My Digital Life

My Directv HR20-700 Video and Audio Stutter Issues (Update 3)

Back in mid-September Directv released a new version of their software. After the automatic upgrade issues with my recordings started to occur. The video and audio would drop out and essentially stopping the playback from 2 to 5 seconds. This happened so many times that it made the viewing experience of recorded content lousy. I have had no issues with watching live TV, but I seldom do anymore other than for sporting events.

In mid-October Directv released version 0x0368 of their software. This version helped considerably but the problem was still very noticeable.

I have been a Directv customer for 14 years now, but with the onslaught of Verizon FIOS marketing, the fact that I have FIOS for internet and home phone service, I was starting to think hard about switching to their TV service. The two biggest issues I have had with switching are:

1. The Motorola DVR which FIOS provides is substandard and they don't allow you to add an external drive.
2. If you purchase (additional cost) a Tivo DVR which provides the external drive functionality, you are stuck using one way cable cards which eliminates any pay per view or interactive feature.

Yes, FIOS could work for me, but the overall Directv experience is better and their iPhone app is a great little tool. The forums like dbstalk.com have provided very little help other than to the RBR (Red Button Reset) the DVR. This seems to help a little but you have to do it almost daily so that is not a solution. As I was planning my potential move to FIOS, I decided to call Directv customer service to see what they would suggest (I have to say I was pretty skeptical). As I explained my problem, the CS person narrowed the potential issue down to the disk and suggested I run a disk scan and report any errors.

I ran the disk scan (RBR, wait on the "just a few more moments" message, press the front panel down key and record button simultaneously until the scan message comes up). It took 16 hours to scan my 1 Terabyte external hard drive. No errors were found, but the scan clearly resolved some issues.

Last night I started watching recorded programs and although not perfect there are no audio dropouts and the video stutters are blips that do not negatively impact the viewing experience.

Bottom line this clearly a disk related issue associated with the update and probably associated with the external drive functionality which is supposedly unsupported but operational.

Updates:

11/23/09: Good weekend for recorded material with only minor video and audio stutters. It was interesting that the hard drive started making quite a bit of noise again (I wonder what is going on, could it be defragmenting?), but if it makes things watchable I will live with (my DVR and HD are in a cabinet 20 feet away from my LCD panel). I may schedule another scan this week.

11/21/09: I ran another scan Wednesday night and last night watched 3 recorded shows. This seem to help quite a bit, I had 2 minor video/audio stutters on a 30 minute show. I will keep monitoring.

11/19/09: I am sorry to say that the video and audio dropouts/stutters are back when I watched 2 recorded shows last night. I had planned on running another scan and started it around 10PM last night. It is about 60% done this morning. If this does not work, I may purchase a Western Digital My DVR drive to see if that helps (I would need it anyway if I went to a Tivo/FIOS setup).

 

Note: BTW, I am using a special starter edition of Office 2010 (closed beta w NDA) to edit this blog post I created with Office 2007. It is funny to see the file being opened in compatibility mode.

The week of September 17th in My Digital Life

It is Monday morning and I have a rant about football, program guides, and technology. Ever since the big viewer outrage (at least 15 years ago) over CBS cutting off a Giants game (I think it was) to start the 60 minutes show at 7PM, all of the networks have allowed premiere sporting events to be viewed until their conclusion, and then start the next show. In today's world of DVRs where you can select a show by title and not have to worry about when it will air, I don't understand why the program guide cannot be updated in real time. I have a Season Pass for 60 minutes on Sundays at 7PM, however during football season it never starts at 7PM, yet the guide shows 7PM. This means that if I do not want to miss a 60 minute story, I have to add minutes or record the show after it. Why do the cable and satellite companies use arcane technology (batch processing) for updating their program guides. The television network control centers plan for the delay and should be able to provide an estimated lag time in real time to the program guide providers and in turn download the update to our DVRs. The DVR can then automatically adjust their recording times. This is not "rocket science"!

I have had fun playing with the iPhone last week. The touch interface and Safari browser are exceptional. It has it shortcomings (more to come on these, even the Apple store associates I have to talked to agree), however it does provide Apple with a truly innovative platform. After my post on the "irate Apple followers", the comments have been thoughtful and have forced me to refine or redefine my thinking about Apple, their products and overall strategy (I am not done commenting...). Even though they are a minor player in the desktop/laptop arena, the fact that they are the undisputed market leader with the iPod gives them a great deal of power in our personal digital lives. I am keenly interested on how they use that power, the iPhone is clearly a projection of that power. It is interesting to note that the Apple web site clearly lists OS X as the iPhone's operating system, yet the iPod Touch has no mention of an operating system. I would have thought that OS X would have also been used for the iPod Touch. Maybe this is just an oversight. If they are using OS X on the iPod Touch, this would clearly show a strategy of projecting OS X to new computing platforms which could be quite significant.

