Problems with latest software update

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Problems with latest software update

Postby adhawkins » Thu Sep 30, 2010 11:35 am

Back in April or May I used an Alpha version of Copy+ to copy programs from my old Thomson HD box to the new Amstrad 1.5TB box. This was required due to some inconsistencies in the way the disk format had been implemented I seem to recall.

Since the latest software update (28th September 2010) some of the recordings that were already on the box are playing back with noticeable glitches during playback. I haven't specifically tried playing back any recordings that have been made since the update. This is happening on both SD and HD programs.

There is some suggestion on Digital Spy that these problems are only being experienced by people who used Copy+ in the past. While it appears to be all anecdotal at the moment, I wondered if anyone here has any ideas?

Cheers

Andy
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Re: Problems with latest software update

Postby pcbbc » Thu Sep 30, 2010 11:53 am

Release 1.2.0.6 Beta - February 2010
* Emulate bug in Sky disk formatting for drives over 1TB (stops copied recordings being corrupted/overwritten and enables Copy+ to see recordings on DRX895).

This was the first version to correctly support 1TB disks.
If I have missed something it could result in the corrupted/overwriting issue reoccurring....
However it should also result in Copy+ not being able to see the recordings made by the DRX895 (either on an existing disk or a Copy+ed one).

Perhaps Sky have fixed their "bug"? Although that would have had a disastrous effect on the state of existing recordings made under the old format.
It would also mean that Copy+ will now not list recordings again (so as I do not have any reports of that - I can not see how that would be the case).

Is Copy+ able to see all of the recordings (both old and new) on the disk?
Is a Copy+ backup and restore of a disk with problems reporting any errors? e.g. "VC incorrect".
Can anyone supply a disk image of a disk exhibiting glitches?
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Re: Problems with latest software update

Postby adhawkins » Thu Sep 30, 2010 1:56 pm

People on Digital Spy are reporting the loss of lots of programmes. Possibly they're the ones that didn't use the correct software? I used this Alpha that you sent me in April this year (appears to be around April 28th looking at the Forums posts I made).

Can't say whether Copy+ is still correctly recognising the disk, as I haven't really had chance to do anything in that respect. Given the issues I had getting the case off and back on again last time I'm a little loathe to take it all apart again! Posted here primarily to see if anyone else had reported this to you, and if you had any ideas.

My wife has watched a complete recording that was made since the upgrade, and it appears to be fine. She's currently watching another made since the upgrade, and that one is fine too. However, the box is 90% full, so it'd be a shame if all the existing recordings were likely to have problems!

Thanks for the advice so far, if the problem continues perhaps I'll look at doing a backup and restore of the disk if possible. Not sure I've got enough disk space to do that though!

Andy
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Re: Problems with latest software update

Postby pcbbc » Thu Sep 30, 2010 2:19 pm

adhawkins wrote:People on Digital Spy are reporting the loss of lots of programmes. Possibly they're the ones that didn't use the correct software? I used this Alpha that you sent me in April this year (appears to be around April 28th looking at the Forums posts I made).
These kinds of problems are certainly what I would expect if using 1.2.0.5 and a disk over 1TB.
But so far I haven't been made aware of (other than via this post) any ongoing problems with the DRX890/5 boxes.
However I am quite happy to investigate issues people may be having after using Copy+ 1.2.0.6 or 1.2.0.7 with a 1.5TB or 2.0TB drive.

Can't say whether Copy+ is still correctly recognising the disk, as I haven't really had chance to do anything in that respect. Given the issues I had getting the case off and back on again last time I'm a little loathe to take it all apart again! Posted here primarily to see if anyone else had reported this to you, and if you had any ideas.
Quite understand.

Thanks for the advice so far, if the problem continues perhaps I'll look at doing a backup and restore of the disk if possible. Not sure I've got enough disk space to do that though!
Just an image would be helpful as I can then look for inconsistencies. I have a tool for creating reasonably small images (order of a few MB instead of GB by omitting the actual video data) which are suitable for my debugging.
However I understand your reluctance to pull apart a box which is difficult to access at the best of times!

Can you supply link to the DS posts? The forum probably won't let you post links - but you can if you remove the "http://www" from the front, or break it with spaces.
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Re: Problems with latest software update

Postby Max99 » Thu Sep 30, 2010 6:23 pm

This is the thread over on DS here.

There's also a larger thread containing the same kinds of comments, but they are harder to find amongst the general discussion of the latest update here.

