The Official AVS Dish DTVPal DVR Topic! - Page 475

Dude, I sincerely apologize.

Channel 8, our local NBC in the Tampa Bay Area, had been showing up in the Guide as "No Information" for over 10 days. In the last few days, a new channel has shown up as "000-00 No Info" in the Guide with the same programming as NBC. This channel refuses to be deleted and the time slots do not always line up with the No Information slots as shown on the Channel 8guide. Neither Channel 8 nor the 000-00 yield any progam information when highlighted. This has occured on both of our Pal systems. Just another way for TVGOS to screw up, I guess.

Never mind... we got it right.

Thanks, for some reason I didn't see that.

I reformatted with the DTVpal last night, losing all recordings but am back to a working machine (so far!). I don't have a desktop pc to test the HD outside of the DTVpal, but will keep MHDD/Victoria in mind for future use.

Is anyone experiencing a problem with receiving TVGOS in Washington, DC? This last week my guide has stopped being populated with information.

I'm sorry to say that what you are experiencing has been occurring in the Rochester NY area for about a year now. I actually bought a TiVo for the media room, and now the Pal is our backup in the living room.

I'm in Rochester and don't recall ever having any problems with TVGOS. However, I'm not in town right now if you're referring to last few days.

If in your area we could find someone with 8VSB [OTA] card /USB stick , we could gather real info about your TVGOS stream.

Anyone else find their DTVPal messed up this morning? Would not turn on. Only blink the power light and shut right off. It had been so long since it's had a problem I'd gotten spoiled. Finally I did the power button hold down reset, and it came back up, and so did TVGOS. Phew! What a relief. Got it going once again. Just a coincidence with May 1?

Things are fine here in the Austin area this AM. However, something else rather strange has been happening on occasion.

There is a Mon-Fri timer set for KEYE (42). Several times in the last few months, the correct program title is listed but the actual recording is for the KVUE (24) program that occurs at the same time. What would cause the timer to flip from 42 to 24? I have never had a timer set for channel 24 at that time but did delete the one for 42 with no improvement in the glitch.

Has anyone else ever had this happen?

On very rare occasions in the past I've had the DVR tuned to one channel but had it show a different channel.
IIRC F208 put a stop to that.

This has happened to me three times in the last three years. In all thee instances the DTVPal recorded channel 38/36 (PAX) a channel I have never recorded. The programs to be recorded and the header information were for channels 7/18 & 10/30. I concluded that the tuner chip tuned to the wrong channel.

Already running F208. It's not the end of the world but annoying nonetheless that the wrong channel gets recorded.

No problems for me on Tuesday night.

Maybe a "ghost of DST changes past"

If you went through the DST without a factory reset, might a remnant artifact of those issues.

Has anyone in the Seattle area noticed that TVGOS disappeared this week? It stopped populating last Sunday. I have two DVRs and the one that is constantly on still shows the logo but when I turned on my other unit yesterday it still does not show the red logo after 24 hours. This is disappointing to say the least. After two years of nearly flawless TVGOS it certainly makes things more difficult to schedule.

Try resetting back to factory defaults? I had mine lose TV GOS for powering off for the whole summer since there was nothing to watch and it was too hot.

Have you contacted the engineer at the station that broadcasts TVGOS in your area?

Does the machine that still shows the TVGuide logo have a fully populated guide (listings out through day 7)? If it does, then your local TVGOS broadcast is fine, you just need to force the other machine to re-seek and re-acquire that TVGOS datastream. There are several suggested tricks in this thread for doing that, but the most reliable is always the "reset to factory defaults" option. Unfortunately, this option also whacks all your timers (but not your recordings).

If both machines are lacking guide listings for the later part of the 7-day window, then you probably have a problem with your local TVGOS supplier. You can verify who that is on rabbitears.com and then give them a call.

Both machines are missing the TVGOS logo now and the program guide is only the EPG of about 24-48 hours. I have tried emailing the station engineer but as yet have no response. The data stopped populating last Sunday (week ago yesterday) but the data stayed until it ran out on the following Saturday. By the way rabbitears still lists the station as good.

You can try a joint email to the local station engineer and to ROVI at mailto:CE_customer_support@rovicorp.com

Sometimes each party is a little more responsive if they know the other party is also in the loop... Or you can try to get your local guy on the phone. Either way tread softly, history in several markets across the country suggests local stations don't have much love for ROVI and people at ROVI see red whenever somebody mentions the DTVPal.

