The Official AVS Dish DTVPal DVR Topic! - Page 514

For no reason? C'mon, you've posted the same basic messages dozens of times over and over. People here would rather see some new ideas rather than the same old futile twaddle from you.


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Linux and FreeBSD have a core of people in place and a system to test changes before committing them and releasing them for general use. Doable be but does take some effort.
Edited by WillN937 - 12/18/12 at 10:02am

But how many of the testers would own DTVPals? Can't test without the needed hardware . . .

Agreed, but this insistence from some parties that they're gonna force Rovi to do what they want, or force EchoStar to go back and make extensive alterations to its firmware to support something else is bordering on delusional. Ask, fine. But be realistic.

But Rovi's not in the business of dealing with end users. So "the ability to then by a TVGOS subscription from Rovi" is not even a thing. And why would Rovi want to do that? It's like with HBO GO - they don't want to deal with end users, and have the end-user billing and support apparatus that would be necessitated by such things. I'm pretty sure the court decision that allowed EchoStar to pull in TVGoS data only applied to OTA data, not via the Internet, so I'm pretty sure that any license would have to be for the entire customer base, and would necessitate EchoStar signing a license for TVGoS 10.1 or later, and incorporating TVGoS software, which would require significant alterations to the software. That's gonna be a massive amount of money. For a product they don't sell, or support, or even acknowledge anymore. $100 per user would be cheap for what all that would cost.

Open sourcing it will most likely never happen. The software that was used on the DTVPal was, I believe, based on the same base code as was used on their Dish satellite DVRs. They're not gonna want that running around in the wild. That assumes they wrote all the software, too - I'm guessing some part of it is probably licensed, in which case, even if they released what they have the rights to release, you would get an incomplete code base. Essentially, half or maybe three-quarters of a DVR. That might be replaceable, but they're not going to want to invest more developer time replacing software components.

Open source is nice, but it's not magic fairy dust.

Problem is you are not going to get a core of people to make firmware changes to the PALDVR. AT best you will get one or two people to work on it with limited funds etc.

Secondly I have dabbled in LINUX trying out 4 plus distros and I have had distros bomb after installing updates. There are stable releases and unstable releases and there are releases where you basically reload a new system.

Not sure this is really comparable to a firmware upgrade that would be needed for the PALDVR for a number of reasons.

I have utilities that I use that the developer says use at your own risk, and that and other caveats in the fine print are to avoid lawsuits. Devices have been destroyed by firmware upgrades. Unless I was sure about who was doing the upgrades I would stay away from them. Or at least I would let some early adopters install first and see what they have to say before I took the plunge.

Anyway this whole discussion is a waste ot time as there won't be any further firmware upgrades no matter how much Keyboard21 and others wish for it.

Merry Christmas and a HAppy 2013 to all on this forum!

This is not the place to discuss Linux and I would like to stick to the PALDVR issues. Future firmware updates will never happen. Just like ROVI will never fire up TVGOS again. You need to start wishing for more realistic things to happen in 2013......like more worthwhile content for OTA. Or better reception! And even those are sketchy!

Well, any open-source software/firmware would probably be distributed under GPL or a similar license, expressly disclaiming any warranty.

So lawsuits are unlikely; nevertheless, your point is well taken. Firmware upgrades are inherently risky, as we've discussed earlier in the thread: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1099071/the-official-avs-dish-dtvpal-dvr-topic/15320_20#post_22699557

My local station stopped updating TVGOS a week ago. I asked their engineer if it was a temporary outage,
and he said Rovi had demanded their equipment be returned, so its gone forever.
Just my $0.02

I wouldn't expect them to. I realize Rovi & Echostar are both B2B businesses; for anything like this to happen they'd have to partner with a B2C business that's set up to deal with things like billing and cutting off subscriptions for non-payers. Dish might be a good choice, but they have their own interests. As I said, there'd be a lot of negotiation involved.

Also I said "maybe" $100. (I was being deliberately optimistic.) Since none of us knows anything about the software, we can only speculate how hard it would be to replace Echostar's current TVGOS software with, say, 10.1. It could be either a snap or a major undertaking. And we don't know how the licensing would work. I think Rovi normally expects to make their money on software license fees; a subscription model would be new for them even if another company were handling the retail end. But a smaller, steady income stream from these units might be more appealing than a big lump sum from a one-time upgrade fee.

Obviously, all of the above is a pretty long shot. Basically, we'd be asking Echostar to support their product once again, but for a fee. I realize the difficulties and am really not much more optimistic than you are; I'm just trying to show that there might be a remote possibility, if we could show Echostar that 500 DTVPal users are all willing to pay at least $100 for one more upgrade that offered a replacement for TVGOS and fixed the daylight saving time bug. That's only $50K but Echostar could infer the possibility of much more, if news of the upgrade were advertised beyond this forum.

You're probably right. See highlighted caveat above. Another concern I didn't even mention is the Pal's proprietary file system. If Dish's satellite DVRs use the same file system, Dish probably won't let Echostar release that. That means the open-source version would have to use another file system (probably Linux), and that installing it would erase all your existing recordings.

And I realize that even in the best case, Echostar can only release what they wrote. It would be up to individual open-source developers to obtain, or replace, any proprietary software development tools, including compilers for the Pal's processor, etc. Again I was just trying to highlight whatever remote possibilities exist, not to build unwarranted enthusiasm. Not to be overly blunt, but it sounds as if you read only the first half of my first sentence and ignored all the if's, and's and but's that followed.

