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Motorola 7216-1 HD DVR has unacceptable positioning problem with HD fast-forward and rewind

Hi all,

There is a very annoying and unacceptable problem with the newer FIOS HD DVR model - the Motorola 7216-1. When you fast-forward or rewind HD broadcasts or HD recordings, the actual playback position is 30 seconds or more away from the place that you visually pause on. For example, say you are watching a live or recorded HD tennis match and you press FF or Rewind to see a particular shot again. You press pause when you get to the beginning of the shot. You then press play. With the 7216 DVR, the playback resumes some 30 seconds away from the point you paused at, making it extremely difficult to precisely play back stuff.

I have reproduced this problem with two separate brand new 7216 boxes. It does not appear to be a problem with the older 6416-2 model and it doesn't seem to occur with non-HD broadcasts or recordings. If you have the 7216-1 HD DVR, try it yourself with a HD broadcast or recording and if it happens, please post a reply to this message thread to help better alert the FIOS technical folks.

I have notified technical support by phone and they said they would forward this problem on. Apparently, there are other issues plaguing the 7216-1 HD DVR as well.

Comments

nXt1

I'm guessing it's just lag of what you see on the tv and what the machine is actually doing.

DirecTV boxes do this also.

When you're fastforwarding or rewinding then when you THINK you saw what you want to stop at on the tv screen and press pause/play, it's something else when it does play.

I take this as normal, when it rewinds or ff, a frame every X number of seconds is shown on the screen and it's not really where it's at.

Analytic

Respectfully, there's no need for guessing, the facts are clear. I never saw this behavior with Cablevision's HD DVR (before switching to FIOS) and as I mentioned, it's not a problem with the other DVR model FIOS provides, the 6416-2 which I verified. Second, it's a not a matter of where I 'think' I'm paused -- When I'm paused just after fast-forwarding or rewinding, the STILL FRAME that I VISUALLY PERCEIVE on my TV is some 30 seconds away from where the playback actually resumes. That thirty seconds is a lifetime in this situation and is just not acceptable. If you are watching a sports or nature program and moving around a lot to play things back, it drives you nuts.

DallasTX

Does the 7216 use a positioning offset to adjust for time difference between seeing something (like the end of a commercial) and the time you actually press play or pause? I admit that a 30 sec offset is way too long.

I don't have a 7216, but TiVo will position back a bit from the point where you press play after FF. Likewise it will position the picture a bit foreward from the point where you hit play after RWD. The offsets used to are greater for the faster FF and RWD speeds.

In the case of TiVo, the offsets are not applied if you hit pause after FF or RWD instead of play. Although the TiVo positioning offsets are changable, I find the defaults are just about right.

Hubrisnxs

if I hit pause instead of play during ff or rew, it seems to work better for me.

just a thought.

Analytic

As far as I can tell, there's no configurable offset that gets automatically applied in this circumstance. That is, nothing that I can see configurable from the regular FIOS settings. (FIOS does have a very handy skip back/forward button that you can configure for 30 sec, 1 minute, etc. jumps commercials, but that's different.)

With Time Warner Cable's non-HD DVR, I recall there was an automatic offset of a few seconds applied when you FF/RW so that playback resumed just a little bit prior to where you paused on the screen. And that is actually nice to have. But this problem with the 7216 is not that kind of very short offset. With the 6416, playback seems to resume just right after where you paused which is sometimes confusing but certainly not as bad as the 7216 flaw.

I would use the 6416 except for the fact that, unlike the 7216, it does not have a coaxial output connection which I use to connect to my computer.

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