Official DVICO TViX M6620N HD (ATSC/QAM) Tuner Topic - Page 41

I understand. I can install an internal drive or use an external drive. Does the internal drive require additional hardware? I'm still reading all the posts.

Ok, last night back to the crashing behavior. After about an hour of trying to figure out a cause I gave up and watched a couple videos. Lo and behold, after watching the videos (about 2 hours) the tuners worked again. I left the box on all night and it's still working Ok this morning.

Frustrating behavior....

I don't think you can record to an external hard drive. Installing an internal drive does not require any additional hardware. The Tvix I bought came with a 1.5TB hard drive. I later bought a 2TB one for $60 and swapped them. Now I have one for backup.

Yep, this machine can be unpredictable at times. The thing about most Asians is they like form over function. As long as the product looks pretty for the picture, they are happy and don't care how well it works. The Tvix is a good example. It looks really pretty outside, but the programming inside is crap.

I could use some advice. I have cable, no chance of OTA, 25 vsb and 140 clear QAM channels. I have 20 in 720p/1080i and even my 480i looks good. I have read every post on this thread and the documentation on the web site. It would be stupid to ask if this is a good product. But I am looking for something to replace a DVR that has almost 30k hours on its HDD. It works perfectly and I don't NEED something today. So, the questions.

Will an Hitachi HDT721016SLA380 work for testing? It's a small 5" SATA.
The specs say it has coax digital audio. That's not true?
The USB ports will work for updates. Will the internet?

I have no PSIP data and little SCTE-127 data (which is usually wrong). How well does manual recording and playback work? I also have a BV-980H. I don't want another ts file creator. I can see no pictures of manual recording or playback anywhere. Would this better be addressed on the support forum (that I can't seem to find)?

Does WiFi require a dongle? I can use CAT5, but I have too many wires.

I know many internet sites will take time to be included. I have no need for them. I would like time to be set from an internet source.

Thanks, and I hope 2012 is better than 2011 for all of us.

Yes (Fortunately, that's a 3.5" HDD rather than some strange 5" beast--does anybody still actually make 5" HDD??)
It outputs both digital coax and optical as well as HDMI and analog (RCA jacks).
Yes you can directly install updates from the Internet as well as from a downloaded file (via USB or copied to the internal HDD).
Very well.
Not sure what you mean by this. TS files are what all DTV recorders make (even though WMC wraps them in DRM container). The TViX plays back those files, whether created on the TViX or some other device.
The M6620N has built-in WiFi-n rather than needing an external dongle. However, you'll likely find that HDTV files do not play smoothly over your WiFi connection unless it's unusually free from interference.
Yep, that's an option.

Most of your answers are here M6620N Specs and more are in this thread. If there's no hurry, read this entire thread and you'll find most all the good and bad of the device.

A few other answers: The relevance of PSIP or SCTE data is nada because it doesn't do "Season Ticket" type recording. Only manual programming. It's easy enough to schedule a recording and then expand it to weekly or daily or whatever. Wifi is dongle but included. It very low profile and has built-in antenna.

The time setting is a friggin P.I.T.A. and I could never get it right. I have to use Alaska Time with Daylight savings in order to get my clock right and matching the programming schedule. No internet or channel time settings ever worked - I'm in SoCal, BTW. Cable might work better as I'm strictly OTA.

I've never tried USB for updates as the internet connection works flawlessly. Audio is available via Coax, HDMI and Optical but I've only used the Optical.

Finally - I've never heard of a 5" sata drive so I'll assume it's a 2.5 incher The drive "caddy" is a rather flimsy plastic snap in frame meant for a 3.5" drive. It should accept a 2.5 drive with a proper adapter (one that lines up the sata ports properly) but don't plan on swapping drives in and out. I doubt the frame will take much abuse, although I've heard no reports about breakage so that's good.

