# Confused Progress Bar??



## PhilG (Jan 15, 2002)

Hi all,

Something odd happened last night

My wife pulled up a program to watch on Tivo and noticed that the progress bar only went up to 37 minutes of a 1 hour program (and in fact, the green part started in the middle of the bar!)

Lots of mumbling about missed ends of recordings BUT when Tivo got to the "end" of teh bar, it kept going - The attached pic shows that we were then 43 minutes into a 37 minute recording!!

Has anyone seen this before?

Should I worry??

btw, when we'd finished watching the program, it deleted OK with no obvious problems.....

I'd like to know what was going on though

Phil G


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## dvdfever (Jun 2, 2002)

PhilG said:


> Hi all,
> 
> Something odd happened last night
> 
> ...


Back in September, I recorded the second part of Low Winter Sun on More4 (it lasted 90 mins, but I'd added 2 mins before and 15 after, as I didn't want it to overrun a bit and miss the end), then went to watch it and while the time bar at the bottom runs up until 1:47 (which is fine since 90+2+15 = 1hr 47mins), it started at 1:24 (ie. it appeared empty for the first 1:24), appeared to only run for another 23 mins, but if I skipped to the end it goes up to 3:11, which meant the
whole programme is there but the time bar has completely gone to Weird
Town for the night.

The drama deleted perfectly well once it had reached a rather predictable conclusion.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Just to continue on this very old thread (thanks to Tivocommunity's new function to search for relevant subjects near that of one's own proposed new thread).

On Monday 1st March 2010 at 12am (12 midnight) I had scheduled a recording of an episode of a series called Globe Trekker on The Travel Channel Plus 1 (on Sky EPG channel number 252) about the Spanish Islands. To be honest now I can't even think how I came to schedule it as it wasn't picked up by a Wishlist but I think I spotted it while using HiGuide or some other such other such thing in Tivoweb. However we have a family apartment out in Mallorca hence why I was interested in the program.

However when I came to watch the program Tivo's Now Playing summary only showed the program as being 1 hour in length (even though End pad normally adds 2 minutes to the start and four minutes to the end of my recordings unless they overlap with another program) and when I selected Play I got a Now Playing bar that showed 0:00 on the left hand side but both 1:00 and 24:00 on the right hand side.

Although all the Now Playing bar that ran from 0:00 to 1:00 was completely blank with no colour (like it is with a failed recording when a Sky box has been off or had a software hang) when I pressed Play the program started playing as normal with a single green arrow on the far right of the empty Now Playing bar and showing 24:00 as the position in the program. The program then played the full hour all the way through to the end where it showed 24:59 above 1:00 below it but the Now Playing bar continue to remain vacant and colourless, although I could use the Skip 15 minutes function as normal during fast forwarding or rewind etc. It seems more than a coincidence that the Tivo ignored Endpad and did not add any time to the recording at the start or end as this would then have forced it to show 1:00 twice on the same screen. But it managed to avoid this by only recording the full hour without the start and end padding.

I would tend to assume that this is a glitch of some kind perhaps being caused by EndPad as if there was a general problem with recording programs that begin at 24:00/0:00 surely Tivo would have picked it up long ago. Although perhaps the fact that not many of us record programs starting at midnight could perhaps have allowed the bug to go undiagnosed for all this time.

Has anyone else experienced this kind of odd behaviour by a Tivo and if so is it a Tivo on which they also run Endpad?

*EDIT*:- I just remembered that this program was actually recorded as a Suggestion by Tivo but I then changed it to Save Until I Delete through the Now Playing module in Tivoweb. That possibly explains why Endpad hadn't added any time to the start or the end of the recording but still doesn't seem to explain the weird Now Playing bar behaviour. Having said that I thought Endpad did still add time to Suggesstions if the program doesn't clash with anything else that is recording before or after it?


