6.3b: Where is the feedback?

[shanman14]

I've been watching the 6.3b threads waiting for some definitive feedback from those that received the update. Preliminary information seems to indicate 6.3b may have resolved some of the more irritating problems; namely the audio dropouts.

I've still got 3.15f and I'm ready to get my folders back in the Now Playing List, but not at the sake of audio dropouts or new problems. So...

Let's hear it, has 6.3b fixed 6.3a's issues? Or am I just missing it?

[jediphish]

There's certainly some positive feedback (including my own) in the main 6.3b thread. I will say, however, that once I realized that 6.3b had seemed to cure my Tivo from all its ailments, it felt like a real chore to log on and post the good results. I write this to say that I think there's some real validity to the theory that people post more when there are problems and much, much less when things are going smoothly. Even in a situation like the 6.3a debacle, I think there may be a good number of people who, once 6.3b is loaded on their machine, will go back to watching TV instead of coming to this board (or its relatives dbstalk and avsforum) to post the good news. The same applies in many other aspects of life.

[shanman14]

I suspect your theory is accurate. Thanks for the positive post! I hope more chime in with good news... or any news!

[TurboVR4]

Running 6.3b for 2 days now. The only problem I had before was the audio drop outs on FOX and those are completely gone. Not a single audio dropout!

[Liquidice]

Posted my results in the main 6.3b thread, but since getting 6.3b I haven't experienced any audio dropouts like there was in 6.3a (the 5-10 second long audio dropouts). I have had some minor audio dropouts but I think they are related to the OTA signal and not an actual problem with the TiVo. Watched 2 hours of FOX last night, and another hour tonight and no problems. I haven't experienced any of the other problems with 6.3a (missed recordings, short recordings, spontaneous reboots). But the main problem - the audio dropouts seems to be fixed for me.

[videojanitor]

I noticed the same thing -- things seem to be awfully quiet regarding this release. Either not a lot of people have received it, or as has been suggested, there's not much to say when something WORKS.

In any event, I posted my experience in the "other" thread -- 6.3b has been solid for me so far after two days. I have logged about five hours of viewing of my FOX affiliate, and haven't heard (or seen) any problems at all. Although more time will have to go by before I proclaim that is absolutely, positively fixed, for now I give it a big :up:

[cheer]

No audio dropouts here. That was the only 6.3/6.3a bug that was really biting me.

[mag249]

Sorry to be a downer, but I have the update and my unit has rebooted twice tonight. and froze a couple of other times that required a manually reboot.

I just wish I had the technical ability to retro back to 3.1.5f

[bpdp379]

Posted my results in the main 6.3b thread, but since getting 6.3b I haven't experienced any audio dropouts like there was in 6.3a (the 5-10 second long audio dropouts). I have had some minor audio dropouts but I think they are related to the OTA signal and not an actual problem with the TiVo. Watched 2 hours of FOX last night, and another hour tonight and no problems. I haven't experienced any of the other problems with 6.3a (missed recordings, short recordings, spontaneous reboots). But the main problem - the audio dropouts seems to be fixed for me.

Were those two hours recorded under 6.3a or 6.3b?

I am wondering if a recording the was "bad under 6.3a would play "OK" under 6.3b?

[cheer]

Sorry to be a downer, but I have the update and my unit has rebooted twice tonight. and froze a couple of other times that required a manually reboot.

I just wish I had the technical ability to retro back to 3.1.5f
Doesn't take much. Pull the drive, cable it up to a PC, boot up off of InstantCake, follow the menus.

[mag249]

Cheer,

I have to admit I have been thinking about it, but when people start throwing around instant cake, slicer version, slave drive to boot, I get a little overwhelmed.

I have never so much as put a card/device in my PC much less pulled the hard drive from one unit and booted it on another.

As an update, I was frozen on a grey screen this morning when I woke up. Will try clear and delete everything today in case there is something on the hard drive screwing this up. If that doesn't work, I might have to bite the bullet and try the instant cake route.

[comp4pod]

Has anyone noted a better remote response with 6.3b? I find an lag in response in 6.3a.

[narrod]

I've had both my 250s unplugged from the phone line for more than two months to avoid the 6.3 upgrade. If I allow them to connect now will I get 6.3A or 6.3B? I had 6.3 and 6.3A on one of them and it was a disaster. I don't want to deal with that again.

[rifleman69]

Has anyone noted a better remote response with 6.3b? I find an lag in response in 6.3a.


I have, some of those lags were a long time, had to go up to the box and hit the directv button to cycle all of the button presses out (which only sometimes worked).

