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Box struggling to come out of standby
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Hello all and thanks for the many useful posts that I've been following as a guest for a good few months before plumping for one of these.
One strange problem I've encountered that I've not found much about on here is how erratic my 9200t is on coming out of standby. Sometimes it's about 5 seconds, sometimes it won't start without a reboot round the back and sometimes it can suddenly rev up after about a minute.
Is this regarded as a proper problem, or just one of those things that we have to live with (if it is, I'm not too concerned).
Cheers in advance.
One strange problem I've encountered that I've not found much about on here is how erratic my 9200t is on coming out of standby. Sometimes it's about 5 seconds, sometimes it won't start without a reboot round the back and sometimes it can suddenly rev up after about a minute.
Is this regarded as a proper problem, or just one of those things that we have to live with (if it is, I'm not too concerned).
Cheers in advance.
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Other than that the only other explanation is a symptom of the "box thinks its recording" bug. Another symptom of this bug is the PIP test.
Never really knew what it meant when some people reported that their machine took more than 15 seconds to fully start up and be watching a channel. Just checked it myself and mine takes 20 seconds now - I wonder how long this has been the case?! Is this related to how much of your hard disk is used or how many timers is in your scheduled timer list - maybe the box is checking through all that on start up. I say this because it always takes 10 seconds to get to STING (starting) but its after that where the number of seconds has increased. e.g. press standby on the remote/L00 to comes up at 4.5 seconds/STING comes up at 10 seconds/then first picture at 15 seconds - or now 19!
The only other changes to the machine I can think of is going from one software to another.
One other issue that could be useful to know is that when you press standby on the machine it doesnt look like anything has been registered, apart from the slightly dimmed time display goes slightly brighter straight away. I wondered if pressing standby again before the loader starts at 4.5 seconds could put the machine back into standby - with the effect that it seems nothing is happening. EDIT: once you have pressed standby once, pressing it again, even a number of times, doesnt interupt the startup process.
My current get around for this is getting the machine to boot up before I get home from work. Tested it a few times this evening with the timer and it works everytime.
Cheers
I dont know if this is normal or mine is abnormal but I havent seen that before.
I just had a 'box struggling to come out of standby' occurance and I think this 'watch' or 'clock' has something to do with it.
I think this icon indicates that the box is 'timed' to switch off or turn on? If so then I've don't know what is telling to as I don't have that set (although I did set it once, but then turned it off).
Anyway once I used the off/on button at the back, after a second powercycle the box came on and did something weird...
The chief problem with that is that when I recorded a programme in the middle of the day while in standby, it missed the first 7 minutes off, while I presume it was waking itself up. I know it's a bit sluggish coming out of standby, but that seems exceptionally so.
What happens is that the clock gets to 16:59 and sits at that time until, 7 minutes later, the beast fires up, does the STING thing and then displays 17:07
I'm going to try taking all the on / off settings out and see if it will speed things up. Other than this, the box is behaving really well and I'm well chuffed with my first PVR.
It reduced the wait to 2 minutes - perhaps something in it, but will try again from totally cold tomorrow morning.
What happens on other boxes then? The line I get is a sort of flicker. I'm using RGB output, by the way - any chance it's something to do with that?
This morning I tried bringing it out of standby early using the remote and it took 11 minutes (the clock on the front was showing 7.44 when I started and 7.55 before it fully came to life - the time freezes during power-up). It hasn't bothered me so far but I can see it would be aproblem if I wanted to record something while it's in standby.
Perhaps others who power off/on to wake the machine up could try leaving it for a while to see if it would come on by itself eventually.
I'm curious to know what advantages there are putting the box into standby?
sTeVE
Noise. Power consumption. Heat. Wear and tear on hard disk as it is recording constantly...
(BTW I had another struggle this morning... and odd since it had been only earlier as I listened to some radio... then put it in standby, then later when to power it on and... it struggled... but did eventually come on...)
My TiVO is over 3 years old, has never been in standby either, and it has never failed. The HD must be always spinning in that machine too...
So I guess my question is this HD issue a 9200 problem?
I've not heard of it before, is it recommended to keep the unit in standy?
sTeVE
Save the planet man! Standby uses less power (see http://www.humaxdigital.com/uk/pdf/PVR-9200T_L.pdf).
Mind you, it still uses 11W in standby, which isn't much short of half its max power consumption. I wonder what the power consumption of the unit is when it's not in standby but not recording or playing.
Some people on the board use timer plugs to turn off all their AV equipment during the day. I might start doing that too.
Don't ever do that with a 9200, its filesystem is too fragile and doesn't recover from interupted file writes. Turning them off after a total lockup has lost a lot of people their recordings already, an unattended powerdown is just asking for trouble.
Does the TiVO maintain a live buffer? I admit that hard disk technology is pretty reliable - either a disk works or it is broken and 'wear and tear' in generally isn't a factor. But since the Hummy contantly records the current channel to keep a live buffer then it means the read/write heads are in constant action (and since it is a mechanical construct, then it will have 'wear and tear' properties).
Humax recommends you put the machine in standby (although I admit again this advice might not have anything to do with the hard disk - I assume that it might be to do with the transmission stream screwing the box up).
With regards to Paul Shirley - how are people going to reset the machine when a lockup occurs if you don't recommend powering the box off via its on/off switch? What is a difference from an unattended power off and a power via the power switch? As far as I can see the use of a power off timer is the same as a manual power off as long as the Hummy is in 'on standby'...
I think the point is that powering the box off while the disk is still spinning risks messing up the file system and losing your recordings. If the box is locked up, then there is no other option, but it should be seen as a last resort, not as something you would want to do every day.
I tend to be in agreement with Paul about abrupt power down via say a timer. It just doesnt feel right when the unit could if nothing else be buffering a channel if watching TV i.e. disk in use.
Standby on the Humax also powers down the disk after a few seconds. If people would like a complete unit power off using a timer then perhaps using the PVRs own in-built auto shut down and auto start up could be used in conjunction with a wal socket power timer. Using the timer to power down and power up from a wall socket say 5 or ten minutes either side of the automatic standby settings.
As on all these devices, if the machine does not respond like it has frozen, often only a complete switch off and on again will put it back to normal. In those cases I suppose thats all you can do for PVRs.
Yes, I understand that, and I wouldn't recommend users powering off their machine unless it is in standby... I would assume that when using a power off timer you would put your box into standby first...