# 70 hours is really 37 hours???



## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

I have an R10 and it only stores about 37 hours of programming. Mostly local channels plus CNBC.

I did a search and came up with two possible reasons:

1) KUID, ie Keep Until I delete. Nope. All my SPs are keep until space needed.

2) Expiration because of "keep at most" kicking in. Nope. One of my SPs has keep at most "all episodes".

I've done "clear and delete everything" but that hasn't solved the problem.

Phooey. It's almost like they put a 40 GB drive into this R10.

Anyone have any other ideas? I feel cheated.


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## rminsk (Jun 4, 2002)

Is this unit a refurb? Maybe there is a 40 GB drive in there.


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## stivovance (Feb 12, 2003)

What does your system information screen tell you?

37 sounds about right as remember, it's variable based on what you are recording. A 40 gig in the s1 and 2 would say 35, but you'd actually get closer 20-25 depending on what you'd record, so having an 80 in there, sounds like that's about right.


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## beanpoppa (Jan 7, 2004)

No, something's fishy. DTivo's record driectly from the digital DirecTV stream. On a high-quality channel like HBO (ie-low compression) you will generally little less than 1 hour per gig. If it's a dolby digital broadcast, even less. On most channels, however, you will get over 1 hour per gig. That's the upside to D* trying to cram as many channels onto their sats as possible. 

My system information screen tells me that I have a 137 hour DTivo (160GB drive). However, because I have a lot of stuff recorded off of highly compressed kids channels, I get a little more than that on my drive if I add everything up.

My guess is someone put a 40G drive in there. Not sure how they could have, though. The R10 software (6.1) was never available on a 40 hour unit, and you can't restore an 80G image onto a 40G drive.


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## Barryrod (Mar 17, 2006)

From what I understand, it will allot the time needed for upcoming shows under your season pass and then tell you that you are out of space when you try to record more shows and your other recorded shows have not expired. This happened to me before I upgraded.


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## JimSpence (Sep 19, 2001)

It not already, I'd turn on the automatic recording of suggestions to see what happens.


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

Phantom Gremlin said:


> I have an R10 and it only stores about 37 hours of programming. Mostly local channels plus CNBC.
> 
> I did a search and came up with two possible reasons:
> 
> ...


Just to confirm, it is actually deleting shows at approximately 37 hours?

I wanted to check, because even though you've done your research and sound like you know what you are doing, surprisingly many people misunderstand how expiration works, and assume an expired show is going to be deleted immediately.

No matter how much disk space you have a Keep Until Space Needed show will get a yellow ball (meaning will expire within 24 hours) 24 hours after it was recorded, and will get a yellow ball with exclamation point (meaning it has expired) 48 hours after it was recorded. But it may stay on the hard drive for years unless the TiVo actually runs out of space.

I don't think that is what is happening to you, but I just wanted to try to cover the obvious first. 
(If that is not the case I second the recommendation of checking the system information to see how many hour of disk space the TiVo thinks it has)


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## phox_mulder (Feb 23, 2006)

I just looked at my unmodified R10, and it has almost 8 pages of now playing.
95% of them are 1 hour shows, over half of them padded 2-3 minutes.

By my calulations, 60 hours of programming that I haven't had time to watch yet.

No warnings that it is running out of space, programs set to record up till 6/4 (1 1/2 weeks),
and as far as I know, nothing has been deleted before I had a chance to watch it.

System info says "Recording Capacity: Variable, up to 70 hours.

Something is definately up with yours.


phox


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

Jonathan_S said:


> Just to confirm, it is actually deleting shows at approximately 37 hours?


Yes.

This unmodified, purchased new not refurb, R10 is in my den. It reports "up to 70 hours" in system information.

It records stuff like local news, Nightline, Kudlow & Co, Mad Money. Most of the time I won't watch much from it. But, for example, if the next day at work someone mentions that something interesting was on Nightline I want to be able to go back and watch.

So programs are always falling off the end (everything is keep until space needed).

Last night I add up everything in my now playing and it totalled 37 hours. Despite the fact that Mad Money is set to keep at most "all episodes" so I should have found several dozen more episodes of Mad Money than I actually have.

