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Question about a recording time...
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Posted by: Nihilator

Hi, all. Thanks in advance for the replies...

My Sony SA was kind enough to record Stephen King's The Stand on 8/24. I've got a WishList for Rob Lowe.

The program description page shows that the recording is a full 8 hours long (8:00). It does not state that it's a partial recording.

The green bar is different. It is scaled to 8:00, but the actual recording is only 6:58 long. There's 6:58 of green bar, and then the last 1:02 on the bar is clear.

When we started watching it, a couple of days after it was recorded, we thought, "Oh, there must have been a power outage, and it missed the last hour of the show." But it turns out that the show itself is only 6:58 long. As soon as the credits started rolling, the recording stopped.

So, why would the show be listed as 8:00 long, when it's actually only 6:58? Or, on the other hand, why would the description page not show the recording as "partial", if it indeed didn't record all 8 hours? How would TiVo know to stop at 6:58, which is exactly when the show ended?

And no, nobody was messing the the TV or TiVo when the show was recording. In fact, we were out of town. Even if we had been, and stopped it prematurely, it should show as a partial recording.

Anybody seen anything like this before?

--Chris

Posted by: phone1

The bar seems to be the duration of the program, regardless of the recording length itself.

I stopped recording a sporting event the other day before the scheduled end, because the event was over. Went I went to watch I saw exactly what you describe.

Posted by: Robert S

Not exactly, if you stop a recording early, TiVo will add (Partial) to the Duration on the recording's screen.

Posted by: Joey303

Is it possible that the station signed-off at the end of the showing? In other words, I'm looking for a way that TiVo coitinued to "record," but actually later determined that the signal was gone at 6:58 and truncated the program there.

Posted by: Robert S

Well spotted Joey! That would exactly explain it. Without a signal TiVo keeps recording (so no partial), but the green bar doesn't advance and nothing is written to disk.

Posted by: phone1

quote:
Originally posted by Robert S
Not exactly, if you stop a recording early, TiVo will add (Partial) to the Duration on the recording's screen.

Nope - mine said "partial" but showed the bar for the entire scheduled length. And as mentioned above, TiVo stops recording when it looses synch.

Posted by: Nihilator

quote:
Originally posted by Joey303
Is it possible that the station signed-off at the end of the showing? In other words, I'm looking for a way that TiVo coitinued to "record," but actually later determined that the signal was gone at 6:58 and truncated the program there.

No, the showing was slated to end at something like 9:00pm, and it was USA network, and I think they're up all night.

--Chris

Posted by: Joey303

Okay, now we're getting into the very unlikely scenarios: is it possible that TiVo re-booted after the movie ended? I'm thinking that a re-boot would not have given TiVo the opportunity to add the word "Partial."

When you returned from your trip, were your digital clocks blinking?

Posted by: Joey303

Next Guess: Is it possible that the Program Guide data for this program changed? In other words, the program may have been listed as 8hrs long originally, when you scheduled it, but when it came time to actually record it, perhaps the Program Guide data for the show had changed to reflect a 7hr-length . . . Perhaps TiVo's scheduling software had allocated 8 hrs, but the program was, in fact, only 7hrs -- a fact which maybe TiVo knew when it began its recording . . .?

P.S. -- SOMEBODY HELP! This is the type of puzzle that keeps me awake at night . . . ;)

Posted by: Nihilator

M'kay.

Here's the end of the green bar:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cspanglr/greenbar.jpg

and here's the full description screen:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cspanglr/nowplaying.jpg

Sorry for the poor quality, but I just threw it together. The progress bar is clearly scaled to 8:00, and the green portion clearly stops 1:02 before the end.

The description screen shows a full 8-hour recording.

Because the show began at noon on Saturday, and was scheduled to end at 8:00 on Saturday night, I find it highly unlikely that the broadcast just ended. USA is showing, if nothing else, paid programming all night.

I suppose it's possible that my cable simply cut out at 6:58, but what are the odds that that would coincide with the exact end of the movie?

Also (Joey), if the program guide changed, then why would it reflect an end at 6:58? That's when the program ends, not 7:00.

There was no power failure.

Next theory? :-)

--Chris

Posted by: BrettStah

OK, coincidentally I happened to reproduce the same exact thing tonight (not saying this is what happened for your recording).

I double-checked the To Do List to confirm that American Idol was scheduled. I saw that it was, but my wife thought that it was supposed to be a 2 hour special, so I went in and padded the scheduled time (1 hour) by an additional hour, for a total scheduled recording time of 2 hours.

Well, it was only 1 hour long, and we wound up finishing the show just a couple of minutes after it actually ended. I stopped the recording by pressing the record button (if you're in "live tv" mode and the current show is being recorded, this will give you the chance to stop recording... I don't know if the specific method that I stopped the recording makes a difference, though).

