magnavox 515 will not timer record some channels

Take a look at the dedicated Magnavox thread at the top of this forum's topic list. The first page shows an index, look for tuner and subchannel related subjects. wajo, the moderator of that thread, promptly responds to near any Magnavox question posted on this forum: give him a few hours, and his advice should appear here.

If I remember correctly, the 515 (as well as other brand recorders) can "lose track of" certain sub-channels when powered off, so that when they turn back on in timer mode they record dead air instead of the channel. This usually occurs because the sub-channel (x.xx) has a weaker signal than the main channel: the recorder tuner will see the signal when its powered on and you manually enter that sub-channel, but for some reason cannot grab and re-tune the signal automatically in timer mode. The sub-channel feature of our klunky digital ATSC broadcast system (like many of its other aspects) was not particularly well-designed, so can be unexpectedly buggy to use.

You may have a issue with incorrect or odd PSIP channel mapping that your Funai recorder doesn't like. People in my market had a similar issue you describe and they figured out if they tuned to the actual channel and not the virtual channel number they were able to record the channels they wanted. I think?? it was JoeKustra who figured this out but I'm not positive. If you know the physical channel numbers for your virtual channels you might want to give that a try.