Firmware 01.05.235 Bug & wish List

[ocdi]

Don't know if anyone else has seen this, but twice now I have had the BW go a bit funny randomly after playing a file. I loaded a recording and jumped to a bookmark. The display was black, no sound. Tried seeking and still nothing.

I've had this happen on 235 with fully unmodified firmware, no telnetd, nothing. I followed bohemian's suggestion to play a file of different media type off the network and this fixed live tv and playing of a recorded file. The Beyonwiz had been running for only a few hours prior to this so it isn't like its a long term thing. It has taken a while for it to reoccur though.

[tonymy01]

This was certainly a nice tip. I had the same problem about 3 days ago, serious stuttering of the Wiz format files (including live TV) so I remembered the tip about playing back, say, a DIVX file from the network, and sure enough, this knocked the Wiz back into its senses and it could play its own recording type properly again.

[madmax]

A new beta has been distributed for testing, here are the notes for those interested to know what is coming (assuming it all works well). I don't understand all of it, but the autoplay DVD and rename channels are definitely the highlights as far as new features go.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Firmware release note ( 01.05.243-beta )

01.05.243-beta

* In the TV/Radio service list popup, you can edit the service name using the info button.
* After factory setting is applied, the Mute popup cleared with default volume.
* No event information availeble? in the Info popup of recording file list fixed to ?No event information available?
* In Movie-HDD-/recording/ of contents player, the recording file list will be updated automatically if new timer started
* Live broadcast can be paused with time-shift buffer less than 10 seconds. But if the pause button is pressed again or another trick mode button is pressed after pausing with time-shift buffer less than 10 seconds, live broadcast will be played again rather than playing from paused position.
* CD/DVD auto playing feature is supported, but not in the contents play page.
* The A-B repeat feature for AVI and MKV formats is revised.
* For the models except DP-S1, disabling DTS audio is revised to don?t allow DTS audio mistakenly.
* The bug that mistakenly renaming the on-going timer that its name is edited or already given by EPG
* Bug fix for SMI display
* The case that hang up with a message ?Error 0022? during boot time is fixed.
* Improved features or functions from feedback of the beta testers
* Add exception handling for some cases of broken recording file (especially missing the stat file.)
* Setup/Time
 The setting problem of Time offset of MODE MANUAL fixed

Known problems

* MKV and H.264 AVI support
* Some files with unusual frame rates may not be played properly.
* Some files with multiple audio tracks may not be played properly.
* CD/DVD auto playing feature is not supported in the contents play page.
* Some files with unusual frame rates may not be played properly.

[grampus]

If they keep it up at this rate, we'll be through the bugs/wish list by xmas?
Fantastic response to what seemed to be becoming a real deal breaker for some.

[SomebodyElse]

If they keep it up at this rate, we'll be through the bugs/wish list by xmas?

Come on! Have you seen the lists lately? Which Christmas, 2012?

[Vortical]

If they keep it up at this rate, we'll be through the bugs/wish list by xmas?

Come on! Have you seen the lists lately? Which Christmas, 2012?

There still may be wishes that will get written off as not possible.
As far as I'm aware Beyonwiz hasn't categorically stated if there are or are not wishlist items that can't be implemented as of yet.

But judging by the proposed fixes in the new beta it at least looks promising.
I just hope it doesn't take more than a month before the public gets the fixed firmware.

[Vortical]

* Improved features or functions from feedback of the beta testers

Any clues on what these are madmax?

[Neon Kitten]

* No event information availeble? in the Info popup of recording file list fixed to ?No event information available?

Heh, I'd actually noticed that mis-spelling but figured I'd get flamed if I brought it up here

* For the models except DP-S1, disabling DTS audio is revised to don?t allow DTS audio mistakenly.

Meant to ask about this one: is DTS audio supported for MKV files? I do have one here but since I'm not using passthrough at the moment (and I presume there's no internal DTS decoding) I haven't had a chance to check.

