soju, Given you have updated your firmware to the latest version (e.g. Jan 2005 to fix such things as the Divide Title problem), disabling the TV Guide download is 100% effective at eliminating U99's. The procedure for doing so has been discussed many times on this thread and is faciliated by the Setup submenu featuring "Auto Channel Scan". If the option is grayed out, you'll have to reset to factory defaults in order to re-enable the option. If you have a cable box, others have reported that they have not been able to enable the Auto Channel Scan selection. I suggested a possible workaround some pages back, but no member has posted whether they have tried it. I do not have a cable box, so there is no problem for me to disable the TV Guide download.
First of all, you have to determine what the normal operating wattage and the standby wattage of your digital video recorder is. (Look this up in your operating instructions manual under Specifications). Since your DMR-E95H is not much different from my DMR-E85H, I'll assume that the power is the same: operating power is 35 watts and the standby power is 15 watts. Look at the power capacity of the UPS (in watts) and the minimum backup time (mins) specified at that load. (Be careful about statements like "up to" when referring to backup time.) Multiply the wattage and the backup time to determine the energy (watt-mins) the UPS will supply: Energy (watt-mins) = capacity (watts) * backup time (mins) (Note: If the backup time is only specified for a wattage that is less than full capacity, use that wattage and the corresponding backup time to calculate energy capacity.) As an example, let's use the Belkin 750VA 400 Watt unit mentioned by someone on this thread. A Belkin ad indicates that it has a capacity of 400 watts and a backup time of 38 minutes. Assuming that the backup time of 38 minutes is at full load, the energy capacity of the UPS is equal to 15,200 watt-mins (400 * 38). If you had a power outage with a worst-case scenario where your recorder was recording (35 watts) during the entire outage, the number of minutes that the UPS would operate would be 15,200 / 35 = 434 mins (7+ hrs). On the other hand, if the recorder was in standby (15 watts) during the entire outage, the UPS would operate 15,200 / 15 = 1013 mins or 16.3 hours. For other scenarios: watt-mins (required) = [watts (standby) * hours (standby) * 60] + [watts (operating) * hours (operating) * 60] Example: You estimate that during a typical 8-hr power outage, the unit will be in standby (15 watts) for 6 hours and recording (35 watts) for 2 hours. watt-mins (required) = [15 watts * 6 hours * 60 (mins/hour)] + [35 watts * 2 hours * 60 (mins/hour)] = 9600 watt-mins Based on these assumptions, a 9600 watt-mins (or greater) UPS is required for an outage of 8 hours. If power is restored before the UPS runs out of juice, then the DVR will be in exactly the same mode as if there had been [bold]no outage[/bold]. The whole purpose of the UPS is to supply uninterrupted power to the DVR. Thus, your DVR will be in blissful ignorance of the power outage.
Update I was fine for 8 days. Thursday morning I woke up to find that no overnight download occurred. I did a soft reset (power button for 10 seconds, then unplug for 30 seconds) and when I powered up again everything was gone. By the time I got home at 5PM, I had 2 days of listings and 11 promos. I moved my download channels to the top of the lineup and disabled unwanted channels (TGVOS thinks I should have all the premium cable channels, even though I don't) and all is well for now. I take back anything I said about Gemstar rolling out any fixes globally.
I too have gone through the trials of the EH85/TVGOS. I've flashed my system with the latest firmware. etc etc etc., to no effect. My problems started about a month or so ago,( after nine months or trouble-free operation). From missing some recordings to losing all the TVG listing and finally displaying a black "no information available" instead of the the usual TVguide infomation. Then, after a couple of weeks information slowly began to appear back on the screen and now, (last night at least), everything is working okay again. Except for the steps mentioned above I've done nothing. There have been no power interruptions of any kind in the past year. I see that there are hundreds of posting here about this problem and haven't had time to read them all, (it seems sometimes that waving a wand over the system would be as effective as some of Panasonics suggestions) Has there been an official explanation from Panasonic? And does anybody have names of Panasonic officials to contact? Sometimes a direct approach is more useful than repeated attempts at contacting tech support. (An irate cutomer once contacted our CEO and we're a 4 billion dollar a year company. That had everyone jumping and the problem got resolved instantly.) Maybe waking "Mr. Panasonic" at two in the morning would generate better response. Like I said I haven't read all the postings so perhaps all this has been said and done.