I finished my review of Ilium ListPro 5.0 and it should be published on pocketnow.com sometime this week.

This week:

• Continue my review of the Etymotic ety8 Bluetooth headphones.
• Continue my comparison of Windows Live Search and Google Maps for Windows Mobile.

My HDTV Adventure...Launch of Directv 10 satellite

The promise of more HD content will hopefully become more of a reality tonight with the launch of the new DirecTV 10 satellite in Kazakhstan. With the successful launch of this satellite, DirecTV will have the ability to offer 100 HD channels by year end with many scheduled to go live in September.

You can follow the launch on International Launch Services blog here and it will be carried live on DirecTV channel 570 at 8:30PM EDT.

Almost three months, since I upgraded my Directv service to HD and I still think it is great. Several weeks ago a new version of the Directv HR20 DVR software was released. Although there have been reports of individuals having problems, my unit has worked flawlessly (knock on wood) with version 0x168. I find the new colors easy to read and the improvements made to smooth out the fast forward and rewind are getting closer to the Tivo experience. The sensitivity of the Off The Air Tuner seems to have improved as well. All in all it looks like Directv is headed in the right direction.

The only issue I have is with my old Yamaha RX-V992 receiver which does not seem to automatically detect a Dolby Digital audio signal from a standard PCM audio signal. This seems to be a problem with early generation Dolby Digital receivers, mine is 10 years old. The work around is to leave the HR20 DVR in PCM mode, the receiver will automatically detect Dolby Surround. Even though Dolby Surround is good, you can notice more channel separation with Dolby Digital. Maybe someday I will buy a new reciever.

I can't wait to get access to additional HD content in September; my 1 TeraByte external eSATA drive is only about 60% full...

The week of May 21st in My Digital Life

I will hopefully be the owner of a T-Mobile Wing tomorrow. I plan on calling my local store today to make sure they have them in stock.The Wing has not shown up on the T-Mobile web site yet.

Last week I finally was able to have Verizon FIOS installed. It took about 6 hours to complete the installation. I am very pleased with the service. The downstream speed is similar to what I had on Comcast, however the upstream speed of 2 Mbps is about 6 times faster. This makes file and picture uploads considerably faster. Watching Slingbox away from home is a much more pleasurable experience. I also think the quality of my Sunrocket VOIP service is better. More on my install tomorrow.

My upgraded Tivo hard drive seems to be working fine, however I cannot connect to it via my Silicon Dust Cachecard. I am still researching the problem and have found other individuals with a similar issue but nobody seems to have a solution to the problem. It seems most individuals on the forums have moved on to the newer Tivo boxes..

On the consulting front, I finally found a work around to connecting a Microsoft ISA server to a Cisco VPN router that does not use NAT-T. The bottom line is that you can't use ISA, the connection needs to go through a firewall that performs static NAT translation. Now I am onto diagnosing a DFS environment across three subnets which does not appear to synchronize files correctly.

This week:

• My QuickLook review of the Prevalent Devices Phraze-It  keyboard 2.0 application using my Dell Axim X51v should appear on pocketnow.com this week.
• I should be blogging about my new T-Mobile Wing.

Directv Tivo - Rebuilding my hard drive

I have owned my Directv Sony T-60  Tivo DVR for 6 years. DVRs are just starting to hit the mainstream, it is incredible that it has taken that long for people to understand the concept. About the only broadcasts we watch in real time any more are sports and newscasts.

My Tivo is on its third set of hard drives. The original unit had two Quantum drives (13.5GB and 30 GB) for a total of about 30 hours. A year into my DVR experience 30 hours was just not enough and I decided to upgrade to a 120GB (109 hours) hard drive. Since Tivo was built on Linux, a group of hardcore enthusiasts quickly developed. Some of these enthusiasts turned their knowledge into businesses which provide upgrades to the basic unit. I decided to purchase an preloaded 120GB Samsung drive from dvrupgrade (originally ptvupgrade) since back in 2002 the drive upgrade process was not as well laid out as it is today. Five years later the Samsung drive started failing (see my post here) at the time I was upgrading to HDTV with the Directv HR20 DVR (see my HDTV thread here). I was planning on keeping the Sony T-60 Tivo unit, so it was time to replace the drive. This time I decided to purchase a Western Digital 250GB hard drive and perform the upgrade myself.

