The Official AVS Dish DTVPal DVR Topic! - Page 541

MPEG-4 is also mentioned under "Technical Specifications" for the DTVPal DVR in the first post of this thread:

•STMicroelectronics STi7109 DVR CPU w/ integrated MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC, and VC-1 decoders

Ah OK. Thanks.

P Smith, please go back and re-read what Scooper wrote and what I wrote. Scooper mentioned "ATSC mobile." I believe he was talking about "M/H:" the "mobile/hand-held" service - not the encrypted MPEG-4 Airbox service that Ion broadcasts. It was M/H that I described that way, to explain why it would look very "alien" to an ATSC receiver not designed specifically for M/H broadcasts.

The Airbox service is as you described. It's encrypted and it uses MPEG-4 instead of MPEG-2, but aside from that it's straight ATSC. As a result the Airbox channels are displayed on some tuners not designed to receive them and can cause other issues, as with the DVICO TViX 6620 DVR. That's why I was curious whether the DTVPal converter box ignored them or whether they caused problems. (I knew our DTVPal DVRs ignore them as they should.)

But M/H is another thing entirely. Go check out any station broadcasting M/H on Trip's rabbitears.info site. In the "technical info" section you'll see the IP multicast addresses you say do not exist. Unlike straight ATSC, M/H was architected as an IP stream, presumably to simplify decoding on IP-capable devices such as smart phones.

8VSB is the common modulation system for all North American digital TV. It has trellis coding - a kind of error correction - built in, and both ATSC and M/H share that. ATSC has additional error correction beyond 8VSB, but even so it's impossible to demodulate accurately from a moving receiver. M/H was designed with additional error correction to overcome that obstacle. As a result, low-definition M/H broadcasts use nearly as much bandwidth (~1.8 Mbps) as a decent SD subchannel (typically around 2.4 Mbps) even though the M/H "payload" (raw data without any error correction) is much smaller.

Yes, you're right, I didn't respond to M/H, but that PayTV service (not sure who is owning it here). That post fixed.

After looking at Trip's site and newest M/H info, I see there is some discrepancy what would require myself dig into it; like the phrase:
"Bandwidth in this chart is based on the M/H data bandwidth of 0.56 Mbps, which is the bandwidth contained in M/H pid 0x1ff6 (1.91 Mbps) minus the total of the various FEC and overhead bandwidths for each parade and ensemble (1.35 Mbps)." from the table http://www.rabbitears.info/atscinfo/64987-0_0.htm

I see how "overhead bandwidths" defined by RTP protocol, but I don't know how the "the various FEC" taking place here. The M/H PID 0x01ff6 is already pass 8VSB demod...

My DTVPal just started acting up. I put the latest F208 on it a couple years ago. Its stuck at the startup splash screen where it tells you to wait.... I pulled the hard drive (WD2500AAJS) and and tried it in my PC, swapping it for a working backup 2tb SATA (not the boot drive). Got an error on bootup of my PC about a 3rd drive being a master or something, and hit the F key to continue. Once up, the drive was not recognized. Tried rebooting a couple times with no luck and then put back the previous 2tb SATA drive and it worked once again.

Does someone have experience on this? Since my PC didn't recognize the drive, I would think there's a good chance problem is the drive. I've dealt mostly with PATA drives and jumpers and not much with SATA but wonder if I need to jumper it to make it work on PC or something else. Or maybe I should go ahead and buy a replacement drive. Thanks.

Are you sure it's 2 TB drive, not old 250 GB ?
See post#1 about HDD limits for the DVR.
Read/search more the thread and you'll find why your DVR's drive is not recognized by your PC/Windows OS (a hint: try boot temporary from CD with Linux)...

To be more direct, the DTVPal does not support 2 TB drives; 1 TB is the maximum supported capacity as of F206 (F208 being the latest). The HDD is also encrypted, so you can't read its contents from anything except a DTVPal.