Known problems

* MKV and H.264 AVI support

Is the MKV aspect ratio bug getting looked at? (This is where the aspect ratio is read from the video stream itself, where with MKV it should be read from the container's metadata. The vast majority of MKVs with anamorphic video have had the aspect ratio data stripped from the actual video stream and placed in the container metadata instead - this is the default behaviour for the mux tool everyone uses, MKVmerge).

Also, any word on the playback-stutter-within-30-seconds-of-starting-playback on TV recordings issue?

[Gully]

But judging by the proposed fixes in the new beta it at least looks promising.
I just hope it doesn't take more than a month before the public gets the fixed firmware.

That will depend on whether any problems show up during testing.

In the end it will be BeyonWiz's call on when to release it, but we have suggested a quick turn around if no problems show up.

[GregH]

What about the audio dropouts when playing a .TS file over the wired network and as already stated the dreaded pause after starting a recorded program

[IanSav]

Hi Vortical,

There still may be wishes that will get written off as not possible.

I believe that this will/has happened. Beyonwiz just haven't told us what requests aren't workable.

As far as I'm aware Beyonwiz hasn't categorically stated if there are or are not wishlist items that can't be implemented as of yet.

I think HD PIP is one that has been stated as not possible.

I just hope it doesn't take more than a month before the public gets the fixed firmware.

The beta testers were told that intention for this beta to make it short and sweet so as to get the fixes out there ASAP.

Regards,
Ian.

[IanSav]

Hi Vortical,

* Improved features or functions from feedback of the beta testers

Any clues on what these are madmax?

The issues pushed by the beta testers that were delivered are:
- The "Error 0022" issue
- The corrupted "stst" file issue.
- The incorrect DST offset issue.
- The DVD/CD quick access feature.

Regards,
Ian.

[IanSav]

Hi Neon Kitten,

Heh, I'd actually noticed that mis-spelling but figured I'd get flamed if I brought it up here

Please don't keep those spelling mistakes to yourself. Beyonwiz have a special thread in the beta area specifically looking for spelling mistakes. They also accept poorly phrased messages etc that can be improved.

Regards,
Ian.

[darz]

I dont know what has happened but al when I tried to skip forward, it deleted the recorded show. And recently half of the ice tv recordings I have set were ignored, and alot of the rest did not including the padding that I have set, so I missed the last 10 mins.... im really dissapointed at the moment...

[prl]

...
And recently half of the ice tv recordings I have set were ignored, and alot of the rest did not including the padding that I have set, so I missed the last 10 mins.... im really dissapointed at the moment...

Without more information, it's hard to give you any help. "It didn't work" isn't much to go on.

What version of the firmware are you running? Did you check that there had been an IceTV Interactive synchronisation between the Beyonwiz and the IceTV Interactive server? How far ahead of the broadcast time did you set the IceTV recordings? Did they appear eventually? Did a recording icon appear on the show? Did the show appear in My Upcoming Recordings or in My Recordings? With or without a recording icon in each case? Had you deleted any of the recordings on IceTV?

Padding has nothing to do with IceTV. Were the shows you were recording consecutive shows on the same service? If they were, what you describe is normal behaviour on some padding settings, and you'll find the end of the first show in the start of the recording for the second. Other circumstance can also mean that padding time isn't recorded, or that parts of one timer are recorded in another timer's recording if the padding for the two recordings overlaps.

What are your padding settings? Are you sure you know how they are supposed to work? Have you had a look at the padding FAQ? Some of the settings may not do what you expect Exactly what were the recordings (times, service) that had problems?

IceTV Interactive does not make last-minute corrections to align timers to the actual broadcast times rather than the scheduled ones.

[Neon Kitten]

Please don't keep those spelling mistakes to yourself. Beyonwiz have a special thread in the beta area specifically looking for spelling mistakes. They also accept poorly phrased messages etc that can be improved.

