The Official AVS Dish DTVPal DVR Topic! - Page 543

My time changed to DST no problem. Still had the TVG logo too even though the data stopped 3-4 weeks ago. Then about an hour ago we had a power glitch that caused a soft reset. Found the time again, but no TVG logo now. So that's finally gone. I assume the CBS station (KTVT-11) still has the TVG equipment in place and they were on top of the DST time setting.

Both my F201 and F208 DVRs made it through the time change OK but my F201 is exhibiting behavior that will finally force me to upgrade it to F208 today. As I go through the channels on my F201 DVR the time goes backward by 1 hour when I tune to 6 stations in my area that apparently haven't adjusted their PSIP times to DST. I never had this problem with F201 over the last 4+ years as I always had TVGOS for a time reference. The 6 problem stations include affiliates of CBS, PBS, FOX, Shop NBC, DayStar and an independent station. Surprisingly the Spanish stations have it right!

The F208 firmware definitely made some major improvements with DST handling. When I tune to the same 6 problem stations with my F208 DVR the time does not change. It's been nice to have the two firmware versions to compare against each other over the years but this behavior today is the end of the road for me for my F201 firmware DVR. RIP

Have you tried manually setting the clock after doing a factory reset and seeing if the correct time sticks? F208 is "supposed" to disregard stations with incorrect DST signals so if you set the clock manually to a known accurate source you "should" be good to go from that point on.

Isn't there also a setting to tell the Pal if your area observes DST? If you accidentally have that set to NO, that would be a problem. Sometimes it's just an oversight like that that is the issue.

Did set the time manually, when I did the factory reset, and went through disabling TVGOS, 00000 for zip and disabled updates, but the programming was still off. I lost TVGOS back in February so I have been on PSIP. All stations give different amounts of time from 8 hours to several days. I'll post weh it gets corrected.

Ah, DST happened so I checked my DVR. Things look good. Correct times, no messed up schedules like a few weeks ago, etc.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that your "programming" is off. Do you mean that your program grid is off in the program guide? If your DVR clock is correct (and stays correct as you go through all of the channels) and you set timers you should still be able to record programs at the correct times.....right?

The programs are not under the correct time, ie "The good wife" shows up under 6PM instead of 8PM. My clock is still 1 hour behind like it is still Mountain winter time not DST

Go through the setup again, and this time, tell it that your area observes DST.

I did ! I am one of the original owners of the PAL. It is probably the stations. ABC programming is off 1 hour. A week or so Ago I Had NO psip information on the ABC affiliate. Asked them and they had to turn their PSIP generator ON because it was OFF. AN FCC violation but I think a lot figure everyone has cable or Sat and don't care about OTA until someone catches them. The ABC doesn't even do 5.1 dolby audio.

Nope, just more power consumption and heat (as inside of the DVR).

A possible explanation to your problem is that the "weighted mean" of PSIP times in your area could be skewed to being an hour behind especially if you don't have that many stations in your area and a lot of the ones you do have are running an hour behind. I'm sure the programmers felt that the "majority" of stations in any given area would have the correct time even during DST changes and wrote the code accordingly. You might just have a unique set of PSIP circumstances that F208 did not plan for or address.

The only concern I can imagine is that if you leave the Pal "on" (green light on) 24/7, you may have issues keeping the EPG up-to-date. Reason is that tuner 1 is always in use (the Pal doesn't know when you're not watching ). I don't know for sure, but I don't think the Pal will use tuner 2 to scan for EPG info. But if your EPG does stay updated (w/o having to surf through all your channels manually every so often), post back and let the rest of us know!

If the EPG becomes a problem, a possible workaround might be to use the "analog pass-through" button instead of putting the Pal in standby. However, analog pass-through might let the drive spin down, which would defeat the purpose. Again, let us know your experiences.

Aside from that, though, you should be fine. Power consumption won't be affected enough to notice (an extra watt or so, according to my measurements with a Kill-A-Watt meter). The internal drive was the big energy hog; with it removed, the Pal should actually be cooler inside than before.