Have not been getting any U99s for a week now and have eight days of listings. Based on messages on this thread, I became convinced that it was a download problem, not anything wrong with my unit. So, I did not do anything to my unit (not even a power reset). Just turned it on each day, recorded programs, turned it off at night, and waited for the U99s to stop popping up in the morning. DMR-E85H Time Warner Cable (no box) La Jolla CA
CopperTop, what is your zip code and cable supplier? Your situation sounds like mine (Painassonic E85 that worked fine, then died) , with the CRUCIAL difference that my listings or TVGOS had never returned...;-(
My U99 woes started a couple of weeks ago when the power line in front of my home was cut by a fallen tree :0 I had a UPS on my EH85 but the battery ran out before the power company was able to repair the service. Since then I was getting U99 at least once a day. I did the firmware flash but that didn't help. Earlier this week (perhaps due to the Gemstar fix??) my U99s stopped and my listings have been populating nicely. A daytime program record works fine, but since all of this happened, I am not getting my nightly recording of the Late Show with David Letterman. The show starts here at 11:35PM and ends at around 12:40AM. The scheduled recordings shows the program set each night, but when I check what has been recorded, the Late Show isn't there. A Jay Leno conspiracy, perhaps? Cable company=Cablevision ZIP=07675
I have COX cable, in San Diego. 92109. The EH85 has been stable since Wednesday now, "knock on wood". As far as I'm concerned the problem was Panasonics. Even though TVGUIDE may have sent out a corrupt listing or something that had the same effect, the microcode that Panasonic used in it's firmware should have been robust enough to deal with a bad file, even if just to report the file was corrupt.
dmr 85 has been stable for about 6 days. totally populated, ads and no u99s. seems good so far but since i am really skeptical, i will wait another week or two before i feel like i am now getting what i paid for. stuff like this just shouldn't happen, but, having purchase much graphic's hardware and software in the past 10 to 20 years, i have come to realize that all these companies do not test their merchandise enough and rely on the poor jerk consumer to field test for them every time they make a change in hardware or especially software. comcast cable no box zip: 94111
If it makes you feel better to blame Panasonics rather than Gemstar or TV Guide, then have at it. But, I must respectfully disagree. You state that Panasonic's firmware should have been robust enough to deal with a bad file [or equivalent], even if just to report the file was corrupt. Panasonic units [bold]did[/bold] report a "corrupt file" by its display of U99. And it would be absurd to expect Panasonic units to come up with proper listings when dealing with a downloaded corrupt file, regardless of its robustness or lack thereof.
They COULD have not disabled the unit (until manual intervention) just because of a corrupt TV-Guide download... That's where Panasonic screwed up: the error handling.
