The Official AVS Dish DTVPal DVR Topic! - Page 468

Within the engineering community, "EE" stands for electrical or electronics engineer, and lab is obviously short for laboratory.

I have no idea what he meant by his comment either since even if you knew an EE working in a lab (or anyone else trained in electronics working in the field anywhere), good luck on getting the technical documentation he'd need to troubleshoot your unit (service manual, schematics, etc.). For that matter, presumably these things use custom integrated circuits, ones virtually impossible to buy via any standard supply house. So assuming you've suffered an electrical failure and not some fixable glitch, it's either an eBay sale for parts (the hard drive?), or off to some warranty repair depot (if they still exist). Isn't the modern world grand with all the throw-away technology?!

Practically, there is no limitation. Use any SATA drive what is in a range 80 GB - 1 TB.
Other personal reasons could be an issue - noise, heat, etc, but there is no other restrictions.
Sure, it would be best to use AV [AV-GP] drives as they designed for 24/7 video streaming, but the device is not that peaky.

If I would do the research, I would post the number, but a) I'm not obligated b) it's your cup of tea.
I thought someone who is inclined to find facts would pick such existing reports and would be appreciated to that person who did his work what allowed to have them here.

Drives with 5400 RPM are perfectly working as AV drives 24/7 and capable to provide 4-5 HD streams [R/W], they have more advantage then 7k2 or 10K or 15K RPM - less energy consumption, less heat, less noise. Remember - special AV dives spinning at 5900 RPM.

There is many way to obtain replacements for broken components: China, other failed devices ...
BTW, the DVR (and other if that matter) using mass production components (while I'm agree it's hard to find those for repair).

Thanks to MikeBiker and J Smith for the help!

What's your thoughts on manufacturer refurbished drives for the DTVPal DVR?

I can get this drive for $70 delivered.
Manufacturer Refurbished Western Digital AV-GP WD5000AVVS 500GB SATA 3.5 Hard Drive in sealed anti-static bag.

My aunt likes a Spanish Soap. I forget name or channel. She does not speak Spanish, but watches it anyway.

I tried putting the DTVpal on different Close Caption settings. I have not got ONE Spanish channel to work with any setting besides CC 1. I read that CC 2 or CC 3 would provide English Sub. I can not get it to work. I understand that not every program works with CC 3. Yet I had my aunt try CC with her Soap with no luck. Any suggestions?


I wish Spanish channels would have SAP like some English shows do for Spanish audiences.

Should be OK; I would check SMART right before install into DVR and would check it once in a quarter.

Thanks.... as long as everything goes well, I'll have myself another perfectly working 500Gb DTVPal DVR for under $150.
Gonna keep my fingers crossed till that time.

I think he just meant that telepathy was not an effective diagnostic method. Someone that knows what they are doing needs to lay on hands. Since there is not documentation even that is not a promising method but sometimes you can measure a few voltages, replace a hard drive or something.

The 5400rpm drives tend to be quieter will usually last longer than the 7200 or 10000 rpm drives but they have lower transfer rates but that even with three recordings (one of the tuner streams can be recorded and buffered for viewing at the same time) thruput does not seem to be an issue because you are still looking at about 60 mbit/sec.

The drives listed in post one are known to work but there is no reason others can not work.

This weekend I had an opportunity to compare, apples-to-apples, my old Pal with a new Tivo Premiere and a ChannelMaster 7400. By a small margin, the Pal was better than the Premiere, which in turn was slightly better than the CM 7400. (A whole bunch of caveats apply. I didn't have any test equipment; every signal situation is different; etc. But the Pal solidly locked a distant PBS affiliate that the others couldn't quite get.)

You went to far - I don't posses such extraordinary thing.

But I don't fix DVRs or other boxes by following regular ppl's description if it not obvious easy problem.

Could anyone give me a good fix idea?

Doesn't suprise me at all.
Yesterday I got a new broken DTVPal DVR, plugged it in and hooked it up to my antenna lead.... within 15 minutes, it had a good time, a zillion channels(of which I might keep 10 or so) and was set up to work... if only it had a working HDD in it.

At worst case I had a two tuner ATSC tuner for whatever I wanted to do with it. Add a HDD, and I got a unit which makes me want to sell my Sony HDD500.

You can get a brand new drive from NEWEGG for about the same price! If given a choice I would buy new even if it costs a few buck more.

I believe it's universally agreed that repairing electronics has become increasingly difficult over the decades. This is not only due to the custom components (which I find to be virtually unobtainable), but also the miniature parts and the special techniques needed to deal with them. But even if all that were not so, good luck on understanding these designs without detailed documentation.

Oh sorry, I thought you had the data in hand. No matter, I'm interested, but frankly only mildly. And certainly not enough to labor over the data to extract the exact numbers. Why? Because while I'm technically curious about the topic, I believe that there's absolutely nothing I can do to influence the situation, and there's no way to get the powers that be to make my clock be accurate again. Heck, the local CBS affiliate no longer even replies to courteous emails, ROVI is unresponsive too (in both cases, because we evidently are a non-issue for them) , so why sweat over this?

By the way, a quick internet search regarding ATSC revealed this:

"Terrestrial (over-the-air) transmission carries 19.39 megabits of data per second..."

