Zinwell ZAT-970A? - Page 36

I've tried leaving the 1st timer selection empty on two of my ZAT's and I'm still getting corrupted timers. I need to create a spreadsheet and start taking a more detailed direction towards this problem.

Yep, a Design Of Experiments (DOE, a matrix to reduce and solve problems, etc.). I wasn't detailed about it but that's sort of how I figured the Fav/Groups thing out. Did you try the Fav/Groups workaround? (or maybe you were the one that didn't use that function). Unfortunately I don't use the timers much so I don't know if it helps, just a theory based on what I saw with channel jumping.

Currently, I don't use the "Favorites" group for channel selecting, but then again I do have some settings invoked.

Try moving your Group 1 to another group and put some station you don't care much about in Group 1 as a placeholder (I worry that the next group in sequence would become problematic if I completely empty Group 1).
Group 1 was my favorite so I moved it to my last group to make it easy to select.

I've also had problems with subs I 'try' to delete (All Channels) keep coming back to haunt me; I settled on Skip for those. Lock or some other function may work too but I haven't tried it.

Basically I'm concerned that the Favorite problems are interleaved with the timers and who knows what else (ex: Parental Controls). Something is making the non-volatile memory volatile.

They should recall these silly Zinwell's or at least put in effort into figuring out why these timers become corrupt so easily. In the last 2 days, I have reset the timer 6 f**'n times.

No idea why having adding favorites would help my cause, but I set the timer channels in a group 7 and used a few other groups with a single channel that is never used. One would think that having more user settings just means a better chance of corruption.

I would think so too, my suggestion was more towards those that have the Favorites settings invoked like in the case of systems2000. But I suppose anything is worth a shot at this point.

Check your All Channels for unstable channels/subs like I mentioned above.

A couple of other experiments that might be worth trying (do one at a time to eliminate interaction):

Leave a box fully powered up (i.e don't put it in standby and disable sleep timer).

Delete all but the list of channels that you like to timer program (this is a pain in the butt so more of a spare box experiment).
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I bet these CECB mfgers don't even care unless it's a rqd function, these kind of options were probably poorly certified (if at all).

You could try emailing the Zinnet people (Zinwell dist/rep) and post it here so us others could copy&modify/email it to them too to inundate them with requests. There's probably a good description of the problem in this thread.

On that note, I emailed them about tuners losing lock (pixelates and signal strength meter levels drop, then 'repairs itself' after retuning the channel). They didn't know what the hell I was talking about and told me to send the boxes back. Well I blew that off because I figured they would send me new boxes with the same problem if they weren't familiar with the problem; I would just be wasting time&money shipping them back.

I was having frequent problems till I put it on a UPS. Now it is very stable. So I conclude that power fluctuations are one cause. Now the only time things screw up is when a new channel/sub-channel is added. Then the wakeup channel flips to the highest UHF station in my area.

My 970A (w/hidden EPG) is on 24/7 and my newer 970A is set for four hour sleep mode. Neither unit is on a UPS. Both units get corrupted timers.

systems2000's results eliminate the fully powered up solution.

golinux's UPS solution makes me think these boxes have poorly filtered power supplies. The new channel/sub problem could be due to a shift in the memory table(s) when new channel info arrives.

Try a 5 V battery setup or a clean 5 V power supply. 4.5 V may be enough (3 - 1.5 V cells). If that solves the main problem then a better 5 V wallwart might do the trick or we can venture as far as adding big capacitors to power supply circuitry. My Zinwells have those Sino-American switching adapters which I assume are switching regulators. Switching regulators generate their own noise which require quite a bit of filtering but they're usually pretty good at rejecting input noise.

This might even explain my tuner problem although I haven't observed it on my 950A or my earlier date code 970A. Could be some of the 970A Sanyo tuners are more sensitive to noise.

I might try replacing one of my 970A's with my 950A and see if there is any difference.

Speaking of which, have any of you observed this tuner/pixelation problem I'm referring to? It also messes up the audio. It's like your antenna reception suddenly goes bad but it clears up when you retune the channel. Of course you have to have good reception to notice the difference. If you're recording you'll definitely know it because the rest of the recording will be screwed up (that's my biggest gripe about it). I mostly saw it on VHF channels but saw it once on a UHF channel (real bummer since I could deal with one or two channels having the problem). I'm suspicious of the Sanyo tuners (newer 970As and the VHF part).

I don't believe I have.

One other thing . . . the DST switch also screws with the timers.

I lost my recording tonight because the box froze when it turned on. It was stuck on an advertisement image. I could not get info or change channels, or even power off. It was totally stuck. I had to unplug it to get it to reset.

I remember in the CC thread, this was happening, that certain ads caused freezing when closed caption was on.. This is the first time I've seen it, but I have not left CC on before.

I've had mine freeze a couple of times, but I never use CC. Freezing is not limited to the Zinwell box. I've read reports of many other CECBs freezing from time to time. I think most of them were rushed to market and just didn't go through as much testing as they should have.

One of the reasons that I bought a Zinwell was because they had upgradable firmware. Who knew that they would never publish any updates? I assumed that any reputable company would fix the most common problems reported. The response I got from Zinwell when I reported problems was that it was too expensive to produce and distribute updates, so there would not be any. Nice support!

My 0827 model freezes from time to time.

I also thought the update capable CECB's would be a good investment and that the manufacturers would provide support or give the "OPEN" community the ability to make modifications.

