I would like to know if this is specifically an Athlon 64 X2 problem, those of you who have commented please indicate your CPU.

mine is an athlon 64 x2 processor...  4600+ i think (its pretty old by most standards).

I have this problem as well. About 1 in 4 recordings doesn't have the correct file length (the lengths are usually different, anywhere from 2 minutes to 18 minutes long). I can watch the entire program as long as I don't skip or ff which is extremely annoying.

My specs:
Vista Home Premium
AMD X2 4400+
2 GB ram
HDHomeRun dual HD tuner (ATSC OTA)

This is not a signal strength issue as mine is very strong. I'm going to try turning off my anti-virus tonight. I'll also look into the Cool 'n Quiet feature - I don't know if it is currently enabled or not.

This is definatley looking like an AMD problem, I may just switch my two computers. If anybody reading this is haveing the same problem with an Intel setup please say so (you will save me a lot of work :).

Well I'm *very* glad that I'm not the only one!

Good to know that reinstalling doesn't change the behaviour, although thats what I expected.

My turning off the "Cool & Quiet" feature in the BIOS does not seem to have made any difference.

 

Exactly - if I realize that I'm watching a show with the "problem", I just stop and restart it and don't *touch* the fwd/rwd or skip/replay buttons and it will play thru til the end without any problem.

Note: Although the original subject of this thread was about it being reported as "6:00" minutes, I too have seen it do the same thing with differing times - sometimes 5:00 minutes, sometimes 7:00 - once or twice I've seen 15:00 and 25:00.

Agreed it is starting to look like that - although we don't all have the *exact* same AMD X2 processor.  Unfortunately, I don't have an easy swap I could do to make the problem go away, but even so I feel better about eventually finding a fix if there really is something point to as the problem.

BTW, the "AMD Dual Core" driver on AMD's site (last updated 9/7) does not want to install on Vista - says the OS is unsupported.

It looks like we can rule out the X2 commonality - see this thread: http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4256

I tried to contact Microsoft about this problem, but I didn't get very far because I'm using the HDHomeRun tuner, which isn't officially supported. If any of you that are having this problem use an officially supported tuner please contact Microsoft and see if that gets anywhere.

Has anyone tried editing the metadata and just setting the length to be longer? Is there a way to do that?

Just read thru that thread and you're right it does *seem* to be the same thing being talked about.  If it really is then you're right and I guess we can toss the AMD x2 idea since there's a person in that thread with a single-core AMD Athlon XP and a person with an Intel Quad-CPU with the same problem.

The one thing a little different with the original poster of the problem in that thread is that he says if he just lets the recording play without touching fwd/rwd/skip/replay it does not play completely but rather stops at the incorrect time.  Thats never been the behaviour I see and also not the behaviour reported in here or by the others in that thread so I don't know what to think there.

I'm using supported tuners (at least I'm pretty sure they are - 2 Hauppauge PVR-250's and 1 ATI TV-Wonder650 Pro) so I could try the MS direction, although I can't say that I've ever gotten anything resolved that way. :(

 

I am experiencing this problem consistently with Heroes. I am running vmc 32bit on an intel p4 3.4 and a 7600gt and recording via an HDHR. The recording will play fine if i just let it play through but as soon as i ff/rw/skip it jumps all over. One thing that i thought might be affecting this is that i am recording prison break and heroes back to back, but im not sure if this could be causing this.

I saw this alot when I first installed Vista after I got the HDHomeRun working. I havent had it happen in a long time.

What version of HDHomeRun Firmware and Drivers do you have? I dont know mine but I will post later tonight.

Specs: P4 2.8ghz, 1GB Ram, 6600AGP 256MB, Vista Ultimate 32bit, HDHomeRun, 250GB Hitachi HDD.

-Nate

---

CPU: C2D E6750 + Arctic Cooler
Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L
RAM: 2GB DDR2-800
Video: Fanless 8600GT
Capture: HDHomeRun
HDD: 500GB
OS: Vista 32bit SP1

Well, thats funny because "Heroes" has also done the same for me each of the new season episodes so far. (including the one last night) Just like you said, I've just had to watch them from the beginning and mute the commercials rather than skip them.

I know there are a couple of you with the issue that use the HDHomeRun tuner, but I don't think thats the cause regardless of it's firmware/drivers - I don't use that and I know a number of others here are also using different tuners.  (the AMD X2 processor thing is the closest we've been able to come to any commonality, and now that doesn't seem to hold either)

Here are my exact specs for my machine in case folks want to compare:

Gigabyte GA-M61P-S3 motherboard (nForce 430)
2Gig PC2-6400 RAM
AMD 64 X2-4200 CPU
Nvidia PCI-X 8600GT
(1) IDE 300GB Maxtor
(1) SATA300 500GB Maxtor
(2) Firewire 750GB Seagate
(2) Hauppauge PVR-250 Analog Tuners
(1) ATI TV-Wonder 650 Pro ATSC Tuner

My VMC install is plain, except I have the VistaCodecPackage 4.5 loaded (for DivX, etc.) and I use Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 7.3 as the DVD decoder. (and have it selected for usage by VMC - both audio and video)

Just noted another comonality, it appears that at least some of us are running Nvidia PCIE cards. Any thouughts?

Ninja Viper:

Just noted another comonality, it appears that at least some of us are running Nvidia PCIE cards. Any thouughts?

In my case I have an ATI PCI-E card.  I don't really think it's any specific type of hardware problem, but rather a code problem with VMC or the DVR-MS file format itself. 

I'd try this myself but I don't actually use VMC as my primary DVR anymore, and I don't have a copy of the one recording that had this problem.  But one of you all that does have a copy of a bad file should try this... it's a piece of software that reads and edits DVD-MS file meta-data. 

http://blogs.msdn.com/toub/archive/2005/05/12/416874.aspx

I'd bet one of the fields in the meta-data is the length of the recorded program.  Try setting to the proper length and see if it plays any better.

You can find your .dvr-ms files in the C:\users\public\Recorded TV\ folder on your HTPC. (Unless you have changed your default recording location.)