Strange Problem with TWC 8300HD

[hormy_83]

I've got a TWC 8300HD and had around 10-15 recordings on it as of Sunday night.  I watched one of the shows that was recorded earlier in the evening on Sunday and then went to bed.  When I got home from work Monday I turned it back on to watch a few more of the shows and I noticed it looked like it did back on the previous Tuesday night (4/17).

All the shows recorded from 4/17 - 4/23 were gone!  No where to be found.  And all (or at least most) of the recordings that I've watched and deleted during that week were back on the list.

The dates that showed up for the recordings were correct though.  An example would be the recording from 4/17 showed as 'Tuesday' and a recording from 4/15 showed '4/15' rather than 'Sunday'.

I've pretty much given up on the recordings that disappeared, but I wanted to know if anyone else has had this problem or have any idea why it happened?  I would like to make sure I don't have this problem in the future!

[Mark Strube]

Strange bug... has this happened more than once? Have you tried rebooting the box to see if that recovers anything? (Hold down the power button on the box for about 5 seconds until it says "boot.")

[mhz40]

I too had this happen one time.  In my case a reboot followed by the setup of a test recording restored the list.

[hormy_83]

This is the first time it happened to me.  I didn't try rebooting the box - I just turned it off and back on.  I didn't spend too much time worrying about it as most of the stuff I lost I didn't care too much about.  I'll probably not try it now as I don't know what will happen with the stuff that I've recorded since that happened - but thanks for the info guys, if it happens again I'll reboot and then record something to see if the other stuff comes back!

[markd]

This has  not happened to me but it did happen to my parents once last month.  They lost about 12 hours of recordings and rebooting the box did not bring things back.  Some of the recorded shows appeared to be in the list still after the reboot but selecting them to play only brought up a message on the screen that the show was unavailalbe (!?).  Very weird.  After calling TWC to just report the problem, my parents were instructed to exchange their box.  The odd thing was that only the HD programming was "deleted" from their box.  They still had some random SD recordings from weeks past but all of their HD recordings were either gone or would not play.  Strange indeed.

[LoadStar]

This happened to me once.

Basically, as best as I can tell, there are two copies of the database that store, well, pretty much everything needed to run the box, including the list of what has been recorded. Apparently, on a periodic basis, the "active" or "online" database is backed up and replaces the "offline" or inactive copy of the databases. If anything serious happens to the active database, it fails over to the inactive copy of the database, and depending on how long ago the copy was made, that's how much data you lose.

This is all conjecture, of course, but it's based on what I saw when it happened to me... basically, the box looked like it went through about a 7-10 day time warp. Programs I had deleted during those 7-10 days appeared to come back from the dead, and stuff I had recorded during that time vanished. (Of course, the programs I had deleted and that reappeared didn't work - the actual recordings on the hard drive the database was pointing to no longer existed.)

This is similar in a way to how TiVo works, though I've never had this sort of problem happen with a TiVo. The similarity is that TiVo actually has two complete copies of the operating system partition on the hard drive; one online and in use, and the other offline. When an update comes down the line, it's applied to the offline partition, then it and the online partition swap upon a reboot, and the offline partition becomes the active one and vice versa.

[gparris]

After battling with a very-gone-wrong Digital Phone installation, whereby the installers pulled my cable tv installation panel apart
(who knows why, don't get me started), the main-line HT room HD DVR box rebooted, only to find that all the future recordings set up on season pass were completely gone.

So I then did a rebooting of the HD DVR again after the installers finally left, I got my power-on HD channel to appear on cue (541), but as I scanned in the weeks for the unit to load the schedules, nothing came up to record when I pressed "LIST". I had to manually set the recordings as if the unit had lost its mind...odd.

Out of three HD DVRs, this one forgot what it was supposed to do...very odd.
But the recordings were still there, but on the second HD DVR, the ones I had erased, came back from half a month ago...odd again.

[LowSignal]

After battling with a very-gone-wrong Digital Phone installation, whereby the TWC moronic installers pulled my cable tv installation panel apart
(who knows why, don't get me started), the mainline HT room HD DVR box rebooted, only to find that all the future recordings set up on season pass completely gone.

So I then did a rebooting of the HD DVR again after the "3 idiots" finally left, I got my power-on HD channel to appear on cue (541), but as I scanned in the weeks for the unit to load the schedules, nothing came up to record when I pressed "LIST". I had to manually set the recordings as if the unit had lost its mind...odd.
Out of three HD DVRs, this one forgot what it was supposed to do...very odd.
But the recordings were still there, but on the second HD DVR, the ones I had erased, came back from half a month ago...odd again.

Where they 8000 series DVRs or the newer silver 8300's

[gparris]

These are 8300HD DVRs....BTW, later the box rebooted itself and regained its full memory including the ability to recognize what was to be recorded.
I have not tried to play anything back or access anything yet from Friday-Sunday, but if there is a problem (again), I will post something.

[Paul S.]

The answer is obvious- the government removed shows that they didn't want you to see. Controlling your DVR= controlling your life. :p

[gparris]

Quite honestly, I don't think that there is a govt conspiracy with DVRs (at least not yet), but the software is still a bit shaky with the HD DVRs, though I would assume its better than what I have heard with that Navigator "mess" and DVRs.
Why TWC just doesn't keep Aptiv/Passport is beyond me.
IF it works (better), then keep it and if its broken, fix it - don't replace it.
Reading about what happened in Nebraska - was downright inexcusable.

Anyway, if anyone wants to add Digital Phone to their existing cable service (including DVR service boxes) along with RR service (to make it that "All-In-One" thing), make sure the TWC installer is knowledgeable and beg for a QC TWC person be there to supervise it, otherwise your cable/DVR hookups can suffer, too.