In that case, here's one I scored when I got home earlier tonight and turned on the Beyonwiz to look at the weekend's recordings:
(I'm paraphrasing here by the way, but the last word is accurate)

"URGENT: There is only 3069MB remaining on the hard disk, Please delete some files to ffee more spa..."

First time I've seen the bright red caution light lit on the front panel too

On this subject, by the way, why does the Beyonwiz refuse to record further when there is still 3GB left on the drive (reported as 98% capacity)? My recording of Flight Of The Conchords - which would easily have fitted into the remaining space - was aborted mid-way through, and a subsequent timer didn't record at all.

3GB is enough for nearly an hour and a half on ABC2 or even SBS. Seems like a dreadful waste of disk space to set such a harsh cut-off.

My old Wintal used to just record till the HDD filled, then say "no more space" - and it meant NO more space!

[IanSav]

Hi Neon Kitten,

In that case, here's one I scored when I got home earlier tonight and turned on the Beyonwiz to look at the weekend's recordings:
(I'm paraphrasing here by the way, but the last word is accurate)

"URGENT: There is only 3069MB remaining on the hard disk, Please delete some files to ffee more spa..."

Is the word "free" miss-spelled as "ffee" on the Beyonwiz or is that a typo here?

The "spa..." may be an issue with the message being too long for the dialogue box. If this is the case then perhaps the message can be shortened to "URGENT: Only 3069MB free space on hard disk, please delete some files to free up some more space."

On this subject, by the way, why does the Beyonwiz refuse to record further when there is still 3GB left on the drive (reported as 98% capacity)? My recording of Flight Of The Conchords - which would easily have fitted into the remaining space - was aborted mid-way through, and a subsequent timer didn't record at all.

3GB is enough for nearly an hour and a half on ABC2 or even SBS. Seems like a dreadful waste of disk space to set such a harsh cut-off.

My old Wintal used to just record till the HDD filled, then say "no more space" - and it meant NO more space!

The Beyonwiz maintains some status and data files on the hard disk. If all the space were consumed by recordings then it would be possible for these files to become damaged or lost.

Regards,
Ian.

[logger]

WISHLIST - Delete Soft Padding?

It is not possible to set different soft padding for different services or timers. I recall from a while ago that this is a design limitation and not likely to change.
My settings of -3 & +15 cover my worst case scenarios pretty well. But this means 90% of my recordings need to be cropped to clean them up if I intend to keep them.

Would it be feasible to create a "Delete Soft Padding" option?
Its functionality would simply be to remove the users specified paddings from either end of a recording. It could do this by batching tasks normally achieved with button presses sort of like a MACRO. So in my case
1 go to start of recording,
2 go forward 3 min place marker,
3 Go to end of recording
4 Go back 15 minutes place marker
5 Delete all except AB

If this could be done in a button press it would save me a couple of minutes of stuffing around on each recording.

Would be handy for tidying ABC news and other known shows that tend to run on time. Shortcomings would be overlaps and padding priority. But I could live with this. At very least if it just placed the markers at the padding intervals without the delete it would still seem useful to me.

If it was possible would this utility appeal to anyone else?

[prl]

WISHLIST - Delete Soft Padding?
...
If it was possible would this utility appeal to anyone else?

Virtually nothing I record starts at the scheduled time. I'd hardly ever use a feature like this.

[IanSav]

Hi Logger,

WISHLIST - Delete Soft Padding?...
If it was possible would this utility appeal to anyone else?

I don't use auto padding at all as I don't find it flexible enough to copy with Australian TV. I pad my own timers manually to suit the channel, the time and the shows earlier in the day.

In the past I suggested that the timer padding should be an attribute of the timer being set such that the default pre and post padding times could be shown and applied in each and every timer. That way the specific padding for a timer could be manually adjusted as required. This suggestion was never accepted.

The suggestions you offer add much complexity to the recording process and are unlikely to be of significant/widespread value.

Regards,
Ian.