That's why I mentioned post#1.
As to a content ... It would be DMCA violation to read the drive. But data is not encrypted.

OK you're saying Windows won't recognize the PAL HDD. Got it. The 2Tb HDD happened to be in my PC and had nothing to do with the PAL I was just saying the PC seemed to work with a SATA HDD but not the PAL HDD.

Since I had the PAL box open, I observed what happened when powering it up. What happened was the green and red lights came on and the fan began to spin. That lasted about 10 seconds and then lights went out and fan stopped. Then right after I get the screen on TV saying ... please wait ... That doesn't change. And its not a cycle of reboot after reboot. Simply one bootup and it hangs forever. I also read a post that talked about a soft reboot by holding the remote power button for several seconds. Then you can get into the menu and reset stuff. But that didn't work, still in hung mode.

Had one more idea. I disconnected the data cable to HDD, then powered up. Hangs. Then disconnected power cable to HDD, then powered up. Hangs. Logically this tells me the HDD is not the core problem, its the PAL. Anything left to try before I bury my good old PAL?

It's FW corruption then. It could be cured by reflashing flash memory BGA chip. I did that for members here many times.

If the unit acts exactly the same with the HDD attached as it does with no HDD attached, that just implies that the HDD is not being seen. That could indicate a problem in the PAL (maybe in the disk interface circuitry or possibly in the power supply), but it could also be a symptom of a thoroughly dead HDD.

If this was a healthy PAL what should it do on startup? What lights flash first and how long? Does the fan stopping at same time lights go out mean anything? Does the splash screen appearing within 1 second of lights/fan off mean anything or is normal? My experience on PC bootups would say the light/fan off symptom indicates its in serious trouble right then. Does anyone know what the "loading please wait" message that follows refers to, namely is it loading the FW or loading something from HDD or both?

Both you and David responded with 2 different conclusions (FW corruption vs HDD access problem). I wonder if either of you can say with confidence, in X percent of this kind of symptom, its nearly always FW or HDD access. Since you said FW corruption, can you give a % likelihood of this being the problem? If David is listening maybe he can explain how confident he is too. Thanks again.

My conclusion of possible failure came from on-hand experience fixing the model ( ~ 20 DVRs); I would give FW corruption 95%, and 0% to HDD related failure.

If you'll read the thread backward. you'll find my response to questions similar to your.
Edited by P Smith - 3/4/13 at 10:10am

Last night, I noticed my future weekly Timers show one with "DST". That was cool. I have never seen that before with TVGOS. Has anyone noticed that?

Well...I never thought it would happen to me but one of my 2 PALDVRS just died. It was my first one. It is stuck in the booting up screen and is unresponive to the remote. Itried all the hints in post #1 to no avail. I guess these boxes do die at some point.

So I have to ask. What are the options for an OTA DVR these days. There really are no new PALDVRS, CM7000 or CM7400 on the market anymore.

So outside of using a computer with a tuner in it are there any other PALDVR products out there? I could go the PC route but really don't want a PC by my TV.

I'm not at all familiar with TIVO or what TIVO is all about. Is there a TIVO box that functions like the PALDVR but you have to pay a fee?

Help.....

Yeah, it is frustrating to find OTA DVRs these days. As for TiVo, there are lifetime subscriptions to pay with the DVR purchase without paying per month.

Usually, it's a failure induced by corrupted FW. So far I had 100% success of fixing the issue.

It would be interesting for someone with a healthy PAL to disconnect the HDD and observe the resultant startup behavior. But I will say this: (1) turning the fan off does sound suspiciously like the unit is shutting down due to some startup test failing (but not necessarily the HDD), and (2) P Smith surely knows a lot more about these units than I do.

