Shield + HDHR DVR sometimes not recording

[Darwin's Child]

There was a time when our Shield was connected to the internet via ethernet cable. When we were done watching TV in the evening, we'd put the Shield to sleep. If we had set HDHR to record a show after that, say 2 AM, the recording would certainly be made. I don't know if the Shield actually "woke up" before the recording was made, or the Shield remained asleep during the recording................ but, again, the recording was accomplished.

Nowadays, because our TV and all input devices are on a rolling stand, with only one power-bar power cord coming out of the bottom of the stand, the Shield is connected to the internet via wifi. In this configuration, the likelihood of a recording being made during the night is far from certain. I don't know the exact reason for this, but I believe it is because the wifi connection to the Shield may not be constant UNLESS the Shield is awake and downloading something that requires the wifi connection to be constantly maintined.

What I've been doing lately is before going to bed, I make certain that HDHR is running, showing the strongest signal live TV channel available to our OTA antenna. Then I change inpurt source from the Shield to, say, our Roku Streaming Stick+, which is just playing its screen-saver. Then I power off the tv. In effect, the HDHR show is constantly being played "in the background". No data is being downloaded from "the internet", only data from the HDHR receiver and OTA antenna (rather than streaming through, say, Netflix all night long).

In the morning I turn on the TV and am presented with the Roku's screen saver, as expected. Then I switch inputs to the Shield and, hopefully, HDHR is still playing an HDHR live channel. If that is the case, then I check to see if the show that was programmed to record was actually recorded, which it usually has been.

WIth the above in mind, I have four questions.

1. When an upcoming show is programmed to be recorded, is a sleeping Shield first awakened, the recording made, and then the Shield put back to sleep, or is the recording made while the Shield is asleep?

2. For exactly how long does the DVR "try" to make a recording --- 1 second, less than a second? Further, if there is no wifi connection between the Shield and the HDHR receiver at the instant the recording is supposed to start, does the DVR do anything to the Shield in an attempt to get it to establish a wifi connection?

3. I have a strong suspicion that when the Shield's screensaver turns on (which has to be set to come on at a MAXIMUM of 2 hours after all of its apps have remained inactive and no "NEVER" option is available), the wifi connection is, for lack of a better word, disconnected. Is there any setting on the Shield that can be set to MAINTAIN wifi connection regardless of the Shield being asleep or, if its awake, its screensaver is running?

4. Is there any way to ensure that a recording will be made OTHER than playing an OTA channel constantly "in the background", as I've described above (without running an ethernet cable to the Shield)?

Thanks.

[NedS]

1. A Shield doesn't actually sleep. Sleep for Android is very different than sleep for a PC. It might do some stuff to be a little more low power, like turning off the HDMI port, possibly the wifi (at the very least, some Android TV built-in TVs do this), but the Shield itself doesn't fully sleep.

2. The DVR will keep trying to make a recording unless it thinks there is no tuner available to make the recording. If the wifi is unstable, then it probably doesn't see the tuner and will not make the recording. The DVR storage device should not be on wifi, it will make things far too unreliable. The DVR can't make the Shield do anything with the wifi, the Shield (Android) handles the networking stuff.

3. You can disable both the screen saver and all sleep functions. You might have to enable the developer options to do this, if I recall correctly, and then the option will show up with the other settings: https://docs.nvidia.com/gameworks/conte ... evmode.htm

(that link is a bit dated, but the basic idea is still the same)

4. Playing an OTA channel should have no impact on how the DVR performs. It might be helping to keep the Shield awake, but it has no direct impact on the DVR component.

[Darwin's Child]

The only developer option named "Stay awake" that I can find has the description "Screen will never sleep while charging". Is this the one you're talkinng about? If so, I think that this must be for a charging game controller. Regardless, I'll turn on the option and see if it keeps the Shield awake and connected to the LAN via wifi regardless of the screen saver turning on.

Running HDHR on one channel/station all night definitely keeps the Shield awake and improves DVR performance. I'd much rather do this than keep our PC running all night solely as the device to record shows. While on this subject, if I put the PC to sleep, rather than shut it down, will it still make a recording and, if it has to wake up to do that, can it be made to go back to sleep after the recording is made? If this is possible, will the Shield still play any role or will the HDHR app on the PC take over the role that the Shield is taking now and the Shield will be, essentially, irrelevant in the recording process?

Do the HDHR receivers that have USB ports for storage act more or less independently from a Shield that is connected via wifi? That is, if we had one of these receivers and a USB drive is plugged into it, if a program is set to be recorded, if the Shield box has lost wifi connection, will the show still be recorded on USB drive connected to the HDHR receiver? Now back to the PC option. If our PC is put to sleep, but the USB drive connected to the HDHR receiver is set as the recording device, does the PC have to wake up to tell the reciever/recording drive to make the recording?

Thanks.

[NedS]

The DVR software cannot wake a sleeping PC. In theory you could have a program set the PC to wake up at a certain time (at least for Windows, a record can be created to wake up most motherboards), but if you set up a recording while the PC was asleep then it still wouldn't record, because the PC would need to wake up to know about the new recording rule. It wouldn't be reliable.

When you have more than one DVR instance on the network, what happens is that the active (awake, etc) DVRs will figure out which one has the most free space, and that DVR will save the recording at that given time. Then all recordings from all active DVRs will show up in the HDHomeRun app as a single DVR library. For example, if the PC DVR is handling recording then Shield DVR won't be used.

