[Willowdale]

I record the Sunday morning talk shows, including "Fox News Sunday", every week on my two 8300HDs, off the HD FOX Buffalo channel. (Please no Fox News jokes - that's not what this thread is about). I live in Toronto.

Usually it works fine. Today on both PVRs, the 1 hour recording was split into 6 chunks: 33 min, 2m, 11m, 1m, 13m and 1m.

All the chunks looked fine - perfect picture and sound.

All the breaks/boundaries happened when the show switched from Fox network programming/commercials to local Buffalo commercials, or back.

This is worries me, because this is NOT a simsub problem.

FWIW, I am not yet on the new firmware.

Edit by 57: This thread is for discussing split recordings on Fox Buffalo (or for split recordings caused by recording Fox Buffalo earlier). There is another thread for discussing split recordings due to simsubbing over the US channel. If you record the Canadian channel, then the recording should work. Here's the link to that thread:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=130290

 

[Willowdale]

I see users Packet and scotta reported a similar HD FOX Buffalo non-simbsubbed problem yesterday on the Official SA8300HD Issues thread.

I think this warrants its own thread, because worst case, it could potentially affect all non-sumsubbed HD Fox Buffalo recordings - ugh.

 

[57]

If you haven't already, you may wish to advise Rogers of this issue, especially if it occurs mostly on the Fox channel. As we are aware, there were similar split recording issues with Fox a couple of years ago. When you contact Rogers, remind them of that. It's possible that Fox has changed something that has caused the problem to reappear on Rogers.

Here's the old thread:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=65547

 

[Daniel Tonks]

It's been happening for about 3 weeks now. Either split recordings, or partial recordings (ie. 14 minutes of House and nothing else).

 

[Willowdale]

I don't normally watch the Good Guys, but I recorded it last night. Same problem, split on all the local/network boundaries.

Most evenings, Fox Buffalo's network programming is simsub'ed, so the problem can't be observed. Their NFL games are always simsub'ed too.

Always simsub'ed: Mon (House, Lie to me), Wed (Hell's Kitchen), Thu (Bones, Fringe), Sun (Simpsons, etc)

So the only time to catch this bug is Tuesday 9-10 (Raising Hope), Friday 8-10 (House repeats, Good Guys) , and Saturday (Cops, AMW), and Sunday morning at 9am (Fox News Sunday)

If someone could convince a Rogers tech support rep to record one of these shows, on their own PVR in the GTA, then the problem would demonstrated.

 

[Packet]

had this happen again last night with the good guys again on 526 (fox buffalo)

surprisingly, the simpsons etc tomorrow night will be fine

 

[scotta]

had this happen again last night with the good guys again on 526 (fox buffalo)

Same here, again.

 

[Packet]

i opened a ticket with rogers on this today.
lets see what happens now...

well, simpsons last night too - since that was right after the football.
quite interesting to see recording stop / screen flash / recording restart etc - never seen it before

 

[Willowdale]

Happened to Fox News Sunday yesterday too. 1 hour program, six chunks, broken exactly on local/network feed boundaries.

On a hunch, I ran the 8300HD setup, enabled all resolutions, and switched the output format to "Passthrough".

Nothing exciting to report. All six chunks appeared to be same format, 720p. I guess I was expecting something different.

Tonight (Monday) Fox Buffalo's primetime will be simsubbed by Global. (House, Lie To Me).

Tuesday's 8:00 Glee will be simsubbed too, but I expect the 9:00 and 9:30 Raising Hope episodes will exhibit the same buggy split recording behaviour.

 

[ANDYA]

Human Target (non simsub) split into 6 sections last night. Has anyone head any achnowledgement from Rogers of this problem?

 

[Vikzak]

I can add my recording of Hell's Kitchen (non-simsub) last night to the problems.

The commercials would have their own 1-2 min recordings. The good news is that I didn't have fastforward through them. I would just skip the 2 minute recording and play the next recorded section.