Yes, you can buy new Pal DVR's-sort of. These are the CM-7000's which are exactly the same. These are new-old stock--never used. They have the last firmware available (the F208). I just bought one last week. Be aware-the prices are going up. Two weeks ago, they were $269. Then $279. Then $289. Now they are $299. If you want one, act quickly. Once they're gone, that's it. If you do buy one and don't use PayPal (I don't), be aware that the web page payment links can be confusing if you want to use a credit card. I called AntennaLogic and he said I wasn't the only one to be confused. FYI.

http://antennalogic.ecrater.com/p/17000550/dtvpal-dvr-w-cm-7000pal-remote

The behavior of the fan is normal;
how the DVR booting:
before CPU start control the fan, it has full voltage on it eg rotating at full speed; as soon bootstrap executed, it will set voltage according temp sensor, eg for cold DVR, the fan will stop.
Bootstrap is located in protected part of flash chip and working always. Corruption happening in that part of flash where is current FW mixed with EPG, channel map, your settings, etc.

I did check this site out and it looked very sketchy to me. Sort of like a hack site. The home page and everything was not very good. I emailed them asking if they had any left as I did not want to order, send them money only to be told they had none. So far no response so they may have sold out.

I had this happen to me once already with another company on the net where I ordered something, they took my payment and then later when I asked where my order was they said did not have the item and would give me my money back....which the good news is I did get my money back. On another occaision I order one hard drive model and they swapped it for another without telling me. So caveat emptor on the internet!

I suppose there is hope then.

Aside from getting a used DTVPal/CM-7000 or CM-7400, your options consist of the PHD-VRX, TViX 6620, and the Entone Amulet 458, which is a rebranded CM-7400 with a case fan. You can only use TiVo if you're willing to pay the monthly fee or the $500 one-time fee for guide data.

Even if the drive is not technically using encryption, the proprietary filesystem of the DTVPal that no publicly available PC software seems capable of reading is functionally the same, in that the user cannot access the drive's contents.

I could help him in moving all data from old drive to new (with expansion or not) for continue using in the DVR.

Another one bites the dust... San Antonio has gone "dark" (reminds me of an episode of "Jericho"). Not sure if PSIP will cut the mustard.................
Chuck

I've seen this happen several times. It was always an indication that my timers were going to be screwed up after the DST change.

Mark

Yes, and "STD" as the reverse change looms in November.  This is the first time I'll be going through it without TVGOS, but my clock is still grayed out, so WBBM might still be sending a time signal over TVGOS.

I've done this with my CM-7000 Pal, albeit by accident. I moved my HDD to an external enclosure, and once accidentally turned on the Pal while the HDD was off. The Pal started up just fine except all DVR options were grayed out on the menu. In other words, it acted more or less like a DTV receiver (like the TR-40 with component & HDMI outputs). Turning on the drive and rebooting the Pal returned everything to normal.

Presumably the Dish-branded Pal would work the same way. However, a recent poster also tried disconnecting the drive when his parents' Pal started to go out. He reported getting a message stating there was a problem with the drive: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1099071/the-official-avs-dish-dtvpal-dvr-topic/16180_20#post_23026806. So perhaps there are a few minor differences between the Dish-branded and CM-branded Pals beyond cosmetics.

I've seen another minor difference between my Dish-branded (F208) and my CM-branded (F400) Pals. One of our local stations sends out a very long PSIP guide (at least on Sunday evenings). The Dish-branded Pal displays all the guide info (almost 6 days), but the CM-branded Pal only displays about 36 hours. (Other channels' guides are the same on both DVRs.)

Just a heads up on my own experience regarding this issue: although I lost TVGOS back in November and confirmed that none of the TVGOS broadcasting stations I receive still had their Rovi equipment (i.e. I was not receiving a time signal), my clock never ungrayed as it eventually did for others once they lost it. I had to do the two soft resets as suggested by mabuttra*, the first to ungray the clock, the second to set it according to the PSIP time information the DVR was receiving.

(*I think? My apologies if I'm crediting the wrong poster--my memory isn't firm on this and I didn't feel like searching back through the posts to find out for sure.)