TiVo Community Forums Archives - Different "Error playing a recording"

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Different "Error playing a recording"
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Posted by: EBZero

Hi everyone. I have recently upgraded my tivo with a new drive and I did the slower option of using dd so I could keep all my recordings. This is on a Tivo Series 2 using MFS Tools 2.0. Everything was working great. I did the upgrade on 5/14..on 5/15 I recorded a show and on 5/16 I recorded a show. I've been able to watch them afterwards...earlier today I was also able to watch them.

This evening now I am unable to watch them and I get the "Are you done with this program? If you delete it now, there will be more room for programs to be recorded." When I hit "Don't delete" I get the error: "Error playing a recording" "The Tivo DVR 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."

All my old recordings still work and all my new things from today still work. It seems like after it started recording something today it started having this issue. I made sure to expand the drive to the new size and everything seemed fine until today? Any ideas? I didn't want to loose all my old recordings and I figured it should work fine since I just copied it from one drive to a new one using the same Tivo unit.

Thanks for any help you can give!

Posted by: weaknees

You're saying that you were able to watch this specific show, and then you weren't able to watch the same show (same episode - same exact show) later in the day?

What model TiVo?

Michael

Posted by: EBZero

Thanks for the reply. It is a Tivo Series 2 Model TCD240080. I figured out I made some mistakes. The friend who gave me the Mfs Tools 2.0 cd gave me the one with large disk support and said it would work with a 250gb drive. I tried that and within system info it showed the right upgraded amount of hours but I guess it was still restricted to the 137gb limit or whatever it is. I think when it ran out of the max space it started clearing out all the older recordings but since it thought it had 250gb to work with it didn't ask me to delete some stuff. So, it showed the programs still under Now Playing and when I click and get the errors as posted before I am guessing it is because the show was actually written over so there is no video signal anymore.

I hope this makes sense..bear with me..I'm new. Having friends who tell you how to do stuff doesn't work out so well when they really don't know.

One question I do have since I can't have a single 250gb drive working..is it possible to have 2 drives with 137gb in there and get away with it or is that not how it works? I have heard that I can use LBA48 support to get the 250gb drive working but I really haven't found any detailed info on it. The bigger I can fit the better..I'm sure it's the same for everyone here who wants to expand their drive space. I work late most of the time and don't have much time to catch up on recordings and the playoffs are going on right now so that's even more to add to the plate. :P

Incase you need to knowmy software version:

4.0.1b-01-2-240

Oh, yeah. It was the exact same show. Later in the day when the tivo unit started giving me the errors was when it started recording something new which is what made me guess the conclusion above. Who knows..you guys would know better than me. :D

Thanks for your patience with me.

Posted by: weaknees

OK - that all makes sense now. Basically, the table of contents that shows what programs have been recorded is fine (as is the TiVo OS), but all of the storage space is completely mangled due to the lba48 support.

Yes, you can use two 160 GB drives to get 137 GB out of each. Just boot in an older kernel (2.4.16 or earlier) and Linux will only see the 137 GB and you'll be OK. You can even use the 250 if you want, you'll just only get the benefit of 137 GB of it.

There is no current stable way to get lba48 support on your unit.

Thanks for posting the detailed info - the situation sounded familiar from some long-ago test, and now it all adds up.

Michael