# V401 error



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

Today I was watching live TV on one of my Minis. I went into another room and attempted live TV viewing on that Mini and got an error that the only available tuner was in use so would I like to watch a recording instead. 

That's when something "interesting" happened. I had scheduled a recording of a live program I had been watching on that same Mini the previous evening. I tried to play back that recording and the Mini threw error code V401 "there was a problem playing your recording". 

Other recordings seemed to play back fine. Yet another TiVo Mini teething problem it seems. Rather annoying one too. 

It would also be nice if TiVo gave the ability for us to "force" takeover of a tuner from another amino on the network.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

That would be asking for trouble in some households.


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## tatergator1 (Mar 27, 2008)

aaronwt said:


> That would be asking for trouble in some households.


With the introduction of the Mini, I think the whole "Profile" system that Tivo is supposedly been working on really needs to be released to have a true "Whole Home" system.

As part of this, such advanced options should be available like granting certain profiles "administrator" privileges. One such privilege would be overriding tuner-allocation.

The problem is that Tivo probably doesn't see the value in developing that for "enthusiasts" like us on this forum.


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## compnurd (Oct 6, 2011)

tatergator1 said:


> With the introduction of the Mini, I think the whole "Profile" system that Tivo is supposedly been working on really needs to be released to have a true "Whole Home" system.
> 
> As part of this, such advanced options should be available like granting certain profiles "administrator" privileges. One such privilege would be overriding tuner-allocation.
> 
> The problem is that Tivo probably doesn't see the value in developing that for "enthusiasts" like us on this forum.


Why? No Other Whole Home system has a profile system and they have no issues..


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## tatergator1 (Mar 27, 2008)

compnurd said:


> Why? No Other Whole Home system has a profile system and they have no issues..


A marketing benefit. Those with whole home systems from their provider are generally indifferent to the features of the system, as long as it works when they want it to. A profile system would be a nice feature to differentiate Tivo from the MSO solutions.


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## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

The primary point of the thread was the V401 error. The inability to play back a recording on the Mini is more of a problem then the tuner allocation which is just a nuisance v


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## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

So the problem recording cannot be played back on the TiVo that created the recording either. The error there indicates that there was no signal on the tuner and that the recording as a result is no good.

My suspicion is that if you schedule an ad-hoc recording on your Mini, and the other tuners on the main TiVo are in use, you won't get an option to cancel one of the other recording (in my case it would almost definitely have just been TiVo recording suggestions), the Mini will act like the recording has started and the main TiVo will show the recording has been created, but the recording is null.

Hopefully someone else can confirm. It's a rather annoying bug.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

Still not sure I fully understand what steps led to your problem. From what I could gleam:
* Host 4 tuner unit has 1 tuner dedicated to Mini for live TV, hence 3 tuners remaining for recordings.
* Host 4 tuner unit was busy recording 3 shows when you decided to start a recording from the Mini on the channel that was currently being viewed as live TV.
* Mini did not complain that there were no tuners available to schedule that recording and acted as though the recording started normally.
* Entry for that "recording" shows up on Host unit but cannot be played.

Does that sum up the problem you ran into?


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

jmpage2 said:


> So the problem recording cannot be played back on the TiVo that created the recording either. The error there indicates that there was no signal on the tuner and that the recording as a result is no good.
> 
> My suspicion is that if you schedule an ad-hoc recording on your Mini, and the other tuners on the main TiVo are in use, you won't get an option to cancel one of the other recording (in my case it would almost definitely have just been TiVo recording suggestions), the Mini will act like the recording has started and the main TiVo will show the recording has been created, but the recording is null.
> 
> Hopefully someone else can confirm. It's a rather annoying bug.


When I tested it I got a prompt telling me one of the other programs would be cancelled to start the one I was scheduling from the Mini.

It definitely did not pretend to record the title when the other tuners were already recording.

Here is what I posted on March 17th.



aaronwt said:


> I had three recordings taking place on my host ELite. My Mini was tuned to a channel and when I tried to record it a message came up that said it would need to cancel one of the other three recordings for me to record the new one.


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## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

moyekj said:


> Still not sure I fully understand what steps led to your problem. From what I could gleam:
> * Host 4 tuner unit has 1 tuner dedicated to Mini for live TV, hence 3 tuners remaining for recordings.
> * Host 4 tuner unit was busy recording 3 shows when you decided to start a recording from the Mini on the channel that was currently being viewed as live TV.
> * Mini did not complain that there were no tuners available to schedule that recording and acted as though the recording started normally.
> ...


I don't know if the Host 4 tuner was busy or not, it's just my speculation to explain what happened.

Everything else you state is correct regarding what it was that happened.

I imagine others will stumble into this bug eventually.


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## mr_smits (Dec 17, 2009)

I'm not sure if error "there was a problem playing your recording" is Mini specific. I received it yesterday on my 2 tuner Premiere ( two 2 tuner Premiere & TivoHD household). I'm not sure why that happened.


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## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

Perhaps, but it's never happened before, until I installed the Minis.


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## mr_smits (Dec 17, 2009)

jmpage2 said:


> Perhaps, but it's never happened before, until I installed the Minis.


Right. It's definitely a possibility. I'm just saying I received the error message yesterday and I've never seen it before either. I also do not have any Minis or 4 tuner boxes in the house.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

jmpage2 said:


> I don't know if the Host 4 tuner was busy or not, it's just my speculation to explain what happened.
> 
> Everything else you state is correct regarding what it was that happened.
> 
> I imagine others will stumble into this bug eventually.


 When I tried this, as aaronwt posted, the Mini was aware of the fact all 3 tuners available for recordings were currently busy. I also tried scheduling recording of current live TV channel from Mini when Elite tuners were not busy and that went through and I was able to watch it as it was recording from the Mini. So I guess whatever the issue was may not be readily reproducible or we don't have the right sequence of events narrowed down to reproduce it.


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