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HDR 'BBC Red Button' most mornings...

Wallace

Wallace

Traveler 34122
Not quite sure if this falls into the Customised Firmware category, so feel free to move...

I am now seeing on a regular basis, one of my HDRs showing 'BBC Red Button' on its display most mornings. The HDD is also spinning. It has done this for the last four consecutive days, but more intermittently prior to that.

I do have a reminder set for that channel (200) from 04:15 for 30 minutes daily, but that has been the case for as long as I can remember.
The unit is placed in standby before we go to bed, and I have been waiting to make sure that the LED ring turns orange and the HDD spins down which they both do, yet now in the mornings, the unit is on, blue LED, HDD spinning and the VFD scrolling 'BBC Red Button'. I assume it powers on correctly, but for some reason is not going back to standby.

I have used Maintenance mode to FDISK the HDD, no issues found. I also cleared the EPG data and reset the DLNA server as well. The problem remains.

The box is used daily to record stuff, but recordings have finished well before we put the unit in standby.

Any thoughts as to what might be causing this?
 
It is behaving like the box is already switched on when the reminder is actioned. Has a stray power-on timer crept in somehow? Do you have the system monitor package installed? This will at least let you know when the box is switching on and off.
 
Ha! Turns out I turned HDR off to go to bed, but SWMBO, turned it back on a bit later! DOH. Women!
 
I'm seeing this daily with mine, and it seems to cause recording issues as well. The box is left running almost 24/7 most of the time because of some other recording hiccups (and because it's usually still grabbing something when I go to sleep, and powering off interfered with auto-shrink and the like) ... the scheduled disable-OTA(?) thing is the culprit for the change afaik but I don't know why it's sticking or, right now, how to schedule a power-off when all the recordings are done. I've tried changing various options, forcing some reboots, scanning disc etc...

It seems to do it even on the occasions when I have something scheduled to record between 4 and 5am (it does happen - educational progs on BBC2 and the like), as it's a reminder and tends to be on the same multiplex...
 
Why do you need to schedule a power-off when the recordings are finished? Just switch to standby and it will come off power all on its own.
 
tahrey said:
I'm seeing this daily with mine, and it seems to cause recording issues as well. The box is left running almost 24/7 most of the time because of some other recording hiccups (and because it's usually still grabbing something when I go to sleep, and powering off interfered with auto-shrink and the like) ... the scheduled disable-OTA(?) thing is the culprit for the change afaik but I don't know why it's sticking or, right now, how to schedule a power-off when all the recordings are done. I've tried changing various options, forcing some reboots, scanning disc etc...

It seems to do it even on the occasions when I have something scheduled to record between 4 and 5am (it does happen - educational progs on BBC2 and the like), as it's a reminder and tends to be on the same multiplex...
Click to expand...
Auto shrink, decrypt et al will restart after the next power on if they are interrupted by the system powering itself off. If you want to give the system time to complete those processes before it powers off you can schedule a (daily) Reminder to keep the system on after the recordings are complete.
 
Black Hole said:
Why do you need to schedule a power-off when the recordings are finished? Just switch to standby and it will come off power all on its own.
Click to expand...

Because if I have some things scheduled to record through to 2, 3, 4am, etc, I don't want to have to either stay up that late, or set an alarm and get up out of bed in order to switch the system into standby, that's why.

Where I say about the system automatically turning off, you can read it as automatically switching to standby (and then turning off after, maybe) if you like. It's the same result in the end, from the standpoint of my original question.
 
tahrey said:
Because if I have some things scheduled to record through to 2, 3, 4am, etc, I don't want to have to either stay up that late, or set an alarm and get up out of bed in order to switch the system into standby, that's why.

Where I say about the system automatically turning off, you can read it as automatically switching to standby (and then turning off after, maybe) if you like. It's the same result in the end, from the standpoint of my original question.
Click to expand...
I thought you said you mostly left it running 24/7, so why do you suddenly want it going off?

If it's off and scheduled to record, then it'll come on, record, then go off again. So why don't you just turn it off before going to bed?
 
1/ It's running 24/7 because that's how I have to leave it at the moment to make sure things actually record late at night, or it actually finishes shrinking / decrypting / copying / etc - it was a sort of workaround to other issues. If it can be made so that it actually goes into standby gracefully without knocking other stuff out, and restarting properly when needed later on, then naturally that'd be the preferred option.

1.5/ Hang on, what ... you're making my head spin. Erm.

2/ OK then, if we're going to ask sarky questions instead of finding a solution, what would you suggest as I do if it's in the middle of both recording something and doing one of the processor-intensive, needs-to-be-turned-on-in-order-to-perform-them tasks as mentioned above at the point where I turn in for the night, AND has something scheduled for overnight recording (a combination which is the majority case, rather than the minority), other than a command to "turn off once idle" / "turn off at time X *if* not already busy" or the like? Bearing in mind that I have a job that requires me to be out of the house during the normally expected hours, and my tastes / those of the people who I also need to record things for in a professional capacity run more towards the eclectic than the banal?
 
