The Official AVS Dish DTVPal DVR Topic! - Page 420

How we could separate guessing points about internal algorithms of E* DVR firmware and real values of timestamps and data of TVGOS stream in your [DC] area ?

I'm badly surprising that's no one in your region have ATSC computer's tuner card/USB device...

Using it would cut half of speculations and will allow to distinguish station/ROVI/DVR's problems and find real way to fix issues with time and recordings.

You guys really wasting your time and effort while swamping in uncertainties. IMO.

Why not buy a TV tuner? I am sure one could buy it for cheap. USB devices would work if don't want to fiddle with internal PC.

I just talked to Dusty. K-EYE did NOT renew its contract with ROVI for TVGOS. So it's PSIP only until or if another station decides to pick it up. Currently I'm only getting the current day's PSIP info though Dusty says it was loading through Wednesday morning (till the end of our conversation). He said he was going to check it out. Let's compare notes on our new PSIP era!

I've seen those USB on eBay for $5-7, but before pick cheap one Terrestrial (ATSC), please check compatibility with TSReaderLite SW here.
My pick would be this one - Hauppauge WinTV HVR-950.

Does that mean Wednesday is the last day they will be sending out the data (presuming they get it up and running again before that)? I want to be clear on this before I give this very bad news to the Austin guys in the Sony forum. The Sony is basically a doorstop without TVGOS. Rovi may approach the PBS station to carry the TVGOS data. That is what has happened in other cities where the CBS station has decided to stop carrying it.

Mark

K-EYE will continue to carry PSIP data. It had just loaded that far when we finished our conversation. I'm still only getting the schedule for today and only K-EYE and FOX for tomorrow. Everything else is dead. At least the clock is more well-behaved!

Maybe I need to change some settings so it can find the PSIP data more efficiently?

I'll call KLRU tomorrow to see if they've heard from ROVI.

What about TVGOS? Is it off for good there, or is there still more time on KEYE's contract?

Mark

If someone is willing to invest the time and effort to accumulate data for analysis, I'm all for it. While I appreciate their efforts and revelations, it doesn't seem to have resolved the issue for the people in Austin.

I have three Pal dvrs displaying the full DC Guide and the correct time. It's useful that J-D-H reset the DC zip this morning and gave us the results because it tends to corroborate the hypothesis: The DC zip code needs to be reset during an optimum period of day (as recommended by the guys in Austin).

So my recommendation remains: At 6PM set the zip code to 21210. The next day at 7PM, set the zip to DC and wait 7 hours.


In fact, if at 6PM the Baltimore zip resets the clock quickly, try restoring the DC zip at 7PM the same day. It's really not a big investment of effort.

Has anyone tried to set a zip code that is far from their reception area in order to force a PSIP only clock set? As a last desperate measure, this might be preferable to a crazy clock.

TVGOS is finished, kaput, bye-bye on K-EYE. PSIP only from now on.

Well, it was sort of resolution above ...

Good one!

PSIP data comes from each individual station, and provides listings (usually 12-24 hours only) strictly for that station.

Without TVGOS data, the clock will be set by an amalgam of the clocks from all the individual stations' PSIP data, hopefully tossing out any outliers, since stations' clocks are often incorrect. I don't believe the actual clock-setting algorithm is known, but it has reportedly improved substantially since early FW releases.

I believe you're correct about choosing the right time to make changes -- this factor seems to be critical here.

After observing that going to a Baltimore zip code was the only way to get get an accurate clock, I wanted to confirm this and the most straight forward way was by reverting to my old Wash DC settings. After doing this, I found out the hard way that my original conclusion seems to have been correct. After swinging the antenna to Wash DC as well as changing the zip code to Wash DC, the clock became almost instantly off by 5 minutes or so (fast). I made the changes at 6:30 PM last night, presumably around the best time. After observing the bad clock, I tried several soft-resets via the 4 sec on-off button push on the remote. This caused some minor clock changes, but certainly not a fix, not a return to an accurate clock.

Now I need to try to get back where I was, something I'll work on later today.

While making the above changes, I periodically checked how much advance TVG info was present. No matter what nor when, the listings were always limited to one day. Maybe this is a bogus observation since I probably needed to wait a few hours to be certain, but for whatever it's worth I'm still reporting what I saw.