Based on other ideas in this thread I will try two other things:

1) add another keep at most "all episodes" season pass, not just Mad Money.

2) turn on suggestions and see how many of those are stored.


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## Boston Fan (Feb 8, 2006)

Just checked my R10. I have 67 hours of programming currently stored and set for Keep Until I Delete.


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## DJ Tom Tom (May 25, 2006)

Try checking your settings and see if the 5.1 digital is turned on.
I have a 70 hour dvr now. Set at 5.1 digital, it will only record about 35-40 hours.


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

DJ Tom Tom said:


> Try checking your settings and see if the 5.1 digital is turned on.
> I have a 70 hour dvr now. Set at 5.1 digital, it will only record about 35-40 hours.


Nope, my 5.1 digital is NOT turned on. Recording standard audio.

How many hours does your unit get using standard audio?


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## tbeckner (Oct 26, 2001)

Phantom Gremlin said:


> Nope, my 5.1 digital is NOT turned on. Recording standard audio.
> 
> How many hours does your unit get using standard audio?


In my case, an hour takes up about 890MB to 950MB, on HBO with 5.1 an hour takes up about 950MB to 1.1GB, or about 60MB more for 5.1. These are just averages.


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## Barryrod (Mar 17, 2006)

Like I said...If you record a lot of stuff via season pass, all upcoming episodes are alotted time, even if nothing is recorded there yet.


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## curtis0620 (Sep 6, 2000)

Are the shows dropping off set as keep at most 5 episodes and the ones dropping off have 5 episodes already recorded?


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## dtremain (Jan 5, 2004)

DJ Tom Tom said:


> Try checking your settings and see if the 5.1 digital is turned on.
> I have a 70 hour dvr now. Set at 5.1 digital, it will only record about 35-40 hours.


That should only matter if whows with a dolby digital soundtrack are recorded (and they are few and far between on premiums and ppv's). Otherwise, just having it set should not effect disk space at all.


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## dtremain (Jan 5, 2004)

Barryrod said:


> Like I said...If you record a lot of stuff via season pass, all upcoming episodes are alotted time, even if nothing is recorded there yet.


But that only matters if you have your shows set to not delete automatically.


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

curtis0620 said:


> Are the shows dropping off set as keep at most 5 episodes and the ones dropping off have 5 episodes already recorded?


Yes all shows that are limited by "keep at most" are dropping off as expected. For example, Nightline is set for 3 episodes and that's all that are currently stored. A daily local newscast is set for 5 episodes and that's all that are currently stored.

As for Mad Money on CNBC, I've got the following setup (all manual recording):

3 PM keep at most all episodes
6 PM keep at most 3 episodes
9 PM keep at most 3 episodes

(Hey I wanna make sure I don't miss Cramer, even if he's pre-empted or delayed or I have a thunderstorm.)

Right now on the machine are 10 episodes of Mad Money. All put into 1 folder (aka Group). 3x Wed, 3x Tue, 3x Mon, and a single 3 PM episode from last Friday. That final episode is 2nd from bottom in non-group view so I'm sure it will disappear in a few hours.

I've got 3 other active DirecTV TiVos and 2 other retired DirecTV TiVos. Been doing this for years. So I think I've got a good handle on how they work.

I think this is a bum unit. The only other conclusion is that DirecTV loves CNBC and is giving them about 3x the bandwidth of other channels. Next step is to open it up and see what it says on the drive.


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

dtremain said:


> That should only matter if whows with a dolby digital soundtrack are recorded (and they are few and far between on premiums and ppv's). Otherwise, just having it set should not effect disk space at all.


Hmmm. That's *VERY VERY* interesting. Because it sounds like DJ Tom Tom has a DVR (R10?) that's behaving very much like mine.


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## Barryrod (Mar 17, 2006)

dtremain said:


> But that only matters if you have your shows set to not delete automatically.