[shanman14]

I bit the bullet and decided to plug the phone line in, force a call and see what happens.

It's been "downloading" for an hour now over the phone line. http://www.twowheelforum.com/images/smilies/toetap05.gif

[bwaldron]

I've had both my 250s unplugged from the phone line for more than two months to avoid the 6.3 upgrade. If I allow them to connect now will I get 6.3A or 6.3B? I had 6.3 and 6.3A on one of them and it was a disaster. I don't want to deal with that again.

As of a few days ago, I got 6.3a on a unit that had been unplugged since October. Forced calls since then have not yet upgraded me to 6.3b.

The download came over the phone line, though, and took forever...so if you force a call and see it's taking a long time, that would be an indication that you're getting 6.3a and not b.

[bwaldron]

I bit the bullet and decided to plug the phone line in, force a call and see what happens.

It's been "downloading" for an hour now over the phone line. http://www.twowheelforum.com/images/smilies/toetap05.gif

That means you're probably getting 6.3a...unfortunately. 6.3b should be a quick call as the slices are already downloaded from the satellite.

[shanman14]

That means you're probably getting 6.3a...unfortunately. 6.3b should be a quick call as the slices are already downloaded from the satellite.

That's correct, I'm at 6.3a now. I've called and rebooted, still 6.3a. So as not to hijack my own thread, I'll wait until I actually have 6.3b and report the results.

[sluciani]

Will try clear and delete everything today in case there is something on the hard drive screwing this up. If that doesn't work, I might have to bite the bullet and try the instant cake route.

Based on the positive 6.3b feedback, sounds like your problems are disk related and not software related... the new software may have exposed bad sectors on your drive that may have been previously unused.

A C&D everything will essentially reformat your drive, but I'm not sure if it will reformat the system partitions as well as the data partitions. Perhaps others would know.

If C&D doesn't solve your problems, you might consider purchasing a new drive and "Instant caking" it with a fresh copy of 6.3b, once it's available. 400-500 GB drives are now selling for $120-$160, so you'll have the added bonus of up to twice the stock HR10 recording capacity.

/steve

[mag249]

Went ahead and did a clear and delete around noon EST.

So far, it seems to be holding. I will let everyone know if it goes bad. BTW, it took almost three hours to do a clear and delete to complete

Thanks for all the feedback

[Liquidice]

Were those two hours recorded under 6.3a or 6.3b?

I am wondering if a recording the was "bad under 6.3a would play "OK" under 6.3b?

6.3b - Recordings with 6.3a that had audio dropouts actually are missing the audio stream, so they still have audio dropouts with 6.3b.

[bpratt]

The only problem I was having with 6.3a was the audio 8 second dropouts. After running on 6.3b for nearly a week, I have seen no more dropouts or any other problems. Merry Christmas early from D*.

[BigBearf]

Good results with 6.3b on 4 HR10's for about 5 days. Used IC 3.1.5f and then slicer directly to 6.3b. I had to rerun tweak to get Joe and then did manual hack for 30 sec skip, backdoors and encryption disabling.
BigBearf

[bobbo007]

Good results with 6.3b on 4 HR10's for about 5 days. Used IC 3.1.5f and then slicer directly to 6.3b. I had to rerun tweak to get Joe and then did manual hack for 30 sec skip, backdoors and encryption disabling.
BigBearf


Huh????

[mgoddard1]

Huh????

He said is hacked unit is running fine after he manually upgraded from 3.1.5f to 6.3b. :)


I've been running 6.3B for almost a week and no audio dropouts or spontaneous reboots. I'm not seeing any audio buffer overflow messages in the logs like I saw with 6.3a.
I've also enabled the HME hack on 6.3b and it seems to work pretty well. I can see and play my music collection as well as view my photo collection. The audio streaming and podcasting modules seem to work ok but the rest of the modules don't.

[Klips]

Well, I just got 6.3b over the weekend. I haven't had a chance to see if it is going to crash or not. I will come back and post either way.

Before 6.3a, ZERO crashes. I don't even know what anyone is talking about with audio dropouts. :-)

6.3a, crashed on a daily basis.

6.3B, ????? I'll tell you when I get through the week.

Klips

P.S. What is a HME hack?

[mgoddard1]

HME (home media engine) is something that normal Tivos have which is disabled on directv. However, there is now a hack out there that will re-enable it for 6.3a and 6.3b.

http://tivohme.sourceforge.net/

Being able to play my music collection from my Tivo makes it worth it.

[rpiotro]

I got my 6.3b on Friday afternoon after a forced call.

