# Error playing a recording



## ethan (May 9, 2002)

> Error playing a recording
> The Recorder was not able to record this program because there was no video signal on the channel. You may have been trying to record on a channel that you don't receive.
> Press SELECT to continue


got this when i went to watch tonight's Studio 60 recorded off OTA. it was scheduled from 9:00 (9:01 to be exact) to 10:00 this evening. i finished watching Heroes (from the previous timeslot on the same channel) at about 10:40. that recording was complete (but for one 8-sec audio dropout about halfway in). as of 10:45, i'm getting reception without any problems.

here's the stranger part...
i checked my Recording History, and neither Heroes nor Studio 60 are listed. at all. there's no entry for them period.

my local NBC affiliate has been pretty rock-solid of late. i can't imagine that they stopped transmitting exactly at the end of one show and the beginning of another. and then off-the-air for the duration of that show? besides, that wouldn't explain the missing entries in the History.

has anybody else seen similar symptoms?


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## newsposter (Aug 18, 2002)

yes got that a few times since 6.3

no video signal...nuts..simply not true..rarely do i have a totally missed show. I'll have a ton of pixels for at least a few min even if ota is shot


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## dmward81 (Aug 27, 2005)

ethan said:


> here's the stranger part...
> i checked my Recording History, and neither Heroes nor Studio 60 are listed. at all. there's no entry for them period.


Never seen that error message. However, the recording history only lists programs that didn't record, won't record, or were deleted, so if the program shows up on your now showing list, it shouldn't be in the recording history. I've had now showing entries with a 0:00 duration because there was no signal and they don't show up in the recording history even though there is nothing to watch.


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## juanian (Oct 2, 2002)

I have had that "no video signal" message occur a few times, and I am using the RCA jacks as input, so it is not a TiVo Tuner tuning issue (since the tuning is being done by the digital cable box). When a show starts recording on the TiVo going through the cable box, I see about a second of the previous channel, then I see the channel numbers being entered for the new channel, and then I see the cable box banner showing the newly chosen channel and program name. So, I should *never* have a totally empty recording. (I could probably find some setting on the cable box to turn the banner off, but I haven't looked into that yet.)

Once, I did have a situation where the cable box had been accidentally turned off. Obviously, this caused the scheduled programs to not be recorded properly. But what did the TiVo do? -- it recorded an hour of a totally blank screen, and *did not* give the "no video signal" message, even though there *was no video signal!* Note: The disk space taken for those recordings was about 1/4 the size of a normal recording for the same timespan -- a clear indication that 'blank' compresses better than valid content.

On one occasion, I had been recording multiple shows in a row off of the same channel, and one of the shows in the *middle* received the "no video" message. (Note: *every* recording should have the cable box banner display for about a second at the beginning.) Also, I noticed that the disk space size listed in the program info is the same size as if it *had* properly recorded the show. So, I suspect that the show *is* properly recorded, but something is flagged which prevents the show from being played. (I also can't download the show or transfer it MRV; I get the message:
Resource Not Found
Unable to initialize videomgr pipeline: err 0x40001
when I try to download it via the web server.)

I do feel that it is something wrong with the TiVo that causes the problem to occur, and I don't think it has anything to do with the signal coming in. But, since the problem only occurs once every 2 or 3 months, I assume that it is impossible to get TiVo to reproduce it (unless they can get more information out of a TiVo with one of these 'bad' recordings than I can see).

Note: I just received the 8.1 update on that TiVo, and the program still plays with the "no video" message. (I really want to get at this recording, because it will probably not be repeated.)

P.S. What a coincidence -- my wife just attempted to play an episode of "Go, Diego, Go" on another TiVo, and she saw the 'no video' message for the first time. (Same setup - a cable digital box feeding the TiVo via the RCA jacks.) Now, we've both seen the message in the past (before we used a cable box) when the TiVo Tuner supposedly wasn't able to tune to a channel even though there was nothing wrong with the channel (but that is in the past, but could actually be related to this problem).


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## jap3 (Jul 14, 2003)

I know this is an old thread, but I just got the message after recording The Astronaut Farmer on Free HBO HD. I began watching it, and fell asleep until the credits. I went to play it and now get the error message. I know it was recorded, now it says it's not.


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## JimSpence (Sep 19, 2001)

What receiver?

Try a restart to see if it will then play.


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