Cannot Fast Forward recorded ABC Shows

[jimmy327aoa]

For last 3 weeks or so I've found I cannot fast forward recorded shows from ABC.  So far I've noticed it on every ABC Show that I've recorded (Castle, Dancing with the stars, Last Resort).  Everything I've recorded has been new shows so I'm testing right now with some reruns to see if it is every show. 

This really defeats the purpose or recording a show on DVR.  My wife records DWTS and really doesn't want to watch the Tuesday show often.  She normally fast forwards to the end to see who got cancelled.  I sat down tonight with the intent of watching Last Resort.  I haven't watched it yet, and I've got 3 weeks of it.  First week, fast forward works fine.  Weeks 2 and 3, i can't fast forward.

I'm almost to the point of finding the shows online instead of recording them.  Does anyone else know of anything else I might do?

[Computer-Joe]

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jimmy327aoa wrote:

For last 3 weeks or so I've found I cannot fast forward recorded shows from ABC.  So far I've noticed it on every ABC Show that I've recorded (Castle, Dancing with the stars, Last Resort).  Everything I've recorded has been new shows so I'm testing right now with some reruns to see if it is every show. 

This really defeats the purpose or recording a show on DVR.  My wife records DWTS and really doesn't want to watch the Tuesday show often.  She normally fast forwards to the end to see who got cancelled.  I sat down tonight with the intent of watching Last Resort.  I haven't watched it yet, and I've got 3 weeks of it.  First week, fast forward works fine.  Weeks 2 and 3, i can't fast forward.

I'm almost to the point of finding the shows online instead of recording them.  Does anyone else know of anything else I might do?

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That's pretty bazaar, and it's not happenning with any other neywork's programming?

I hope it's a defect. If it's not, it does not bode well, because if it's not a defect, that means they changed watching what we want, when we want, and how we want to just what we want, and when we want.

__________________________________________________________
How can you be in two places at once, when your not anywhere at all?
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I really want to become a procrastinator, but I keep putting it off.
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There are three kinds of people, those that can count, and those that can't.
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“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them." :Bertrand Russell

[JefferMC ACE - Wizard]

Similar occurences have happened in the past with certain channels and/or content.

I would suggest you send a PM to Alex to report your issue.  However, I can't get my macro to work that pastes in Alex's link.

[RCSMG ACE - Master]

That would be the pits.

[jimmy327aoa]

Digging further it appears people are reporting the same thing on other carriers.

It looks like ABC may be able to block the ability somehow and I don't like that at all.

I'm new to the forums, how do I contact Alex?

[jimmy327aoa]

Oh, and I've checked, it only appears to be on first-run shows. I can fast forward any reruns I record.  I've only noticed it on the 3 shows I mentioned earlier, but that's the only ones we record from ABC.  I'll try to record some other first-runs just to see if they do the same thing.

[Computer-Joe]

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jimmy327aoa wrote:

Digging further it appears people are reporting the same thing on other carriers.

It looks like ABC may be able to block the ability somehow and I don't like that at all.

I'm new to the forums, how do I contact Alex?

---

You can send a message to Alex, and he, or someone on his team, will get in touch with you within a couple days to help you get a resolution to your problems. Alex is here to ensure issues are taken care of when standard Customer Service attempts have failed. To see his reply, click the little blue envelope.

__________________________________________________________
How can you be in two places at once, when your not anywhere at all?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I really want to become a procrastinator, but I keep putting it off.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are three kinds of people, those that can count, and those that can't.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them." :Bertrand Russell

[RCSMG ACE - Master]

I know ABC doesn't allo FF or Rew on their On Demand videos.  Maybe they are carrying it over to their recorded programs, some how.

[oufanindallas]

They aren't doing it on all shows since I'm able to fast fwd on Last Resort.

[SF_Rachel]

I found this thread looking for info on a different problem I'm having with DVR recording ABC shows on AT&T Uverse, so I'm intrigued that other people are having the problem you describe with ABC shows.

Not to get all conspiracy theoristy on you, but one starts to wonder if AT&T is collaborating with ABC to experiment with some DVR disruption tactics, with an eye to helping ABC improve live viewing ratings (either in advance of November sweeps, or for long-term learnings), or driving viewers to Hulu if that network is trying for some reason to get their ratings or ad revenue up there.

