Humax DVD "Saving Failed"

sirrob1 · 12-29-2004, 01:40 PM

'Saving Failed'

AFTER my revision to 1.15, dvd burning with my Humax DVD began making expensive wasted dvd coasters!

When I first received my Humax Tivo/dvd with the 1.08 software life was grand. Since the upgrade, I now get the 'Saving Failed' and an internal error in my machine has occured- listings. I use the same dvd-r media (8x)and burn the same tv shows as when it worked. I have restarted my unit a couple of times and reset settings as well.

Anyone with similar problems after the revision? Any suggestions?

generalpatton71 · 12-30-2004, 06:15 AM

I had this problem with my first Humax unit. I tried different disks and everything. The unit then started rebooting if I tried to burn a disk. I called Humax up and was told it was broken and I needed a new one.

ramey · 12-30-2004, 09:48 AM

I just bought the toshiba version, and saved 1 show to disc and then it seems to have quit working.
Am I doing something wrong?

1) The first show I saved and recorded worked perfectly.

2) The next three shows I saved and tried to record didn’t work. In one case, it got about 30-40% through and quit. In both the other cases, it got almost completely done a then crapped out. All three times I got a message that said that the save failed because of an internal error. That’s not exactly helpful, since that seem to me that it could cover a multitude of sins.

- - Things I checked: a) the first movie was recorded in high quality, but I switched the quality to best for the next three. Should I only save with high and not use best?

b) only one of the three would have had to have been recorded over more than one disc, but it didn’t make any difference whether I tried to record the first part first or the second part first. It still crapped out.

c) I looked to see what the DVD record speed was, which, interestingly, I can’t find ANYWHERE, even on Toshiba’s own website. I am using 8x DVD-R discs… I do know that the disc type (DVD-R) is correct, but I am using the wrong speed?

d) Toshiba’s website says that some DVD-R/DVD-RW discs may be incompatible… any idea which ones, or, at least, which ones are likely to work? I don’t remember what brand I’m using… I got them at Circuit City in a 25-pack and they might be sort of generic. I seem to recall they had a white label, but as far as I know they weren’t one of the major brands. Just seemed odd that one – the first one – worked great and nothing since.

Thanks for any ideas before I pack it up and take it back to Best Buy.

generalpatton71 · 12-31-2004, 03:56 AM

Same here ramey. My first burn went fine and then had a problem. First thing they will tell you is try a diffrent brand of disk, The speed shouldn't matter at all in terms of the unit messing up. I received the same error message you did and everything. I would recommend exchanging the unit right away. I tried a crap load of things tring to fix it. I cleared and deleted everything and did the entire setup again and it didn't matter. I think there must some defective DVD drives out there causing this or something.

sirrob1 · 12-31-2004, 09:07 AM

I justed burned a 3hr15min single tv movie and it worked. I wonder if the number of programs and fullness of the dvd make a difference. I attempt to cram/fill 100% sometimes putting eight 30min shows on one dvd.

Anyone else experience this failure?

rhirwin1 · 01-03-2005, 02:05 AM

I have a Humax DVD unit with the same failure mode.

I find it interesting that the DVD unit had burned 30-40 DVD's without a problem and then after a message that the DVD was inoperable until a new revision of SW was uploaded the problems began.

Intially I recorded 4 30 minute programs which consumed 99% of the DVD and the record time was ~60 minutes. After the SW revision the same 4 programs took only ~28 minutes. All of the failed recordings indicate a record time of ~ 38 minutes. I've now made a rather large set of matching useless coasters.

BTW my last experiment was to ensure that the DVD unit was not recording any other show and to limit the DVD to 74% of capacity (i.e recording only 3 shows vs the normal 4) but it still crapped out!!!

What gives? Any clues or ideas of what to try would be greatly appreciated. I suspect some type of faulty SW code.

rhirwin@cox.net

sirrob1 · 01-03-2005, 07:20 AM

I have tried the same stuff to see what might be triggering the intermittent saving failure to no avail. Last night I successfully burned (with same dvd-r media and even same shows) a 87% full disc and a 99% disc. The only different variable was that the tivo unit hard drive was half or less full.

I know that the near fullness of my 82hr unit is what drove me to burn some dvd-r's before and made no difference prior to the software update. This relative emptyness however is the only thing I know of that is different.

Anyone see anthing from official tivo sources about the lattest dvd software upgrade issue?

