The Official AVS Dish DTVPal DVR Topic! - Page 531

With help from a number of you, I made the decision to play with my DTVPals and their drives. To refresh the story, I have 2 DTVPals, one is pretty old and I will refer to it as the "old" DTVPal. The other has not been used and has been stored in my basement for about 3 years for when my old DTVPal failed; I will call it the "new" DTVPal. When I first got the new one, I unboxed it and it seemed to work.

But, now when I tried the new one it would take a really long time to boot up after power on and then in live TV mode it freezes up almost constantly and is useless.

I experimented with both DTVPals, removing their drive and seeing that they worked pretty well that way. At least I think they both worked without their drives, but my memory is shaky on that.


However, after learning to remove the cover on the old DTVPal, I decided to remove the cover on the new DTVPal, too. Then I ordered a 1TB internal disk drive to see if one of the DTVPals would work with a new drive. However, while I was waiting for the drive to arrive, I tried the new drive in the old [edited this because it was backwards before -- thanks, wiscojim] DTVPal. There was no change in the bad behavior and I was pretty disheartened. Then I reversed it: on a lark I tried the old drive in the new DTVPal. Bingo, it works. I cannot figure that out and would appreciate any clarifications you might have. However, I am sure that this paragraph is truth and not a result of bad memory or mistaken acts. But this paragraph does not seem logical to me.

I have not opened the 1TB drive and am trying to decide whether to return it in a week or so after I have more experience with the old drive in the new DTVPal.

Brian in Atlanta
Edited by zerowords - 2/8/13 at 3:32pm

Not sure what you are trying to say here. You claim you reversed it, but the way you wrote it you did the exact same thing twice, with no reversing. In both instances you claim you "tried the old drive in the new DTVPal".

Sounds like one Pal DVR was failing due to a bad drive and the other was failing for some other reason. When you swapped drives you ended up with a bad drive in the bad DVR and a good drive in the good DVR.

You can still upgrade the good DVR (the one that's working now) with the 1TB drive (which will give you more room for recordings) if you wish, and keep the other drive as a spare.

BTW, my experience agrees with yours: a Pal will work without a hard drive, although of course you can't record, nor pause/rewind/FF a live show. Basically it acts just like an (expensive) STB.

Datter answered this, but just to clarify: yes, you can still create repeating (weekly or daily) timers even without TVGoS. Just go to the proper date, time, and channel in your guide; without TVGoS it'll probably say "no info" and will be exactly one hour long, but don't worry about that. Just press Select and set your recording options.

If the actual show is shorter or longer than an hour, you'll have to edit your timer after creating it, to reflect the desired start and/or end time.

When the timer runs, the recording will often have the correct name, because by that time the guide will be filled in for the channel being recorded. Exception: if you edit the timer to start early, the recording will probably have the name of the preceding program instead. But once the recording is done, you can rename it as desired.

Ironically, this situation turns one of the Pal's disadvantages into an advantage; i.e., the Pal doesn't do name-based recording. Instead, it works more like a "smart" VCR: when you set a timer, it just records that channel at the specified date & time regardless of what show is on. So you don't have to have the correct program name in the guide for recording to work.

Has TVGOS finally been disabled in the Washington DC area? My guide has stopped showing entries beyond about 12 hours.

Same.
No TVGOS from DC or Baltimore zip codes. I miss it.

Editing the start time or duration or both will convert it from an Event Timer to a Manual Timer, and the special properties of Event Timers will be lost; so if you're going to have to edit it, you might as well just create a Manual Timer in the first place.  AFAIK the only parameters of an Event Timer that can be edited without converting it are the channel and the repetition.  (Hmm; I wonder about the date.  I think that the date of an Event Timer can't be edited at all, unless you've edited the start time or the duration, let it be converted to a Manual Timer, saved it, and returned to edit it again after it has become a Manual Timer.)

But I had more fun with my unit tonight; that will be in a separate post.

New oddity tonight (unit purchased 2010-04-11 with F208 already installed): one program on one station had a synopsis that really upset the DVR.  We actually get that station on two channels, and if I tuned to one of them and pressed Info, the unit would reboot.  That didn't happen on any other channel , even during the same show on the other channel with the same programming, and it didn't happen during the next program on the channel where it had happened earlier.  It occurred when I was tuned to the show and pressed Info, three times out of three, and I belive it also occurred when I located the show in the guide and pressed Info.  Fortunately, it was not recording at the time.

So, fun fun fun, now it isn't safe to press the Info key during recording, unless recording makes the unit immune to the problem.

About a year ago, the PSIP on one of my PBS stations (KRCB) would cause my TV (LG) to spontaneously power itself off if I tried to view the description of the program in the upcoming timeslot. IIRC it happened on two different days, but I haven't observed the phenomenon since. It seems any station is capable of sending glitch-worthy guide data that will cause various devices to shut down.

