DVR- It's all gone!!!

Had a similar situation happen on Monday; wiped 5 weeks of programming, 50+ hours of content. I was livid.  The unit retained the settings though (like blocked channels).  Of course the easy to recover stuff was saved.  These Cisco DVRs are junk; 3 replacements in 4 months due to similar issues.  I've neve seen such a poorly designed device and I design integrated circuits for a living.

Don't know how to prevent it as I don't see any way to back up the data; at a minimum, demand a new DVR.  I did, demanded a tech come out the next morning.  I pay a rental fee for this gear, ATT better make it work or I'll make them come out each time ASAP to replace gear the second it flips out like this.

I have to wonder if this thing goes though some wipe/boot if you push the power button and then unplug it.  If so, then it was "designed by monkeys", a phrase used in one of my engineering journals (Design News).

Sorry to hear about your problem.  I don't know if this is happening more with the Cisco boxes than the Motorola dvrs.  Normally I would say request a new box, but this time I will say request a Motorola box if you can.  Just a thought.

Thanks RCSMG.  The tech was out Tuesday; Cisco boxes is all they use here in the Raleigh, NC area when you have the DVR.

I have a engineer friend at Cisco who works in their RTP facility and he's also a Uverse customer (tripple pack).  He told me the DVRs are not designed by Cisco, they're just OEM'd with their name slapped on it.  There are all kinds of memory management issues with the box he said, that it was poorly designed.  He said he wished Cisco didn't put their name on the box since it's such a lousy piece of hardware.

I called tech support and they immidiately offered to send a tech at no charge to replace my DVR. I declined the offer and here's why. I have had Uverse for close to 2 years and have NEVER had a problem. Never an outage, never any pixalation or freezes. I don't want any one screwing around with my settings or anything else on my network. I work in combined bill for AT&T and handle many issues for customers who experience issues with technicians and poorly trained customer service reps. I love this service and am proud to be working for a company that has some of the smartest techincal people in the world working for them. That being said I know what can  happen when we start down the path of "support".

My DVR has a USB port on it and I wonder if I can back my stuff up that way. I thoughtmof also putting a backup battery on it, but in the case of resetting the DVR that would really not resolve the issue.

I tried using the USB port; it doesn't work.  ATT had it disabled by the supplier.

I stand corrected.  It does have the 5V DC power operational (I checked with a DVM) but data lines appear to be disabled.

It's not much juice, so only works with low-power, sort of like front ports vs. back ports on old desktop machines.  

Frustrating!!!

This technology clearly has a long way to go.  I find it hard to believe that ATT has not required their suppliers to provide a DVR that can survive a power outage!  Every time there is a "disturbance in the force" the thing loses all it's programs.  After an hour of my time with a very polite rep. the party line is "that's normal."  Maybe normal but not acceptable.  Do your homework ATT!!  Us customers still count for something.

Can you imagine if computer hard drives lost all their data when there was a power bump?

We have had at least 2 DVRs that lost all recording due to a power fluctuation/outage.  The last Level 2 tech I talked said that the DVR box is programmed to re-initialize itself whenever it has to reboot; in other words it erases itself.  The tech then proceeded to say that they could work with me about what to have an electrician check to make sure the electrical wiring in the house was good.

Here is a suggestion for AT&T, change the programming in the DVR not to erase all of the saved recordings.  It should not take very long to do, would be cheaper than having customers rewire their homes, and save a lot of money in having techs go out and replace incorrectly programmed DVRs.

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@ereinoehl wrote:

 

We have had at least 2 DVRs that lost all recording due to a power fluctuation/outage.  The last Level 2 tech I talked said that the DVR box is programmed to re-initialize itself whenever it has to reboot; in other words it erases itself.  The tech then proceeded to say that they could work with me about what to have an electrician check to make sure the electrical wiring in the house was good.

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Something must have been miscommunicated.  A reboot of the DVR should not result in recordings being erased.  I have never had recordings lost as a result of a reboot or a power loss.

Is your DVR plugged into a surge protector?

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@texasguy37 wrote:

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@ereinoehl wrote:

 

We have had at least 2 DVRs that lost all recording due to a power fluctuation/outage.  The last Level 2 tech I talked said that the DVR box is programmed to re-initialize itself whenever it has to reboot; in other words it erases itself.  The tech then proceeded to say that they could work with me about what to have an electrician check to make sure the electrical wiring in the house was good.

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Something must have been miscommunicated.  A reboot of the DVR should not result in recordings being erased.  I have never had recordings lost as a result of a reboot or a power loss.

 

Is your DVR plugged into a surge protector?

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I beg to differ.  I had about 50 hrs. of recordings blitzed when the power glithced in my home in April 2011.  The ATT tech I spoke to said that was not supposed to happen but it did.  ATT replaced the box, the new one hasn't had the issue since then.

So, it can happen.  Not sure if there was any updates to the box to prevent that but I sure had it happen to me.