Kaokulk · 01-03-2005, 08:54 AM

My first Humax did this too. Right after the upgrade, it started making coasters.

Fortunately, it was in the first week after purchase, I simply took it back and got another one.

Of course, THAT one had a bad hard drive. But so far, the third one works great...

rhirwin1 · 01-04-2005, 12:01 AM

I contacted Humax Customer Support by phone (they are open 24 hr x 7 days) explained the problem and they immediately said "Your unit is defective and needs to be replaced with a new one" I tried pointing out that the hardware seemed to work quite well up to some time after the point that new SW revisions "upgraded" the DVD portion of the unit.

Bottom line was that they took all the information along with a VISA charge of $499 to secure the return of the old unit and they are sending a new unit out via mail. The return postage of the old unit will be borne by them.
I think they would be amenable to returning the old unit first and then sending the new unit without the security deposit, but this way I have at least the use of the DVR portion of the exisiting unit until the new one arrives.

From a customer service perspective they were cordial, decisive and the resolution of the problem is relatively painless to me. As an engineer, I would rather see a root cause solution- I find the insight that how "full" the DVR might be a causative factor intriguing. My daughters are home for the holidays and have really loaded up the hard drive.

dkyrus · 01-04-2005, 01:54 AM

I am having a very frustrating time with my relatively new Humax DRT800 unit! I've had it just over a month and have happily Tivo'd and burned a ton of discs, but all of a sudden yesterday I started getting the error message "saving failed due to an internal error" when I tried to burn any discs. I tried everything from large (99% of capacity) to small (25%) and using different DVD-R discs, but nothing's working. Humax tells me that if I let them charge $500 on my credit card I can get the unit repaired or replaced within a couple of weeks--otherwise, it'll be more like a month. I bought this unit directly from Tivo.com on 12/1/04--anybody know whether they will offer something a bit more customer-friendly? I would really appreciate any response or suggestions as to how to deal with these folks. Thanks!

geo9234 · 01-04-2005, 11:57 AM

My Humax just stopped burning after many successful try's. I called tech support (if u want to call it that) and he said to send Humax the unit. He wanted credit card info to secure the exchange but I told him I'm taking it back to Sam's Club where I bought it. He said fine. Also, I asked about any s/w changes and he said there were none. He didn't volunteer this info so I figured he didn't know anything anyway.

So...I'm off to SC to exchange.

(The only upside is with Multi Room viewing, I can transfer my recorded programs and not lose anything)

Cheers,

G

rkester · 01-10-2005, 06:48 PM

Having a similar problem with mine. When I first got it about 2 weeks ago, it burned no problem on any media I gave it, DVD-R and RW. Then, I got some new DVD-R (Fujifilm) media and burned 2 discs. IN a few days, tried to burn something else to the same discs and it failed. Made 2 coasters that way. So, I put in a RW disc, and it successfully burned. Did some checking around on the net and it seems that the brand of media is a variable in this equation. Any of you tried other media, like Memorex or CompUSA brand to see if they work instead of the brand that did?

update... rebooted the unit for kicks. later i tried the fujifilm media that had worked before then failed next time. this time it worked again. wierd.

RickStrobel · 01-12-2005, 01:40 AM

Someone else posted that after the update to 1.15 they had to delete EVERY recording on the unit. After that, any new recordings would burn just fine.

lordrichter · 01-12-2005, 06:23 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by RickStrobel
Someone else posted that after the update to 1.15 they had to delete EVERY recording on the unit. After that, any new recordings would burn just fine.

That doesn't sound quite right, but I suppose it could be possible.

However, reading through this I did not see, but may have overlooked, if anyone unplugged and rebooted their units to see if the DVD writing was better after that. Maybe the DVD drive needs to be reset or something.

dkyrus · 01-12-2005, 03:59 PM

I should have re-posted with a followup to my problem before now, but better late than never. After very frustrating phone calls to both Humax and TiVo tech support, I finally read something in one of these threads that suggested restarting the TiVo box--something that neither the TiVo nor Humax tech support even mentioned). I did so, and right afterwards was able to successfully burn DVDs again with no problems.

This happened to me again a couple of days ago. I restarted again, and again, it resolved the problem. I'm not thrilled with having to restart all the time, but it does seem to take care of the problem and I don't lose any settings or saved programs, so it's not too much of a hassle.

I called both the TiVo and Humax tech support people back and told them how I had resolved the problem, including by what means I was able to get the information to do so (i.e., not from them!). In both cases they seemed interested in what I was telling them and said they would document it for future reference. Probably not much real hope, but maybe.