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## PhilG (Jan 15, 2002)

I also find this happens occasionally - but by occasionally, I mean about once a YEAR

I do run endpad, but this is so infrequent I have had no luck in determining exactly what might be causing it

Apart from the shock of thinking a treasured program has failed to record (when in fact it has) I have seen no other side effects


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

PhilG said:


> I also find this happens occasionally - but by occasionally, I mean about once a YEAR
> 
> I do run endpad, but this is so infrequent I have had no luck in determining exactly what might be causing it
> 
> Apart from the shock of thinking a treasured program has failed to record (when in fact it has) I have seen no other side effects


Before I powered off my Sky box once a day on a timer I had a number of instances with a blank bar and no recording having happened (despite Tivo thinking it had recorded the program) because the Sky box source was unavailable (i.e. crashed/locked up). However this is the first instance in over seven years I have had of the recording having actually happened but the progress bar being stuck in the far right of the bar.

I know I did see another forum member post about much the same thing happening with a recording that started at midnight within the last year but now I can't seem to track down that particular thread.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

Do you both run the "sort now playing" hack? If so, it might be related to that. See this and subsequent posts for details: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v.../tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7775010#post7775010


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

cwaring said:


> Do you both run the "sort now playing" hack? If so, it might be related to that. See this and subsequent posts for details: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v.../tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7775010#post7775010


Yes I do use SortNP Carl.

So at least just this once can I thank for your most helpful, illuminating and constructive post.

It also seems as though I possibly have been barking up the wrong tree in blaming Endpad here.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> So at least just this once can I thank for your most helpful, illuminating and constructive post.


No sarcasm required, smarty-pants 

Oh, and we're still waiting on a fix


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

cwaring said:


> No sarcasm required, smarty-pants


What possibly could have given you the impression that I was being sarcastic.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

If you were being serious I apologise.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

cwaring said:


> If you were being serious I apologise.


I feel guilty about making you apologise when I was in fact being sarcastic. I would have thought you might possibly have noticed the emoticon in my last post though.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

I did see it. Mis-interpreted that one too, it seems  I'm on a roll tonight aren't I!


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Was just going to post that it's unlikely to be an Endpad related thing as it doesn't use dates, relying on TiVo's internal "seconds since Jan 1st 1970" system, but I see you've found the problem.

EndPad can add padding to suggestions if you configure its options to do so.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

TCM2007 said:


> Was just going to post that it's unlikely to be an Endpad related thing as it doesn't use dates, relying on TiVo's internal "seconds since Jan 1st 1970" system,


There seem to have been a little over 1,261 million of them in those 40+ years. To be honest I'm surprised that a Tivo can manage to handle such large number on its relatively puny processor.



> EndPad can add padding to suggestions if you configure its options to do so.


That was what I recalled and I thought I had set it that way but perhaps Mike's new hack again got in the way of that too?


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## RichardJH (Oct 7, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> That was what I recalled and I thought I had set it that way but perhaps Mike's new hack again got in the way of that too?


Surely you should be checking your endpad startup script in sysint.author before you try to apportion blame on another forum member.
It may be all of your own making


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Pete77 said:


> There seem to have been a little over 1,261 million of them in those 40+ years. To be honest I'm surprised that a Tivo can manage to handle such large number on its relatively puny processor.


Well there will be a problem for all linux and other systems using this in 2038 when that figure will wrap around to 0 (similar to the Millennium bug).



> That was what I recalled and I thought I had set it that way but perhaps Mike's new hack again got in the way of that too?


Nope - the progress bar display problem is an old bug in SortNP for programmes that cross midnight that seems to have resurfaced in the latest version. No reports of it affecting suggestions or padding at all.

Although I have seen that progress bar oddity on an unhacked tivo in the past too - very rarely tivo gets confused.

Endpad can be set to not add padding on suggestions (option *- sugeq* ) and that's recommended so you get more suggestions than otherwise.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

RichardJH said:


> Surely you should be checking your endpad startup script in sysint.author before you try to apportion blame on another forum member.





mikerr said:


> Endpad can be set to not add padding on suggestions (option *- sugeq* ) and that's recommended so you get more suggestions than otherwise.


