DVR Recordings Disappear

This is a followup to my reply 4 hours ago which mentioned another recording had disappeared.  That one was at 5:00 AM today (8/21/24).  It was on the DVR at 10:00PM last night (8/20/24).  No daily update from Cox was done during that period. 

At 7:48AM an update message appeared and I clicked to start it.  It finished at 8:54AM and after the update a second recording had disappeared.  So deletions can occur during an update but they don't occur on every update.  They also get deleted when there is no update.  To me that indicates updates don't cause the deletion.

In July & August there were updates almost every day but of 262 recordings made from April through August only 7 were lost.  Since most of the recordings were made in sequence (for example, episodes 4 to 12 of an old TV series), if a bad sector on the DVR disk became corrupted you would think several recordings in a sequence would disappear at the same time.  That hasn't been the case- - all of the deletions were originally recorded days & weeks apart.

The daily update process is a nightmare but since it isn't what is causing the deletions I'll do a separate post covering the problems I'm having with it. 

Do Contour updates cause a reboot?  If not, try setting a reminder in your calendar to perform a manual reboot once a week.  If programs are being deleted because of a memory issue, a scheduled reboot might prevent it.  

Error

I guess I'm supposed to interpret that terse response.  My guess is the box goes into standby mode during the daily update process or when idle for an extended period.  So, it's not a reboot.  Theoretically then, a box could go for weeks without being rebooted.  If it doesn't manage memory well, problems could begin to occur (such as loss of recorded programming) during Contour tasks that require larger amounts of memory or when multiple tasks are performed at the same time, e.g. watching a recorded program while scheduling a recording or performing a search.  

Edit: StephanieS's post originally read:  snoozed for engagement -steff

I faxed the following to Cox and they have scheduled a visit.  Sorry it's so long but I felt the details & background were important.  I tried sending this to you a few hours ago but received a rejection notice that I had exceeded the limit on postings.  You still may get the other one(s).  With Cox it seems like it usually turns into a SNAFU.

The following provides more detail than my comments on the TV Forum and includes problems with the daily update which may be part of the problem.

Cox Recordings Disappear

Recordings keep disappearing from my DVR.  They were not watched or deleted, are less than 1 year old, and the DVR is only 75% full.  I’m forced to monitor this daily.  A recording made 7/14/24 was still listed on the evening of 8/19/24 but was gone on the morning of 8/20/24.  Another recording made on 8/4/24 disappeared on 8/6/24.  There are 2 others I know of that were recorded on or after 4/24/24, and I also discovered that 7 of the 10 episodes of the VietNam War documentary recorded in 2017 have disappeared.  

On 8/20/24 at 10:00PM a recording was on the DVR  but had disappeared by 5:00AM the next morning.  No daily update from Cox was done during that period.  At 7:48AM an update message appeared and I clicked to start it.  It finished at 8:54AM and after the update a second recording had disappeared.  

This confirms that a recording may be deleted during one update, but it doesn’t do it on all updates.  In July & August there were updates almost every day but of 262 recordings made from April through August only 7 were lost.  Since most of the recordings were made in sequence (for example, episodes 4 to 12 of an old TV series), if a bad sector on the DVR disk became corrupted you would think several recordings in a sequence would disappear at the same time, but that has not happened.  The deleted recordings had all been originally recorded on different days.  

Daily Update Problems

Starting at the end of May, the daily update causes the DVR to keep rebooting every 7 minutes until it gets a good signal, taking anywhere from 1 hour to 7 hours.  When it reboots itself there is brief audio static and the screen shows the old snow pattern that would display when channels went of the air after midnight (in the last millenium) then the Welcome.Bienvenido.Bienvenue message appears.  

The daily update was scheduled to run overnight, thus the rebooting would be in process when I got up in the morning.  I’ve changed the schedule to 8:00-10:00 AM so I can see the message.  I don’t know if it reboots at other times or only after updates.  My notes going back to 2022 show 99% of the rebootings were before 9:00AM.

When it’s longer than 1 hour I unplug the DVR, wait 10 seconds, then plug it back in and repeat that periodically.  I’ve waited 3 hours or longer without unplugging to see if that works.  Sometimes yes, sometimes no.  One day last week I waited 4 hours.  


Here’s a history of the last visit by a technician:

11/3/2023 12:15AM shortly after going to bed a mini box lost its signal.  So did the other 2 in the living room and office.  Not sure if I checked the DVR, but if it was rebooting at 12:15AM it would have finished at some point because it was working at 5:00AM when a recording started and was later interrupted at 5:47AM.  

Later that morning Cox sent an email that a network issue caused by recent network changes may be affecting my service and they would send a technician at no charge.  

The technician came on 11/6/2023.  He said the network was upgraded from 4 frequencies to 8 and some older line filters and amplifiers can’t handle the change.  He checked the input on the roof and went through the attic.  He said all the equipment up there needed to be upgraded but the current installation was improper and changing it could fix one problem but create other ones.  He pointed to a 2-way splitter on the input line that went to an amplifier and said whoever installed it must have thought it was an output line.

