The Official AVS Dish DTVPal DVR Topic! - Page 497

At least this DVR can still be used with limited PSIP data, or VCR style unlike the Sony.
Gota love advance notice (eight days after the fact).

So Sony DVR is useless after TVGOS is unavailable?

I'm assuming, if the "No Listing" grid remains, one could do manual recordings for the stations in the grid. That is only an assumption.

I just talked to my local host stations engineering department which is the PBS affiliate and they already pulled the equipment and sent it back to Rovi on Nov 2nd! The notice from Rovi was dated October 1st.

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Edited by videobruce - 11/8/12 at 1:19pm

Seems to me we could get the ROVI's price finally after all the boxes will be disconnected, someone from some station could tell how much they paid for the service.

Yes, and one can do event recordings for anything already listed from PSIP info; or for channels/times without PSIP guide info, one can do event recordings for any one-hour period starting on the hour within the coming week on a known channel, because where the unit has no guide info it fills everything in with one-hour slots.

> I would like to hear from any users here who have used the DTVPal DVR/CM-7000PAL DVR for extended periods with no TVGOS

I was without TVGOS for a couple of months; too dumb to figure out that I could get it back by doing a reset.

It was annoying but useable. The PSIP worked, but was sometimes just a few hours ahead or missing. I found myself recording one hour blocks to get a half hour show, and the recording list would have several "no information available" blocks.

dattier;
My comment was referenced to the Sony DVR, not this one.

I have "no information available" with some stations like KTTV 11.x even though I have TVGOS. They only have a few hours of TVGOS for those stations. The bigger ones like ABC, NBC, and CBS have the seven days listings from TVGOS. I just wait hours before my recordings with TV Guide, or manually set them like a VCR.

Thanks for clearing that up, but your post that I quoted didn't say that nor did it refer to a previous post that said it, AND it's in this thread.  Therefore it's understandable that I thought you were speaking about the DTVPal DVR.

It was a response to the very previous post.

My first inclination was to explain the reasons that one can't count on that for establishing context and that it's a good idea to quote a little even then, but it came off as too didactic and lecturing, and surely you already know them.

Just please make sure that your intent can be understood by people who enter or re-enter the thread at that point.  Thank you.

To try to bring this back on topic, I'm still getting a week of TVGOS from WBBM.  It doesn't include all stations but it never did.

And now it's all back to normal. Go figure.

Buffalo, NY - DTVPal DVR reboots every time I use it now. Can't say 100% it is because TVGOS is gone - but too much of a coincidence to say its not. I'll give it a couple more days and I'll mess around with some settings. If it continues to be problematic, I'll get a TIVO.

Make sure the vents in the side of the case are not blocked with dust, etc. Running hot can cause reboots.
Also if you haven't already, install the F208 FW.

One of the first to own one of these. Been using F208 since it was released. Reboots weren't a problem following the firmware update. Been running great for years. I will check it out for dust - appreciate the suggestion.

Another thing to consider - program and timers data can become corrupted, which can cause frequent reboots.
Mine started rebooting the other day, and I solved it by doing a Factory Defaults reset. That erases the corrupt data.
Just food for thought...

So, you can't see corrupted data on screen beside reboots?

Corrupted data inside flash memory [EEPROM] (include constantly changing EPG) is inevitable outcome of a design the DVR; say hello to UK designers who purposely ignored common practice to save/update/fetch EPG data to/from a drive.

Just got another reboot. It becomes unresponsive for about 5 minutes then reboots.

I ran the installation wizard which reset my channels and cleared my timer settings. I also disabled TVGOS for the EPG. I'm hopeful this stops the reboots.

Or not. It WAS fine, up until 10pm or so. At 8 pm I watched The Vampire Diaries on The CW while recording The Voice on NBC (the subchannel and main channel which I previously mentioned have the odd guide behavior every time change, incidentally); the clock was correct at that time, the guide was correct, I had no problems watching the program, and the show recorded fine. I then watched Person Of Interest and Elementary on CBS from 9-11 pm, and at 10 pm I had a timer set up to record Scandal on ABC. (All of this was through the DVR.) Somehow everything became shifted again and instead of recording Scandal, it recorded Grey's Anatomy. And my guide information is once again shifted an hour later than it should be. This is about the same time of night when I first noticed it yesterday, strangely enough--don't know if that's related to the issue or just a coincidence.

