Virgin boxes deleting recordings.

[woof woof]

We have two Virgin boxes which are I've been told Tivo and recently I've noticed that they delete recordings and these deleted recordings do not appear in under "Deleted recordings" so I wonder what's going on and has anyone else seen this?

For example, I recorded a documentary and as I tend to watch things I like many times I kept it and then one day it wasn't there any more. I waited for quite some time and it came back on so I rerecorded it and this time on both boxes and after a while the same thing happened and it disappeared from both boxes. I also noticed that a couple of movies I'd recorded also vanished and this is not time related as older recordings remain intact and are still there.

I've tried Googling and people have spotted this but there doesn't seem to be any definitive answer as to what is going on but I don't believe it's a fault as the deletions seem very specific and in my case affected two boxes simultaneously and it's not space related either and if it was the deleted recordings would appear in the deleted recordings list. My own guess is that Virgin or Sky can delete things from our boxes perhaps due to some licensing issue but who knows for sure? I'm just guessing.

The things I want to keep are I suppose few and far between but it is annoying when this happens to things that can't be bought at all on DVD or if they can be bought are only available as imports and not playable on many UK DVD players. That documentary for example, I just loved it but of course it's not available at all on DVD. I know DVD's are old tech these days and some people don't have any but how else can you retain things these days?

Anyone else seen this?

 

[ecoleman]

If the programs are no longer available on Virgin to watch then it could be a licensing issue.

I don't know how Virgin works but I can download movies from Amazon onto my ipad so if we go out in the van we can watch a movie offline. Some of those downloads will sit on the ipad for months and others have a time limit before they are automatically removed.

 

[Brentor]

I assume your boxes are not at 100% recording capacity?

 

[Box Brownie]

If the programs are no longer available on Virgin to watch then it could be a licensing issue.

I don't know how Virgin works but I can download movies from Amazon onto my ipad so if we go out in the van we can watch a movie offline. Some of those downloads will sit on the ipad for months and others have a time limit before they are automatically removed.

A DRM (Digital Rights Management) question came to mind too, though one would like to think that it/they could be more transparent about it, if that is the reason!?

 

[Box Brownie]

I assume your boxes are not at 100% recording capacity?

A good and though we don't have streaming service "boxes" our PVR will tell us if HDD space is too small to record any more.

 

[onomatopoeia]

I don't have Virgin, but my Sky box states a date when a recording will be deleted in some cases, but not all. Sometimes 30 days, sometimes a year. I suspect this is due to licensing requiements for the content and further I suspect VM do the same even if they don't state the date the licence expires.

 

[Brentor]

A good and though we don't have streaming service "boxes" our PVR will tell us if HDD space is too small to record any more.

Off topic, but when I looked for a PVR last year, none of the well known makes were available. Seems they are being phased out.

 

[woof woof]

I assume your boxes are not at 100% recording capacity?

It's not a space issue and if it was the deleted items would first appear in the deleted programs area before being permanently deleted.

 

[woof woof]

If the programs are no longer available on Virgin to watch then it could be a licensing issue.

I don't know how Virgin works but I can download movies from Amazon onto my ipad so if we go out in the van we can watch a movie offline. Some of those downloads will sit on the ipad for months and others have a time limit before they are automatically removed.

It's not simply that they're no longer available on On Demand as some recording I still have are no longer available and yet they haven't been deleted. The deleted ones seem to be specifically targeted and I guess, yes, it's possibly a licensing thing. Strange though that they become available again but I assume Sky or Virgin could renew a license. Maybe they wait for a few programs to expire and renew them en masse rather than renewing licenses for individual ones? I'm just guessing

 

[Box Brownie]

Off topic, but when I looked for a PVR last year, none of the well known makes were available. Seems they are being phased out.

Yes they are now uncommon but our PVR is something like 12 years old and the make went bust about 6 years back.

Still working ok'ish as it throws a wobbly sometimes but a hard restart seems to solve it.

IIRC I still have the 2012 Olympics ceremony on it. AFAIK the HDD format & file type is bespoke and there is no immediately ready way to transfer/save the videos to another drive

 

[woof woof]

PS.
I do wish it was possible to buy the deleted ones on DVD as a way of permanently keeping them. Some are available in other parts of the world but not in the UK and some just are not available anywhere I can see.

I might buy a region free DVD player, that'll cure part of this.

 

[Harriers9]

We've had a similar problem with Virgins V6 box and our LG TV. Twice this has happened in the past six months.

We've around 20 recorded programmes on the box but, suddenly, watching TV a message will come up saying that there's no internet signal. Bemused at first but then we realised the V6 box had turned itself off (it's set to stay on at all times). Switch it back on again and the message goes but we do have to wait for the box to reboot itself.

It's not till later when we access recorded programmes that we see that all our recordings have gone. I get the feeling that it's knackered at less than a year old.

 

[woof woof]

We've had a similar problem with Virgins V6 box and our LG TV. Twice this has happened in the past six months.

We've around 20 recorded programmes on the box but, suddenly, watching TV a message will come up saying that there's no internet signal. Bemused at first but then we realised the V6 box had turned itself off (it's set to stay on at all times). Switch it back on again and the message goes but we do have to wait for the box to reboot itself.

It's not till later when we access recorded programmes that we see that all our recordings have gone. I get the feeling that it's knackered at less than a year old.

We've had multiple new boxes but the problem I described above is different and if it is a fault it's very specific but actually I don't believe it is a fault. I think Virgin or Sky must have the ability to delete our recordings, That's the only thing I can think of which explains why specific recordings are deleted but nothing else is. If they are doing this why they should do this I can only guess and some sort of copywrite / licensing issue is possibly one possible answer.