[tonymy01]

Soft padding is an absolute must when using ICE Interactive/Remote. This is because ICE won't pad out the timers unfortunately, saying that this functionality should be part of the PVR/recording device.
My default padding settings of -3mins +20mins still actually mucked me up last Thursday as, per usual, TEN HDs "The 4400" started about 10minutes early!! (GRR). So now to make sure I capture it, I am getting ICE Interactive to record the show before the 4400 also, "Eureka", as the show looks interesting enought that I might watch it anyway. I used to have a weekly timer setup for the 4400, but Ten was shuffling it around almost weekly, sometimes being after BSG, sometimes later, so I ended up with about a 2.5hour weekly timer to ensure I used to get it!!
Regards

[logger]

Hi Logger,
....The suggestions you offer add much complexity to the recording process..
Regards,
Ian.

Hi Ian
Fair enough if no one else would want it. But how would it add any complexity at all to the recording process? It has nothing to do with it. Keep the recording process just as it is now.
What I am suggesting is something that notes a users Soft Padding settings and applies them as variables to a batch process that would place two bookmarks AB in a recording and delete all except AB. It could appear in the Popup menu as "delete soft padding" as an alternative to Detelete A-B etc.

I use ICE/Remote as I am away from home more than half the time. I Soft pad everthing.

regs
Logger

[IanSav]

Hi Logger,

Fair enough if no one else would want it. But how would it add any complexity at all to the recording process? It has nothing to do with it. Keep the recording process just as it is now.
What I am suggesting is something that notes a users Soft Padding settings and applies them as variables to a batch process that would place two bookmarks AB in a recording and delete all except AB. It could appear in the Popup menu as "delete soft padding" as an alternative to Detelete A-B etc.

The complexity I refer to is in noting that bookmarks must be added while recording. This is far more logic than the simple capture of the data stream as it is now.

Regards,
Ian.

[logger]

Hi Logger,

...But how would it add any complexity at all to the recording process? ....

The complexity I refer to is in noting that bookmarks must be added while recording. This is far more logic than the simple capture of the data stream as it is now.
Regards,
Ian.

Not in what I envisiage. Why MUST they be added during recording? Especially given that would effect all recordings and not just the ones the user wanted to crop the padding from. I envisiage process where the bookmarks are added when the user initiates the "delete soft padding" process. Therefore it would have no effect on recording complexity whatsoever.
Nothing more complicated than a time saving means of replicating steps the user can achieve in a couple of minutes by pressing the forward and back buttons mutiple times and pressing the yellow bookmark button. The users padding settings are available to the process from the user settings areas. (If it could be done somehow without setting bookmarks then even better. ie delete start of file + x minutes then delete end of file - y minutes.) Still no effect on recording process.
Cheers
Logger

[peteru]

This is exactly the type of functionality that does not belong in the basic firmware, however it is a perfect candidate for a user generated extension.

This type of macro could be easily implemented if the Beyonwiz was scriptable or at least had an API like the Topfield 5000 series.

[pjc3]

May I say that the time for files to load from the network is getting to me. I had to wait a full 2 mins of twirling to load a TS file. It seems to be getting worse and is quite variable. Why would it have changed so much in the recent firmware?
Philip

[peteru]

I don't know, but during the beta testing I also noticed that things take long (and sometimes longer), yet others claimed that they find the load times faster.

I suspect that the identification algorithms need a major rewrite and any changes in behaviour we see currently are only due to minor tweaks. I bet that this code is designed, written and tested on normal PC hardware with content on the HDD, where the performance appears adequate. Once the same code runs over a slow network connection on an embedded box, the performance takes a dive.

It's a shame that Beyonwiz engineers don't actually use the product that they manufacture - I'm sure if they did, some of the usability issues would annoy them enough to fix the code.

[Neon Kitten]

Hi Neon Kitten,

In that case, here's one I scored when I got home earlier tonight and turned on the Beyonwiz to look at the weekend's recordings:
(I'm paraphrasing here by the way, but the last word is accurate)

"URGENT: There is only 3069MB remaining on the hard disk, Please delete some files to ffee more spa..."

