The Official AVS Dish DTVPal DVR Topic! - Page 112

That used to be a problem but not anymore.
The only differences:
- Updated to F202
- TVGOS was enabled in my area

Since I update to F202 the same day TVGOS showed up, I do not know which one fixed the problem.

TVGOS solved it, not the fw update.

Agree, I am running on 202 and not getting TVGOS, thus this problem. Either Dish needs to fix this bug or I need to somehow convince my CBS station to step up. Neither is looking very good at this point.

Thanks.

I think that leaves only Panasonic and Samsung as the PDP panel producers. The new high-end Panasonic plasmas have performance (and price tags) that look to match the Kuro. The price of plasma came down much faster than anyone expected and are readily undercutting LCD on price/performance. It's just that when you go into a store, there are 10 LCD display models for every plasma, and the sales people push LCD.

Four years ago I was looking at a displays marketing report that said plasma was in decline and 1080p plasma would never be more than a niche product. I often wonder why we spend a lot of money for these idiot marketing reports.

PBS does TVGOS in my area. You might want to give your local PBS folks a call.

Really? Can anyone else confirm this? I thought PBS did the analog TVGOS and only CBS did the digital.

I am now in possession of a UPS call tag. Problem is I am not sure if I should use it. My unit averages a reboot maybe once a day (on bad days, sometimes 2-4 reboots). I am worried that I may get a unit back from Dish that is worse than my current one (see posts on this thread where people with replacements are still getting reboots.) Should I play DTVpal DVR Russian roulette?

I can confirm that here in Buffalo PBS is indeed broadcasting digital TVGOS, here's an email reply I got from the director of engineering at WNED here in Buffalo in response to me asking if he knew who was broadcasting the TVGOS signal:



Thanks,

Erik

Oops - originally just had the first two brands in there, then remembered the third, and forgot to take off the "both".

Yeah, there's a recent running thread in the "Flat Panel General" forum about it: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1123689.

I'm really happy that I have several CRTs to use up before I'll need to be buying a new TV. By then the dust on Plasma/LCD should have settled.

Chapelrun and I are having a close look at my "K" unit and comparing it with his photograph of the power supply. We have come to the conclusion that the power supply in his "L" unit and my "K" unit are IDENTICAL. They are the same all the way down to the part number. Only the serial number is different. Both say ""Assembled in China TA L2". The sticker he referenced above reads "164272-02 and RR64272T00028K" on my unit. Does anyone think I got the 28th "K" power supply off the assembly line? Perhaps Chapelrun got the 3115th unit from the "L" run?
My "K" unit says "Assembled in China TA L2" on the green (main) board, just like the power supply. This sticker in hignfy's excellent photograph of his "L" unit reads "Assembled in China TA L3".
Comparing this photograph of an "L" unit to my "K" unit we see the following:

- hignfy's power supply board also appears identical.
- Both main PCBs say "SCH 162506 PWB 162507". This, along with other markings, makes me think they both have identical printed wiring boards (not necessarily identical assemblies, though).
- The assembly numbers on the main board are different. hignfy has 167517-02 while I have 163940-08. We have looked all over the board and only find one difference (which does NOT mean there are not others): On my board, the ONLY chip with a label reads "K163949. 71BD" and has a red dot on it, which may contain the firmware, reads "K16751?. ????" and has a blue dot on hignfy's.
- My serial number for the green board is also quite low.

The bottom line is that there are NO obvious hardware differences between a "K" unit and an "L" unit and the power supplies are most definitely IDENTICAL.

Go it today. So far, no reboots . Happy.

I don't have a TVGOS (Digital or analog) device yet. But on my PC using a Fusion card and TSReader lite sw, I can see the data streams, and my local PBS (Indianapolis) is sending the digital TVGOS. So perhaps there is something to this.

does anyone know if they {dishdepot} are still selling this unit ??

If so I am tempted, just to access the dual tuners that
are needed for my HDTV ready Sony, that could well
use a 5th or 6th gen tuner chip. Please correct me
if I am wrong.


were closed..... and do not reopen till Monday>

Then I could just hope to get a unit that does the DVR
function; sadly, it sounds as though you could almost consider
that an "extra" at this time.

I got a replacement recently and haven't had an issue -- so far in 10 days of use. My earlier unit was a piece of junk that never worked.

Probably worth trying. You've got nothing else to lose really if your current unit is already rebooting.