As the Tivo enthusiast community grew two forum sites gained prominence; Tivocommunity.com and dealdatabase.com. Dealdatabase.com deals with more hardcore issues like extracting content and web enabling Tivo. However in order to take full advantage of these features you needed a network adapter. The Tivo motherboard had an edge expansion connector which could possibly be used. An enterprising engineer (silicondust.com) developed a network adapter (Turbonet and Airnet), then a combined application cache (to speed up the program list) and network adapter (cachecard). I purchased the cachecard. Along with the applications people developed and posted on dealdatabase.com. I now could control my Tivo via the web and off load programs I wanted to archive.

Fast forward to today, I wanted to be able to copy my complete configuration to my new larger drive. Copying from one drive to another on an PC using downloaded Linux images configured for Tivo was easy (dd command). However a big issue cropped up. The Tivo system was built to support a hard drive with a maximum capacity of 137GB. I needed to upgrade to LBA48 kernel to be able to run the file expansion MFSADD application. Not a problem, there are several LBA48 images available for download. Unfortunately after a week of trying different combinations and even manually creating the partition table (pdisk), I was never able to get MFSADD to expand the partitions. The image I copied worked fine on the new hard drive but only used 120GB of the drive. I was never able to use the MFSBACKUP/RESTORE (partition errors) on the whole image, but the basic MFSBACKUP/RESTORE without content worked fine. Maybe because of the drive failure the content partition got corrupted and even though I was able to fix the bad clusters using HDD Regenerator, it did not fix issues at the application level. Since it was time to get Tivo up and running again before a household revolution took hold, we decided that we could live with loosing the content. In the end I saved the configuration but lost the content which works out fine.

All of this would not have been possible without the postings of many individuals. I want to thank all of them. They have made a great device, much more useful. In addition the sites I listed above here two sites I have used, Steve Jenkin's Tivo site and Hinsdale's how to web site.

The week of May 14th in My Digital Life

Almost 4 months after the release of Windows Vista, Apple still does not have a 100% stable implementation of iTunes. From the folks who think they are tops in software innovation, I think this is pretty lame. The iPod's biggest customer base is Windows, yet there are still major problems even with Windows XP and synching. This weekend I had to let my wife's iPod run its battery dry to reset it because iTunes would not detect it and it was stuck in sync mode. This is a pretty sad situation. With the iPhone and Leopard in development, I think Apple is stretched, yet still arrogant, to the point of a possible misstep. This could give a competitor an entree.

I spent a week trying to restore the Tivo content from my old drive and finally gave up. Although the restored image worked, I could never get the MFS partition to expand to use the full 250GB of the new drive. I ended up performing a basic restore (no content), I am up and running with a 235 hours of recording capacity. All my settings were copied over, even my content list however there was no associated content and I had to manually delete the list.

We are one week from the rumored release of the T-Mobile Wing, still no official confirmation from T-Mobile...

This week:

• l am working on a review of Prevalent Devices Phraze-It  keyboard 2.0 application using my Dell Axim X51v.

The week of May 7th in My Digital Life

I am back blogging from Windows Vista  on my Thinkpad X60. Last Friday I ranted about being down, however kudos to FedEx they came through delivering the LaCie Slim CD/DVD ROM drive. I was able to try restoring the X60. Unfortunately the IBM recovery disks did not work. I was able to recover this weekend by using the Kill Disk utility (more on this tomorrow). I don't know if it is psychological, but the X60 seems to be running faster then when I first got the unit.

Since I was in full hard disk diagnosis mode this week end, I also decided to transfer the data off of my ailing Tivo Samsung 120GB (see post) to a Western Digital 250GB drive. The DD copy finally finished this morning and I am about to run HDD Regenerator to make sure the copy is fine. You might wonder why I did not run this utility first on the original drive, well it seems when I used it originally I only received a temporary key and when I tried to use it yesterday it would not work. I wanted to start the DD copy since I knew it could take 12 to 24 hours. I finally received the permanent key last night, so I am running it today as a precaution. The DD copy did complete successfully so I am pretty confident I won't have a problem. I will find out if I am successful tonight when I have time to put my Tivo back together.

We are two weeks from the rumored release of the T-Mobile Wings, however no official information yet...

This week:

• With my X60 problems, I never finished my Verizon Aircard 595 Quicklook on pocketnow.com, hopefully this week.
• l will be starting a review of Prevalent Devices Phraze-It  keyboard 2.0 application using my Dell Axim X51v.
• I plan on waiting longer before commenting on my new Lenovo X60 Tablet with Vista, since I had the drive problem.