ETA: I forgot to mention that the "Scandal" recording ended up being 58 minutes long, despite being set to record for 62 minutes. The timer shows as completed in the log, not stopped short for any reason.
Edited by ABHiDef - 11/8/12 at 8:40pm

Good luck; please keep us posted.

Your best bet when you experience "bizarre" behavior like you are having with the DTVPal DVR is to do a restore to factory defaults. I've found from past experiences that if you don't do a restore odd things continue to happen seemingly at random.

I'm curious if you carried over any program timers (especially recurring program timers) over the recent time change. If so, that could be the cause of your problem. A few years back I kept some recurring program timers over the DST time change and they were fine the first week. In the second week after the time change, however, they shifted by an hour. Based on that experience I NEVER carry ANY timers over the time change. I delete all of them and re-enter them after the time change takes place. I have not had any problems since I started doing that.

Another point to make is that even though you were watching a program "live" while another was recording, your live show is still recording to the hard drive. Did you do any "trick" functions (pause, skip ahead, skip back, etc.) while you were watching your "live" program? From my own personal experiences (and I have duplicated this behavior) I have found that if you happen to be using a "trick" function on a program that is currently being recorded to the hard drive at the same time another program is supposed to start to record it can cause some problems. I have had skipped recordings, misnamed recordings, etc. all related to this.

Regarding your Scandal recording being 58 minutes long even though it was set to record for 62 minutes, that's a glitch that I have seen from time to time. I've had programs that I've recorded show up afterwards being a minute or two short or long but the entire program is recorded. Last night's Grey's Anatomy was 62 minutes long but showed up in my DVR as 63 minutes after it recorded. I think it has to do with the way the DVR calculates the time from the data stream that it is recording. Different channels have different data stream rates and I think the DVR is not always totally accurate in the recorded time that it displays after the recording has taken place.

I can confirm that the time change bug affects both manual and guide-selected timers, at least on my unit each time we switch. Might have something to do with the local TVGOS sender. I've just learned to delete all timers before the switch and then add them back afterwards. Forgot to keep an eye on it last week and missed Grimm on Friday.

Will miss TVGOS, although I had only a few stations that populated 7 days. None of the subchannels had more than a few hours.

You can set a manual timer event for any day and time you wish if you know what is on. I think I once set a manual timer for an event that was several weeks away but I forget how but as long as the channel is listed in the guide you can enter any start time and duration withing reason.

It didn't work - rebooted after an hour and a half of use this morning.

I'll pull it out, clean it up, and do a factory defaults reset.

Yes, a manual timer.  But with this unit, manual timers and event timers have some different characteristics (details would be too long to go into now).  In some circumstances one or the other does the job better, and in some circumstances one or the other won't do the job at all.

There can be ways to get an event timer even for something that isn't in the guide.  For example, if there's a guide entry, not already set to be recorded, with the same start and end times on another channel, you can create an event timer for it and edit the channel.  Another is that you can take a slot that, if repeated, will include what you want to record, and which has a guide entry for a closer date, and set up a repeating event timer and just delete recordings unwatched until the date you care about.  Unfortunately, sometimes neither of those opportunities is available.

(Maybe you can edit the date as well as the channel, and if there's anything at that slot of the day on any channel on any date, you can set an event timer and then edit it?  I'll have to check into that, though I probably won't remember to post what I find.)

 

I have both a DTVPal DVR and a DTVPal+ that is used as a front end to a NTSC recorder so I decided to see what was on the Pal+. On the sidebar that normally has the advertisements there was a statement that starting November 1 and ending April 2013 TVGOS, VCR+ and other ROVI services would be discontinued so I guess there is no doubt that they are serious. It also said to contact your CE manufacturer as though they will upgrade their software to get information from the internet or something.

Yeah, an URL been posted somewhere above, where you can see that screenshot. Shameless business.

I wonder how long the power supply, specifically the electrolytic capacitors, will keep functioning. Your symptom sounds like it could be a power supply problem.