Did anyone ever have problems with their DVR rebooting when they go through their recording? I'll hit the DVR button, then scroll down a few recording, then all of the sudden my DVR reboots. I just got switched over to PSIP data a few days ago from TVGOS and did a full factory reset (even w/ the antenna unplugged) and I'm still having this issue just as of today. Thank you

Are you sure? According to this and this, KPIX pulled their inserter sometime last Monday.

Mark

I had had a similar problem with a Zenith CECB back in 2008-9 (when I was still using it).  You'd think a device could display text without getting upset about the content.

I am having the same issue. it happened around 2/8 pm ET. Any idea?

I am having the same issue. it happened around 2/8 pm ET. Any idea?

? What's with your recent bad posts?

Perhaps the person who's entering the text is copy/pasting from a word processor rather than a plain text editor? Formatted text can really screw things up.

I have a similar problem to what I am reading here, though mine is more serious. It also happened the night of the 8th, so makes me think it is related.
My DTV Pal won't let me view my Recordings section. I can get to the screen where it shows My Recordings, and the Schedule, and it will let me enter the Schedule section. But as soon as I try to enter My Recordings, the picture disappears, the green and red lights are on for a few seconds, and then it reboots, reloads the channels, and everything is fine again for watching TV, but as soon as I try to view my list of recordings, the same thing happens.
I suspect the HDD might be close to full, but I can't even get in to delete some of them, or to even see how much time is left. It recorded some shows on the 7th without issue, and I was able to view the list of recordings then, and watch one of them, I just didn't notice how many hours were left. This problem appeared on the 8th while I was recording one channel and watching another, and tried to check the amount of hours left. I was going to stop the recording of the one channel if the HDD looked too full, but since the recording light came on again after each of the reboots, I ultimately decided I should just let it keep recording. But even with no shows recording, I couldn't get in to My Recordings.
I then tried a factory reset, but that didn't help. And now the TVGuide logo is gone, but since that would happen with any reset, I don't know if my issue was due to TVGOS leaving my area, or if my hard drive is dead, etc. Is there an easy, foolproof way to know if a hard drive is broken?

As usual - remove the drive, use Linux: disable spin-off during power on, run MHDD or Victoria, get SMART before and after Scan&Remap process.

100%.

Right now I see Time/ID98/ID100/ID26 for 5 min monitoring. Wanna see TSReader's snapshots or a log ?

CO_Bear had this problem a few weeks ago. His first post about it was here, and his last post was here.

In short he went to the recordings screen, and figured out which recording caused the DTVPal to reboot. He then went back to the recordings screen, chose "select all", and then unselected all the recordings except the bad one, and then chose "Delete".

Mark

I said "easy". This is Greek to me. LOL! I have no idea what any of that stuff means. :-(

I don't need a log, thanks. What does your DTVPal show? Does it have listings beyond next Monday? Maybe the listings aren't updating.

Mark

Find a computer geek/nerd/person.

I could help in diagnosis, testing, recovering your data from old drive.

Didn't use the DVR for last weeks ... after turning on, it didn't show anything, I did reformat the drive [Seagate 160 GB], video is OK now; did run Wizard, it got time from TVGuide, but no showing a logo, nor data after Mon 3:30pm for 44.1 KBCW (other channels has much less data). I'll wait for one hour to check if the logo will comes back.
But TVGoS stream [PID 0x0111] is there, so the box is connected and running. Perhaps ROVI drop monkey wrench into it

LuvMyDVR33 I had the same problem as you described, also started with 2/8/13 recordings. I deleted the problematic recordings as described in that post by Co_Bear and now I'm back up and running, no problems. I don't think you should worry about a problem with the hard drive until you have at least attempted the simple corrective option described. Hope that helps.

I read how to delete the recordings, and I would certainly love to be able to delete the one from last night that is probably in 3 parts after the 2 reboots during it, but that method of selecting all and then unselecting the others won't woork for me if I can't even get into My Recordings. Is there another way to view and delete the list of recordings besides thru the DVR button and then the My Recordings option?

Kudos to CO_Bear and Mabuttra for the tips. Your tip works great. My advice to LuvMyDVR33 is to record a new show for about 5 minutes then stop the recording. This will give you access into My Recordings. Then follow advice by CO_Bear to delete the "bad" show. Works like a charm.

I think the problem is that the bad recording is the first one in your list. I would just record something new (anything at all, just for five minutes should work), just so the bad recording would no longer be first in the list. I think you could get to your recordings screen then.

Edit: Chanman123 beat me to it.
Mark