There are quite a number of variables here (antenna bearing, zip code, which of two CBS stations are allowed in the channel listing, soft-reset or not, how long to wait between changes, etc.). And when doing tests, the order in which the changes are made matters as well as the time of day when they are done (at least for some of the changes). This leads to a test matrix which is large and rather intimidating. So if and when I can get the clock back to being accurate, whether or not advance TVG data appears, maybe I'll stop making changes for awhile. This strikes me as prudent since those in power to actually DO something to fix all this - the CBS stations and/or Rovi/TVGOS - presumably already know exactly what caused the problem in the first place. Will accumulating test results (with or without a TV tuner) to send to the only entity who has been slightly responsive, the local CBS station's tech director, even conceivably be productive? If we have zero clout as has been said here, I fear the answer to that isn't a very optimistic one. On the other hand, if there are reasons why any of these companies ~would~ care about the impact of what they've done on we DVR owners, I'd love to hear what they are....

Unfortunately, KLRU allocates their ATSC bandwidth almost as aggresively as KEYE. When I last made measurements, KLRU had only 485 Kbps reserve bandwidth. Thats a little better than the 250 Kbps typical for KEYE, but still pretty tight compared to data we've seen for successful installations of the ROVI boxes in Wichita and S.F. It would be ideal if ROVI could ink a deal with the local NBC station (4 Mbps reserve), or FOX (3 Mbps reserve). We'll see what happens. Thanks for keeping us up to date on the latest news from Dusty...

Yeah, KLRU won't be picking it up. I confirmed that this AM.

FWIW, it was ROVI's lack of support and communication that drove Dusty's decision to let TVGOS go not our whining and whimpering.

I'm finding life with PSIP to be pretty sucky. Guess I should start working on NBC and FOX . . .

The hardware compatability list is here. I may have one of those Hauppage USB tuner sticks in a box. IIRC I bought it from Woot for $20. If TSReader Lite now handles BDA drivers for ATSC tuners, then my PCI card might work too.

TSReaderLite sees my Hauppauge WinHVR1600 (a PCI with both analog and ATSC/QAM tuners). It sees it as Generic Hauppauge ATSC.

Maybe there's been a reprieve of some sort... TVGOS is starting to populate guide data again in Austin... alas, the time skew is back, also.

Yes, I just now noticed that the guide was going out 8 days. I'm suffering from whiplash!

Whiplash or not, no question you people are suffering.

Sometimes the 8 day guide will not populate. I've had the problem once (i'm sure posted somewhere above!) while others had full guide. I don't think I was able to say what made it come back. It just eventually did after a few days (or week or so).
So to summarize:

1. If we want accurate clock and don't care about 8 day guide data for DC, then set zip code to B'More.

2. Keep DC zip code and reboot PAL after 6:30pm via "updates on" to get an accurate DC clock MIGHT give you an accurate clock for evening recordings?

Hi, stranger here in Austin, struggling with 2 Sony DHGHDD500 DVRs the last few weeks, But today I got 5-6 days of program listings! I think via the OTA CBS signal. Hope to find out what is going on since I was reading here that TVGOs was kaput from KEYE. I've used these wonderful machines for 5 years.

I'll find out tomorrow whether K-EYE had second thoughts or whether another station picked it up. Thankfully, it's back for the moment.

I'm assure you, it does, perfectly ! Running regular TSreader with three or four different ATSC cards (PCI and PCIe) with BDA drivers.

I believe your summary is correct. The lack of certainty derives from my no longer trusting my clock setting screen when it always shows TVG as the source. Given the other symptoms here, for all I know the clock source may actually be PSIP.

Just talked to Mike Wengler at KVUE. They installed the ROVI box late yesterday afternoon as we noticed. He seemed pretty upbeat about it. Even mentioned they'd be watching the time closely in their studio though I hadn't said anything about the 'problem'. So let's see if this is an improvement or if the problem persists. My clock seems to have been better behaved lately. Fingers crossed . . .

If someone could dissect the station mux for start... I mean what reserve level they set (null packets PID 01FFFh) ?

Thanks for the update, that solves that mystery... with the two TVGOS stations within range deleted from my channel list, KEYE and KNCT, I was still getting a TVGUIDE time sync, albeit 2 minutes slow.

KVUE Null packets running at 683 Kbps now. When I checked them last fall they were at 750 Kbps, so pretty consistent.

Primary HD Channel = 11.5 Mbps
-2 subchannel = 3.3 Mbps
-3 subchannel = 1.2 Mbps

Took two timestamp measurements at 6:38:00PM (NIST) and 7:03:00PM (NIST), they translated to 6:36:00PM and 7:01:00PM, so clock is skewed slow by two minutes. This happens to be exactly what is displayed by both DVRs. The optimist in me says "at least the skew is under 5 min!", but the pessimist maintains, "here we go again!"

Last 24 hours the clock has been acceptable. I can live with this. Maybe the new hardware installation at KVUE 'fixed' things . . . more or less . . .