I had previously labeled all the cables and showed him the line in to the amplifier was from the outside antenna which is a 2-wire antenna cable (one connected to an antenna pointed towards San Diego and the other to an antenna pointed towards Los Angeles).  The splitter in reverse served as a consolidator…2 wires in and 1 coax wire out from the splitter/consolidator to the input port on the amplifier.  All the outgoing cables from the amplifier are from the antenna, not from Cox.  They go to the TVs with digital tuners for over-the-air signals, which are accessed by changing the input from cable box to antenna.  None of the Cox cables go through an amplifier.

The incoming Cox cable goes into a 3-way splitter and one output from that goes to the DVR.  The others go to mini-boxes which never have problems.  The technician didn’t mention whether or not there are filters on the incoming cable or the cable from the splitter to the DVR.  

Since everything was currently working we agreed to not change anything until something failed, but he did go through and make sure all the connections were tight.

The incoming cable comes from a telephone pole across the street.  My house is the only one whose cable is connected to it.  My neighbor’s comes from a different pole and he never has problems like mine.  My guess is the connection on the pole that feeds my house generates an erratic signal that, after a daily update, causes the DVR to reboot continuously until the signal stabilizes.  Sort of like a car with bad plugs that is hard to start, but once the car is running it may misfire at times but otherwise is fine until turned off.

My current Cox subscription has Cox Complete Care which states I will not be charged the labor rate if a problem is determined to be in my home wiring.  My suggestion is for Cox to check the telephone pole first.  If it’s OK, then replace the 3-way splitter mentioned above, and if there are any filters on the incoming Cox line or the line from the splitter to the DVR, replace them too.  I’ll be happy to point out which cables are from Cox.

Hi, there. I'm so sorry for the lost recordings. I'd like to help. Please email us the physical address and any other pertinent information to Cox.Help@cox.com with your name and a copy of this forum message. I will be glad to look into this for you. 

I just sent a very long email to Cox with details about both the DVR & Rebooting problems.  I tried to also post it in its entirety as a reply to CurtB but it doesn't show up yet.  A similar thing happened a few days ago so either the Forum software is buggy or I'm doing something wrong.  I click on Reply, then a box appears and I type my comments in it, then click on Reply in the lower right corner of that box and poof! it's gone.

I sent a long email to Cox a few minutes ago and replied to your comment but the reply failed to show up here so I'm trying again.  This also happened to a reply to CurtB above.  Now when I click on Reply to his post, what I attempted to send pops up but still won't post.  But that doesn't happen when I click on Reply to your post.  Cox sofware always is like a minefield to me.

Tech Visit 8/25/2024

He brought a new DVR box but I refused it for now because 564 recordings would be lost.  He explained that the daily updates taking a long time to finish and recordings disappearing are indicators that the DVR is failing.  Mine is at least 7 years old.

I wanted to eliminate a weak or unstable signal as the cause and asked him to check the signal from the telephone pole across the street and change the sequence of 2 splitters so the coax to the DVR would only go through one splitter instead of two which was the current setup.  Also, the first splitter had a filter on the incoming coax.

He tested the incoming signal and said it was extremely high and thought it might be connected to an amplifier on the other side of the house where the cable enters in.  I told him there were no power outlets for an amplifier there.  I no longer crawl around up there, but there were no amps on that side during my last excursion there last year.

I asked about static or distortions in the signal and if splitters or filters could cause it.  He said it could happen but rarely.  The previous technician last November said that the network was upgraded from 4 frequencies to 8 and some older line filters and amplifiers can’t handle the change.  Does anyone know if there a meter that can test for that?

I asked why daily updates are necessary.  He said they aren’t but didn’t explain why you are required to set a time period for the daily update.  It is set under preferences.  The impression I got from the technician was that an update is done only if a problem with the DVR is detected.  Does that explain why it is updating every day now?  It used to just update about once a week, and not too long ago it only updated a few times over a 2 month period.  During those times the updates were scheduled while I was asleep, and the only way I knew one was in process was when the DVR was rebooting in the morning.  I just assumed that on days when it wasn’t booting that the update finished with no issues.  Was that a bad assumption?  

The changes we made did not stop the daily updates and the durations that last from 45 minutes to several hours and an occasional deletion of one or two recordings either during the update or an hour after it’s completion or just at random times.  So the technician is probably correct.  But it still isn’t clear to me why the updates are necessary even though the DVR works perfectly all day long until the next update. 

Any explanations or answers to the above will be appreciated, but if nothing appears in a couple of days you can mark this as closed.   Thanks for your help.

Hi, there. The requirement to set a time preference is for convenience, as some users prefer to watch TV during the overnight hours and an update at that time would interfere with their ability to view. The updates are needed to maintain our network and absent failing equipment, they are not an issue. With regards to backfeeding amplifiers, this can be an issue and we will typically see the signal noise on the individual channels as we view it on our tools here. As it is not the purpose of these forums to deal with individual accounts' telemetry, send us an email to Cox.Help@cox.com with your name and a copy of this forum message. We'r glad to look at it for you there.