I'd been looking forward to How Earth Made Us all week and started watching it on BBC HD last night - sensational! Watched about 30 mins then had to go off to bed for an early start Wednesday. 'Never mind,' thought I, 'I'm recording it.'
Tonight I found a failed recording...and no sign of the programme in the Catch Up HD section of iPlayer, either. Bloody hell. As I watched the SD version on iPlayer, complete with loads of blocky artefacts and a very blurry picture, I almost wept.
Bloody SA V+ box...can I have a Samsung please Virgin?
12 comments:
Hi Niall, I got my Samsung box for complaining that my box failed when recording HD sounds like you have the same problem, just push it a bit when complaining.
Alexei
I Vee Plussed the HD version - brilliant TV. Have ordered the kids to watch it. But the footie before over-ran so it missed the end and I had to finish in SD. Bugs me that this tech still doesn't know when a programme starts and ends!
Happening to me more and more often lately: previously recorded programmes suddenly change to being "failed recording" and last week only half of Wallander recorded for some reason. Luckily I started to watch it during the week of broadcast, so was able to see the second half via iPlayer HD.
What I find odd (have a Samsung now, but does it on both boxes) is this:
We set it to start a recording 5 mins before, and finish 10 mins after, which means a 1hr prog is normally 1hr15.
But! Sometimes it comes up saying "1hr00", so it hasn't done the extra bits and we sometimes miss the end. I haven't quite figured it out yet and it's a bit annoying.
I set mine to record Gordon Ramsay's Great Escape on 4HD on Tuesday, and although in the recordings list all appears correct, when I play the program it's actually recorded some science program from Nat Geo instead.
@lee I get 1 hour recordings when I have multiple programmes set to record around the same time. It then seems to not record the the bits before and after the "official" start times as the tuners (i guess) are busy with shows already running
@Argiolus I totally agree with you. Surely it should be possible for the broadcasters to push an updated start and end time for shows that get delayed for whatever reason.
Habanero: there was a problem for about 24 hours with Nat Geo HD playing out on channel 146 as well as 230. Sorted now. Apparently "lots going on behind the scenes" according to this discussion http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/104/33660593-channel-4-hd-showing-nat-geo.html
Thanks for the info Nialli. Only had the V+ installed mid November (an SA version). Since, we had a about 3 occasions where the V+ recorded a blank program, and I think every case was an HD channel. I commented to the Mrs that it hadn't done this recently on the very morning the Nat Geo bug happened!
I get failed HD recordings very often, I'd say around 1 in every 20 fails. Worse, are the ones that seem to have recorded okay, then mysteriously fail when sitting on the HD for a few days.
SD stuff rarely, if ever fails, so it's clearly the ancient, circa 1980s hardware in the SA V+ boxes which pushed beyond breaking point with those cutting edge MPEG 2 1080i recordings.
Is it really possible to get Virgin to swap the SA for a Samsung? Last time I complained to them about failed recordings they just told me to reset the box...
Also, what's with the lack of HD content on the BBC iPlayer? You would imagine it would be an automated process, pushing everything to the on demand servers without fail.
The HD selection is like having your V+ programmed by someone obsessed with kids programmes. How come they see to successfully list CBeebies stuff but miss the big documentaries? Are the under-fives watching HD? Crazy.
And whatever happened to the promised HD on demand content from ITV and C4? Still nowhere to be seen.
Bugger...it has failed to record Heroes now. Daughter will not be happy - thankfully it is repeated on BBC2 next Friday. Will reboot (third time in a week) and see how we go with Being Human and Hustle...
Update on my SA V+ HD situation:
It's been successful with all seven HD recordings this week so I haven't made the call to request a Samsung yet. Wish I could determine a pattern to failed recordings but I can't see rhyme or reason to them. It even coped with the double header of BBC HD and 4HD on Wednesday at 10pm (which I thought it would fail on). Most odd.
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