Is the word "free" miss-spelled as "ffee" on the Beyonwiz or is that a typo here?

Err, yes, that's my typo, sorry "free" was spelt correctly, and the typo/omission was "spa..." which I did figure was probably due to the message being too long for something - but not the dialog box, which had plenty of room left (that line finished only two words into the second line of the dialog).

The Beyonwiz maintains some status and data files on the hard disk. If all the space were consumed by recordings then it would be possible for these files to become damaged or lost.

That puzzled me a bit:

1. Why is 3GB needed for those files that have not yet been written? Not only is that a hell of a lot of disk space, but with no more recordings possible, what's likely to get written anyway?

2. No files should be damaged or lost with any sensible filesystem in the case of a disk filling up. It doesn't happen with NTFS, it doesn't happen with FAT32, and it doesn't happen with ext2/ext3.

3. It's been a while since I was able to do a disk format on the Beyonwiz, but last time I did, it reported 1 or 2 percent of the drive already used right off the bat. I presumed *that* was being reserved for system files. That wouldn't be an unusual situation - the Playstation 3 reserves some 27GB of a 250GB drive for its filesystem and housekeeping, though in the PS3's case it's a custom, encrypted filesystem - but to have the Beyonwiz allocate itself a big chunk of the free space it tells the user is available is unusual behaviour.

As it stands, the Beyonwiz is telling the user that "you've still got 3 gigabytes of disk space free, but I'm not going to let you use it and I'm going to abort any recordings that are running or try to start". Possibly not the most consumer-friendly behaviour

[Neon Kitten]

I don't know, but during the beta testing I also noticed that things take long (and sometimes longer), yet others claimed that they find the load times faster.

I suspect that the identification algorithms need a major rewrite and any changes in behaviour we see currently are only due to minor tweaks. I bet that this code is designed, written and tested on normal PC hardware with content on the HDD, where the performance appears adequate. Once the same code runs over a slow network connection on an embedded box, the performance takes a dive.

I'm not so sure about that, actually.

This "loading" holdup - which of course takes longer the bigger the file is - was also present on the Sigma-powered Mediagate, and storing content on its internal hard drive didn't speed that delay up at all.

In the case of Divx/Xvid files at least, the delay appears to be in order to load the file's "index", and that annoyed Mediagate users so much they eventually added an option in firmware to skip loading the index until a search operation was made (fast forward greater than 2x speed, rewind or time search) at which point the indx would have to be dealt with. That way, you'd hit "play" on am Xvid file on the network, and you'd get playback right away.

Perhaps a similar option could be added to the Beyonwiz?

As far as lengthier times with the latest firmware is concerned, I'm sure one thing everyone has noticed is that file deletes take MUCH longer...!

[darz]

...
And recently half of the ice tv recordings I have set were ignored, and alot of the rest did not including the padding that I have set, so I missed the last 10 mins.... im really dissapointed at the moment...

Without more information, it's hard to give you any help. "It didn't work" isn't much to go on.

What version of the firmware are you running? Did you check that there had been an IceTV Interactive synchronisation between the Beyonwiz and the IceTV Interactive server? How far ahead of the broadcast time did you set the IceTV recordings? Did they appear eventually? Did a recording icon appear on the show? Did the show appear in My Upcoming Recordings or in My Recordings? With or without a recording icon in each case? Had you deleted any of the recordings on IceTV?

Padding has nothing to do with IceTV. Were the shows you were recording consecutive shows on the same service? If they were, what you describe is normal behaviour on some padding settings, and you'll find the end of the first show in the start of the recording for the second. Other circumstance can also mean that padding time isn't recorded, or that parts of one timer are recorded in another timer's recording if the padding for the two recordings overlaps.

What are your padding settings? Are you sure you know how they are supposed to work? Have you had a look at the padding FAQ? Some of the settings may not do what you expect Exactly what were the recordings (times, service) that had problems?

IceTV Interactive does not make last-minute corrections to align timers to the actual broadcast times rather than the scheduled ones.

Answers to your questions:
I'm running .235
The beyonwiz synchronised with IceTV since some of the shows were recorded.
I set the recording a day in advance.
The recoding icon appeared in Ice TV and and the show was in My Upcoming Recordings. I had delete and re-instated some other recordings, but not that one.
I understand that when two shows are recorded consecutevely there will be a cut at some point, but this was not the case in this situation. I have set a 3 minute pre padding and 10 post padding, but it only recorded 30 mins (maybe29) for a 30 min show. And the I dont beleive there was a change in the schedule.
And to add, another recording was deleted while I was watching it.
I went to multimedia to watch a show while it was still recording (close to the end), about half way through I tried to skip some commercials, I _may_ have pressed the OK button while I was skipping, it stopped all of a sudden and the show is no longer in my list of recorded programs. I was also recording another show on another channel, and strangely theres two instances of that show (same name, same starting time) one is still recording now, the other is complete at 1 minute. This happened the last time too.

Apologies for the previous outburst, but there was two shows (3 now) that I really wanted to watch, but couldnt...
Cheers,

Darz

[tonymy01]

You still haven't quite answered the question. What is your padding priority? Any priority other than "none" will cause padding from other timers to eat into other raw timer times. So if there are 2 timers on the one channel for consective times, having any kind of padding priority will have consquences.
Regards

[logger]

WISHLIST - Delete Soft Padding?
It is not possible to set different soft padding for different services or timers. I recall from a while ago that this is a design limitation and not likely to change.
My settings of -3 & +15 cover my worst case scenarios pretty well. But this means 90% of my recordings need to be cropped to clean them up if I intend to keep them.
Would it be feasible to create a "Delete Soft Padding" option?

This is exactly the type of functionality that does not belong in the basic firmware....

...in your opinion - peteru.
This is exactly the type of functionality that would not even be needed if adhoc padding was included in the basic firmware in the first place. It would essentially be a kludge to get around bad design. Beyonwiz's all or nothing approach in this area forces users to pad shows that do not require padding to cover shows that do.. However I do acknowledge that it seems most users are happy to live with this inconvenience.

Cropping recordings is about the only tedious annoying thing I have to do with my Beyonwiz these days. Apart from this I am very happy with it.

[madmax]

The way it is now, wouldn't it be less effort to have no default padding and just manually pad the timers for the 10% of your recordings that need it?

[logger]

Yes I guess you are probably correct. Will look in to it. Can I manually pad a timer that has been created by selecting a show in the guide and pressing record? Or do I have to start from scratch and specify service time and everthing?

[prl]

Yes I guess you are probably correct. Will look in to it. Can I manually pad a timer that has been created by selecting a show in the guide and pressing record? Or do I have to start from scratch and specify service time and everthing?

Select a show in the guide, press REC, then press REC again, and you'll get a editor popup for the timer.

[Stunkrat]

OK, try this one for size, firmware v.235.

Three timers set, like this:

Ch7 7:30-8:30
Ch2 8:00-8:35
Ch9 8:30-9:30


Someone Clever noticed this, and thought that there would a clash once padding was factored in, so I pointlessly changed the Ch9 timer to start at 8:37. Didn't factor the -1 +10 padding correctly. In theory, this is what I was telling the unit to record:


Ch7 7:29-8:40
Ch2 7:59-8:45
Ch9 8:36-9:40


The problem should be obvious, ie. the third timer is an overlap. Now, the complication was that the family were watching the Ch7 show , effectively in timeshift mode. FWIW, this would have been started from the fileplay menu. So, at the point that the third timer is due to fire (8:36), we have Ch7 recording (and being timeshifted), and Ch2 recording.

In an ideal world, what I would expect to happen is that the viewers get a message that the third timer is due to fire, but as the third tuner is unaccountably absent it isn't going to happen. In the less-than-ideal "this is a PVR, don't get your hopes up" world that we occupy, I could probably guess that a message would appear saying a timer's about to fire so the current one is going to stop.