Anyway, I'm very glad this community exists!!

rkester · 01-12-2005, 04:28 PM

Hopefully it will be something they now know to fix. Rebooting the machien is a PITA imho. But, if it fixes the problem at least it's a fix and not an unresolved item.

gawise · 01-14-2005, 01:43 PM

I'm having the same exact problem with one of my units. I burned almost 100 DVDs with no problem, then all of a sudden...

The first thing I did was reboot it and it started recording again...then crapped out AGAIN. Repeat the cycle...

It is a pain and I hope they get it fixed soon!!

Greg in York, PA

MisterDNA · 01-19-2005, 03:46 PM

Hopefully my Humax DVD experiences will help others.

1) Humax support told me they have lots of problems with Memorex DVDs operating correctly with the Humax TiVo (don't you wish they mentioned this incompatibility in the instruction booklet, before you buy a 100-pack of Memorex DVDs???). Not sure if any updates could have solved that problem.

2) I find that after one DVD burns incorrectly, often subsequent DVDs will also fail to burn until you reset the system (BTW, does anyone know what just reseting the DVD does?)

3) I've also found that, once in awhile, a particular recorded show will seem to cause DVDs to fail to burn. The system burns every other show fine, but that one "problem" show just won't burn to DVD correctly. Obviously, if I kept trying to burn that "problem" show over and over, I never would have had a successful burn!

Hope this helps someone!

-Rob

bodonnell · 01-28-2005, 01:35 AM

I don't have a solution but I thought I'd add my name to the list of people having trouble with their new Humax DTR800 DVR. I have noticed problems with all media except one, Verbatim; I have not had a problem with this yet but then I have switching media and have not had much opportunity to burn many Verbatim DVDs. My unit is on version 1.15 of the DVD-drive firmware (I wish I wrote down what the version was when I setup the box).

Being that some people noticed they started with version 1.08 of the DVD-drive firmware and are now at 1.15, and add to that the information that most people have burned dozens of DVD without incident and then only recently started having problems, it sounds like a bad patch was downloaded to everybody's Humax (IMHO).

Kaokulk · 02-02-2005, 07:43 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by bodonnell
Being that some people noticed they started with version 1.08 of the DVD-drive firmware and are now at 1.15, and add to that the information that most people have burned dozens of DVD without incident and then only recently started having problems, it sounds like a bad patch was downloaded to everybody's Humax (IMHO).

Agreed. That's when my Humax started screwing up.

I have a different (and interesting) problem now. I can't go into my Messages, it locks up the UI. I have to reboot. Recording and burning will continue though.

tom_da · 02-10-2005, 11:06 PM

I'd been turning out coasters

too on my Humax. It seemed to be related to using Basic recordings and the software not correctly determining the size that would fit on a DVD. I think it was using the filesize as its queue, not taking into account that Basic recordings are smaller but longer running than the same filesize for a Best or High quality recordings. I think they think we'll all use Best for our recordings, but I still want to cram as much as I can on both the drive and DVD!

I'd get coasters when I would select a lot of Basic recordings, up to 93-100%. It'd say it was fine, but would die with the couple of messages mentioned above.

So I cut back to 73% and got consistent recordings. But lots of stuff (the Super Bowl, go Pats!) won't fit at 73%!

But I went and did the Restart and tried the SuperBowl again. I was able to go right to 100%! Not only the Super Bowl, but the NFL Films shows on the Pats 2 other Super Bowl wins! (Dynasty

)

I think we have to remember that TiVos run on Linux. I noticed wheree I work on software with Linux versions, that Linux is NOT faultless. In fact, we had more memory troubles with the Linux software than we did with the Windows versions! I think either memory is being lost in fragments or swap space on the drive was running out for similar reasons. You need contiguous space for good recordings and we never saw linux take care of this kind of thing well.

But I loooove the TiVo interface! Best Linux I ever used!

Another thing that bothers me though about the Humax, is it can't do incremental recordings! I don't want to make a weekly TV disc, with all my shows on it. I want to make an Enterprise disc, a SG1 disc, a Teen Titans disc. So I want to add a new show to each disc each week. Unless I use up my HD space for months for these few shows, to collect all the episodes for a disc, I can't do this! Every other DVD recorder allows this. But not the TiVo recorders!

Thanks for the info guys!