My wife watched 6 hours of Football yesterday on Fox OTA (HD). Not even a hiccup! Does anyone else think that it may also be a tiny bit more responsive to remote commands?

[bsnelson]

I'm more concerned about the "short recordings" problem that seemed to affect 6.3 users. At least one person (in the "Empty Recording" thread) reports that this still happens with 6.3b. Note that I'm not talking about the TNT-HD/HDnet bandwidth issue.

I'm a bit loathe to go to 6.3b (currently on 3.1.5f) until I feel more comfortable about this.

Brad

[phox_mulder]

I'm seeing a really long "please wait" when selecting the Now Playing list, then a bit of a delay after selecting a program from the list.

I haven't tried to enter a new SP or re-arrange the SP order, as that was where 3.1 was horribly slow.

No shortened recordings yet, but I've only had 6.3b for 3-4 days.

Haven't recording anything from FOX, as I moved all those SP's to my S3 to avoid the 6.3a audio problems.


phox

[jediphish]

I'm seeing a really long "please wait" when selecting the Now Playing list, then a bit of a delay after selecting a program from the list.



Same here in both instances, except I don't get a "please wait" message - I just get the delay. The worst delay was the freeze I described in my other post about the missing Finding Nemo recording.

[Bob_Newhart]

Merry Christmas early from D*.
For some. For some. :(

[phox_mulder]

Same here in both instances, except I don't get a "please wait" message - I just get the delay. The worst delay was the freeze I described in my other post about the missing Finding Nemo recording.

I might not be seeing a "please wait" either, but definately a delay.


phox

[FourFourSeven]

Some positive feedback - I would get several audio dropouts every hour with 6.3a during NFL football on Fox. I watched about 4 hours of NFL football on Sunday with 6.3b, and did not get a single dropout.

[Beckzilla]

HME (home media engine) is something that normal Tivos have which is disabled on directv. However, there is now a hack out there that will re-enable it for 6.3a and 6.3b.

http://tivohme.sourceforge.net/

Being able to play my music collection from my Tivo makes it worth it.
OK, I downloaded it. How do I install it on the HR10-250

[wmcbrine]

It seems to me that the audio dropouts are indeed fixed in 6.3b. This is the only problem I consistently had with 6.3a, though it did also crash once. I'm basing this on only a single season pass, though -- most Fox programs, I record off 88, which never showed the 6.3a bug. But I have one SP on a Fox OTA subchannel, and had dropouts in every episode until this week -- now none.

[mgoddard1]

OK, I downloaded it. How do I install it on the HR10-250

Well it requires you to hack your box and network it and the sourceforge link is to the SDK where you can develop HME apps that run on your PC that the tivo can see. This is not the proper forum for this but it is discussed at the ddb forum in series 2 support.

[Klips]

6.3B, ????? I'll tell you when I get through the week.

Well, it is still crashing!!!! :(

Maybe not quite as often but still doing it. It is a total lockup for me.

What I find interesting is that it doesn't do it overnight. It doesn't do it while I'm watching it in the evening. It is always mid-afternoon sometime. Somewhere between People's Court at 11:00am and Judge Judy 4:00pm. Most of the time, it looks as if you hit the pause button where you have a frozen frame showing.

Wierd. I guess the only thing I can try now is a new hard drive. I'll have to jump over to the other forum area and see what people are buying these days.

[BrettStah]

Well, it is still crashing!!!! :(

Maybe not quite as often but still doing it. It is a total lockup for me.

What I find interesting is that it doesn't do it overnight. It doesn't do it while I'm watching it in the evening. It is always mid-afternoon sometime. Somewhere between People's Court at 11:00am and Judge Judy 4:00pm. Most of the time, it looks as if you hit the pause button where you have a frozen frame showing.

Wierd. I guess the only thing I can try now is a new hard drive. I'll have to jump over to the other forum area and see what people are buying these days.
That's great to hear... NOT. I was really hoping 6.3b would solve my lockup problems (I think the mid-afternoon thing is true for me too, now that I think about it).

[Klips]

That's great to hear... NOT. I was really hoping 6.3b would solve my lockup problems (I think the mid-afternoon thing is true for me too, now that I think about it).

Now that is weird. So the question is whether or not the lockups are happening for everyone or a big portion of those in the afternoon as well?

By the way, what happen to the forum section here that had all the hard drive upgrade information and such?

[BrettStah]

By the way, what happen to the forum section here that had all the hard drive upgrade information and such?
This one?
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=25

[Klips]

This one?
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=25
Yep, I'm brain dead tonight. I was down a level lower than I thought. :eek: