Cisco CHS435HD (1 of 2) will not record two episodes of series (shows as recorded; won't playback)

[JCN1908]

Last night (9/13) and again early this morning (9/14) I tried to record the episodes "Bound and Determined" and "Playing With Hearts" of the series "Deadly Affairs" (Ch.123 in Reston VA).  Both times the episode show as recorded.  Upon playback the DVR waits for about 5-10 seconds and then returns to the live channel.

Both episodes are NEW and the series options are STD, FIRST-RUN and REPEATS, SAVE ALL.   DVR is 28% full.  There is no external expansion drive on this unit.

A different episode / series recorded and plays back fine (from 8 pm on 9/13 just prior to the first of the two episode failures: 9 pm and 10 pm).

This has happened before on a very sporadic, random basis but never deterministically on the second (manually schedulred recording) attempt.  Maybe once a month or every other month prior to this (at the worst).   About the same fequency on the other (Living Room) DVR (same model, etc).

I moved the series to the top of the pirority list so the repeats would be sure to record overnight.

Previous FIOS on-line support did the usually master reset worthless stuff on the script.  Now what?

[JCN9801]

The one in the Master Bedroom up-chucked again on ONE episode that shows in the recorded list (aka VIEW) and yet when PLAYBACK is selected the DVR returns to LIVE TV.

Once again on CHAT SUPPORT.  Tech insisted that RESETTING was not the same thing as REBOOTING the DVR.  PLEASE!  It is a LINUX computer!  SAME, SAME.  Po-ta-to = po-tat-toe.

And he could see the suspect episode listed (with his tools, on his end).  So he claimed.

RESET the DVR.  And, as I had predicted, upon going back into VIEW ALL RECORDINGS.  The missing PLAYBACK episode, and, since there was on ONE from this series, its FOLDER too, were GONE.  As if NEVER THERE.  The perfect crime!  Let's call these:  "GHOST RECORDINGS", shall we.

So FIOS assessment is:  The firmware is faulty.  Surely this cannot be the case.  But it must be on the SCRIPT when all else that is sane and logical fails.   So I reluctantly gave in to a DVR swap.  I'll have 30 days to re-work the series recordings (*) and catch-up and peel off everything and send the old one back, to be "re-furbed" and "re-issued".

(*) I just went through this with my other CHS435HDC box in the Living Room.  Swapped that one out because it REBOOTED whenever a FOLDER DELETE was attempted, I'm sorry "RESET" itself.  And I expect the SAME MESS with the Master Bedroom replacement in EXPORTING series recordings to the VERIZON CLOUD and then downloading them back onto the replacement box.

The Living Room replacement was a 2 hour exercise is ferreting out LONG, LONG AGO delete series, misplaced priorities, etc.  What a mess!  Glad I am not a big fan of CLOUD computer backups, esp with VERIZON!  When it rains CLOUDS tend to evaporate!

I will post any future anomalies as they happen.

How goes it in QUANTUM land?  With only ONE DVR for the whole house? With no transition support for legacy boxes while everything eases over?   With NO EXPANSION drive capability?  Has anybody lost everything yet to a QUANTUM "firmware" failure?  I had recently thought that a DVR-in-the-CLOUD ala Time-Warner (?) might be the way to go.  Now I am not so sure.

---JCN

[JCN1908]

Another update on the GHOST playback episode recording phenomena.  I am back to two CHS435HDC DVR boxes; both are replacements.  The Living Room replacement (returned because of "faulty firmware" - DELETE FOLDER rebooted the box) is now named "FIREPLACE".  The Master Bedroom replacement (GHOST playbacks) is now named "WORKSTATION".  This update concerns WORKSTATION.

On Monday night 12-Jan-2015, this unit showed recordings of the first airing on the ID Channel (#123 here in Reston VA) of six 30 minute episodes of the series "Cause of Death" (be aware this is NOT a new series but a re-branding of the series "Mystery Detectives" AKA "Forensic Files" that aired on truTV and other outlets in 1990s and 2000s).

None of these six consecutive episode would playback.  PLAY FOLDER would skip through them one after the other 5-6 seconds each and then freeze on the last one.  Individual episode playback would simply return to live TV immediately each time.  India based CHAT SUPPORT was worthless.  As I cautioned that tech, rebooting the box would simply erase these from the recorded list.  Which it did.  Strike #1.

A day or so later I called regular phone support and got a pretty experienced rep.  She claimed to have never seen anything like this.  And she offered to replace the box (again!) which I declined. Strike #2.

It is obvious that the DVR boot sequence knows something about ZERO LENGTH episode content in that it is able to clear these GHOSTS from the recordings list.  Which leads me to suspect that the programmers of the DVR software (FIOS or CISCO or somebody) have allowed for this possibility.  I have also encountered on the since placed Master Bedroom DVR a couple of instances where there was a couple of minutes of recording.  These are not erased on reboot.  And GHOST episodes in the DLETED folder are also not erased.

By the time I returned home on Monday I was only able to catch and record TWO of these episode on their second airings (2:00 am and 2:30 am).  Those played back okay.

Interesting aspect of this was that the ailing Master Bedroom unit symptoms of this got progressively worse over the 30 day exchange period when I had both it and the WORKSTATION replacement running in parallel.  I even managed to find several GHOST episodes on Master Bedroom that could be successfully played back on WORKSTATION.  Therefore this problem seems to be unit specific, not related to wiring or ONT or anything upstream.

I am betting now that this has something to do with the hard drive and / or disk controller subsystems.  It is probably too rare and infrequent to be caught in QA or testing and so is highly likely that refurbed DVRs are sent back out with a tendency to further exhibit this problem as they age.

Any comments appreciated.

---JCN

[JCN1908]

The saga continues.  DVR "WORKSTATION" once again with GHOST episodes that will not playback.  This time with a new twist (two other events like this have happened since my Jan 16 update but mostly this unit has been OKAY).

NOTE:  This DVR is typically only 5-15% full and there is NO EXPANSION drive attached.

Channel is 123 (ID Discovery in Reston VA).  Date:25-Feb-2015.  Time period 3 am through 6 am.  Six consecutive episodes of "I Was Murdered"; 30 minutes each were supposed to be recorded.  This screw up was so novel I put it on my computer as a video captured sequence albeit as low resolution.

Episodes 1 and 2 played back fine ("Devil You Know" and "Midnight Monster").  Then episodes 3 and 4 refused to playback at all ("My Bloody Valentine" and "Just My Type").  Finally episodes 5 and 6 ("Lone Star Double Murder" and "A Perfect Storm") once again played back fine!  It was only by carefully watching for slight, 10-15 second overlaps between episodes that I figured out what was truly missing.

If I playback the entire FOLDER I can just barely discern the jump overs on the episodes that won't PLAYBACK... Very subtle gaps as it skips to the next one in the list immediately (with that blue notice banner at the top of the screen:  "PLAYING BACK NEXT PROGRAM IN THE LIST") and a spill-over from the end of the previous episode.

So this event is back-to-back-back on the same channel over a continuous 3 hour time interval.

Since these are in the 4 am Wednesday time frame it is possible that FIOS's ridiculous implementation of EAS NOTIFICATION Testing is to blame for this one ("If this had been actual emergency...").

Occasionally there are two or more of these EAS tests per week as each county / jurisdiction tests seperately and they all get folded into the local upload stream.  Most often early AM on Wednesday but occasionally on a Tuesday or Thursday early morning.   Unlike, say, COMCAST, the FIOS testing interrupts all PLAYBACK and returns to live TV.  I have complained about this since installation in Nov 2013.  COMCAST's version does not take the entire screen, continues whatever was in progress (volume muted) and goes back to whatever was going on before.  Better, no?

Just continuing to document that the GHOST problem is still there, still rare thankfully.  I expect no help or resolution.  Just another curiosity logged.

I'd be interested to hear of any similar events from people who have QUANTUM DVRs.

---JCN

[MeffaMa]

Having a similar problem here - about 5-10% of the time, I get an episode on the DVR when, if I hit play:

1. The DVR menu screen freezes - can't move the cursor, it is stuck on play.

2. The current channel will sometimes continue playing in the upper left corner, sometimes it freezes.

3. After a few seconds, the current channel goes black in the upper left corner.

4. A few seconds later after that, the menu crashes and the current channel

I tried live chatting with support but the tre they were working through clearly had nothing to do with the issue. When the rep asked me to reseat the coax (hello! The recording should already be on the DVR - how can the coax affect that?) I decided I'd just buy the **bleep** episode on Amazon Instant Video.