My preferred regime under those circumstances would be to leave it off (standby) most of the time; it will wake up to make the scheduled recordings and then go to sleep. If there is any decryption etc required for previous recordings, that will be completed while other recordings are being performed. There is no need for any of that (ie the auto processes) to be completed in order to actually watch a recording, unless you intend to watch it across the network rather than locally, so there is no hurry to complete the processing.
 
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Black Hole said:
My preferred regime under those circumstances would be to leave it off (standby) most of the time; it will wake up to make the scheduled recordings and then go to sleep. If there is any decryption etc required for previous recordings, that will be completed while other recordings are being performed. There is no need for any of that to be completed in order to actually watch a recording, unless you intend to watch it across the network rather than locally, so there is no hurry to complete the processing.
Click to expand...
I find that previous recordings are not decrypted while the box is making scheduled recordings from standby, it has to be brought out of standby for decryption to take place.
 
You're right, the DLNA server doesn't run while the unit is half-awake (therefore the recordings cannot be auto-decrypted).

However, the processes are still not critical to watching a recording on the unit that recorded them, decryption and shrinking are desirable for long-term storage.
 
I was quite keen on the idea of having smart on/off timers that were background process aware and capable of extending the off time to allow any outsanding background operations to complete. It would also be nice to be able to alter the on/off times say at weekends and weekdays, although I'm not too sure how feasible that would be via the customised firmware...
 
sceptic said:
I was quite keen on the idea of having smart on/off timers that were background process aware and capable of extending the off time to allow any outsanding background operations to complete. It would also be nice to be able to alter the on/off times say at weekends and weekdays, although I'm not too sure how feasible that would be via the customised firmware...
Click to expand...

It is possible to switch from half awake to awake, and vice versa via the customised firmware using the IR package but you cant turn the box on from asleep. Also you would want having the CF decide to turn the box off while SWMBO is is the middle of watching her favourite show.

I use some manually created Reminder events to ensure the box stays awake long enough to complete decryption and ad detection after some recordings

It should be possible to write a package that analysed your recording schedule and automatically created additional reminder events for a period after each recording to allow time for background processes to complete. This would be subject to the usual reboot requirements for adding entries to the schedule so wouldn't work for recordings added for the near future added via remote control.
 
MymsMan said:
It should be possible to write a package that analysed your recording schedule and automatically created additional reminder events for a period after each recording to allow time for background processes to complete....
Click to expand...

Yes that sounds good! Actually the on/off timers do work quite well for me, as the box is powered on when I get home and powered off in the early hours of the morning, at such a time I would never be sat watching it.
 
Sadly, yes, this is in the interest of long term storage rather than pure time shifting. The device was not bought and the recordings have not been set up for my own leisure, and I only watch back a relatively small number of the things it records (there are a *few* that I queue up for myself, but they're secondary to the main job it performs). Personally, I'm usually more than happy watching Freeview live, and there's plenty enough DVDs on my shelf that are still in the cellophane if I get that bored. Virgin, Sky, Amazon Prime and Netflix keep trying to attract my business, but they're not going to succeed. Hell, don't even bother with torrents any more, unless there's something SUPER rare pops up (the kind of thing that's out of print, probably deleted, never comes up for sale on auction or marketplace sites, and would be priced at / bid up to hilariously inflated levels if it did)...

However, now that I have the automatic processes properly working again, it tends to only need a maximum of about an hour to shrink and decrypt any given programme after it completes recording even when the box is under the heaviest regular load (recording two things, timeshifting another, and copying a bunch of stuff over the network), and there isn't the most screaming hurry to pull things off it unless I somehow run into a shortage of space again (the only situation I can think of that being a risk is an unbroken 2-week holiday, and I'd probably invest the time into upgrading the internal HDD to 1tb or 2tb if that was going to happen...) - if someone demands something be available straight away, I can always plug in a USB stick and copy it off manually.

Therefore there's a bit more flexibility now. If, say, it was possible to full-wake it at the end of a recording and keep it awake for 30 to 60 minutes afterwards, before going back to full sleep (and so effectively restarting when it next wakes up??), that would probably cover it. Even the longest thing I ever recorded on it (the BBC4 showings of "Shoah", which clocked up nearly 9 hours over just two parts, with each piece being about 5-6gb even after shrinking) didn't take more than 10 minutes to do each of shrinking and decrypting when I attacked them manually. Most of the delay between the recording finishing and it ending up shrunk, decrypted, and in a date-tagged folder is administrative... i.e. waiting for the sweeper to move it, waiting for the DNLA server to index it, waiting for a shrink / decrypt cycle to come around, etc.

(I don't bother with the auto ad detection btw, as much of what I record is from the beeb, I don't want to run the risk of it accidentally chopping out the wrong parts given that much of it is recorded and archived "blind", and having them left in is a good way of "proving" that the recording was indeed off air instead of off a commercial DVD with a random screenbug hacked in using Avisynth... enough space is saved using Shrinker and RAR-archiving to satisfy me. Only time I use that function is to split programmes that accidentally get merged by cack-handed timeshifting. So that makes things even quicker...)

Is there a(n easy?) method to set this up then... as I think is discussed above? (Will have to re-read now :D)
 
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