Dish Network DTVPal Plus - Page 14

That can happen if your local CBS station temporarily doesn't have the TVGOS stream active.
Since many CBS stations are still working on the TVGOS transmission, occasionally it may be down.

Not getting the guide download (at power on) is not the end of the world.
Many users don't get the guide download because they are not in a TVGOS market. The guide download at power on is redundant.

Dish designed the unit to work in either situation.

Well, except that, I'll do a factory reset or plug and unplug right away, and then the download will happen. Also, whenever I turn the box on like that in the morning or at any other time after it has turned off by itself (remember, I NEVER turn the box off manually any more), and the EPG does not download at power on, I find that, of course, the clock has started to drift. Having the EPG download at every power on is the only way the clock never drifts, in my experience, with the box that I have.

That is normal behavior regardless of whether you are getting a TVGOS stream or not.

Unplugging the power or doing a factory reset, forces the unit to do a guide download the first time it is powered on after either of those actions.

There is a problem with your particular unit if the clock is drifting as you have described. Plain and simple.

Honestly, I think there is a problem with the design of the Pal+. They did a good job with the on screen menus and the comprehensive program guide, but the Pal+ seems riddled with inconsistencies and flaws. I don't think it's "just my unit". Dish ultimately, in the end, failed. At least I only paid 23 bucks for it, including the shipping. This will be solved for me the same way the AFD issue will be solved for me: get a new television. Then I can relegate the converter box with the old TV to another room or just throw it in the closet to collect dust.

P.S. more people have spoken up in the New York, NY-OTA forum about the weird Pal+ bug putting channels on 70.1 or other channels in the 70's (that don't belong there).

Does anyone know how to prevent the pal+, F106, from having the clock be one hour slow???? It does this on its own and did it twice in the past couple weeks. It also did it once before. I can't remember when. Unplugging power resets the clock.

Odd you should mention that. We had a problem in our area with a channel 7 trying to move their digital signal to their original channel number at the changeover last year, and finding they lost a big part of their viewership. The FCC had advised them badly. The VHF channel was bad for them on digital.

They ended up simulcasting on the UHF channel they'd been using prior to the cutoff, and finally shut 7 down all together, staying on the UHF channel.

Thing is, during the time they were simulcasting, we got both signals here just fine, and if you did a channel scan, both would come up, but the Pal identified one of them as channel 70. (And yet oddly enough placed it alongside 7 in the numerical order list of channel numbers.)

Is it possible some stations in the NY area are simulcasting on two channels at once (maybe one being a repeater for some viewers)?

CBS here (D/FW) had that problem with their broadcast on upper VHF and currently still broadcast on both that channel and a UHF channel. My attic antenna has no problem with either one but my rabbit-ear/loop antenna vastly prefers the UHF channel. My Zinwells and Artecs display both as virtual channel 11, one after another, but my Channel Master only displays one (which one I don't know, no frequency screen).

Aside: Some of my Zinwell ZAT-970As lose channel lock and don't snap out of it without a channel toggle when on the VHF stations. Really sucks when recording without monitoring.

The reason for that is the Pal and presumably other CECBs can tune 2-69, so when it hits two signals with the same ID on different frequencies it can't assign both the same PSIP numbers. So it picks one, I've no idea how it determines which, and drops it up on 70 where there shouldn't be any real channel.

It'll also bump a new channel that maps to a PSIP channel already in use about half the time.. the other half it bumps the channel that was occupying that PSIP assignment.

Gets annoying when you get a heavy tropo night or three having to go delete dozens of channels that don't tune and the bumped channels that you want on that PSIP number and then rescan to put things back how they were...

The Pal DVR has the exact same behavior too, if anyone's curious. The thing that's strange to me is the DVR is supposed to scan for new channels like that, but from what I know the Pal+ only scans when you tell it to.. yet it still happens.

I get the same issue with a translator for my local FOX station. My Sammy TV showed two of the same channels, and the Pal showed a 70-1 and 70-2. Deleted the translator and all was well.

My DTVPAL+ cleared the timers the first of the year. Anyone else see this?

Yes, both of my DTVPAL's (non+) did this too.