The Official AVS Dish DTVPal DVR Topic! - Page 425

[So, did you measure +5V/+12V on HDD connector with the drive ?]

Great, thanks for the tip. I'm glad to hear that two (or more) of these things can nicely coexist.

A 5x5 piece of cardboard is a heck of a lot smaller and easier to work with than using the manual and wrapping it in foil makes for a more professional and functional signal block.

Anyway I suspect most people will prefer to mess with the remote. The way I use the 2 DVRs the cardboard trick is simple and effective and really no bother.

I'm glad to hear this -- thanks for the info. With the large number of channels and sub-channels now viewable from the Wash DC area (at the moment around 42, I believe), owning more than one "PAL" sounds like an attractive luxury!

It's Friday, 13May11, at 9:00 AM, I just checked and the clock is still accurate.

As suggested to me by several members, the thing which did the trick here was the factory defaults. However in my case the reason for doing this wasn't solely the clock problem -- it was more that I wasn't seeing much advance TV Guide info. Maybe something had become corrupted in my "PAL" -- maybe yours too?

Noticed last night the red record light wasn't on at 11 pm like it should be. I have three programs set to record daily. Checked the timers in Daily Schedule, and the Pal had deleted two of my three M-F timers that were working reliably up until last night. Very strange.

I should have clarified, all I did was change the zip code. (Being South of DC antenna always points towards the DC and B'more stations). Changing the zip code clearly changed the clock and TVGUIDE data from one market to the other. Note, it likely took several hours to effect the change.

I'll check mine tonight and see how it is doing as now since I have had it set with a DC Zip code for the past week.

I was hoping others in DC would report a clock skew so that I could confirm that all 3 of my PALs are now magical. Instead, it appears that your PAL is simply cursed. You haven't done anything crazy like record episodes of Supernatural? If you remember, when Charmed went off the air it took almost the entire NTSC spectrum with it.

The first question: What convinced you that a cold reboot was necessary instead of a simple zip code reset, or channel scan, or soft reboot?

Could you give us a timeline of what you tried and when?

It's possible that someone is still fidgeting with the broadcast clock and you picked a bad week to stop cold reboots at 7pm.

Is the coax output on the back of the DTVPal digital or analog?

analog, of course ..(shaking head at poster too lazy to read)...

It took awhile for everything to finish changing the last time I made a change (using the factory default option). I didn't go back every hour to check since it was overnight, but by the next morning the whole TVG listing was complete. This says it took at most 9 hr.s (possibly way less than that).

My auto-updates have been disabled at least since May 8th, so no attending nightly resets here, and the clock is still good.

Turns out I still had the B'more zip code in there (and time was accurate.) I made the change around 7:30pm Fri night and headed out for a few hours. Got back, clock was still accurate, but still no extended guide. Put the PAL on Ch. 9 (to guarentee the PAL sees the data) and definitely by morning the DC Multiday guide was populated. I think it actually came back within a couple hours of putting on Ch. 9, but do not recall for sure.
Clock was still accurate in the AM.

Any time you make a change to your system in the evening hours, that requires a TVGOS update (changing your zip code between two DMAs, or a Factory Default), that update doesn't happen until 1:00 am. There just aren't any TVGOS listings sent out between 5:00pm, and 1:00am.

Mark

I did not post this question out of laziness. I spent half an hour unsuccessfully searching this thread for the answer before asking the question.
Then, you write "of course", as though anything that is obvious to you should be obvious to everyone. Tisk, tisk. Oh, and last but not least, thanks for the info.

You OBVIOUSLY did not read post #1 of this thread - where that question would have been answered. tisk, Tisk.

Hey scooper that brings up a rather interesting question. Let's say you are using the same RG6 cable to go from the antenna to the DTVpal. That signal would be digital? Because if you attach the HDMI to the DTVPAl that is a digital signal. So I wonder why the Coax output could not be made to have digital since Rg6 can obviously carry a digital signal.

Ok - the DTV PAL DVR CAN pass through the OTA signal - so, in that sense it would be digital. However - the licensing costs associated with producing 8vsb digital (or even clear QAM) are out of proportion when there are much cheaper alternatives (i.e. HDMI / component video with RCA analog outputs and TOSLINK digital audio output). So - if pressed I would say the RF signal output is still NTSC analog (I'm not even sure if it is in stereo or not).