For those interested, here are the problems I'm having with recording ABC shows but not other networks' programs.

1. Some ABC shows (Castle all the time, others less consistently) randomly skip 20-30 second intervals a few times each hour.

2. Around the middle of last week, all ABC recordings randomly defaulted to having the "second audio program channel" on. This is that thing where a voice blandly narrates visible on-screen action and locations for the benefit of blind people. (This stopped on its own by the end of the week, and was easy enough to fix on playback anyway so not too disruptive, but weird, right? And just ABC shows, nothing else).

3. Certain ABC shows I have a series pass for simply don't record consistently. Not an error in how my series pass is set up, I checked. Missed the Once Upon a Time pilot and this weekend's episode, but not episode 2. Missed a Modern Family sometime recently I think, not sure.

If this really is some corporate thing to discourage people from DVRing ABC shows, I'm skeptical it will do them any good. People just have too many options, and I notice that they don't seem to have the stones to try anything seriously disruptive on the newer darlings of the season that they need to build audiences for.

[RCSMG ACE - Master]

Many people including myself have posted that series recordings were missed.  What I do is check my recordings every day to make sure they are scheduled.  If there is a series recording is not scheduled I check the info and air date.  If it is a new air date and or info that I don't recognize I will schedule it.  I also set up another series recording along with the first one.  There have been times when a specific show get scheduled even though I have it set up in a previous series recording.  I don't know why this happens but this is what I do to make sure all my series recordings get recorded.

[SF_Rachel]

I hear you, but kind of misses the point of series record, no? It's like marking all your appointments or tasks in your calendar, but asking your boss or your spouse to remind you about your meetings or your tasks every day because you know your calendar is unreliable. Quick way to make your boss or your spouse decide that keeping you around may be more trouble than you're worth.

Also, it's worth noting that at the beginning of the fall television season, viewers' habits aren't set. I decide late in summer or early in the fall what I'm going to give a chance to, and set my DVR accordingly. Especially after a summer break, I'm not sure yet what's on tap any day of the week except for one or two appointment shows. Sunday nights are a crazy pileup every year anyway -- if it's not on HBO or AMC, I can barely remember that it exists on Sunday nights, much less remember to check my DVR for campy guilty pleasures like 99% of ABC's programming.

I know that missed recordings are a long-standing DVR problem, often not the carrier's fault if the networks are providing bad or incomplete info, and in the age of the internet, not really the end of the world. In this case I bring it up as part of a larger pattern that I'm seeing with ABC shows not playing well with others, especially since right now ABC shows are taking up more than their fair share of DVR failures.

[dgoddard1]

Certainly not happening to me in Dallas area on any of the ABC shows I've recorded including Castle & Last Resort. Watched recorded Castle last night and it was fine.

[SF_Rachel]

Castle skipping has been a problem (in HD) since last season, at least in my market and a few others. I have since found this thread on the topic here. http://forums.att.com/t5/Receivers-Battery-Backup/Same-recorded-show-freezes-then-skips/td-p/3029405 Standard Definition recordings are reportedly unaffected so I guess I'll just switch to that (tho' irksome given the premium I'm paying AT&T for my HD equipment and service).

I haven't had any trouble with Last Resort yet either, but the theory goes that ABC would limit serious disruption to established shows only, & wouldn't risk messing with a newer show they're trying to build an audience for. The main goal would be to manipulate dedicated viewers who have already committed to following a show, and drive them to viewing channels that have the highest per viewer revenue. From what I'm reading, these days ABC considers advertiser-based online streaming like Hulu or ABC.com to have higher per viewer revenue potential than DVR views. So if DVR viewers shift there it's a net win for ABC (not so much for AT&T, one would think). Live viewing continues to have the highest revenue per viewer for both parties but simply isn't going to be re-adopted by the current DVR viewing audience, especially for most of the kind of programming ABC does.

I'm also seeing some indications that similar problems with DVR recording specific to ABC shows are happening for subscribers on other carriers too. If you look for it online, you'll find a quote from the head digital media person at ABC from a few years ago stating quite plainly that they'd totally play ball with anyone who'd help them "turn off" the fast forwarding feature for DVR viewers, and other quotes indicating that they expected to enhance per viewer revenue for online channels. So even though this all feels like tin foil hat territory, there seem to be some indications from the network themselves that they're openly game to play around with disrupting/defeating DVR viewing and driving those views to streaming. 

