Tutor

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3 Messages

Sunday, October 16th, 2011 1:36 AM

DVR recordings all gone post-Disaster Recovery

I have the CIsco DVR and 2 STBs in my setup and the STBs were having issue playing back some of my older recordings for the last week and a half.  It seemed to start after changing from a U300 to U200 plan, but that might just be a coincidence. When a recording would not play the STB would attempt to start the playback, then give an error and drop back out to the menu listing for the recording before giving a second error that DVR playback was unavailable and go back to a blank list of recordings which would start populating again with the recordings on the DVR.   Some recordings would still play, but there didn't seem to be any pattern to it.  This occured on one STB connected by Coax and another connected via Ethernet to the RG.  I was unable to test at the DVR itself, as the TV it is usually hooked to was disconnected for room renovation, only the DVR was connected to power and the Coax.  

 

Anyway, I  searched here for similar symptoms to see if there was any related solutions to try. I found an old post with a similar issue  where the first suggestion was to unplug power to the RG, DVR and STBs (at least that's how I interpreted the post).  I am embarrassed to say that I forgot to check the problem recordings while I was hooking the DVR back up to the TV during this step.

 

Unplugging the power failed to resolve the issue, so the next step was a Disaster recovery in the post. I plugged the DVR in while holding OK and Down and it appeared to complete without an issue (1 gear showed, then a second, and the unit restarted), but now the DVR is empty.  I know it's working because it has recorded a few programs this evening, but all previous recordings appear gone.

 

My question is should I be concerned about the integrity of the DVR?  I didn't see warnings in the post I was reading about losing recordings, but I would be less worried if I could be assured this is less likely a sign of potential hardware issues with the DVR and more a side effect of me not understanding what I was doing.  Any input would be a appreciated.

Thanks. 

 

 

Accepted Solution

Official Solution

Expert

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1.3K Messages

14 years ago

Yes, a disaster recovery will erase all recordings on the DVR.  Hopefully, that resolves your issues with the DVR' however, only time will tell.

Tutor

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3 Messages

14 years ago

I wish I had noticed that in the previous post.  Oh well.  I wish I had been able to back up all the recording on the DVR, especially the ones from the channels I no longer have. 

 

Out of curiousity, was there an intermediate step I missed in the troubleshooting before the Disaster Recovery?  If the issue occurs again in the future I'd like to keep from losing all the recordings while I troubleshoot, even if it does eventually point toward a defective DVR.

 

Thanks for the info texasguy37.

Mentor

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9 Messages

14 years ago

I thought the reason why you have to be net-connected at playback time was so the DVR could verify that you still had the right to play the program. You may not have that right if you no longer have that channel.

Could that be the problem you were observing?

Tutor

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3 Messages

14 years ago

No, everything was net connected.  The DVR was onlt not connected to a TV at the time, as the TV was unplugged and moved.  The DVR was sitting on a shelf with a live Coax connection and power at all times. 

Also other recordings would play fine. 

 

I assume it was some kind of glitch with the DVR.  I had also been having intermittent playback issues with the STBs, where it would loose frames or sometimes several second of video during playback.  Sometimes earlier in the summer, the DVR would also lose lip-sync, which would correct itself for a while if you skipped back in the recording once or twice.  It seem to have corrected itself in the last few months, so I thought an update might have resolved the issue. 

Professor

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125 Messages

14 years ago


@NotEd wrote:

I wish I had noticed that in the previous post.  Oh well.  I wish I had been able to back up all the recording on the DVR, especially the ones from the channels I no longer have. 



If you call their billing (aka sales) office, you may be able to grab a promotional offer on U-300 or the Movie Pack. They should have some sort of offer to lower your bill and give you those channels on a temporary basis. Let them know your DVR crashed and you did a disaster recovery. If you make it sound real sad, yet keep it polite, they'll be willing to listen.

Mentor

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9 Messages

14 years ago

NotEd, you mentioned wishing you had been able to back up recordings from the channels you no longer have. I was trying to ask if the recordings on which you noticed the initial problems might have been on those channels (in which case you may no longer be permitted to play them).

Mentor

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14 Messages

14 years ago


@markwmsn wrote:
I thought the reason why you have to be net-connected at playback time was so the DVR could verify that you still had the right to play the program. You may not have that right if you no longer have that channel.

This is not correct. As long as you are subscribed to Uverse, you can watch recorded channels even if you are no longer subscribed to the channel you recorded from. This is why DVRs work overtime every Thanksgiving, when there is a free HBO/Cinemax preview.


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