Couple of other things, SAMBA (windows file sharing) works well enough but NFS doesn't at all with jumbo frames enabled. Other things are scattered in this thread so scan it again.

TPeterson: Yours must be different from mine. Mine box came with a USB Dongle. the Vender:Product code 0fe9:b307 which uses Ralink rt2800 drivers in the linux kernel beyond 2.6.31.

Sorry, but I missed seeing this post until just now.

I am not an icon-mode user myself, but I notice that your file is only 73x100 pixels rather than the recommended 138x186 size and I wonder if that has anything to do with the issue you're seeing?

BTW: JoeKustra. Thanks for the well wishes and back at cha'

Thanks for the update. Yes, mine is different from yours. Mine is a pre "plus" model and it has the WiFi chip inside. I had forgotten that that had changed.

That might be it. I'm actually using 400x400 now and it works great. It fills the Icon box 100% and is easily readable across the family room. I just down loaded some different images for the two offenders and the problem went away so I wasn't really worried about it. but thanks for the idea. I'll test it out.

Happy New Year!

Actually, the PSIP stream is where you get the Program name in the OSD and EPG for the recordings. If there's no PSIP then you have to set up the recording by channel number and time (just like we did with VCRs).
Have you tried this with the current firmware? I find that it actually does work now, although it's still a PITA because the on-screen clocks aren't properly updated right away when you make adjustments to the TZ settings.

No, I haven't tried since then. Once I finally got it "right" :P I left it alone! I'll try it sometime (like next time change, LOL) . I wonder why I could never get the time from the internet, but maybe my complicated network blocks it?

I looked through my icon jpg's and found lots of different sizes from 128x128 all the way up to 500x768 and they all load fine so seems the size may not be it. As I said, more of a personal bug than an important one.

And of course you're right the PSIP helps keep the recordings straight. No Title data at all will lead to a confusing playback list I bet.

My current problem is a couple of TimeChecks or whatever they're called. The tag file created when you stop a show mid-playback for the resume function. I have a couple that are not in the list of deleteable itmes but still appear in the playback list and the shows are deleted. Another minor problem...

The "bad actor" that you posted was even smaller: 73x100. I'm still thinking that that's the problem.

Oops...I just double checked and discovered that I'd accidentally downloaded your image's thumbnail rather than the actual file (which is 399x549)

NTL, you should try using the recommended sizes for best results.

Thanks for the quick feedback. My present DVR (Sony DHG) hides the actual files under a layer that includes channel, DOW, date, start and end time. All the names are the same "UNKNOWN" but sorted by recording time. Setting a manual recording requires me to be on the channel first, since my cable numbers are too large. All I need to do is enter the start & end time, quality and frequency. The date part is nice, since any recording can be set to start until 2099. I can set a manual recording to start next Sunday at 9pm and execute weekly from then on. It doesn't have an everyday or regular option though. But it has never missed a recording. Internet clock is a great feature.

If you ever saw the recording list of the BV-980H you would know why I asked about file names. I couldn't see the coax audio, but it doesn't matter. I use HDMI for everything except my TV audio. I just measured the drive: 4" wide. Must be like a 2x4.

I would play recordings through my Yamaha V-867 to my TV. I have a nice WNDR4000 router, but it isn't that nice. Thanks again for the help. Now when Amazon gives me credit for the CM7400 I sent back I'll have something new to buy. A good way to start the year.

Is there a restriction on channel numbers for manual recordings? My ABC HD channel is 106.1201. I can't enter that number into my Sony, but I can tune to that channel and then hold down the red record button for 5 seconds. It then brings up the manual entry screen with the raw QAM number filled in for me. All I do is add the start date, start & end time, quality, frequency, and an optional delete flag.

I know my cable numbers are strange, but they seem to be a Sony "feature". Even the highest whole number allowed is 1023 which has messed up some people. Right now if I can tune it, I can record it even though is has no name.

