PVR Wire

1. I'm a Canadian DVR user (Motorola on Cogeco) but we have one channel that we cannot use the fast forward or rewind functions on (History channel). No good reason why they would block it on this other than a glitch.

Posted at 9:28PM on Feb 8th 2006 by Arc|Angel

2. Probably a glitch but if they are blocking it deliberatly it's great news for TiVo.

One of the main challenges for TiVo is getting people to understand why their offering is better than the generic "DVR" that their cable or satellite companies ofer. For anyone who's spent quality time with a TiVo it's obvious but for the unitiated it's not and they belive the lies their provider tells them.

If users start feeling the pain of restrictions it will be an effective educational experience and demonstrate quite nicely that now all "DVRs" are created equal.

Of course the providers know this so I'd expect they would think twice before instituting a restriction like this. Then again another possibility is that it is an "accidental" glitch designed to see how many people notice and complain to test if they could get away with it in general.

Posted at 11:05AM on Feb 9th 2006 by Robert Aitchison

3. I think just about everybody knows that TiVo has a better user interface. The main reason not to use them has always been

1. lack of dual tuners
2. lack of HD support
3. A new TiVo box costs $100 or more plus $13 a month, whereas a cable DVR is $10 a month and that's it.

I would have been a TiVo user for life if they hadn't dragged their feet on HD and dual tuners for so long.

Posted at 11:47AM on Feb 9th 2006 by George

4. I have noticed that certain ABC shows are giving me CONTENT BLOCKED BY REQUEST OF PROVIDER ever since I did an update to my Media Center.

I guess the evil content gods are coming after the pre-HD stuff as well...

Posted at 1:05PM on Feb 9th 2006 by Gyp Joe

5. Don't forget that TiVo users have encountered this problem in the past as well. I believe they were on FOX shows too. The example I remember was an episode of the Simpsons, a repeat if I remember correctly.

Posted at 2:06PM on Feb 9th 2006 by Rassi

6. Comcast in Northern NJ doesn't seem to prevent recording Fox shows. Perhaps the user reporting the problem simply has a malfunctioning box. Also, in response to Arc/Angel's comment about similar trouble with the History Channel, I always rewind and fast forward through History Channel shows.

Posted at 2:53PM on Feb 9th 2006 by Matt W.

7. This is most likely a glitch. It has happened before (on FOX) in Chicago back in the early days of the Comcast DVRs.

Apparently, the problem is (was) with MPEG framing and the Moto DVRs. The way that MPEG generally works is that there are a series of complete compressed frames, followed by a series of compressed blocks that describe how the next "displayed frame" differs from the previous "displayed frame". After some short period of time, you receive another complete frame - this is to allow for the MPEG decoder to recover from block drop outs. If they didn't send the occassional complete frame, you'd never be able to recover if you missed one of the delta (how does it differ from the last one) blocks.

Apparently, the Moto DVR expects a these full frames to delivered in a specific sequence in order to perform fast-forward/rewind. To FF/RW, it simply skips from one full frame to another (depending on the scanning speed, it may skip one of more complete frames), ignoring all the delta blocks inbetween. If it doesn't receive the proper sequence of the full frames, it gets confused and decides it just can't support FF/RW for this particular stream.

This occurred once during an episode of 24 in late 2004/early 2005 in Chicago and another time during American Idol. An engineer for the local affiliate dropped by one of the AVS forums and explained that there had been a glitch in their MPEG encoder on those dates. The MPEG stream was good enough to decode in real-time, but not good enough to FF/RW.

Presumably, you could have jiggered the MPEG stream to cause this to occur on purpose, but I think it's related to specific Moto hardware and software revisions. So far (at least), I haven't heard of any station or Comcast market attempting to do this.

Posted at 3:15PM on Feb 23rd 2006 by Brian Erst

8. I just noticed that my "series recordings" aren't working on Fox. They are recording just fine on all other channels. I can, however, still record manually on Fox. This just started within the last few days.

I just called Comcast and the guy told me that what I was describing was very strange and that he didn't have an answer. He suggested unplugging the box for a minute and plugging it back in. That's supposed to trigger a software download in case there are updates available. He said that if that didn't fix the problem, maybe I should bring the box in and swap it.

Unplugging it didn't work...

Posted at 7:43PM on Mar 6th 2006 by Jason

9. I just noticed that my "series recordings" aren't working on Fox. They are recording just fine on all other channels. I can, however, still record manually on Fox. This just started within the last few days.

I just called Comcast and the guy told me that what I was describing was very strange and that he didn't have an answer. He suggested unplugging the box for a minute and plugging it back in. That's supposed to trigger a software download in case there are updates available. He said that if that didn't fix the problem, maybe I should bring the box in and swap it.

Unplugging it didn't work...

Posted at 7:49PM on Mar 6th 2006 by Jason

10. This is definitely paranoia at its best. It seems rumors of not being able to record or fast forward American Idol are going to become a common event at the beginning of every American Idol new season. As we see here, this rumor gets started at the beginning of the season and we never hear about it again. We can't ever find anybody that it has actually happened to, and there is always some dubious screenshot of it actually happening.

I tend to think that if somebody is really experiencing this, it's probably a glitch similar to the one mentioned above concerning the MPEG stream.

Given the problems that I've experienced with my Comcast DVR, it's more likely that this is just another software glitch than some elaborate conspiracy involving Comcast and Fox trying to stop us from not watching commercials.

Posted at 2:39PM on Mar 21st 2006 by ReplayTVBlog