So, my time-bar at the bottom still stretches to 2:00 hours, but the final :57 minutes are clear.
http://www.barbierfamily.com/images/tivo004.jpg

The Now Playing screen lists the duration as 1:03, without the word "Partial" anywhere to be seen.
http://www.barbierfamily.com/images/tivo001.jpg

So, is there a chance that someone happened to see that the movie had ended, and then stopped the recording?

Posted by: mattack

quote:
Originally posted by Nihilator
Hi, all. Thanks in advance for the replies...
My Sony SA was kind enough to record Stephen King's The Stand on 8/24. I've got a WishList for Rob Lowe.
...
The green bar is different. It is scaled to 8:00, but the actual recording is only 6:58 long. There's 6:58 of green bar, and then the last 1:02 on the bar is clear.

When we started watching it, a couple of days after it was recorded, we thought, "Oh, there must have been a power outage, and it missed the last hour of the show." But it turns out that the show itself is only 6:58 long. As soon as the credits started rolling, the recording stopped.

So, why would the show be listed as 8:00 long, when it's actually only 6:58? Or, on
...

By the way, miniseries, without commercials, is 366 minutes (or 359 for the DVD version), according to imdb.com.. (Presumably the "previously on The Stand" is what was edited..?)

So if it was off of USA, which shows _tons_ of commercials, I wonder if you actually missed a huge section of it without realizing it. It was 8 hours with commercials when originally run.. I would expect USA to time compress it even further.
(I've never timed one, but the Dead Zone series seems like it's way under 40 minutes of show..)

Posted by: DBCooper

quote:
Originally posted by mattack
...I wonder if you actually missed a huge section of it without realizing it. It was 8 hours with commercials when originally run..

I second that notion. The missing part is in the middle somewhere. The show ended on time exactly eight hours later.

Posted by: Nihilator

quote:
Originally posted by mattack
So if it was off of USA, which shows _tons_ of commercials, I wonder if you actually missed a huge section of it without realizing it. It was 8 hours with commercials when originally run.. I would expect USA to time compress it even further.

You may be onto something here. My fiancee has watched it twice, and said that she remembers a scene from when it originally aired (as a mini-series) that doesn't seem to be in there anymore. Why would they delete a scene from an eight-hour miniseries if they already were getting to reclaim the "previously on The Stand" sections for more advertising?

But at the same time, your average hour-long show these days runs about 41 minutes of show, 19 minutes of commercials. Extended out to eight hours, you've got 328 minutes of show and 152 minutes of commercials...that means that to fit 366 minutes of content into an 8-hour timeslot, USA would have to settle for an average of about 46 minutes of show and only 14 minutes of commercials. I'd bet that USA cut scenes in order to fit more commercials.

Look! I just argued both for and against the idea!

My fiancee told me last night that she can't distinctly remember any segment of the show that clearly "jumped" between two incongruous scenes, though.

--Chris

PS-- 152 minutes of commercials. Wow. Thank God for TiVo!

Posted by: Nihilator

Sci-Fi was running The Stand today, in four two-hour segments instead of a single eight-hour-long showing, and TiVo started recording each of the segments (again, because of the Rob Lowe WishList).

At the end of the first segment (the 2:00 mark), I went back to the 8-hour version and checked where the final scene occurred. Sure enough, it was at about 1:03. Upon further checking, I found where, at about 30 minutes into the 8-hour version, there was a big distortion and the scene abruptly changed.

It appears that our cable went out for about an hour. TiVo stopped recording data since there was no signal to record, but didn't quit looking for a signal to record. When the cable signal came back, TiVo just picked up where it left off and stitched the recording together.

Problem solved! Now I can sleep at night! :-)

Posted by: Ignathius

something went screwy while recording from USA. The Stand (when aired on TV) is in fact 8 hours long (i've recorded it several times and watched it a few dozen). it's possible the TiVo lost signal sometime during the recording (when this happens, the red recording light stays on, but the progress bar dosen't move. happens all the time on my DTiVo recording Dallas locals that aren't comming in very well. i've seen it record a 30 minute program, which showed up as 28 minutes of black on my reciever, and when played back, only had 2 minutes of green bar, yet the whole playback bar showed 30 minutes). dont remember if u said u had cable or dtv, but if you have dtv, then you probably just got some rainfade or something similar which blocked the signal for a while. if it's cable, it's likly the cable went out for a while (the TiVo will continue to record in these events, although the green progress bar will not move).

Posted by: Robert S

HA! So Joey was sort of right all along!

I can quite believe you could lose an hour from The Stand without being aware of it - cable co. did you a favour, infact :)

Posted by: donvickers

What is the TiVo rule for deleting a recording that you manually stop early?

Sometimes it will stop the recording and not leave a partial recording; other times it will leave a partial recording.

What is zee rule in effect here?

quote:
Originally posted by phone1
The bar seems to be the duration of the program, regardless of the recording length itself.

I stopped recording a sporting event the other day before the scheduled end, because the event was over. Went I went to watch I saw exactly what you describe.

Posted by: BrettStah

If you stop a suggestion that is being recorded, it is automatically deleted. All other recordings are not.