f13.net

Last night (May 3 EDT) I selected to record all the Fox animation shows one by one as I always do, from Sit Down, Shut Up at 7pm though American Dad at 9:30 (off the HD Fox channel on Insight Cable)

So I get home after 10pm, and what do I find:

About 8+ 1 to 2 min. Sit Down, Shut Ups listed, I peeked at a couple and they were empty or on the wrong channel.
A 90min Sit Down, Shut Up (Followed by the American Dad rerun and the new Simpsons, all 1 record event)
A 120min Sit Down, Shut Up (followed by Dad, Simpsons, and King of the Hill, all 1 event)
King of the Hill normal record
Family Guy normal
American Dad (9:30pm) normal

I was pissed no Simpsons, until I found it was at the end of that 90min Sit Down.

I read on AVClub, he had a problem with his DVR also    http://www.avclub.com/articles/worlds-greatest-teacherwaverly-hills-9021dohbad-ne,27488/

I've never had this kind of freak out before, the DVR unit is plugged into a UPS backup, and there was no storm or other signs of power outage.

Was it just bad data from Fox?

I'd bet it's a problem with Insight cable.  We had a tech out to our house last week because we'd been having several issues, but only on the Fox station. (Black bars, picture blacking out. Odd volume levels)   We thought it was something with our feed or our set-top boxes so we put in a service call. The tech who came out told us that the CS who set-up the visit should have let us know this is a known issue and the engineers were working on it, but he couldn't do anything for us.  I'd guess that whatever they're doing to fix those issues may have screwed up some of the guide info that the DVRs use to record.

Time Warner had some blackouts over the weekend. All of PBS and NBC, luckily we were actually watching while the Office was supposed to be recording so we were able to tune in the SD feed from the second local NBC, or my fiancee would've killed someone. We did miss two or three PBS shows we had lined up to record, though.

She's beginning to understand the Time Warner hate, though.

You guys watch a lot of TV.

Oddly, except for those 1min recordings, the (incorrectly) long recordings were perfectly fine, glitch/interuption free, so it must have been the programming info that was odd, but the on-screen display appeared fine.

Actually I miss the DVR from Time Warner (once they worked some bugs out with over-the-cable patches), the one from Insight is a lot worse.  Sorry I can't quote the model numbers.

It feels like it some days, and then I discover I'm still way below the national average (http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html), so I'm ok with that.  However, I'm unusual in my demographic because I still watch most shows live instead of time-shifting or catching them in the internet.


Yeah my sister has TW and they have a pretty nice DVR.  I don't have one and just use my computer when I want to record something instead of paying insight for it each month.

... Is that for real?  :ye_gods:

Probably, yeah.  I was linking more for the nielson average, which was close to what I found on the nielson site but was dated ca 2006.   The preschools/ daycares I've sent my kids to used TV around nap time to wind the kids down and it was always shows like Dora or Sesame Street.  Not all TV is bad.

I will admit, however, that I've heard stories of plenty of private practitioners who sit the kids in front of videos or daytime TV all day.  People who get take state money for daycare, however, are held to more rigorous standards and reviews - around here at least.