Curious: did you replace the drive, or just move the Pal's existing drive to the external enclosure? I'm wondering whether it's the drive or the enclosure that's causing the automatic spin-down. If it's the drive, it may be possible to fix the problem with a jumper setting or PC-based drive configuration utility.
Edited by JHBrandt - 3/10/13 at 1:17pm

My clock's still grayed out too (on the Pal where I didn't do a factory defaults reset).

Edit: Just out of curiosity, I did the "delete CBS/reboot/add CBS back" thing, and the clock did not gray back out (unlike what happened with my other DVR right after TVGoS ran out). So apparently KTVT removed the TVGoS equipment between then and now, but you have to "help" your Pal to recognize it.
Edited by JHBrandt - 3/10/13 at 1:50pm

Are you saying your stations' clocks are that far off? If so, complain loudly! Having times 8 hours to several days off is ridiculous.

Yes, I know it probably won't do any good. But it won't hurt and it only takes a few minutes.

Or did you mean they give different amounts of guide from 8 hours to several days? That makes more sense.

You can check the stations' times using another TV or set-top box. Most likely, several of them missed the DST change and your Pal is just going with the majority.

In the meantime, you should be able to set the correct time manually. The clock will "drift" slowly, but that's still better than being an hour off!

Yes I will follow up with my experience with the external enclosure and the ramifications expecially with the program guide. Although one or more posters on this forum have gone this route before me and was happy with the results. I thought going this route might also help my remaining PALDVR longevity. PSMITH can weigh in on that.

In answer to your other questions. Since my other PALDVR died I had the hard drive in it loaded with recordings I did not want to lose. I also had the Rosewill enclosure I was using with my PC. So I figured I would take the HD out of that and use the enclosure with my good PALDVR and the HD out of my bad PALDVR. I also ordered another Rosewill enclosure. So I will put both of my PALDVR HDs in enclosures and swap them as I need to view recorded shows until one HD is empty. At the time I get caught up viewing that HD will be used for the recently purchased Epidvr which uses an external HD. I still need an enclosure for my HD that was with my PC Well I wanted to make sure the external enclosure approach was working with the PALDVR and EPIDVR before I got a replacement enclosure for the drive I had with my PC. I hope I wrote this so it makes sense.

It may be the enclosure that is spinning down the drive but I think the drive has to allow it to be spun down so maybe it can be stopped using the HD Parm utility? Don't know. Does the PALDVR spin down the drive at all? Or does the HD in the PALDVR never spin down? I checked the specific drive and there are no jumper settings (WD Caviar Green) that control this feature although I think I read somewhere that some drives spin down can be controlled by jumpers...maybe another brand?

After losing TVGOS I did a factory reset and then set my clock manually to the second using a radio-controlled clock as a reference. What I have found over the last two weeks is that the clock drifts about 8 seconds fast per day. So over a week I'm just about 1 minute fast. What I plan on doing to compensate for this is to reset the clock weekly (to my radio-controlled clock) at the same time that I set all of my program timers for the upcoming week. It's a little bit of extra work but I can't think of any other way to keep the clock +/- 1 minute of the "actual" time.

I'm wondering if the F208 firmware only uses the weighted mean of the PSIP times to set the clock initially during installation and then uses the internal clock in the DVR to proceed from there. The quality/accuracy of those internal time chips probably varies from DVR to DVR and maybe that accounts for some DVRs being much more accurate with the time compared to others.

I have a telephone caller ID box that has a clock in it and I noticed that the time would sometimes be WAY OFF especially if a telephone call hadn't been received in quite some time. I contacted the manufacturer and I was told that the caller ID boxes were never really meant to be good timekeepers on their own and relied on getting a telephone call (with time information from the phone company) on a regular basis to stay somewhat accurate. I was also told that there was a great variation in how accurate these clock chips were from box to box. Perhaps our DVRs were similarly designed to primarily use TVGOS as a time reference source and were never truly designed from the beginning to have a super-accurate internal clock of its own. Why spend money on tight clock tolerances if you don't have to!

* - less load on power supply and less heat; not sure on the goal, as main defect is FW corruption and bad CPU as a second
** - yes, try alter HDD settings first, then you'll see if Roswell's controller does not spin down
*** - Nope, it doesn't

echostar using OEM drives what programmed with the feature ON, usually no switch for that
Edited by P Smith - 3/10/13 at 9:44pm

8 seconds/day is also what my DTVPal clock drifts when I set it manually.