And a good $.02 it was! I'd hoped Rovi would wait at least until April before pulling the remaining plugs, but it sounds like any community could lose TVGoS at any time. The only thing we know for sure is that it'll definitely be gone by April.

I'd be interested to know how much PSIP data stations are transmitting. When I got my 2nd DTVPal, I checked the guide (before it locked onto TVGoS here) and it looked like there was quite a mix: some stations were only sending the minimum 12 hours and some were sending up to 3 days. Most seemed to have 24 hours. That's for DFW; are folks in other communities seeing about the same?

Why are you people so fixated on Rovi and TVGOS? If you are going to make the fantasy migration to an Internet based guide for the Pal DVR, there are already a number of Internet subscription guide services that directly serve the consumer. For example, Schedules Direct provides 8-day guide service for $25/yr and is supported by a number of DVR software applications. So stop with the Rovi stuff and just concentrate on the improbability of E* providing any avenue of firmware modification to support an alternative guide. Then we can eliminate at least half the nonsensical chatter.

Do any such software applications exist for the DTVPal DVR?  If so, what are they and where can they be obtained?

My impression is that there are none, and that for the DTVPal DVR, the eight-day listings from Schedules Direct for $25 per annum are no more useful than the fourteen-day listings available for free at titantv.com or tvguide.com.  You still have to read them and then key your entries into the DVR manually.

 
Edited by dattier - 12/18/12 at 9:58am

It was not my point that the Linux or FreeBSD communities should test the DTVPal DVR software but that open source there worked because there were knowledgeable and dedicated people there that tested the software upgrades before they were released to the general public and that there were usually several beta and release candidates before declaring something was good for general use. Also most of us who use the software know it is "AS IS" with no warranty. I doubt that could happen with this community.

No, they do not. Kelson is saying that if you must spend time trying to improve the usability of this DVR beyond the end of TVGoS, focus your efforts on begging the manufacturer to release one final firmware update to let you get one of the available Internet guides as a replacement for TVGoS. The odds of that happening are low, but they are far better than the odds of TVGoS coming back, because the latter is an impossibility.

Here in my DMA most stations are sending about 12 hours - some less, none more than 12.

For L.A. in my area for the ones that don't have TVGOS listings like KTTV11 use 24 hours. They never use TVGOS schedule.

Less? Wow - I know that LPTVs aren't required to send any guide info, and in DFW many don't. (One doesn't even send PSIP at all - no guide, no date/time, not even a channel map!) But full-power stations are required to send four 3-hour EITs, which is 12 hours. It's possible you may see as few as 9.5 hours though, if you check the guide at the very end of an EIT, since the first 2.5 hours have already passed.

That's probably it, since sometimes I see less than 12 hours, but other times 12.

Here's the skinny on Schedules Direct from Wikipedia: So the data should be basically what's on TMS's Zap2it.com, but in machine-readable form suitable for open-source HTPC software, rather than an HTML Web page suitable for human viewers. There's little point in joining Schedules Direct if you just want a Web browser-based guide.

$25/year is about as reasonable as I ever expect to see for a machine-readable guide. It would be an obvious choice if E* could release open-source firmware for the Pal DVRs, but we've already discussed some of the many issues with that idea.

I know the referenced post is a few months old but wanted to thank Paul for the info. I've ordered a cable and one external drive enclosure and will give this a try myself. The only thing I need to figure out is the best place for the external drive enclosure so it won't get knocked around by household pets

FYI, OTA TVGOS went dark in Philadelphia this past Friday. Can NYC be far behind (both are CBS O&O host channels)?

ROVI wishes you a merry Christmas.

WOW!

I expected more from Rovi. They do not even have the decency to open a dialog on their facebook page . Basically ignoring any negative comment.

I said before that maybe calling the Media. Such as Shame on you. Might get some notice. Yes it is a shame since the elderly rely on TVGOS.

I would of been satisfied if Rovi at least talked about other options. They just ignore us all. For me I will not buy any product associated with Rovi in the future.

It is because on how they handled this whole fiasco. I understand it is a business decision. Their PR dept needs help.

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Besides that being one of the strangest statements ever, would you care to define "elderly"?

Isn't that doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result? Maybe I'm too elderly to know it's the wrong answer.

But you get my point.

I'm 68 years old, and while I really liked TVGOS, I did not rely on it. I'll be getting by just fine with only PSIP.

I'm in my sixties as well, and I'll be getting along acceptably (not knowing exactly what Chuck44 means by "just fine") with PSIP and with info from the web to work from.  It won't be as good as it's been with TVGOS, that's for sure, but it will do.
Both sound like impossibilities.

I agree that neither will happen, but at least getting a one-time update to let the DTVPal get guide data elsewhere is a more realistic goal than trying to get a company to provide guide data indefinitely for free for ten people.

That's basically what I was saying.

The main problem for me is that I won't be able to use the Event Timer settings (in contrast to the Manual Timer settings) unless the show [or one with the same time slot on the same day of a closer week] is close enough to be in the PSIP guide info already, or the show starts on the hour and runs for exactly one hour.  Event Timers allow such things as overlapping timers on the same channel, and picking up the name of the program even if the recording starts a minute or two in advance.

It is a little more difficult to program using PSIP because you have to program a day at a time. The problem that I have lately occurs whether I use TVGOS or PSIP because the networks will not create a schedule and stick with it. PBS does not even have a concept of a schedule and CBS is constantly changing the duration of the time filler before the Mentalist. Then of course you have the sports events then never end on time. Name based recording would be nice.