It now seems that I have the -sugeq flag set so as to stop Suggestions being padded because the consequence of allowing Suggestions to be padded by Endpad are that any Suggestion that follows on from a previous Suggestion that is padded by Endpad does not get recorded at all. I must say I find that default setting by Endpad rather counter-intuitive as with scheduled back to back recordings the solution is just not to pad either recording at all as I would expect rather than to cancel one of them completely. I would have expected padding of Suggestions to behave the same way (i.e. pad when possible but not when two Suggestions overlap with each other or with a scheduled recording)

I take it that the creator of SortNP is still working on a solution to the "midnight" problem (suddenly thinks of least favourite Dr Who episode with random demons pounding on the walls of the transporter vehicle).


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> There seem to have been a little over 1,261 million of them in those 40+ years. To be honest I'm surprised that a Tivo can manage to handle such large number on its relatively puny processor.


The processor, while puny, is a 32-bit device, so can handle 32-bit integers (0 to 4,294,967,295) just fine.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> I must say I find that default setting by Endpad rather counter-intuitive as with scheduled back to back recordings the solution is just not to pad either recording at all as I would expect rather than to cancel one of them completely. I would have expected padding of Suggestions to behave the same way (i.e. pad when possible but not when two Suggestions overlap with each other or with a scheduled recording)


Probably. It works that way because EndPad's default behaviour is for end padding to trump suggestion recording, so it keeps that behaviour even when the first recording is in fact a suggestion. I added the option to turn that off later by request, hence why it's not the default.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

TCM2007 said:


> Probably. It works that way because EndPad's default behaviour is for end padding to trump suggestion recording, so it keeps that behaviour even when the first recording is in fact a suggestion. I added the option to turn that off later by request, hence why it's not the default.


I suppose in reality that its one of the many compromises one has to accept with only one tuner on board. Endpad on the whole did a pretty amazing job given the limitations of the hardware.

I must say that Suggestions are working particularly well these days, although it probably helps that I have toned down some of my previous more excessive heavy thumbs upping of programs that I liked in genres where I did not like most of the other programs (games shows or soaps being a particularly hazardous area in that regard).


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

TCM2007 said:


> The processor, while puny, is a 32-bit device, so can handle 32-bit integers (0 to 4,294,967,295) just fine.


But 1.261 billion seconds is certainly getting on towards its maximum abilities....


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Pete77 said:


> But 1.261 billion seconds is certainly getting on towards its maximum abilities....


It isn't any harder for it to process 1 or 4 billion as a 32-bit integer. It doesn't use more power or take more time to add 2 + 2 or 1,234,567,890 + 2,345,678,901!

As Mikeerr pointed out many Lunix/Unix systems use this as their time/date system, and all will hit a problem in 2038 when the number does finally overflow 32 bits.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

TCM2007 said:


> As Mikeerr pointed out many Lunix/Unix systems use this as their time/date system, and all will hit a problem in 2038 when the number does finally overflow 32 bits.


And having already lasted for over 10 years (allowing for their start date across the pond) as a breed perhaps there is a small chance that some Tivo S1 units may still be running in another 28 years time...........


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

50/50 if broadcast TV still exists in 28 years time!


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Some technology moves slower than others though.
It's _10 years _since tivo began, and even now not everyone has a PVR 
... let alone a fully featured one like a tivo


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

Anyone else feel a little superior when you read stuff like that, or is it just me?


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## PhilG (Jan 15, 2002)

cwaring said:


> Anyone else feel a little superior when you read stuff like that, or is it just me?


I've often wished these mags etc. that do comparisons of PVRs would inlcude Tivo in their testing
OK, it only has an analogue tuner, BUT can be hooked up to just about any receiver you care to name

OK, it only records in SD, but look at the UI - nothing else even comes close

Smug? - Definitely 

But what people have never seen, they don't miss


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