My DTVPal clock does not drift when it is sync'd to PSIP. It may be off several seconds, but it doesn't drift. For example, if it is off 10 seconds today, it will still be off 10 seconds tomorrow, and 10 seconds the next day, etc.

Mark

For future guide that have "Information Not Available", is there a way to show and record for 30 minutes instead of an hour? Thank you in advance.

If I've already set my clock manually and want to go back to a sync with PSIP, would one soft reset do that? Or would I have to go back through the entire installation wizard to accomplish that re-sync with PSIP?

What I did in that situation was set a timer for the block that contained the 1/2 hour that I wanted to record. I then went and edited the timer changing the time to 30 minutes instead of 60. I guess that will only work for shows that start on the hour. If the show starts on the 1/2 hour I think your only option is to set up a manual timer.

PSMITH,

Thanks for all the answers. As soon as I am done viewing all the recordings on a drive I will use HD PARM to make changes.

I have pm'd you with some additional questions.

Ah, thanks. Too bad there is no option to show 30 minutes slots for Guides that have no information.

I have a PALDVR firmware question that may have been answered previously.

I think it rather odd that there is no mention of anything other that Firmware F202 and F208.

Whatever happened to F201, F203, F204, F205 F206, F207? Especially the odd numbered firmware releases. Were these ever released? Did I miss them? Was there just a funcky naming scheme that was used?

F201 as you know was the original firmware that shipped in the very first batch of DVRs sold directly by Dish. When those DVRs started to arrive at people's homes in December 2008 there was already an F202 firmware update available. After that the next publicly-released firmware versions were F206, F207 and the final version F208. F203, F204 and F205 were never released to the general public and it is speculated that Dish used these internally (or with beta testers) to revise the firmware. F206 and F207 were only around for a few months each (as the then latest firmware version) and they both had some major issues especially with maintaining an accurate and stable clock. My DVR at F206 and at F207 could not maintain an accurate clock even WITH TVGOS!

As a side note I had one DVR at F201 from December 2008 until yesterday and it had worked flawlessly with TVGOS (when I still had it in my area). Yesterday however the time was changing by 1 hour (going backward 1 hour) as I tuned to 6 "problem" stations in my area that had not switched over to DST. After updating the DVR to F208 that problem is now gone and the time now stays on the correct hour as I go through all of the channels.

The only way I know of is first to select the entire hour to be recorded, then manually edit either the start or end time depending on which half of the hour you want to record. The only problem: editing the timer converts it to a manual timer, so if you "pad" the start of the recording, the Pal will pick up the previous show's title instead of the show you're actually recording.

It takes two soft resets. One by itself won't do it.

Including me Although I used a different brand enclosure and my drive doesn't spin down.

I'm not the expert on the Pal DVR that P Smith is, but my general experience with electronics is the less heat the better. It won't reduce the chance of firmware corruption, but at least it should help avoid failure of the CPU, power supply, or tuners.

It does. So (at least for now), you're using the original drives from your 2 Pals. Since they don't spin down in the Pal itself, it must be the enclosure that's letting them spin down now. Since you'll need another enclosure eventually and you'll probably want your PC drive to spin down, you might buy the brand P Smith uses (BlacX) or the brand PaulJB and I use (Vantec NexStar CX) for the Pal, and use the Rosewill for the PC.

BTW, "EPIDVR?" Is that the ePVision PHD-VRX?

I'm not familiar with the Rosewill HDD enclosures. I wonder if they have a configuration switch somewhere that controls this? If not you'll have to see if the HDDs can be configured to disallow spin-down. (Once you've emptied a drive and move it to the PC, presumably you can change it back.)

Living without TVGOS now, I'm noticing two odd things in the guide: first, if I skip ahead well within the station's PSIP guide info, sometimes I'll still get the one-hour blocks of "No Information Available", but if I go back to the start of the guide and move forward show by show (sometimes, safely, screen by screen), the same time slot has guide info.

Another is that I'll move to a show's slot on the guide grid and a synopsis will appear for an instant in the upper part of the screen, only to revert to "No Information Available" (not for the program name, only for the synopsis) too soon for me to have read it. Pressing the Info key doesn't help: the synopsis screen is still "no information available."