Tom D'A
http://missing-pieces.com

sirrob1 · 02-11-2005, 06:29 AM

Nice post. As above, I have had similar experiences with the Tivo DVD burning. I have found something that has worked every time for burning now.

Keep the burning screen Prep/Burn/Finialize up at all times til the disc is completed.

My last dozen sucessful discs burnt without incident as long as I did this. Everytime I did not ended in a coaster!

It is not such a pain. Just start burning as usual and stop back in 5 or ten minutes and scroll between cancel and return to tivo at the bottom of the screen. It is like moving your mouse and keeping a screen saver from starting but in this case keeps the burning screen 'saver' up for the entire burning session. Odd bug. Are you listening TiVo?

ashu · 02-11-2005, 10:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sirrob1

Odd bug. Are you listening TiVo?

NOT a bug. Its as designed. A few minutes (15?) of inaction in ANY menu, and you WILL return to Live TV. Live TV is being buffered all the time anyway, os its not like that part of your Humax is idle!

I've burnt all my (admittedly few) DVDs on the Humax while doin other stuff more often than not - a scheduled recording, viewing a recording, trick-playing live TV etc.

tivochiguy · 02-12-2005, 10:27 AM

I am also having a problem with saving DVDs and receive the message "could not be saved because of an internal error". It fails at about midpoint of saving three shows. I've rebooted the workstation and tried multiple DVDs. I'm using Verbatim that have all worked fine with burning other shows.

I called Humax and talked with a Cust Serv Rep in New York and they said they had never heard of the problem. How can that be? Are all of you having the problem not calling in???

This sucks!

sirrob1 · 02-13-2005, 04:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ashu

NOT a bug. Its as designed. A few minutes (15?) of inaction in ANY menu, and you WILL return to Live TV. Live TV is being buffered all the time anyway, os its not like that part of your Humax is idle!

I've burnt all my (admittedly few) DVDs on the Humax while doin other stuff more often than not - a scheduled recording, viewing a recording, trick-playing live TV etc.

The bug is that the burning does not complete without the burning screen being maintained.

You misunderstood the bug being the burning screen defaulting to live TV in 15 minutes. That is ok and was never the issue I stated above. Mis-burning is the issue and keeping the burning screen on is the solution. This silly necessity is the bug!

whitmans77 · 02-23-2005, 08:59 AM

has anyone eles had this problem recently??

I have burned about 50-60 discs all with no problems then all of a sudden i cant burn a thing. I called humax and after asking some very dumb questions like "are you using dvd-r's " they just said that they would be willing to swap it out.

do you guys think it is a hardware or software problem??

bodonnell · 02-23-2005, 10:20 AM

I had the same failure. Called Humax level-1 support and they suggested a replacement unit so I swapped it out. But I've since learned that TiVo "pushes" a DVD firmware patch (possible supplied by Humax) from 1.08 to 1.15 and that patch is the culprit. That patch is suppose to make the DVD burn at a higher spin rate. After talking with level-2 Humax support they heard of the problem and said "the unit is working as designed", meaning, the DVD drive manufacturer specs say the drive is capable of a faster burn rate. So now I have Humax DTR800 #2 and so-far-so-good, but TiVo hasn't pushed the patch onto the box yet!

whitmans77 · 02-23-2005, 11:40 AM

is there any way we can keep our boxes from getting that patch.....is ther any way to revert back to the old version??

Quantum Panda · 02-23-2005, 09:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MisterDNA

3) I've also found that, once in awhile, a particular recorded show will seem to cause DVDs to fail to burn. The system burns every other show fine, but that one "problem" show just won't burn to DVD correctly. Obviously, if I kept trying to burn that "problem" show over and over, I never would have had a successful burn!

This is the exact problem I'm having. Anyone have any idea what causes this? At first, I thought it might be the broadcast flag, but if the broadcast flag is preventing the burn, it ought to refuse to try to burn it, rather than starting and then returning an error.

I have found a sort-of workaround for this, if it's important to you to burn one of these "problem" shows to DVD. Record it out to tape at highest quality, then record it back on to the hard drive (easy to do on the Humax recorders). Whatever the problem with the show is, it doesn't seem to carry over through this process. You lose some quality, but you do get to burn the show.

+QP+

whitmans77 · 02-23-2005, 09:34 PM

i have tried to burn all types of shows with no luck--i even tried the restart and the whole unplugging bit with no avail....they way humax acted on the phone i believe they know its a problem .....