My HDTV Adventure...Directv

Third time was a charm. My Directv 5 LNB dish and HR20 DVR were successfully installed yesterday. When my Sony KDL46XBR2 was delivered in early January, I called the Directv retention team (based on advice from this forum) and was able to get the HR20 DVR for free and a free year of DVR service. They scheduled me for  a March 19th install. March 19th came without an installation, the installer had an accident (fair enough) but no one contacted me. Directv rescheduled for the next day, an installer and supervisor showed up. Both convinced me that there was no way for me to get the HD signal because of how they have the angle the oval dish and our large trees. I did not push it since their explanation seem plausible and I had read of many individuals (including Walt Mossberg who lives in the DC area) living near tall trees being unable to receive the HD signal. However a week later, I talked to a neighbor who had the same experience but he pressed and the installer found a line of sight.

I decided to try the stronger tack and to reschedule my installation with Directv. Unfortunately they had canceled the order and could not reactivate it. I had to create a new order, customer service called me back and could not give the deal from my previous order. I had to call back and talk to the retentions desk. I did but they did not want to give the HR20 for free, after strongly objecting that it was not fair, they told me that I should never have gotten this deal in the first place. At this point I had two choices, give up on Directv or pay. I ended paying $334.90, receiving a $105.00 credit and 1 year of free HD DVR service. This is pretty pathetic customer service for someone who has been with them 10 years. I plan on writing the CEO on two fronts, one that they should honor their original deal with me and two the fact that they may be losing a lot of customers due to incompetent or ill-trained installers.

After discussing the situation with the installer, showing the dish on my neighbors roof, he agreed to check the signal on the roof. He took up a test dish and meter (the original installers never did). Within minutes he found a suitable spot. We decided to put the dish as close to the top of the roof line to make  sure I got the best signal possible. I am now getting 100 for many of the transponder on the Tivo upstairs and downstairs in the family room the HR20 is in the mid 90's due to the long cable run. I think that is pretty good signal strength given the comments of the previous installers. The signal on the Tivo is better than what I had before.

I connected my 1 TeraByte external hard disk array, HDMI, an optical audio cable, and  a LAN cable. The unit booted right up, it immediately wanted to upgrade the software which I did. The version is now 0x145, the original version was 0xbe. Here are my initial findings:

• It detected the external hard drive immediately.
• I enabled network access so I don't have to use a phone line (very easy).
• HDMI seems to be working well, I did have to enable valid resolutions in the settings and pass through mode (hold down the format button). The Sony seems to be a little slow to recognize resolution changes but it works, unlike with the SA 8300HD.
• Dolby Digital only works with certain channels so for now I am using PCM. Switching is not that easy (too many keystrokes). Given that not all channels are transmitted with Dolby Digital audio, there should be one button on the remote to switch back and forth. 
• The ATSC off air receiver does not seem to be as sensitive as the Sony's. I am using a split off of my Terk stick UHF/VHF antenna which works fine on the Sony but flaky with the HR20. I may need to purchase a Terk HD antenna if I want to use off air channels.
• I love being able to record PPV movies and only pay for them when we watch the recording (press R to record PPVs in the guide). Also recording PPV movies allows us to watch them over several days, unlike the 24 hour limit with Comcast and Verizon FIOS. This is much more like renting a DVD and fits our viewing habits much better.
• The one problem I have with the installation, are the two little dongles for MPEG4 that need to be connected to the satellite inputs. It makes sliding the HR20 all the way back in my tight cabinet tough. I will have to reroute them elsewhere.

I am much more pleased with the HR20 than with Comcast's SA 8300HD. It is clearly a step or two above, however the UI is still not as easy as the Tivo.

My HDTV adventure...Tivo withdrawal

One of the biggest differences between the competing cable services (satellites, cable, IPTV) is the user interface of the DVR. I have used the Tivo interface for the last six years and I was in shock how much better it is. The SA 8300HD interface is just clunky and here are some of the most obvious functionality that is missing.

• No intermediate 15 minute time markers on the playback status bar. Without these markers it is harder to estimate how much time remains on a show.
• No quick advance feature to go directly to the next marker.
• No ability to resume playback where you paused a show, if you play a different recorded show in the interim
• No full title or keyword search of the guide data.
• No wishlist feature to enter program titles tor keywords  not necessarily in the guide. Tivo then can be set to records shows that match.
• No way to prioritize the list of shows you want to record when a conflict occurs.

Also on Directv we are used to record Pay Per View movies, we can then view them over multiple day. Comcast and Verizon FIOS limit you to an On Demand period of 24 hours. This is pretty lame, although it is probably driven by the movie studios.

Well after hassling Directv and going through the retention desk, I was able to create a new order and they will attempt to install a second time on April 4th.