Excellent post. Very obviously some of the posts that thought the "K" units weren't defective while the "L" units were are basically as much of a myth at this point as the "solutions" some have tried to fix the unit's problems (like plugging it into the wall, or a power strip, etc.)

I think the bottom line is that, unless some markets have cleared up how TVGOS is transmitted, some units are working and some aren't -- and if it's not a hardware problem, then we're probably just grasping at straws to explain what's not working in them.

Hey honeymonkey, 5 days now and 0 lockups, 0 reboots! Yes, I get TVGOS. I left updates on because I want to try one thing at a time to isolate it.

Thats Great! looks like we may be onto something. I have another guy trying same settings, only with some reoccurring timers. At any rate, its a dam site better than the daily reboots and freezes.

Thanks for the report.

Could someone post the settings with the highest probability of avoiding reboots? That is, if there is a consensus about such things?

My old unit was plugged into a wall, plugged into a power supply, I disabled updates, re-enabled updates. Didn't matter -- rebooted every time, on every kind of programming.

The new replacement unit I have works perfectly. And I've plugged it into a wall, plugged it into a power strip. I enabled updates for a few days, dis-abled them for a few days -- all to try it out. So far, no matter what the circumstance is, I've had not one issue with it.

Thus, I think it depends on whatever unit you have. There's no harm in trying some of the solutions out if you've got a bad unit, but from my experience, I think it's safe to say it's a crapshoot and a some of these solutions are kind of like grasping at straws. Some units work, some units don't. I think ultimately that's what it comes down to, regardless of the settings (power strip, no power strip, hanging it upside down, right side up, lol). And if it's not hardware related perhaps something changed with how TVGOS data is broadcast because I'm not sure it's a coincidence some units are all of a sudden behaving better roughly since that date.

Either way, good luck!

I did finally see two reboots with mine the other day, about 4 minutes apart - while I was using it. I say this because after each I checked the power cycle count and it incremented for each, The counter is now at 12 (since 12/23). At about day 9, it was at 9 so I thought it was about once per day (and I don't remember if it started at 0 however). But then it stopped incrementing except for once (going to 10). None of these were while I was using it.

About two weeks ago I did finally disable updates because I got tired of seeing a couple of "Ethernet connection lost" messages each night while using it. This appeared to make that message go away because I haven't seen it since.

At the time of the reboots, I was watching an hour show. It was not recording anything at the time. Each time it downloaded the program guide. Also each time it remembered where I was in the show (actually about 30 seconds before the reboot). So at least I didn't have to find my place. You just have to be real careful to select "Resume" and not "Start" (Resume is the default on the Dish satellite DVRs, but Start is the default on the DTVPal DVR).

The only thing I could think of that was different was that I was watching the show during the day (around 1-2 pm). Previously all my watching was in the evening (while it may have been recording on one or both tuners) and I never saw a reboot. So maybe the other 10 reboots occurred during the day when I wasn't not using it. That was on Wednesday afternoon (3 days ago), I have not seen a reboot since then (again all watching in the evening, including Lost and Life on Mars while it was recording Wed. night as an 8:00-11:00 manual timer - I started watching at around 9:30 fast forwarding past the first hour).

Need a Pal Dvr -
http://cgi.ebay.com/DTV-PAL-HD-DVR-F...3A1%7C294%3A50

I love how they advertise "150hr". Not many will record ANY SD much less a lot of it.

The only SD is some of the smaller networks and the sub-channels. So that means you can record up to 150 hr of a weather subchannel.

I wish more stations would have a SD sub-channel. So much content out there is broadcast in "HD" but is actually SD at the source and 4:3 as well. An example of this would be "Cheers", "Hawaii 5-O", and the like.

And what gets me even more is when something that was shot in 16:9 HD originally, but in syndication is clearly SD in quality and cropped to 4:3 but broadcast in HD so it takes up a lot of space on the DVR and crappy SD quality to boot - the worst of both worlds. "House" and "Criminal Intent" are repackaged just like this.

I ordered mine on 2/26/09 and received a tracking number with 3/9/09 as the UPS delivery date.

I'm sure you are correct. I, on the other hand, record mostly SD content. I typically have about 190 recordings on my 500GB-upgraded unit.

Thank you so very much for that information; I will call them Mon. AM.

The EBay "no return" does not interest me, for if I am not blessed with
a smoothly working unit, I can run up my post count on this board descriping
the tribulations of returns and the results to be had with the latest replacement
unit....

Too bad they didn't get it right from the get-go.

It works for me. Try 60187.