OK, I'm back after nearly two weeks and, as usual, with more than my share to add. But first, let me once again state that finding a common denominator--and thus common solutions--requires *full* information and *MOST* of the reports are leaving out critical information. Thus, I will make a couple of loose assumptions based upon the data I *have* Seen: 1. The contents of your DVD Drive upon failure is *ESSENTIAL* data. Most of you are leaving it out and I'll bet that a great many of your failures happen with a disk in the drive. The ones I've seen that state they leave disks in and don't have problems have all referred to DVD-[bold]ROM[/bold] (which I will for the moment assume includes DVD-Video [finalized]) and the ones that have failed with a disk in usually refer to DVD-[bold]RAM[/bold]. *ALL* of my drive-related failures involved DVD-RAM, but I rarely use DVD-Roms or DVD-Video, so the data is thin--which is one of the reasons I *BEG* you to include data on what's in your drive when it fails, when you post. Any permanent fix from Panasonic *must* address the Drive problem. 2. Many have mentioned doing soft or hard resets, but only a *FEW* have mentioned removing the power cable for 30 seconds--and almost none have mentioned they held the buttons for 10 seconds or so to get a *full* power down (i.e. nothing will be showing on the front panel except the time). If you fail *either* of these steps, the relief is temporary and the three most common problems (U99 errors, Failure-to-Populate Guide Data, and "Phantom Recordings") will almost shurely recur--if they ever really go away. On the other hand, doing *BOTH* (Full-Off followed by 30-second unplug) has *ALWAYS* cleared up *ALL* problems with both my E85 and E86--at least until the next time I break my protocol. The only U99s I've had for weeks have been when I broke Protocol (see earlier in this thread). My E85 crashed last week when I forgot and left a DVD-RAM in the unit and then left it in stand-by for a few days of scheduled recordings. It crashed after two days of apparently sucessful recordings. My E95 crashed after the *FIRST* recording, when I forgot to do a soft reset/unplug after deleting over 60 programs. This really pissed me off because I *KNOW* better, and the show that did record was recording when I put it in stand-by and went out the door for four days--missing nearly 30 hours of scheduled recording. In both cases, a *SOFT* Reset/Unplug fixed everything--without losing any of my existing data (the new listings downloads during the "U99" time were missing, of course). In fact, I now *NEVER* do Ch-Up/Ch-Down (Hard Reset), because the "Power Button for 10 seconds" followed by an unplug for 30 seconds (Soft Reset) seems to do *EVERYTHING* the hard reset does *EXCEPT* destroy my settings. If my drive is empty when I reset, I keep *ALL* data--including listings and scheduled programming, and yet all of the problems have gone away (until the next time I break my protocol). If I forget and leave a DVD-RAM in the drive when I reset, it *often* (not always) loses all data (as if I had done a Ch-Up/Ch-Down). A Word on powering up after resetting: You *MUST* power up *AT LEAST* two times (and I think three is far better--and may be necessary), because the first one only puts you in the "Power Off" position (what you get after a 10-second Power-Off Button press)--and not the "Stand-By" position (which is essential for both timer recording and downloads). The unit *CAN NOT* download in "Power Off." [My guess is, this is why some people have to wait 2-3 days for their data to download. It takes that long for them to do three power cycles.] bob
[bold]compprog Wrote:[/bold] As I stated before, we tend to refer to "The Problem" and look for "The Culprit" and "The Solution," when in fact, there are several problems--some are *definitely* Panasonics, and others are just as obviously Gemstar's. There is no question in most of our minds that the recent rash of U99 errors occurred in conjunction with a Gemstar system changeover. What this consisted of is fodder for lots of pissing contests, but for the most part is irrelevant. We'll probably never really know and they will probably eventually isolate the problem(s) and fix it(them). Several of us have posted quite satisfactory work-arounds for the interim. On the other hand, the actual "U99 Error" (or more accurately, "Errors" because the U99 is, in fact, a whole *FAMILY* of errors), are 100% Panasonic's problem--as they are internal and Panasonic-specific. They are triggered by any of multitude of "Internal Communications Errors" inside the Panasonic unit itelf. These errors could be between two circuit boards, a board and either of the drives, or a board and the input data stream. It is the latter error that is often triggered by the TVGOS signal. Notice, I said "Triggered" and not caused. What causes the error is Panasonic's inability to *COPE* with the data it receives. Properly written code would identify data errors and discard them without crashing. It is the Panasonic code that is faulty