Which is basically what happened, with a twist. The Ch7 recording was terminated and the file was deleted. I can't imagine anyone deliberately designing such bizarre behaviour, so I reckon it has to be a bug.

[Gully]

Stunkrat

What padding priority are you using?

It should be none if you don't want to loose scheduled times. That way you don't have to take into account the padding for clashes.

[Stunkrat]

Priority is none - what I was trying to do was to make sure that they could get to the end of the show they were watching, the commercials always run overtime. It would usually be ok, but Ch2 was programmed to end at 8:35, which is a bit of an unusual timeslot. Rather than miss the end of two shows, I thought it would be better to miss the beginning of Ch9, chances are it would be running 10 minutes late anyway.

Clashes like this don't occur that often, and when they do I can usually work around them somehow. I can't work around this kind of behaviour though, it shouldn't have deleted the recording.

[Gully]

Totally agree it shouldn't have been deleted.

[em5500]

Bug: Pop-Up button does not dismiss pop-up sub-menus.

While watching TV or while playing back a file press Pop-Up, scroll to Sound Track, press OK. Sound track sub-menu is displayed. Press Pop-Up to dismiss the main pop-up. The pop-up goes away, but the sound track sub-menu remains on screen. Same thing can be reproduced with the Subtitle sub-menu.

DP-P1, firmware v247.

[em5500]

Bug: "Popup Menu" text is not cleared from front panel when "Subtitle Control" pop-up is dismissed.

While playing a non-Beyonwiz file (tried AVI and MPEG) across a wired LAN connection, press Pop-Up. (Front panel text changes to "Popup Menu"). Scroll to Subtitle Control, press OK. The Subtitle Control pop-up is displayed on screen. Press Exit. The front panel continues to read "Popup Menu" even though there is no longer a pop-up on screen.

DP-P1, firmware v247.

[msj100]

Hi - in reference to:

http://www.beyonwiz.com.au/phpbb2/viewt ... 9954#29954

UPDATE - turns out the power supply for my disk enclosure was the problem (the one thing I didn't move between BW and Mac/PC). So far, so good with alternate power supply.

Thanks.

[DaveR]

Three timers set, like this:

Ch7 7:30-8:30
Ch2 8:00-8:35
Ch9 8:30-9:30


Someone Clever noticed this, and thought that there would a clash once padding was factored in, so I pointlessly changed the Ch9 timer to start at 8:37. Didn't factor the -1 +10 padding correctly. In theory, this is what I was telling the unit to record:


Ch7 7:29-8:40
Ch2 7:59-8:45
Ch9 8:36-9:40


The problem should be obvious, ie. the third timer is an overlap.

Actually no. With your -1 and +10 and priority set to 'none' your actual timers would have been (had you left them alone):

Ch7 7:29-8:30 on tuner-1
Ch2 7.59-8:45 on tuner-2
Ch9 8:30-9:40 on tuner-1

[Stunkrat]

Actually no. With your -1 and +10 and priority set to 'none' your actual timers would have been (had you left them alone):

Ch7 7:29-8:30 on tuner-1
Ch2 7.59-8:45 on tuner-2
Ch9 8:30-9:40 on tuner-1

Well, yes. Unless you factor in the actual overrun of every single program that starts on a commercial channel after 7PM, in which case the choice is between missing the start of the Ch9 show or the end of Ch7. See my second post on this, I think I explained it a bit better than the first one.

In any case, killing the recording couldn't possibly be the designed behaviour.

[prl]

Actually no. With your -1 and +10 and priority set to 'none' your actual timers would have been (had you left them alone):

Ch7 7:29-8:30 on tuner-1
Ch2 7.59-8:45 on tuner-2
Ch9 8:30-9:40 on tuner-1

Well, yes. Unless you factor in the actual overrun of every single program that starts on a commercial channel after 7PM, in which case the choice is between missing the start of the Ch9 show or the end of Ch7. See my second post on this, I think I explained it a bit better than the first one.