Good luck!
John

And would be tremendous helpful to have some facts about TVGOS stream.
If you'll ask Trip to find/contact that contributor to his site, to re-check the stream.

I'm in Seattle. You are not alone.
I use the Sony HDD-250 DVR with 8 day TVGOS and a Sony TV KDL-40v4100 with 24 hour TVGOS both are missing updates for the TVGOS. I also lost all updates over a week ago. I have emailed KIRO twice with no response. I have emailed Rovi and gotten a response. They said nothing appears wrong at the KIRO end and are having me work through a diagnostic sheet with the TV. I need to report the results back to them tomorrow. I've run tests on both machines every day for the past week and neither is receiving any information. Each device uses a different version of TVGOS yet neither works. My brother-in-law has a DVR PAL by Dish. He said his guide was missing also. This evening he started getting some listings. Please use the Rovi support link, tell them your device name and your zip code. I know the problem is with KIRO!!!!!!!

I have the exact same problem in Edmonds, WA. Timing is the same and problem is the same. I have also emailed Kiro's engineering deparmtent and have not received a replay.

My suggestions:

1) Keep working the Sony TV debug angle with ROVI, at some point it will dawn on them that the problem is at KIRO and they will add their voice to the chorus of inquiries apparently stacking up at KIRO.

2) As P Smith suggests, get conclusive data on the presence or absence of the TVGOS data within the KIRO broadcast datastream. If any of you have an ATSC tuner card in a PC, we can help you grab that data yourself using free software. If not, take P Smith's advice and contact Trip at rabbitears.info, he probably already has a person identified in your area that can take this data. Here's the link to contact Trip: http://www.rabbitears.info/contact.php

3) Somebody needs to get A. Parks from KIRO on the phone and get an update directly from him. He's clearly not responding to emails. Call the station at Phone: (206) 728-7777, ask for Mr. Parks in Engineering and ask him what is the status of the ROVI encoder that inserts the TV Guide info into their ATSC broadcast stream? If he says it's working fine, tell him there are multiple viewers in the area using at least 3 different devices, none of whom has been able to get TVGOS data in over a week. This is where the conclusive stream info from Trip would aid in the conversation...

Good Luck!
John

I have used this forum to fix many many issues I've had over the years with my DTVPal. I really want to thank many of the posters here. So much information was posted here that I never had to post, just read.

My unit is now, sadly, done in. It got stuck in a reboot loop. In somewhat of a tactical error, I didn't keep the firmware updated. I unplugged the hard drive and it still won't boot. I don't have the skills needed to take it any further with repair. Does anyone know if there is there a market for a broken unit? Nothing is on Ebay, working or broken.

Thanks everyone!

Ditto on this. Thanks everyone in here. Your support is way better than EchoStar's!

Lucky. The only problem with mine was losing TVGOS and incorrect timers due to time changes. This was with the latest firmware too. Why would Dish kill it? They don't support it anymore.

This thread is for the DTVPal DVR, aka Echostar TR-50, aka (very briefly) Freestar DVR, aka Channel Master CM-7000. This DVR first went on sale in Dec-2008 and I don't think new ones are even available anymore. Maybe you bought the CM-7400 or ? In any case, this isn't the thread for your device.

Strange TVGOS behavior in Austin...

I have two DTVPal DVRs, both running F208, both taking signal from the same antenna. Last week one of them (Unit #1) lost TVGOS data only for day 7, then the next day, days 6 & 7, etc. During that time Unit #2 continued to show a fully populated guide all the way to the end. Tried some of the zip-code and time-zone tricks to force Unit #1 to re-acquire TVGOS. None of these worked, so I resorted to the "factory defaults" option and voila, problem solved, Unit #1 re-acquired fully populated guide within an hour or two and has maintained it for over a week.

So yesterday, the other DVR (Unit #2) lost day 7 data and this morning days 6 & 7, etc. You guessed it, Unit #1 still retains fully popluated guide all the way to the end, proving that TVGOS data is still coming in. So I did the "factory reset" on Unit #2 and within an hour or so, fully populated guide was restored.

Anyone else in the Austin area see flaky TVGOS behavior lately?