 

[deeplakes]

I also had all of the above issues...indentical shows and times

Plus

Lie to Me recorded nothing last week...1 hour of black

Detroit 187 this week, which has been split into 1 minute plus 59 minutes for weeks, was only 1 minute and nothing else.

All of these issues have been mirrored on 3 separate PVR's in my house and confirmed that a friend in the city has the exact same thing.

It seems to be getting worse every week.

There was a long outage in my area a few weeks ago and since then signal levels have dropped off to a point that some of the upper HD channels will not even lock in and others cut out to a point of being unwatchable.

Calling Rogers is a complete waste of time.

 

[Daniel Tonks]

Yeah, the problem affects WUTV Fox heavily, and WKBW ABC to a lesser extent. I'd say I've been getting the 1 minute + 59 minute issue for well over a year now. Hasn't actually been an issue so far on the shows I tape, as the 1 minute file is always overrun from the previous program.

However Fox is obviously a bigger problem. Let's face it - the error handling on these DVRs seems to suck. Something isn't exactly what it's expecting and it dumps the file, stops recording or (in my case last weeks) kills all data functions.

Every time WUTV fiddles with their signal, Rogers completely messes up for about the next 6 months until someone figures out what's wrong. (And if you're wondering, the time these problems started occuring on Rogers some weeks back is exactly the same time that WUTV added a subchannel to their OTA feed. However WUTV's signal is absolutely fine - I record it off antenna all the time and there are 0 problems.)

If you can, I strongly recommend avoiding WUTV at all times and instead recording off of the west coast feed. And if you don't subscribe to the extended HD tier, this might be a good time to call Rogers and complain about the issue.

 

[Packet]

same issue last night too - and just on FOX 526.
spoke with Rogers today - they're sending a guy over tomorrow to have a look despite my saying 'it's just FOX'

 

[Alan Toronto]

Same thing happening here

Ah, I'm actually somewhat glad to see I'm not the only one.

Same thing has been happening to me. Several shows I've recorded on Fox Buffalo, HD 526, over the past couple of weeks have experienced this. A single hour show is split into four or five or more separate recordings and entries in the recorded list.

 

[leopard]

Yes I have had that problem too but I thought it was just me but watching the show as the one posted in #10 and other posts here it did split into many recording sections and I also noticed the audio went from 5.1 DTS to Dolby Pro logic which is just the two main speakers and the subwoofer then back to 5.1 DTS again a number of times. It seemed to do it when Fox Buffalo broadcasted a few minutes of their local channel then back to the Network broadcast. Hopefully Rogers and or Fox Buffalo will rectify this and fix the problem very soon.

 

[Packet]

so the Rogers tech came over and naturally, all seemed good.
he offered to change the pvr and i said no since i didnt want to lose my recordings and end up with the same issue.

here's where things get interesting - received 2 calls afterwards - once from someone doing a follow-up check (non-Rogers #, ie, regular 905) and another from a supervisor (again a non-Rogers #, ie, regular 647) who has asked Rogers 'tech support' to see if they get the same issue and also to ask me to have someone else do the same test and report the same issue.

seems rather grassroots, even ludicrous to me that they cant convince another department internally to test this.
not sure what their inter/intra-department politics are - but i just found it intriguing..

pretty sure tonight's simpsons on 526 will have the same issue due to the nfl game aired before (like last week)

 

[scotta]

I'll report the same issue for you, the next time it happens, but it would be best if you could provide us with your Rogers ticket/incident number to quote when reporting.

 

[Packet]

awesome - thank you.
pm'ing you with the ticket #

 

[mr. grieves]

I have had the same thing happening to me over the past couple of weeks. It is happening to two programs: one program is on Fox, but the other is on Food Network. Shows will be recorded in 7 or 20 minute chunks or sometimes just one 20 minute piece of the program will be recorded. Other scheduled recordings seem to work fine.