This certainly implies to me that unless they are doing something truly stupid, the TVGOS data ought to take up a tiny amount of that channel bandwidth capacity. And beyond this, knowing the bandwidth percentage to hyper accuracy gains nothing.

Right, with no documentation and no understanding of these specific circuits, troubleshooting would be reduced to just a few areas. Certainly the HDD, maybe a few power supply components, etc. Unfortunately modern consumer electronics companies have us right where they want us -- beyond the warranty period, faulty boxes frequently must just go into the trash.

Beyond tuner sensitivity differences, did you notice any areas where the 7400 is better than the 7000? Maybe this is "off topic", but I can't imagine a more appropriate place to report 7400 vs 7000 comparison info. For instance, any idea whether the 7400 keeps time well? Or is that not a problem in your part of the country?

Take a tour in that 7400's dedicated thread ... You'll find much more info about that model there, include an answer to your last question.

Thanks for this. Who knows, maybe there will be 7000 owners there as well, people who can contrast the two. It would be very illuminating to find out whether the 7400 keeps time better than the 7000 does in the Wash DC area.

I just found a forum ( www.dtvusaforum.com ) with a thread polling user experience with TVGOS. Assuming the poll is accurate, it shows TVGOS to be amazingly unreliable, and this seems to be independent of the user's receiving hardware. For what it's worth, here's their summary:

TVGOS is functioning properly and I've never had any problems - 16.67%
TVGOS is functioning properly, but I have had problems with it before - 10.00%
TVGOS is not working right now - 73.33%

The CM-7400 gets its time from an internet time server. There doesn't seem to be any complaints about its ability to keep time.

The vast majority of problem posts in the Pal DVR/CM-7000 threads have something to do with TVGOS. Their solution was to eliminate TVGOS from the CM-7400 and offer you the option of a paid subscription guide service supplied over the Internet. A paid guide offers reliability and a much better user experience.

There are a number of posters who maintain the CM-7000 is the better device. They cite the CM-7000 cost less, the tuner in the CM-7000 is better than the CM-7400, the CM-7000 does not require an Internet connection and TVGOS is free -- whether it works or not is another story, but hey, it's free.

My issue with tvgos is Binghamton NY (WBNG) does not populate the guide. Time is set properly through tvgos. Syracuse CBS does work like it's supposed to but I only receive the channel in the winter time. I think the issues are local and Rovi does not care about your DTVPAL problems.

I see it as very biased and very skewed poll, because:
a) those ppl have no knowledge what is in a TVGOS stream
2) they're reporting behavior of 'machines' eg boxes, not TVGOS content
3) the poll should be re-stated as "what exactly device behave in that three category"
4) need add advanced poll "how good/wrong TVGOS in your local stream" for those who have 8VSB tuners and running TSReader with specialized program for monitor its content.

Your points are all irrelevant to the consumer who just wants to hit the button on the remote and see his/her guide appear, fully populated for all the channels they care about. They only care whether or not it works reliably and not about the technical details behind it -- and they shouldn't have to be concerned with how it works -- not for a consumer device that wants to appeal to the TV-viewing market at large.

TVGOS worked flawlessly for me for the past 2-3 years until CBS NY pulled the plug on it for 2 months recently to supposedly fix something. No time issues and no population issues were ever experienced by me. Since it came back up about a week or so ago it has been flawless. If some stations can go years w/o an issue sending TVGOS it would seem to me it is an issue that is strangely localized to particular stations or areas of teh country. Why one CBS station has issues and another doesn't seems strange too and you would think that CBS was one big happy family with tech people sharing their fixes, Knowledge etc. It almost seems like the left hand doesn't talk to the right hand with CBS.

Anyway, if I took the survey I would have to say I had a problem with TVGOS but that would not accurately tell my experience as on a scale of 1-10 I would give it a 9 and if CBS did not pull the plug for the time they did I would have given it a 10.

I'm completely disagree with you on all counts!

Such polls should have a goal, not for venting frustrated/satisfied customers, but produce facts for making REAL RESULTS what will solve the ISSUE.

Has anyone had any changes in their TVGOS in the past month? I own a CM 7000 which is the same unit as the DTVPal, at least I believe the TVGOS is the same. I live in the greater Seattle area and our OTA station is the CBS affiliate. I have had my unit for close to two years with pretty good results. The main networks are, or have been, fully filled out to seven days and the secondary stations vary from 12 hours to seven days with most being in the two day range. We have had at least one station change OTA channel but even before that happened I have noticed the entire guide only going out five days and occasionally the entire propagation seems to get screwed up, losing entire channels. I have not yet given the local station a call so it may be just a fault of theirs. Has anyone else accross the country seen any changes like this? Is this what happened on the east coast that I have seen a few posts refer to as a problem in New York/New Jersey, and DC as well as others? I have seen this now at least a half dozen times in the past few weeks. Is this a portent of things to come? I have even had times when all the programs that are there seem to disappear for a few hours on selected channels, not the entire guide. This appear quite odd since the record function still shows that I have a scheduled record time slot but the program no longer registers the name. As yet I have not had one actually start a recording when the guide is messed up but that is only a matter of time.