FLEX models (HDHRs with USB ports) have their own DVR instance, and when connected to a USB drive they become part of that DVR pool. They will be used if they are the only DVR active, or if they are the DVR with the most free space. In theory, a FLEX DVR should be the most reliable, since it is the HDHomeRun talking to itself, and network interruptions shouldn't be a major issue (so long as DVR rules can be downloaded every few hours).

[Darwin's Child]

The DVR software cannot wake a sleeping PC. In theory you could have a program set the PC to wake up at a certain time (at least for Windows, a record can be created to wake up most motherboards), but if you set up a recording while the PC was asleep then it still wouldn't record, because the PC would need to wake up to know about the new recording rule. It wouldn't be reliable.

When you have more than one DVR instance on the network, what happens is that the active (awake, etc) DVRs will figure out which one has the most free space, and that DVR will save the recording at that given time. Then all recordings from all active DVRs will show up in the HDHomeRun app as a single DVR library. For example, if the PC DVR is handling recording then Shield DVR won't be used.

FLEX models (HDHRs with USB ports) have their own DVR instance, and when connected to a USB drive they become part of that DVR pool. They will be used if they are the only DVR active, or if they are the DVR with the most free space. In theory, a FLEX DVR should be the most reliable, since it is the HDHomeRun talking to itself, and network interruptions shouldn't be a major issue (so long as DVR rules can be downloaded every few hours).

Thanks for the additional information, NedS, especially about the FLEX models with the option to connect USB storage. Just one further question about the latter. You mention "so long as DVR rules can be downloaded every few hours". What does that mean, exactly? For example, does the list of things that will be (or are supposed to be) recorded on the HDHR app's "Task" tab exist on the FLEX+USB-storage combo as an entity (a sort of "mini-server") that is separate from, but more or less equivalent to, all the other devices on the LAN that have the "full-scale" HDHR app installed on them? What happens if all the devices, other than the FLEX+USB-storage combo, are disconnected from the LAN for, say, 8 hours, will the FLEX+USB-storage combo still carry out its duty to record the items on the "Task" list during those 8 hours?

BTW, something I did not expect to happen has happened this morning -- when I started the HDHR app on three devices for the second time -- two PCs connected to the router with cable and one Samsung tablet connected to the router via wifi -- all three showed the live window with the red record button available and, when I hit the X, the recorded shows were all available to be played back. I say "the second time" because the first time I did this this morning, the typical no-red-record-button and "No DVR was found" on the recorded tab were present; in other words, as if the Shield+DVR could not be found. What was unusual on that first attempt was that when I switched sources from Roku to Shield, the Shield's secreen saver was not on, which it should have been. What I did at that point was change the period of inactivity for the screensaver to come on from 2 hours to 30 minutes. That's all. In 35 minutes I checked back and the screensaver had still not come on. It was at this point that I turned the tv off while still on the Shield as source. I then went to the other devices and periodically started their HDHR apps and was surprised to see that the Shield+DVR was accessible. This is still the case as I type right now, which, considering recent history, is really weird.

Thanks again NedS. I really appreciate it.

[signcarver]

The way a dvr works is that all the rules are in the cloud. The dvr engine (regardless of being on a nas, pc, scribe, servio, flex or the shield) is that every hour or 2 it contacts SD to find out what to record in the next 4 hours (nickk had made a post recently that suggested it could be 8 or 12 hours but I haven't seen such yet). It will also check for changes if "poked" (i.e. when you set a new recording rule through the app) that is why the engine must have internet access as it only knows what to do for the next few hours.

[Darwin's Child]

The way a dvr works is that all the rules are in the cloud. The dvr engine (regardless of being on a nas, pc, scribe, servio, flex or the shield) is that every hour or 2 it contacts SD to find out what to record in the next 4 hours (nickk had made a post recently that suggested it could be 8 or 12 hours but I haven't seen such yet). It will also check for changes if "poked" (i.e. when you set a new recording rule through the app) that is why the engine must have internet access as it only knows what to do for the next few hours.

Thanks very much for your comments, signcarver.

I conclude the following from what you've said.

1. When a program is selected to be recorded from any device that has the HDHR on it (and is also a device that is on the LAN), this selection is sent via the internet to SD's "cloud" of millions of "rules" (instrictions for individual DVRs to record certain programs/shows), but are marked as belonging only to one particular DVR, accessible in the future by only that particular DVR.

2. When I look at the list of "Tasks" from/through any devices on our LAN (that have the HDHR app installed on them), I am actually looking at our particular DVR's list of "rules" that are located in SD-Central's "cloud", NOT any place on our Shield's DVR or, if we had one, the DVR on a FLEX+USB-storage receiver. The USB drive stores the actual movies or shows as mpgs. The SD cloud stores the "rules".

3. The FLEX+Storage DVR has enough memory to store some number of hours worth of "rules" that it has already downloaded from SD's "cloud" and will use those rules to make recordings over that period of time, but no more. To obtain more "rules" after that period of time, the DVR must contact SD-Central's cloud and download another number of hours of rules.

4. If a selection is made to record a show/program that is, say, two weeks from the moment of the selection, the DVR will not download this "rule" until, at most, 12 hours before the actual time of recording -- in other words, at least 13 days from the moment of selection.

5. If all of the devices that have the HDHR app on them (on a LAN) all lose power (but the router/modem still has power and internet access), and the FLEX+DVR-storage still has power and internet acess (through the router/modem), the FLEX+DVR will continue to make recordings, download new rules, make new recordings, rinse and repeat, for as long as the rules apply. When the devices that have the HDHR app on them are powered on, even if that's two weeks down the road, when the HDHR app is opened on them, all of the recordings made by the FLEX+DVR ever since they were originally turned off will be right there on the "Recorded" tab.

Am I correct on most or all of the above?

Thanks again.