Joe, for VCR-style manual recording setups on the TViX you don't key in the channel number but rather select it from a list of the scanned channels. So the strict answer to your question, as posed, is "Yes, there is a 'restriction'", but effectively there is no restriction on which of the received channels may be recorded.

Thanks! Sounds good to me.

I have recently (6 weeks ago) purchased a M6620N). I have the 2.1.0 firmware and WD green HDD. Overall, I like the unit but there is one behavior that is really aggravating. I have set the forward and back skip intervals for timeshifting and video to 30 and 10 seconds respectively. During playback of an OTA recorded file. Sometimes, after using ">" to skip forward "30sec>>". If I went too far and attempt to us the "<" to go back, it will drop the reply back to a point much, much earlier in the file. Much earlier than the 10 seconds requested. It gets even a little weirder. After FFing to get forward to where I was before and letting it play, if I need to use the "<" again, it takes me right back to the same much earlier point that it did before. It is almost as though there was some type of mark there and the ">" was being treated as "return to " instead if a relative -10 seconds. Has anyone else seen this behavior? Any ideas what might be wrong?
Thanks
John

John, I have seen some inaccurate jumps on some files, but I haven't seen the sort of phantom bookmark you describe. Are you using the TViX' own remote or a "learning" remote to which you've taught the TViX codes?

TPeterson, thanks for quick reply. We are using the original TViX remote. All files have been captured by the TViX from OTA. It does not happen on every recording. I have not replayed a recording on which it did happen to see if it happens again. That is something I should do when we see it again. We have not be keeping any of the programs long. Our usage is mostly watch (when convenient) and then delete.

I've seen a similar problem in the past, but that was with the M6500, not the M6620N. It only occurred with recordings of one particular OTA station, so I figured it was something to do with the time codes that station was producing.

I recently bought the M6620N with a dual tuner and it won't see my cable. It picks up all the OTA (FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc) channels and a bunch of blank channels 74-11, 75-646, 75-62351, 77-62351, 81-3, 92-13, etc, etc, just to name a few. Some of these channels come up with a radio icon.

I've read through most of the pages on this topic and it seems like others have the same problem. The software doesn't recognize my cable.

My firmware is 2.1.0
Cable: Buckeye Cable - Toledo, Oh
Straight basic cable, no box.

So what can I do to get the M6620N to see my cable? Do I need to record some thing and send it in to DVICO? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

If I understand you correctly that you're able to tune the "OTA" stations with the TViX connected to your cable, it's "seeing" your cable just fine. (There are no actual OTA channels on your cable everything is converted to QAM modulation by the cableco)

It's very likely that the only clear QAM stations available to you are the locals (what you called "OTA") and the other cable channels are all encrypted, as Kei suggested. Unless you have another QAM tuner that's seeing more stations, that is my best guess.

This is supposed to be your lineup. I don't know how old it is.

http://www.buckeyecablesystem.com/li...x-channels.pdf

Those numbers and your numbers don't match.

@Kei:

I don't think they are. How can I check?


I don't have a tuner box/cable box in my house at all. Any of my TV's pick up my cable channels (2 through 73) just fine plus the OTA digital channels (11-1, 13-1, 24-1, etc). Even an old CRT TV from 1989 pick up my cable channels but not the OTA any more. All my new digital TV's also have those funky channels after my normal cable channels end. Most are repeats of the actual channels or just blank.

@TPeterson: When I say OTA, they aren't coming through my cable, although I do get the same ones through my cable, these are definitely over the air, digital channels. Example: Fox 36 is channel 12 on my cable. But if I punch in 36-1 on my TV, I also get Fox 36. But channel 36 on my cable is TruTV.

@JoeKustra: The only channel numbers that match up that I get with the 6620 are the WITHOUT DIGITAL CONVERTER OR CABLECARD, all the Or channels (5.1, 30.1, 11.1, 13.1, 13.2, 13.3, 24.1, etc).