# Upgraded UK TiVo skipping :-(



## mark.wheadon (Nov 30, 2007)

My newly upgraded TiVo has a problem :-(

It was running mode 0, at a high bitrate (between about 7 and 9 Mbps) and was skipping every few minutes (sometime more, sometimes less) - a glitch in the video and the audio - sometimes the audio decides to catch up again by running for a few seconds at a higher reate (so higher pitched) - horrible.

I thought "that's the white flashes people talk about" and wound down the bitrate, and down, and down.

Finally I've gone back to the settings for "best" on a normal UK TiVo (5960000 CBR mode 4), and it still skips sometimes on playback (and on "live TV") - so I have a problem :-(

Other symptoms (perhaps?): when pulling off the .ty files, I get between .4 and .6 as an indicated speed (so maxing at about 6Mbps) - which seems rather slow, _and_ if the TiVO is playing at the time then it skips like fury.

Presumably the tserver for tytools isn't supposed t cause skips like that? It says it's running in low priority.

One thought: perhaps tserver, endpad and TivoWebPlus are all conspiring to use too much RAM and the TiVo is paging? Dosn't seem likely but I will try not running them and see if that stops the problem I guess.

This is TivoWebPlus 2.0.0, TyTool 10r4, endpad (don't have version on me) and a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB U100 (http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=44FH). I also have a cachecard installed.

Any thoughs anyone? Is the disk running at the ragged edge of its performance? (I wouldn't have thought so, surely?). Should a pull of the mpeg data cause the TiVo to skip badly? Is the tserver data rate of only 6Mbps normal?

Mark


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## terryeden (Nov 2, 2002)

There are 4 main causes.

1) Check your STB - watch through AUX - if that's skipping, you've got a dodgy signal. Look at changing your box, wiring or aerial/dish

2) When it skips, hit 8 second rewind. If it always sticks at the same place it indicates that the disk in on the way out - assuming you've checked that it's not (1) above

3) Stop running TyServer, TivoWeb, and all your other hacks. If it goes away, you're running too much on your TiVo. 

4) Open the TiVo and clear out the years of dust and dead spiders. If it's over-heating, it may start to skip.

The datarate is about normal - depends rather on the quality of your network. I have found that running a load of hack will cause skipping.


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## mark.wheadon (Nov 30, 2007)

terryeden said:


> There are 4 main causes.
> 
> 1) Check your STB - watch through AUX - if that's skipping, you've got a dodgy signal. Look at changing your box, wiring or aerial/dish
> 
> ...


I will try quitting the hacks tonight. I'm wondering whether TivoWebPlus 2 has a larger memory footprint than TivoWeb 1.x which, probably, most Series 1 users are running? Anyone out there running TicoWebPlus 2.0.0 on their UK TiVo without skipping? As for the rest:

It doesn't skip when viewing through aux - so I'd say it's definitely the TiVo.

It skips around the same place in the video when you jump back - but not exactly the same place. The disk is brand new so is less likely to be on its way out (yes, I realise it's still possible).

Tivoweb says it's running at 38C or 39C and it's all reasonably spider-free in there.

Mark


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## mark.wheadon (Nov 30, 2007)

Here's some more data for anyone who may be able to help. TivoWebPlus says this about memory usage:

Memory Statistics:
total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
Mem: 14151680 14008320 143360 65257472 57344 3497984
Swap: 314564608 4882432 309682176
MemTotal: 13820 kB
MemFree: 140 kB
MemShared: 63728 kB
Buffers: 56 kB
Cached: 3416 kB
SwapTotal: 307192 kB
SwapFree: 302424 kB

Should I be concerned about MemFree being only 140kB? Or does the TiVo normally run with all the RAM in use like that?

Mark


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## verses (Nov 6, 2002)

mark.wheadon said:


> Anyone out there running TicoWebPlus 2.0.0 on their UK TiVo without skipping?


I run TivoWebPlus 2.0.0 and don't see skipping.

I have endpad and Mode 0 enabled.

I only run tserver as and when I need it. In other words I don't leave it running all the time.

Hope that helps.

Ian


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## terryeden (Nov 2, 2002)

mark.wheadon said:


> Should I be concerned about MemFree being only 140kB? Or does the TiVo normally run with all the RAM in use like that?


In general, Linux based systems like TiVo use as much memory as possible to make the most use of all your RAM. Only having a few hundred KB free is perfectly normal.