In any case, killing the recording couldn't possibly be the designed behaviour.

I've posted several times (including in a timer padding FAQ) pointing out that there are circumstances where, no matter what your timer and timer padding settings are, it can be impossible to set timers so that you are guaranteed to get the complete contents of both programs recorded, if (on a two-tuner machine) another timer is running on the second tuner during the time that the channel change must be made. This problem is solely due to the fact that TV broadcasters, and especially the commercial ones, don't keep to their published schedules. It has nothing to do with any failings of the Beyonwiz (apart from it not having three tuners when it's advertised to have only two)..

The fact that a recording was lost, though, is definitely a problem. But I don't think anyone's disagreeing with that.

[Stunkrat]

I've posted several times (including in a timer padding FAQ) pointing out that there are circumstances where, no matter what your timer and timer padding settings are, it can be impossible to set timers so that you are guaranteed to get the complete contents of both programs recorded, if (on a two-tuner machine) another timer is running on the second tuner during the time that the channel change must be made. This problem is solely due to the fact that TV broadcasters, and especially the commercial ones, don't keep to their published schedules. It has nothing to do with any failings of the Beyonwiz (apart from it not having three tuners when it's advertised to have only two)..

The fact that a recording was lost, though, is definitely a problem. But I don't think anyone's disagreeing with that.

I agree, there's absolutely no problem with the unit in regard to the problems with the timers, I only included that info as background in case anyone wanted to do some diagnostics on it. It would be useful to know what the unit is designed to do in the situation I outlined - though it could be that this is only caused by the first timer being timeshifted when a third timer is set to fire, and that this precise situation hasn't been previously contemplated.

[prl]

...
It would be useful to know what the unit is designed to do in the situation I outlined - though it could be that this is only caused by the first timer being timeshifted when a third timer is set to fire, and that this precise situation hasn't been previously contemplated.

Agreed there; there are lots of bits around the margins where we don't know what the expected behaviour is, so it's hard to know when something is going wrong. I had wondered about timeshifting, but it wasn't clear whether you were timeshifting (or even had timeshifting enabled) when the Ch 9 timer fired and the Ch 7 recording disappeared.

There appear to have been some changes in how timeshifting interacts with recordings in recent releases. The main evidence is the fact that instant recordings can't be started normally in 1.05.237 (and .234 beta). Perhaps there's something that's affecting complicated timer/timeshift scenarios, too.

Were you watching 7 timeshifted when the 7 timer started, or were you chaseplaying the channel 7 recording (started watching it from the File Player while it was still recording)? I'll try to set up the same conditions and see if I can recreate the problem.

Sorry the discussion got a bit sidetracked into the convoluted topic of the meaning of the padding priority options

[Gully]

I agree, there's absolutely no problem with the unit in regard to the problems with the timers, I only included that info as background in case anyone wanted to do some diagnostics on it. It would be useful to know what the unit is designed to do in the situation I outlined - though it could be that this is only caused by the first timer being timeshifted when a third timer is set to fire, and that this precise situation hasn't been previously contemplated.

It might be worth trying 247 and if you can formatting your HDD as part of the upgrade process.

[Stunkrat]

Were you watching 7 timeshifted when the 7 timer started, or were you chaseplaying the channel 7 recording (started watching it from the File Player while it was still recording)? I'll try to set up the same conditions and see if I can recreate the problem.

Chaseplay - definitely that. Didn't know there were two different terms for it. If I wanted to watch something that was being recorded, I used to go to the channel being recorded and rewind from the current point. No no, say the children, just go into fileplay and start it from there. Smartarses.

It might be worth trying 247 and if you can formatting your HDD as part of the upgrade process.

Format is pretty much out of the question I'm afraid. I'm on 247, if I have to time I'll look at trying to replicate it. Not likely in the short term though.