and causes the crashes. It is the TVGOS data stream that is faulty and *triggers* the Panasonic error-handling routing--which then fails. *Either* company could come up with a "fix" that minimizes (if not eliminates) its contribution to the problem: Gemstar could isolate and correct the problems in its datastream--thus eliminating one "Trigger." However, the *OTHER* dozen or so U99 errors could still occur. (One of those is the board-to-DVD-Drive communication error that occurs when I leave a DVD-Ram in my drive *and* a scheduled recording occurs in stand-by *and* a third (unknown as yet) condition occurs. Nothing Gemstar can do will prevent this error. Also, where Panasonic *MUST* apply a fix is to the "U99 Error-Recovery Routine." Rather than "Display 'U99 Error' and Halt" (which is what it currently does, it should go through the following routine: 1. Save U99 Error message--including time, action attempted, recording and drive(s) status, faulty components, and action attempted--to the "Messages" folder (which it doesn't seem to use for anything but TVGOS serial number). 2. Level 1: Check and log status and attempt to continue, if satisfactory. 3. Level 2: If unable to continue, attempt soft reset (Since you can do this manualy, it is being monitored by software, so there is an entry-point to jump to). Log all pertinent information to "Messages" and display "Message" on front panel. Tell user to unplug unit for 30 seconds at their soonest convenience. The only problem here is that a soft reset returns to "Off" and not "Stand-by," so that routine would have to be tweaked by adding a flag to set when it is called from the program itself, allowing it to come back up to full-on for final testing and then shut down to Stand-by after a few minutes. 4. Level 3: (Last resort) If a soft reset won't fix it, then do a "Hard reset," but *ONLY* after logging all pertinant data to "Messages." Given access to the source code and a couple of development units, I could easily write, debug, and beta test these changes in less than a week--from a cold start, knowing no more about the units than I do now. bob
[bold]compprog Wrote:[/bold] 1. *ONE* of the (many) problems we are experiencing comes from a Gemstar system change two months ago. Not all of them. 2. This is just wrong, comprog. The data for the channel guide is unquestionably *NOT* being written to the hard disk. If it were, it would be persistant (survive crashes)--just like your recorded shows are. Panasonic has said that it is held in memory and, further, has said that in high-channel areas, the schedule will not populate fully, due to lack of space--unless you delete non-essential channels. bob
Only someone who knows nothing about the Panasonic unit and how it operates could make such a specious claim. As far as the Panasonic unit is concerned, the problem could be due to a faulty download (occurring over and over again) or a fault in the unit itself. Who can say whether the Panasonic unit would go into a fault condition (U99) if it only received a few faulty download frames (with a large number of frames per download)? IMO, it is entirely reasonable for a consumer unit to go into an error shutdown, when it can not determine the cause of a problem, in order to prevent any possible further damage to the unit.
[bold]Coyote24 Said:[/bold] Actually, I said that turning off my *known* download channels did not keep it from downloading channel data (i.e. I didn't know all of the download channels). AFAIK, when you turn off a channel, it's *OFF* and cannot be accessed by either you or TVGOS. The more I turn on, the more reliably (and faster) my listings fill up. It still seems to step through the channels from the top down when searching, so ordering the channels becomes a critical "tweak" of your system. *HOWEVER* if--as appears to be the case with the New Hampshire PBS station--two conflicting download streams put the same station on *DIFFERENT CHANNELS* I would bet that the system cannot cope with that and crashes (tries to access both channels at once, perhaps?). Maybe one stream assigns the channels to one local, and the next stream tries to populate them from a different one and writes to channel numbers that are not on? MSNBC is probably not needed by most--but *may* be needed by some. Only experimentation with positioning and/or enabling will determine this for individual users. When I first turned my units on, and left them 24 hours in stand-by (*after* the third time I powered up), I am almost certain that it populated *ALL 8 Days*. However, when I timer-recorded, or even powered the unit on during the first 24 hours, I got the 1-2-3-8 data load. I think there may be a flag that says "Initial Load--get everything" and which gets reset when you start using the machine. Anyone else get days 4-7 without waiting a week? bob