Our only hope is that "OPEN community" or the Canadian market (assuming the mfgers' box architecture remains the same). What is the timeframe for Canada?

i have the ZINWELL 970A....not sure how 'new' it is tho.....i think i got mine from amazon in approx june, 2009....

i've had several channels, including a vhf 7, that for some strange reason only sometimes display a 'BAD SIGNAL/NO SIGNAL' message....and these are all very strong/good quality local signals....they are never a problem on my TR40 or my ARTEC T3AP....

the 'BAD SIGNAL/NO SIGNAL' message on ch 7 was the most problematic....sometimes it took several minutes for it to lock...but the others locked in just a few seconds.... and then later ch 7 was fine...and has been since then....

and most of the time all of these channels lock in immediately....i dont know what causes these glitches....multi-path in the signal, maybe? whatever it is, it never seems to affect my TR40 or my ARTEC T3AP units....

Sounds different other than the RF frequency. I've never seen the message although the pic/audio is bad enough that a signal weak enough to 'normaly' cause this degradation would give me the message. When it has this problem the signal bar only backs off to an ~95% reading (was 100%). It's never done it on initial tune and that locks quickly. It usually does it after 15 minutes or so (but not 100% repeatable) and never comes out of it by itself (I have to retune).

The underlined part of the serial # is the date of mfg. The first two digits are the year and the last two digits are the week. My problem 970As are 0920 and 0940 while the good one is 0914. The problem units all came from Amazon but there was no statement of refurbish/remanufacture or anything stamped on the product box.

Unlike most other CECB's, the ZAT (9xx series) seems to have a buffer that allows the unit to build a picture before showing it. This allows the unit to operate, even when the Quality meter drops to 0% for a second or two, while all the other units will drop the picture.

I've had situations where the unit will take up to 10 seconds to display a channel.

You could also be experiencing overload.

I see the 'BAD SIGNAL/NO SIGNAL' message on my 950a on about 1/3 of the channel changes. If I did not use the timers, I would not even bother with the annoying/buggy Zinwell.

Interesting, systems2000.

WackyPacks, what do you mean by a channel change?

I mean that when navigating through even strong-signal channels, that No Signal message shows up.

The corruption of timers is still happening now that I have started using the Favorites feature. It might actually be worse than using no Favorites. At least that is my experience thusfar. It seemed liked when the timers would change for whatever reason, the Favorites remained untouched. Doubt it will do anything, but I might try resetting everything back to factory defaults and start over. This daily reprogramming of the timers is getting annoying.

Just for the heck of it, I sent Zinwell an email a few days ago asking if they knew of a work-around for the timer corruption problem. I am not holding my breath for a solution or even a response.

OK, was verifying it wasn't your broadcasters changing info on you. Yeah I see that on my rabbit ear/loop antenna-ed unit even though it comes in strong. I only see it on a few stations via my attic antenna but it seems like it's the same stations (i.e. repeatable). Of course the rabbit ear/loop antenna is more susceptible to moving object interference at the ground level. I suspect multipath is the culprit, some tuners take more time to process it.

I contacted Zinwell (Zinnet?) today about the timers and hope for a reply.

My timers seem to corrupt when the unit loses the PSIP for virtual channel 2 and moves its three channels up the table to actual channel 38. Tuning channel 38 usually restores the PSIP, but it doesn't fix the timers.

Anoter question: Has anyone found the EPG using a programmable remote other than the Dollar Tree one? My Dollar Tree isn't carrying remotes these days and I'd like to try it. I have a Zat-970 0826.

If you know anybody with a CM7000 converter box, you can borrow their remote and program the extra keys on a learning remote. I'm happy with my Sony VL-600 remote, plenty of space to add the extra functions. Here's a chart of what the CM7000 buttons do to the Zat.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...4#post15936224

Zinwell is out of the converter business. I emailed and called all of the other companies that Zinwell products have supposedly been passed on to, and they either say they don't support Zinwell products any more, they just don't deal with anything by Zinwell anymore, or they act like they never heard of Zinwell; then they try to sell you something else that doesn't have the built-in timers.

WackyPacks said: "Just for the heck of it, I sent Zinwell an email a few days ago asking if they knew of a work-around for the timer corruption problem. I am not holding my breath for a solution or even a response." You won't be hearing from them.

TalkingRat said: " I lost my recording tonight because the box froze when it turned on. It was stuck on an advertisement image. I could not get info or change channels, or even power off. It was totally stuck. I had to unplug it to get it to reset. " This just happened to me the other day too, for the first time. Apparently, once these screw up (especially the timer) you might as well throw them away.

I also called the FCC today and told them about it since this unit was #1 on their suggested list. They took my info down, but said the program is over, so we can't help you. If they stop running correctly, you might as well trash them.

Does anyone know of other converters with multiple timers for recording?

TRT.
And some dvd recorders have timers.

cyclerama, IIRC, that lockup was likely caused by a closed caption hangup, similar to the ones Dana reported early on in the CC issues thread. I also have interference from the CM7000, so unless I have it masked off well, I can end up with a menu blocking the recording or with the frame freeze stuck.

But this last month, it has been acting crazier and crazier. If it can't hold a subchannel, it skips to a lower virtual channel. But when it's supposed to record 12.1 it skips to 22.1, i.e., up a station. I have no clue what's causing this. Plus, it's forgotten to turn on quite a few times. I'm just about ready to try my luck again with the DTV Pal, even though the Pal can't handle all the PSIP info, and it only has 5 memory slots. I hate to make the change, but the Zinwell has become undependable. I may as well have a Zenith there.

Doesn't make sense since Amazon still sells them new:

http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=dp_brlad...node=979935011

I suppose unless Amazon handles the 90 day warranty via flat-out replacement (high or acquired all inventory) or there no longer is a warranty (nothing listed on their website so I would call Amazon and ask before buying one); of course the warranty is listed in the manual.

Did you contact service@zinnetusa.com? They're the distributor that handles the interactions here in the US although I can't guarantee them being responsive to a non-warranty issue.