It will if he has close to his storage limit in upcoming episodes.....OP stated that he has a lot of recording of shows that are airing daily (even multiple airing each day)..The tivo will alot storage for all those upcoming episodes


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## rminsk (Jun 4, 2002)

Barryrod said:


> It will if he has close to his storage limit in upcoming episodes.....OP stated that he has a lot of recording of shows that are airing daily (even multiple airing each day)..The tivo will alot storage for all those upcoming episodes


TiVo does not pre-allocate storage. It is only when you make programming changes does it guestimate how much storage.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Phantom Gremlin said:


> But, for example, if the next day at work someone mentions that something interesting was on Nightline I want to be able to go back and watch.


Not exactly relevant, but Nightline is available as a podcast. It's usually a "talking head" show, so I think it works pretty well as audio-only most of the time.

(The whole show seems to be there the vast majority of the time. Once in a rare while the podcast has been like 10 minutes long.. I've not recorded Nightline on one of my video recorders to try to figure out the discrepancy.)


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

For the record, I opened up my problematic R10 and there is an 80 GB Western Digital WD800 drive inside. So my problem isn't caused by a "too small" drive being accidentally put in by the factory.

Unfortunately, the "we're so smart we know what's good for you better than you do" pinheads at TiVo made a deliberate decision to

a) not give the user any indication of how many megabytes a show is taking on disk

and

b) not give the user any indication of free space on the disk

Because that would have made diagnosing problems like this *too simple.*

My next idea is to delete all my season passes except for local channels. I *know* my SD locals are horribly compressed. I wonder how many hours of programming will fit with just locals?

Also for the record I enabled suggestions and none were recorded for a few days. Then I deleted a bunch of programming and got 3 suggestions recorded in the next day. I think that means my disk was "full" until I manually deleted some shows.


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## Dkerr24 (Oct 29, 2004)

Put a 300gb or larger drive in there and then you won't have to modify your season passes or worry about recording time at all.


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## Adam1115 (Dec 15, 2003)

Phantom Gremlin said:


> I have an R10 and it only stores about 37 hours of programming. Mostly local channels plus CNBC.
> 
> I did a search and came up with two possible reasons:
> 
> ...


I don't think you're being cheated. The TiVo is considering future recordings in its decision to prematurely delete shows. (In other words, it doesn't wait until 5 minutes before your show that's going to cause it to run out of space comes on to delete it. It decides to make room ahead of time, maybe days ahead of time..)

So if you have a 70-80 hour R10 (Remember, it's UP TO 80 hours), and you have 37 hours of programming but 40 hours of programming scheduled to record in the next week, the TiVo will get 'nervous' and start deleting expired programs.

In any case, your best solution is to buy a 250-300 gig hard drive and upgrade the unit, they are running between $65-$100 for those sizes. Then you won't have to worry about it again.


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

Dkerr24 said:


> Put a 300gb or larger drive in there and then you won't have to modify your season passes or worry about recording time at all.


At a certain level I agree with you. Often a solution like you suggest results in the least amount of aggravation. And this TiVo only cost me $99. But it's stilll hard for me to let go of the reaction: "hey, this isn't working right ...". Maybe it's because I'm an engineer and this would be a very simple problem to understand if I had any visibility into the filesystems on the machine.


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## dtremain (Jan 5, 2004)

Adam1115 said:


> So if you have a 70-80 hour R10 (Remember, it's UP TO 80 hours), and you have 37 hours of programming but 40 hours of programming scheduled to record in the next week, the TiVo will get 'nervous' and start deleting expired programs.


Interesting. That might explain if if he has that much scheduled.

However, we have at least 25 hours of stuff scheduled each week, and we have much more efficient use of our hard drive than he's having.


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## crkeehn (Mar 1, 2005)

This past weekend with the holiday, we ran into a similar problem. My wife was trying to record the Rawhide Marathon and got warnings of insufficient recording space. As it turned out, USA was running one of their Monkathons and we had 24 hours of Monk scheduled to record in the next two weeks. I deleted the Season Pass and her Rawhides recorded without a problem.


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## Rkkeller (May 13, 2004)

I have 100+ SP's with over 10 shows recording daily, over 500 shows in my to do list and I have never seen any warning messages. Dont use KUID or KAM = ALL. I use KAM=1 or 2 for all my SP's and have never had any space issues.


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