The idea that some subscribers have no problems, some have different problems than others but still internally-consistent problems that recur for specific programs, suggests not that there's a bug with the DVRs but rather that someone could be conducting purposeful, systematic research involving different test groups and a control, and the results in viewer habits and subscriber retention are being carefully studied. It also suggests that the carriers may be directly collaborating: segmenting subscribers would require the carriers' cooperation.

Tin foil hat idea or not, to the extent that this really could be purposeful disruption on ABC's part, it's worthwhile for AT&T customers to point out that we're paying for DVR service from AT&T and expect it to work as advertised, and have plenty of other subscription and non-subscription alternatives. Companies providing subscription services should be legally prohibited from including small numbers of customers in undisclosed involuntary testing that reduces the level of service contracted for. And as ABC's endgame in this scenario would be to drive DVR users to online streaming services, it's a dangerous game for AT&T if it leads to cord-cutting among subscribers. If AT&T is not actively collaborating on such projects, then they may have a stake in taking ABC to court for contract violations of their own and earn some revenue in court, or valuable financial concessions in the next round of negotiations with ABC.

[JefferMC ACE - Wizard]

Since "Network" (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS) shows are being distributed through local affiliates and AT&T is picking up feeds from them at their local VHO, the difference between one subscriber's experience and another's could be that they're using affiliates with different encoders with different capabilities to provide tagging to the feed.

It may (or may not, don't know) be ABC's intention to disable FF, but not all local affiliates are equipped to pass that on to our STB devices (which obviously have the capability to be so directed).

[mibrnsurg ACE - Geek]

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jimmy327aoa wrote:

For last 3 weeks or so I've found I cannot fast forward recorded shows from ABC.  So far I've noticed it on every ABC Show that I've recorded (Castle, Dancing with the stars, Last Resort).  Everything I've recorded has been new shows so I'm testing right now with some reruns to see if it is every show. 

This really defeats the purpose or recording a show on DVR.  My wife records DWTS and really doesn't want to watch the Tuesday show often.  She normally fast forwards to the end to see who got cancelled.  I sat down tonight with the intent of watching Last Resort.  I haven't watched it yet, and I've got 3 weeks of it.  First week, fast forward works fine.  Weeks 2 and 3, i can't fast forward.

I'm almost to the point of finding the shows online instead of recording them.  Does anyone else know of anything else I might do?

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No problem here in metro Detroit w/ABC HD programs, I have full trick control on Castle, Last Resort and Nashville.

One thing I could suggest is a reboot of the DVR, as foolish as that might sound, it just might solve your problems.  I tend to reboot every week or two and haven't had many problems in the more than 4 years I've had Uverse.  Good luck

Chris

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Please NO SD stretch-o-vision or 480 SD HD Channels
Need Help? 1-800-288-2020, After he gets acct info, press # a bunch of times, get a menu from Mr. Voice recognition
Your Results May Vary, In My Humble Opinion
I Call It Like I See It, Simply a U-verse user, nothing more

[jimmy327aoa]

So it didn't do it on LAST weeks' Last Resort, but this week's last resort won't fast forward.

The Arkansas Football game started doing it on Saturday and I booted both boxes and then it started working.  Now Dancing with the Stars is doing RIGHT NOW, but i can't reboot because i found out after pausing it for about 7 minutes. So now if I reboot, I'm going to miss it while it's booting and not recording.

this is really getting frustrating. it's ONLY ABC.  I'm almost done watching that channel altogether.

[oufanindallas]

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jimmy327aoa wrote:

So it didn't do it on LAST weeks' Last Resort, but this week's last resort won't fast forward.

The Arkansas Football game started doing it on Saturday and I booted both boxes and then it started working.  Now Dancing with the Stars is doing RIGHT NOW, but i can't reboot because i found out after pausing it for about 7 minutes. So now if I reboot, I'm going to miss it while it's booting and not recording.

this is really getting frustrating. it's ONLY ABC.  I'm almost done watching that channel altogether.

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I had no problems fast forwarding Last Resort. It must be a local deal

[jimmy327aoa]

It doesn't seem to have any pattern either.