[bold]compprog chided:[/bold] {Chuckle} ...and only someone who doesn't know me would think the claim to be specious. Since that's most of the world, no offense taken. However, I have spent a lifetime making (and spending) several fortunes by making (and fulfilling) similarly "specious" claims. You can check out http://abstract.us/ for one of my old companies. Software, to be written and maintained by teams of programmers, must conform to a few basic standards. There are a finite number of ways to do specific things and most Corporate programmers restrict themselves to a very tiny subset of that universe. I tend to use it all and even expand it from time to time. Over 30 years, I have solved many hundreds of similar problems in many dozens of different types of equipment--from the space shuttle project to ultra-high-speed ion-deposition printers. After the first few thousand programs, and the first few dozen languages, they pretty much fall into set categories--with formula solutions that just need to be tailored to the individual machines. You err when you think I "know nothing about the Panasonic unit and how it operates"--I know quite a bit, having extensively researched and disassembled them over the last year. Actually, it is almost certainly from both. That's easy: any competent Panasonic engineer could determine that fairly readily--through experimentation as well as through analyzing the source code. It isn't rocket science (which, BTW, isn't that hard--I'm also a rocket scientist who completed several contracts for the TRW Ballistic Missile division and for Martin Marietta and Lockheed). However, the *cause* in this case is irrelevant. I wasn't claiming to *FIX* the machine--only to add error-handling code that determines what happens *after* a U99 Error is trapped. Read that post again. I simply stated (and stand by) that I can change it from its current "halt-and-display" condition on *every* U99, to four levels of retry--depending on the type and severity of the fault--in less than a week. Any of their own programmers could do the same--if asked to. In addition, I'll add data logging that will facilitate locating and repairing the *causes* of the faults. I stand by that offer, as it is based upon three decades of similar successes. I totally agree. However *you* are assuming that *all* of the U99 errors involve such a drastic case. It has been my *vast* experience that this is almost certainly *not* the case. I believe we are looking at lazy programming (as is evidenced by the multitude of dissimilar "Internal Communications Errors" that are covered under the umbrella of "U99." I believe that, in fact, many of these errors can be fixed by soft resets--after all, quite often, all any of you do is simply hit "On." Why can't the program do that? In any case, my four-level restart algorithm would determine whether or not any of the cases are recoverable--and if so, which ones are, which are not, and why. It is an essential tool in full determination of fault--and the amelioration of the various problems. Panasonic and Gemstar are both having problems determining fault in part, because they have insufficient data-gathering routines. Test routines are not hard to write--and yet almost no manufacturer ever writes enough of them to be truly efficient. One of my companies specialized in just that--disassembling OEM firmware in a variety of equipment and then writing embedded test routines to check out each aspect of the units to pinpoint faults to the component level. Once done, I simply bought up all of the "scrap" inventory the manufacturers couldn't fix, fixed them myself and sold them back into the after market as either units or (much more lucrative) spare parts. I have a hunch I may be buying a lot of Pannys for pennies a pound in the near future. bob
I wanted to respond to VideoBob's post in detail; but, it's very hard not to get bogged down in his love affair with himself. Who asked for a resume, anyway? Was I impressed? No! I think that a specious claim is exactly what it was. By the way, did you ever hear of a rhetorical question, Bob? When I wrote "who can say ...," I was referring to the people on this thread, not Panasonic engineers. If you lightened up a bit, this would have been obvious. Now to address a previous post of your's: Sorry, Bob. I stand by my claim that the listings are stored on the hard drive. If you don't believe it, turn off the power to your unit(s) for a long period (20 or more minutes). You will find that the listings persist throughout the power outage. And, yes, I've familiar with battery backup of RAM and non-volatile storage in EEPROMs. I just don't believe that either technique is used in these recorders to store listings. But, if they were, the listings would persist through a power outage as well! So, your argument that the listings [bold]are not[/bold] stored on the hard drive based on no persistence -- a wrong assumption -- is completely invalid.
Like Coppertop, I live in SD area with Cox as my provider. No U99s since last Sunday-a FULL week. Hold your breath-I deactivated my TVGOS by entering 00000 for zip code-let it ride for 2-3 days-then did a reset with Ch up and down buttons and it has worked well since. Maybe a Pansonic issue; maybe TVGOS-but it's working for now.
