Sony DHG-HDD250/500: Official Thread - Page 516

I am from Long Island ny and am experiencing the same problem my box stopped recievin information 03/30 I did a factory reset and ever since have had blank time and no listings bricked out the unit. I believe you are right there is no more info. out there to catch. Hopefully signals will come back I have been reading other posts as well and people are starting to catch signals again but there units had been blank for weeks. Hpefuly this problem resolves itself since my unit is pretty much useless now. Will start setting up manual recordings for now and adjust for wrong time.

So I see this is a huge problem. I had the same thing on my two tivos but they are straightened out now. I am in central Illinois and have had no guide at all on my hdd250 since 3-23-09. I use all of my dvrs ota, so is there any hope at all of getting it back on my 250, or am I just outta luck? Does anyone know who I should contact? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Words to live by.

My home 500 again did not download last night.

I am so tempted to do a reset but I'm controlling myself because a resultant brick at any time is a very real possibility.

Before your post, I was hoping that Cablevision's lack of transmission in [at least] one system in NJ was a fluke that will be corrected.

I'm also on Cablevision and my area still has TVGOS transmission.

That it is off on LI also makes me wonder if I'm the fluke- that it's still on here. Maybe they are shutting it off in stages.

Still, being optimistic, I would advice you to just wait- to contact Cablevision to get some specific answers on whether the stream will return- before you start messing with attempting to get a digital OTA host from CBS.

After having SONY DVRs for three years - this TiVo
Subscription fee BOTHERS me - but I can program
my TiVo to record from anywhere in the World. I
do use that feature a lot.

Having both SONY and TiVo is having the best of both worlds

Tivo - 200.00
Hard drive upgrade - 300.00
= 500.00

You're probably better off to spend the extra 100.00 on the Tivo HD XL 150 hours of HD unit and save yourself the worry of voiding the warranty.

That is ONLY TRUE if you PAY someone else to do it.
You can buy a 1 TB HD for Under $100 and DIY

I am still hoping as well that service will return and that they are not shutting it off in sections. I am going to give it a couple of weeks before I consider buying a alternative. The situation looks kind of bad as now since my friend has the same unit and his service went out the same day as mine. Atleast it clears up one thing that it is not the unit but the lack of a signal.

Also should have known this was going to happen when I reset the box and entered my zip code didn't give me a selection to provide which cable service I have. The 3 services were Brookhaven Cable, IO and something else I forget. That tells me that since I entered the zip code and didn't get a selection that no cable provider in my area is offering the tvgos signal at this time.

Mine never gives me that OPTION until it does
a Download overnight.

When you do a full RESET - the Zip code info
does not know anything about OPTIONS until
the dowload happens

Thanks never knew that. That is why it isn't giving me those options anymore.

It should after you get some Guide Data.

Of course without Guide Data - then that is another dilemma

The way I have read it: is $600 plus the $400 fee to make it work.........until such time the box "dies" then you have to buy another?

Ok, turned the unit on this morning. Still just days 1-5; except now the day 5 CBS shows "no listings". And days 6-8 are "no listings"

Over the last three nights, even though mine has stayed with analogue; it appears that another change may be in the works via the actual downloads occuring. It has shown a couple of the downloads via StID #5319 which I believe is intended for digital?

Other than that, 100% of the downloads are coming in on #2687 - the ID tagged to MySonyBox. It appears it is hunting for a digital replacement for the analogue. It did this same odd procedure (all on its own) last week when changing itself back to analogue?

The Tivo does have a lot going for it. But the $1,000 and the additional cables is a pain. Both our phone service, net, and cable service are so sub standard here; both are really a joke, and outrageously expensive because of Texas Law Tier Rate Schedules

Yeah I know what you mean and the 400 dollar lifetime service fee is only good for the life of the box anyway you look at you will have to pay tivo again and again because I am sure those boxes don't last forever so you will be paying for the unit and the service fee again.

That is what you are led to believe

But I just upgraded to Lifetime and before I did
I called TiVo directly and SAID: What if my BOX
dies after 1 Year. TiVo Said - they will transfer
a Lifetime subscription to my NEW BOX whenever
my old one dies. That is the KEY Language. You
have to say your OLD DIED

Old one died got ya. Has a box ever died on you?

OH YA - I have (5) Sony DVRs - one is Dead the other four are fine.

When Sony STOPPED making the DVRs - I bought a 5th one as a
Spare. I thought I would NEVER need it. I was WRONG.

I'm sure it is a HD failure in my SONY.

Channel 2.1 (WCBS) is actually broadcast on UHF frequency assignment Ch 56 and will move to UHF 33 on June 12th. Since it is UHF, you will probably need a UHF antenna to receive the digital channel. You mentioned trying rabbit ears, which are VHF. You can enter your address in www.antennaweb.org and it will help make a antenna selection for your area. Are you able to receive WEDW (49). You could try the G* test there too.

I'm a TWCinci customer with their standard cable. Several months ago, I bought one of these DVRs used (heavily?). It was rather beat up and when I first tried to test it, I couldn't get it to power on. I got kinda busy and left it in a corner until last night. I gave it another try and I got it to power on. The front bezel was heavily beat up and I actually took it off before I could get it to work with the remote (there were some plastic pieces of the bezel that had broken off and may have obscured the IR sensor).

Anyway I put in my zip code in the TV Guide (TVG). I also did a channel scan for cable only and it claimed that it found several channel. I couldn't view them, but I have the impression that that it is expected behavior until the TVG is updated. I followed instructions that I found on spiffspace and determined that my VBI host channel was 1:0-753 (if that makes sense; it doesn't to me since my channel list doesn't go that high) and I powered it off so that it could download the guide. This morning, I found that the guide had not downloaded overnight and my clock is an hour behind. I had seen that the cable channel 8 (WCET) should be the correct channel so I followed spiffspace's instructions to change it to channel 8 and powered it off.

My questions are:
1) Are the Host Channel and the VBI Host channel the same thing? It is not that clear to me. Is WCET channel 8 still the correct channel to pick? or do I now have to pick the CBS channel?
2) how do I fix the clock? Is there a different channel to pick? is the channel selectable?

Do you still have the dead one for parts?

Thanks for the update I think I am just going to wait it out and see what happens with the sony if the problem is still not corrected will switch over to tivo. A antenna is sort of hassle to deal with and would rather just pay the extra money. The sony did very well though had it for almost 5 years and this is the first problem I am ever having with the unit.

The good news is that if you can find a new host channel, you can still select one of the other cable providers to build your channel grid. Then you can manually remap the channels in the EPG. This method should work unless you are using a cablecard.

Actually I am using a cable card so unfortunately this method will not work for me but thanks for the suggestion.

You're using a CC from Cablevision? I assume it's a Scientific Atlanta card.

Did it work for you without getting the 161-6 error and needing the Sony fix?

What sony fix?
Gregg

Sure Do

Haven't tried this way yet but since you said it will not work with a cablevision cablecard. + Can't pick another cable provider that option is gone.

These devices have a problem dealing with some cablecards that requires sending the unit to Sony for a modification.

If you use a CC and don't have an issue, don't worry about it.

It may or may not. I read what you wrote to infer that you were already successfully using a CC [before the recent TVGOS problems] and was wondering that you had no error with the Cablevision SciAtl card.