No, the signal on the RG6 cable is not digital. It is an analog signal with modulation. When the signal is demodulated, it is either an NTSC analog waveform, or ATSC digital data (a bunch of ones and zeroes). To the RG6 cable they both appear to be the same, which is why you don't have to buy special cable to receive an ATSC signal. As far as I know there are no consumer devices that output an ATSC signal over the coax.

Mark

From Post #7853

Go to: http://www.zeevee.com/connected-home/where-to-buy

This will allow you to Xmit 8VSB to ANY ATSC receiver in your house using RG-6 coax.
Although very expensive, worth any backaches crawling under or over your home...

Although more commercial/pro than consumer, you can.

Not quite. It's not ATSC its QAM.

Thanks for the answer

I had seen that device before (and yes it does look to be QAM, and not ATSC). I was talking about a DVR that has one of those built into it (basically an ATSC RF Modulator), so it outputs its own signal over an ATSC channel, which is what SillyConVal was originally asking (sort of). Can you imagine how much the DTVPal would cost if it had one of those in it? It would make the TIVO look cheap.

Mark

My point about "Analog, of course"

More tidbits:

Great -- let's hope yours (and all the others) stays that way!

I tried deleting ch.9-1 (TVGOS channel). My time corrected itself instantly and then added 9-1 back - so far, so good and it's been 3 days - clock accurate within seconds and TVGOS listings are being received! Maybe the DC problem has been fixed...

Because of your clock skew several days ago, I'm still wondering if the DC clock is completely fixed or just mostly fixed. What time of day did you delete 9.1 and then add it back? And, was your previous problematic reboot in the morning or some other time of day?

It appears to me that the widespread clock skews may have only occurred in PALs that were acquiring the timestamps between about 1am and 7pm. The time-stamps between 7pm and 1am might have been accurate all along. Because J-D-H originally had his PAL set to update at 1am (and his clock skewed), we can assume there was a problem with the timestamps going forward from 1am. Since my 2 skewed PALs were fixed by 7:10pm zip code resets, I'm guessing they acquired their timestamps for some period afterward.

Mabuttra has said the Sony dvrs check the clock 5 times a day. Maybe the PAL checks 5 times within a window of several hours. When the Austin group selected a time to reset based on accurate time-stamp readouts, they initially acquired an accurate clock. But, it skewed within several hours. Since my PALs never skewed again, it seems reasonable to assume the Pal needs a window of accurate time-stamps to maintain the correct time. The window of accurate time-stamps was sufficient in DC but not in Austin.

With your cold reboot, you may have revealed a time of day when the clock data is still not accurate.

True, I missed the output scheme from my original search/forum statement (looking for 8VSB) of two years ago(told it was 8VSB and cost was $1000 so I stopped at that). But, the plan was to xmit HD video(and audio)over existing RG/6 cable. My inexpensive bedroom Vizio E320VA has a clear QAM tuner(as do many other TV's) so the zeevee box should be an acceptable alternative.

According to:

sneals2000
AVS Special Member
*
Join Date: May 2003
Location: UK
Posts: 5,900
"QAM, 8VSB, OFDM, QPSK, 8PSK etc. are all different ways of carrying (or modulating) a digital data stream over radio waves. They each have different advantages and disadvantages, and thus different schemes are used for cable, OTA, satellite etc.

QAM is used for digital cable in the US, 8VSB for OTA in the US (and COFDM for OTA in Europe and other parts of the world)

Because the broadcasts are digital it is possible to re-broadcast them in a number of ways. In some cases you can take the entire transport stream from one source (say 8VSB OTA) and remodulate it with few changes using a different system (say QAM digital cable. You needn't touch the mullticasting or video compression at all - though you ARE likely to have to modify the accompanying service data carrying information like broadcast frequency, logical channel number etc.

You may also decide to just carry some of the services if the original source is multicast - so you may strip out the MPEG2 video and audio streams and re-multiplex these, still not touching the video compression, so causing no quality loss.

OR you could re-compress (or rate shape which allows you to reduce the bit rate without de-compressing and re-compressing) if you want to reduce the data rate of a service OR you need to move from constant bit rate to stat mux variable bit rate, or vice versa.

So bottom line - 8VSB->QAM can be done losslessly, or it can be done with a quality change, it depends on the demands of the application..."

Equally unless one wants to repeat a TV show from PALDVR to PALDVR, QAM is another way to go.

Bingo -- I just figured out how to do a discrete on. Press sys info, and then select.

Since the unit has auto shutoff, don't need a discrete off.

So ... added those two commands to the macro that switches to watch TV.