Last night i couldn't fast forward Dancing with the Stars, but i COULD fast forward Castle.  Tonight again, I can't fast forward DWTS. 

it's really frustrating.  I don't watch Private Practice, but I have it set to record on BOTH of the ABC channels that I get tonight to see if i can replicate with that.  So far the ONLY thing that is constant is DWTS.  Last Resort and Castle are both off and on apparently.

[jimmy327aoa]

After more troubleshooting, It looks like it may be limited to which channel of ABC I watch.  In this area, we have channel 40 and 29, which actually are the same channel (even call themselves 40/29).  All 3 shows I recorded today on 1029 (HD) can't fast forward.  Both of the ones I recorded (same shows as on 1029) on 1040 (HD) CAN fast forward.

It doesn't make a lot of sense.  It's the same signal, just different channels but i guess they must be doing SOMETHING different.

I'm going to keep troubleshooting.  I'm not entirely certain it's going to be that simple

[JefferMC ACE - Wizard]

That it would vary by station would be perfectly understandable.  They have different encoders for each station and each one could chose what use-flags that they encode in the stream.

[jamileh]

Hey Jimmy, 

Are you still seeing this issue? I see that you and JefferMC have been working on this and it might be something to do with encoding by local stations. 

If you'd like me to have someone give you a call, please send a private message to ATTCustomerCare with your name, account number, email address, phone number and the best time to contact you 



To send a private message, you can either click on the link in this message or click on the little blue envelope in the upper right hand corner, click "compose new message" and type ATTCustomerCare in the "Send To" field.

[jimmy327aoa]

Since Dancing with the Stars appears to be the one show that has consistantly failed every week, I've got a test set up for Monday to try it out.  I'm actually going to record the show 4 times (2 HD and 2SD) at the same time and see if it 's limited to channel,  I'll post again on Monday with those results.

[jimmy327aoa]

After my experiment I have figured out it is definately limited to the channel.

ABC has 2 channels in my area, 40 and 29.  HD channels are 1040 and 1029.  I recorded Dancing with the Stars on all 4 channels last night (which was annoying because that tied up all 4 streams but that's an entirely different issue).  I have the ability to fast foward on 1040 and 40.  Both 1029 and 29 would not allow me to fast forward at all.  I'm not sure what the difference is in the encoders on that station.  They are broadcast from the same location, on the same tower (though that doesn't actually mean much since it's not OTA) and one would THINK they would be configured the same except for the frequency.  I'm not sure who I would need to contact about this, whether it be AT&T Uverse or the station itself.  For now, as there is no difference in the programming or the signal, and fast forward works, I will simply watch and record all of my shows on 1040 or 40 for the occasional SD programming...which only happens when I have 3 other shows that I think are more important to be on HD. 

So in short, i still have a problem recording and being able to fast forward and rewind on that particular channel, but because that channel is duplicated on another channel and it doesn't have an issue, I have a simple workaround. 

[JefferMC ACE - Wizard]

I'd ask the station(s) about it and see if they'll give you a straight answer.

[RCSMG ACE - Master]

Lately none of my recorded ABC recorded programs have prohibited ff or rew although I did get the disclaimer that some of them may have ff disabled.  I guess ABC is looking out for their advertisers.

[oufanindallas]

ABC On Demand says the same thing and there are 2 or 3 short (30 sec to 1 min) commercial breaks in Last Resort and Nashville, but I've had no issues FFWD through either one of those shows.

[RCSMG ACE - Master]

I haven't tried watching those On Demand yet.

[mibrnsurg ACE - Geek]

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RCSMG wrote:

Lately none of my recorded ABC recorded programs have prohibited ff or rew although I did get the disclaimer that some of them may have ff disabled.  I guess ABC is looking out for their advertisers.

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I've never seen that disclaimer on any ABC HD program recorded on 1007 here in metro Detroit.

I have seen the disclaimer on ABC HD VOD though, but I could FF/Rew w/ NO problems.

Chris

---

Please NO SD stretch-o-vision or 480 SD HD Channels
Need Help? 1-800-288-2020, After he gets acct info, press # a bunch of times, get a menu from Mr. Voice recognition
Your Results May Vary, In My Humble Opinion
I Call It Like I See It, Simply a U-verse user, nothing more

[RCSMG ACE - Master]

Hopefully I have seen my first and last disclaimer for a recorded program.  If this is something that ABC is experimenting with and someday roll out, that would be a real drag.  I wonder how many deal breakers that would be for people watching ABC?