It sounds to me like the processor is being overwhelmed. Only run TyServer when you really need it and see if that makes a difference.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

You might want to check out the use of setpri too:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=332017


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

If you are using a Seagate drive then you might be experiencing the 'helium sound' problem.


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## Mark Bennett (Sep 17, 2001)

If it helps, I'm running TivoWebPlus 1.3.1

Here is what my Info shows:
Memory Statistics:
total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
Mem: 14147584 14016512 131072 920350720 61440 3350528
Swap: 133165056 7725056 125440000
MemTotal: 13816 kB
MemFree: 128 kB
MemShared: 898780 kB
Buffers: 60 kB
Cached: 3272 kB
SwapTotal: 130044 kB
SwapFree: 122500 kB

Running at 32C, and no noticable skips. Alsp running Mode 0 and Autospace.


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## mark.wheadon (Nov 30, 2007)

verses said:


> I run TivoWebPlus 2.0.0 and don't see skipping.
> 
> I have endpad and Mode 0 enabled.
> 
> ...


As a matter of interest, do you run tserver only when you need it because leaving it running all the time caused you problems? (I guess I can't see why you'd stop the server otherwise?)

Mark


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## verses (Nov 6, 2002)

mark.wheadon said:


> As a matter of interest, do you run tserver only when you need it because leaving it running all the time caused you problems? (I guess I can't see why you'd stop the server otherwise?)


I've never left it running, I kind of assumed that it would be a fairly CPU intensive app so didn't want it running all the time. As I say, this was an assumption on my part rather than based on any evidence. I prefer just to have the bare essentials running to maintain stability, rather than run everything then try to work out what's causing problems. I guess being an IT Tester by profession makes me want my home appliances to just work with minimal fuss 

Also, Tytools has a nice little menu item that starts it and stops it for you when you need it without the need to manually telnet in every time, so that worked fine for me.

Cheers,

Ian


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## mark.wheadon (Nov 30, 2007)

Right you are - thanks. For what it's worth, tserver should just be listening on a network port, waiting for something to do. So it shouldn't use any CPU except when tytool is talking to it.

Mark


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

I used to see posts that stated TiVoWeb+ consumed more resources than TiVoWeb, and that people had needed to 'revert back'. Whether that is still true, I couldn't say.


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## verses (Nov 6, 2002)

mark.wheadon said:


> Right you are - thanks. For what it's worth, tserver should just be listening on a network port, waiting for something to do. So it shouldn't use any CPU except when tytool is talking to it.
> 
> Mark


Absolutely, that's what it "should" be doing but there are no guarantees that it won't have an unintended conflict with another part of the system or another hack. As I say, I personally prefer to have the least amount of hacks running that I need and just enable the others as and when I need them.

Also, it will still be consuming memory that could be being used for other things.

Cheers,

Ian


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## mark.wheadon (Nov 30, 2007)

verses said:


> Also, it will still be consuming memory that could be being used for other things.
> Ian


Very true. BTW I've now run the TiVo with nothing but endpad running and I still get the glitches.

It's starting to look like my choice of drive manufacturer was about as wrong as I could get - talking to tivoheaven.co.uk it may well be that the Seagate drive is the root of my problems. I may have to write it off as an expensive mistake and go for another drive.

Unfortunately I can't now go for the Samsung HD400LD which is known to be trouble-free, as I can't keep my recordings and go to a smaller disk - at least, that's my understanding.

I'm currently pondering buying a 500GB Western Digital - but am first waiting for Seagate technical support to let me know if there is any way of reconfiguring my Seagate drive for speed rather than quietness, as at the moment it is amazingly quiet on seeking, and perhaps an attempt to avoid some of the seeks is causing the problem (as the disk is being written and read all the time, so optimization may well wait for another write to come along rather than service a read immediately) - perhaps. There doesn't seem to be a way of reconfiguring the acoustic management on recent Seagate drives, but maybe they have a unpublished app that does the trick - a man can hope.

Mark


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## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

mark.wheadon said:


> It's starting to look like my choice of drive manufacturer was about as wrong as I could get - talking to tivoheaven.co.uk it may well be that the Seagate drive is the root of my problems. I may have to write it off as an expensive mistake and go for another drive.


I had a 300GB Seagate drive that passed all diagnistics fine, even full surface write over night etc etc but produced glitchy picture every couple of seconds on TiVo (hint use aerial input as source to discount issues with set top box breakup etc.)

However listening to the drive in the TiVo and whilst doing diagnostics you could here the drive "seeking". Each time it produced a seek sound the TiVo picture glitched. SMART tests results were fine and was nothing mentioned in kernel log.

