

I volunteered to capture a sample of 4-1 with my PC HD tuner card and send it to Tivo for further analysis. The reply was that it was fairly easy for Tivo to setup a Tivo S3 in the Southern California region to look at this problem further if necessary.

So in short it seems for now the best that can be done for now is wait for the next software update to hit to see if the problem then goes away. I was glad to hear that Tivo engineering is aware of and working on the problem at least.

I would encourage others that have had this problem to call in with the details to ensure this problem is getting the proper attention - it was a short phone call for me:
* Number: 877-367-8486
* Automated system with voice recognition answers.
* Say yes to 1st question that you are calling in regards to the Tivo Series 3
* Select technical support and wait for a CSR

Cloud

10-25-2006, 11:51 AM

Mine rebooted a few weeks ago recording survivor and smallville. I can't play the either show back or it reboots every singel time at the 8 min mark on both shows... blah.

Oh, this was cable, one digital and one analog.

Robert Deckman

10-26-2006, 09:56 AM

moyekj

10-26-2006, 11:54 AM

I too experienced the problem on Monday night. I had Studio 60 and What About Brian scheduled to record at the same time (over the air HD). When I played them back, the first 14 minutes of each were missing. The TiVo log said that the box had experienced a power failure.

I won't be recording any NBC-HD over the air programs on that box until I know the problem is fixed. It would really help if you could spend a few minutes to call in with your problem just to re-enforce to Tivo this problem is affecting many people in the LA region and other markets such as Boston.

rickh710

10-26-2006, 12:35 PM

I too am in Los Angeles and encountered this problem last night (10/25). Had recordings of "30 Rock" and "Jericho" scheduled on the NBC and CBS HD OTA channels - first 4 minutes were cut off on each (from a reboot I assume). I'm gonna have to rework those season passes to record from HD cable feeds until we get a fix. I'll place a call to report the issue as well.

nreuben

10-26-2006, 12:36 PM

Just got my S3 last night. Hooked up the OTA and tuned to channel 4-1 rebooted continuosly for a while but then it works some times. Signal strength around 70.

When it works though, OTA was great - I'm impressed.

Interestingly, I scheduled a recording for that channel it worked ok - dumb luck or is the tuning mechanism different?

Good to know at least that its not my new s3, but still :(

Cable cards come this weekend so some relief...