I've experienced the same issue as a lot of people who've used Copy+. My Amstrad DXR895 worked perfectly until the latest update a couple of nights ago, Since then, every recording experiences severe sound and picture breakup - at worst, a couple of times every minute, at best, once every five minutes. The box is 80% full, so there's an awful lot of recording on there.

I can confirm that I used Copy+ v1.2.0.7. If you believe there is a chance that you can rectify the problem, I'll be happy to submit an image file or whatever diagnostics you require.
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Re: Problems with latest software update

Postby adhawkins » Thu Sep 30, 2010 8:09 pm

My wife saw another odd symptom earlier, she was watching a recording of Eastenders and it suddenly changed to Helicopter Heroes for a bit (actually played a few seconds of video), then went back to Eastenders.
Ummm... But these would both have been recent recordings?
If what I think is wrong is the cause, I would more expect old recordings to have been corrupted with parts of new ones. Not new ones interspersed with other new ones.

Surely they can't have 'fixed' the bug regarding the format of the disk, otherwise wouldn't everyone be seeing it (not just Copy+ users)?
You would have thought so.
But also you'd expect some kind of flag to indicate which format to use. Perhaps Copy+ has confused it somehow? Dunno.
I really have no idea if they are even aware of their slight slip up with the disk formatting. It's not really anything serious, just a discrepancy between the space allocated for "normal" files and space allocated for "video". It's inconsistent once the disk size exceeds 1TB due to a 32-bit integer overflow in the calculation.

Ideally looking for a solution that doesn't involve a full system reset. As I said, the box is about 90% full!
Usually a copy off and back on with a "fixed" version of Copy+ will recover much material.

However this assumes that:
a) I can work out what is wrong
b) that it is something that is at fault with Copy+ and not the box software itself (see recent Anytime issues)
c) that I am supplied with a disk image which exhibits problems....
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Re: Problems with latest software update

Postby TwoArmedBandit » Fri Oct 01, 2010 7:47 am

For the record, I've been having issues with my DRX890 since the upgrade. I upgraded the internal drive to a Western Digital AV-GP WD15EVDS back in June and used Copy+ 1.2.0.7 beta

All seemed well at first, the planner was much quicker and all recordings seemed to be present and correct. However, I started having issues last night which ended up with me restarting the box.

Following the restart the box became very unstable, live pause would not work - coming up with a message 'Your SKY+ HD box is being initialised - Please wait" Eventually (about 20 mins later) the live pause logo appeared, but the program carried on playing. Remote was unresponsive so I restarted the box again then went to bed.

This morning the box was locked up so I restarted again. Came up pretty quickly (another feature of the new software) but still had the same message - even after about 20 minutes - and worse still the entire contents of my planner have now disappeared.

Obviously this could be an issue unrelated to Copy+ however it seems like Copy+ might be becoming a common theme with people who are having issues. As it stands my box is now unusable. I am off to work soon, so I'm expecting a fun weekend trying to unravel this.
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Re: Problems with latest software update

Postby TwoArmedBandit » Fri Oct 01, 2010 10:26 pm

Update: It looks like this has turned out to be a hard disk failure, rather than an issue with the Sky Software.

Tried to do a full factory reset on the box and it stuck on 'Housekeeping' for 30 mins or so. In the end, pulled the power and replaced the original hard disk. Everything is working ok now following another full reset (which took a couple of seconds).

Interestingly, the box didn't pick up the recordings on the original disk when I first powered on (before the reset).

Bad timing for the failure. I'm still not convinced that this is totally unrelated to the issues with the upgrade. I'm connect the drive to my PC this weekend to see what shows up.
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Re: Problems with latest software update

Postby adhawkins » Sat Oct 02, 2010 8:32 am

The post I'm quoting proclaims to be by me, but I don't think I wrote it! Seems to be more likely to be from pcbbc.

adhawkins wrote:
My wife saw another odd symptom earlier, she was watching a recording of Eastenders and it suddenly changed to Helicopter Heroes for a bit (actually played a few seconds of video), then went back to Eastenders.
Ummm... But these would both have been recent recordings?
If what I think is wrong is the cause, I would more expect old recordings to have been corrupted with parts of new ones. Not new ones interspersed with other new ones.

The Eastenders she was watching was a pre-upgrade recording. It's possible that the bits of Helicopter Heroes she saw were from a new recording (it's on every day).

Usually a copy off and back on with a "fixed" version of Copy+ will recover much material.

However this assumes that:
a) I can work out what is wrong
b) that it is something that is at fault with Copy+ and not the box software itself (see recent Anytime issues)
c) that I am supplied with a disk image which exhibits problems....

Absolutely. Hopefully someone can provide you with an image of their disk so you can get on with identifying it.

If you like, send me the image creation software, but I can't promise to be able to get an image anytime soon I'm afraid.

Cheers

Andy
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Re: Problems with latest software update

Postby pcbbc » Sat Oct 02, 2010 9:55 am

adhawkins wrote:The post I'm quoting proclaims to be by me, but I don't think I wrote it! Seems to be more likely to be from pcbbc.
Ooopps...
Looks like I may have clicked EDIT and not QUOTE... :oops:
Sorry for obliterating your post with my reply.

adhawkins wrote:The Eastenders she was watching was a pre-upgrade recording. It's possible that the bits of Helicopter Heroes she saw were from a new recording (it's on every day).
That isn't good then. Implies Copy+ made a mistake in the disk format and there is a discrepancy between where Copy+ placed the recordings and where the Sky box thinks they are and is now putting new recordings, so areas of the disk are getting reused.

adhawkins wrote:If you like, send me the image creation software, but I can't promise to be able to get an image anytime soon I'm afraid.
I've sent you a copy of the tool.
I'm also very busy at the moment, so don't worry too much about an immediate turn around. Hopefully in a week or so things will have calmed down a bit and I can spend the time on this it deserves.
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Re: Problems with latest software update

Postby fitz39 » Sat Oct 02, 2010 10:31 am

I have been having problems since the updated software. I used version 1.207 beta on a new 2tb drive for the new amstrad 1.5. My recordings are not breaking into other recordings but they are freezing and pixelating (is that a word?) Everything was fine before the new update.
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Re: Problems with latest software update

Postby alpine101 » Sat Oct 02, 2010 10:19 pm

fitz39 wrote:I have been having problems since the updated software. I used version 1.207 beta on a new 2tb drive for the new amstrad 1.5. My recordings are not breaking into other recordings but they are freezing and pixelating (is that a word?) Everything was fine before the new update.



Same here, it's been fine since I installed my 2TB disk in May, now periodically glitching on sound and pixellating on existing recordings that have previously been reliable. The appearance is like you get when the transponder signal vanishes spasmodically in heavy rain. Freezes for a second or two then comes back. No sounds of disk retries. Rewinding over a glitch point and replaying produces a glitch but not necessarily identically. My Copy+ version is also 1.2.0.7Beta.
I havve seen examples on one programme only of a brief interruption by completely different material, which seemed by the content, to be the very beginning of a recording.
Strangely, a recording of Downton Abbey made last Sunday ran tonight without a glitch, though other programmes before and after are randomly affected.
Rather annoying since I have over 1TB of programmes I would like to keep!. Sky have clearly been messing...
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Re: Problems with latest software update

Postby adhawkins » Sun Oct 03, 2010 12:14 pm

Got the image too, thanks.

Just a bit more information, it appears that when the recordings jump into other recordings, these 'incorrect' bits are from newly made recordings. Hard to tell definitely in all cases, but certainly in a number of them we've been able to identify the incorrect bits as being from new recordings.

Has anyone else managed to get you an image yet? If not, I'll try to do it next weekend.

I also have the problem of not having sufficient disk space to store a copy of my SkyHDs disk on, so I'll have to buy one!

Andy
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Re: Problems with latest software update

Postby alpine101 » Sun Oct 03, 2010 12:16 pm

pcbbc, can you send me a copy of your dump tool please.
My disk is in a separate eSATA enclosure, so it's quite easy to play with. This AM I took it off the sky box and tried to get a backup copy of its current contents using the 1207 beta. I tried both Win7 and XP. In both cases, while the PC can see the disk and all its apparently empty folders and misc files, Copy+ will not recognise it as a valid source disk... Plugging it back into the Sky box, it works as before. The disk was originally created and formatted with the Beta, so I could copy the recording off my previous 1TB disk to it.

I also have an image of the original 1.5TB disk, which has never been powered on by me inside the Sky box, I removed it on delivery.
Last edited by alpine101 on Sun Oct 03, 2010 1:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Problems with latest software update

Postby pcbbc » Sun Oct 03, 2010 1:13 pm

Hi,
I have sent a copy of the tool.
However if your disk is not recognised as source at all you will probably need to check out the Support Tools post in the FAQ section.
Regards, Stuart.
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