Drive was returned and quickly replaced and has been fine ever since.


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## mark.wheadon (Nov 30, 2007)

mark.wheadon said:


> There doesn't seem to be a way of reconfiguring the acoustic management on recent Seagate drives, but maybe they have a unpublished app that does the trick - a man can hope.


Seagate are being less than helpful:

"With regards to your query, I understand that you are trying to use the external hard drive in TiVO, I am sorry to say you that we do not support using the external hard drive in TiVO"

So I've said:

"OK. I would like to place it in a PC running Windows XP, but would like to tune it for performance rather than quietness. Do you have an app that will allow me to do that please?"

and will see what they say. (Hmm, they say "external hard drive" - better put them straight about that as well.)

Mark


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Drives used to do  thermal recalibration periodically especially when the drive was hot / heating up. Getting too hot can be a faulty drive in itself though.

Due to changes in technology, this type of recalibration isn't normally done any more, but some drives (fujitsu) still do something similar;


fujitsu engineer said:


> [fujitsu hdds] do a servo recal every 30 minutes from start up. This is not thermal recal as such but compensation for torque and air flow factors within the HDA of the drives.


That would be a 1/2 second (500ms) or more delay
I suspect some seagate models might do similar from what blindlemon says about the "helium sound" bug as well.

Re: acoustic management
The latest seagate models don't have externally configurable AAM at all, but acoustic management gives quieter (slower) seeks by slowing down more gradually when the heads approach the correct posiition
i.e. 12ms vs 20ms seek times not huge delays (500ms+) like you are seeing


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## terryeden (Nov 2, 2002)

Daft question, have you tried SeaTools, MaxBlast or any of the other disk tuning utils found on the Samsung site / http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/


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## mark.wheadon (Nov 30, 2007)

mikerr said:


> Re: acoustic management
> The latest seagate models don't have externally configurable AAM at all, but acoustic management gives quieter (slower) seeks by slowing down more gradually when the heads approach the correct posiition
> i.e. 12ms vs 20ms seek times not huge delays (500ms+) like you are seeing


I'm seeing quite short delays - a momentary glitch in video followed (typically) by a couple of seconds with the audio running something like 10% faster whilst the audio catches up - happening occasionally every few seconds but typically every 5 mins or maybe every 15 mins, with occasional runs of an hour or so without any problems.


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## mark.wheadon (Nov 30, 2007)

mark.wheadon said:


> I'm seeing quite short delays - a momentary glitch in video followed (typically) by a couple of seconds with the audio running something like 10% faster whilst the audio catches up.


I think this is now a thing of the past, finally.

It looks like the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB is the offending beast after all. I have installed a Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB and it seems to be working fine.

Size: the Samsung and the Western Digital are exactly the same size (976773168 sectors):

/dev/hda:
multcount = 0 (off)
I/O support = 0 (default 16-bit)
using_dma = 1 (on)
readahead = 8 (on)
geometry = 16383/16/63, sectors = 976773168, start = 0
drive state is: active/idle

Device: WDC WD5000AAKB-00YSA0 Supports ATA Version 8
Drive supports S.M.A.R.T. and is enabled
Check S.M.A.R.T. Passed

Noise: there's more vibration (thrumming) than the Seagate (which was very quiet), although it's still pretty quiet - seek noise seems to be fine (very little noise). If I were running it in (say) a bedroom then I'd probably sit the disk on some kind of rubber mounting (anyone for some large rubber bands and some Evo-stik?  but it's fine in the lounge.

Heat: the TiVo appears to be running at the same temp as when it had the Seagate fitted (40C in an open-backed, closed-fronted AV cabinet) - so I presume that's fine.

So my suggestion: if you're thinking about upgrading to a new drive - avoid the Seagate 500GB 7200.10 - I'm guessing there's a firmware issue that's delaying a read just long enough to upset the mpeg decoder - I expect the decoder is pretty fussy.

Thanks for everyone's help.

Mark


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## TivoTown (Mar 21, 2003)

Wish I read this thread before buying the Seagate. I have the glitchy problem now also!


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## mark.wheadon (Nov 30, 2007)

TivoTown said:


> Wish I read this thread before buying the Seagate. I have the glitchy problem now also!


:-( You have my sympathy

For what its worth, the Western Digital in my TiVO is still fine and there's no skipping - and it's been a while now - so I can be sure that swapping out the Seagate fixed the problem.

Mark


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