Sony DHG-HDD250/500: Official Thread - Page 819

Yes, the former, a TVGOS patch. With Sony firmware 1.2.21 installed, the base TVGOS firmware is 8.01.71. The two successive patches that get downloaded are 8.05.40 and 8.06.44. A reboot occurs after each patch is downloaded.

As of this period of time - NumSearch 2 - it appears to be able to get HostSUFlag of 0xff8 quicker than ever before. And now seems to come in at "any" X:45 (and perhaps X:15) time; not just 1:45AM. More importunately the data pattern mix is significantly different; for example, DPPs now outnumber EPPs. All the ratios of data bits appear to have changed. Of course all of that conjecture is premature; it has only been "two" NumSearch. LOL

So at this point it appears to be working better in Houston, than it ever has since the digital change.

Hope it does not vanish January 31st.

Interesting word there.. "importunately". Kind of like a cross between important and fortunately . . .

Not applicable here. I have been at 8.06.44 for years.

The cause is the strangeness that has affected the NYC area since early December.

I just hope these errant effects don't turn fatal for these devices.

Ok, but don't forget that 8.06.44 is not permanent - if you do a TVGOS reset, it needs to download those patches again (i.e.: it will revert to 8.01.71/8.01.71).

I can't offer you anything but commiseration, but my Sony is normally off by 5 - 10 minutes. It's becoming a pointless waste of space on my media cabinet.

I receive OTA in DC with WUSA host.

I am consistently amazed that the folks that designed these things came up with such an insane way to keep the time set. I'm about ready to give up and go the SiliconDust/EyeTV route.

I'm pretty sure this is intentional. Every DVR is on a string controlled by someone else. The only difference between the Sony, and say, a TiVo, is that you can't individually toggle ONE Sony on and off at the behest of a content provider. It is my theory (unproven as of now...) that the HDCP rules discourage any HD DVR without an individual and external "kill switch". Shutting off TVGOS has the same effect, but isn't individual.

The utter pointlessness of this is shown by the fact that HTPC exists, so clearly you can record anything and play it back, just not conveniently or off the shelf at a CE store. The rest of it was to be dealt with by SOPA PIPA, but luckily that was too broad a grab by "the industry" and had some world changing corporate censorship ability which pushed it back. (I faxed both my congresscritters...I hope you did too !)

You can also expect to be sued by TiVo to death. Yet another example of over-broad patents used as a weapon.

My Cable installer told me he'd never seen an HDD before, and had been installing five years...he'd installed a cablecard once in a Sony TV.

LOL Urgently requesting help LOL Unfortunately, my spell checker does not check my dumbness, but in a strange way it almost applies. LOL

Sigh. What a depressing cluster**** this all is.

I live in DC itself, so I have no one to fax (well, email; my fax died long ago), but I appreciate all the people that did.

Hi dhg fans I just listed my MINT cond, 250 unit on flea bay,

NYC DMA, OTA only.

Clock sighted as of this evening


Let's hope it stays.

TVGOS came back on in Philadelphia (KYW) on Friday and has stayed on ever since. Hopefully once WCBS is back up permanently too, outages will be few, short, and far between. Long live the Sony DHGs.

And this morning, some very few incomplete channels of listings.

Which, by the way, is something I don't understand. You would think there is either data flowing or not flowing. If the answer is flowing, then why is it not filled in completely? What explains just some very few listings?

The TVG1 data is transmitted whenever possible, which is when the inserter finds a dummy packet in the host's MPEG stream, and replaces it with one of its own. If a given host is using most of its channel's bandwidth, there are fewer opportunities for the inserter to insert the TVG1 PIDs. Also, the listings are voluminous and various parts are transmitted at various times and rates. Lastly, the next few days are transmitted more often than the days far out. Given all this, I saw that it took a good two days for my DTVPal DVR to fill in most of its listings after I did a factory reset; the 8th day always seems to be sparse. Just a simple fact that there is a lot of data (including tons of channels you may not be interested in) and it takes time, even when embedded in the digital stream. I'd say you should expect full listings in 2-3 days.

If you go further back in this thread, there are breakdowns of what days they send, and when. It takes a few days. The total guide has in my case four hundred channels under TVGOS listings, so it is a lot of data. I turned "off" all the channels I don't care about, leaving me with eight or nine OTA, and another 25 or so cable. TVGOS carries every possible cable channel and many, many OTA which I can't get at my location, as well as the subchannels and listings for the music channels on my cable system.

What does "auto hide" do ? I took the long approach and turned on/off each channel...took awhile to do 400 of them but you only have to do it once...and many of my old listings were wrong/corrupted which is why I did a 9012. What loaded fresh was totally correct.

I got the beginnings of listings too, but oddly, no Ads. Normally you'd get clock, adverts and then listings....right now, it is clock and listings...not that I'm complaining. Hopefully it comes back up and stays.

A DVR with no rental fees and listings that also have no monthly fee. I can't imagine why the industry isn't fully behind this business model.

Auto hide turns off the listing if there is no signal for the channel. Ads are missing on a lot of the east coast. You can see that in the TVGOS thread.

Most of us get 600 or more channels in the editor. Only those with channel numbers are part of your cable feed, but not always part of your lineup. I still have 26 analog channels, but the guide has over 100 not including music. Same with the internet V10 version on my Sony TV.

That makes sense and as of this morning we're about 80% populated (have removed almost all but the clear QAM channels).

I asked the question- I could be wrong it was many years ago in the analog environment- but I seem to remember when we first set these up, followed the manual instruction, and it happened exactly as the manual advised. Setup, left off overnight, and the next morning had a clock with days 1, 2, and 8 fully populated.

That is analog data that follows the 1,2, 5, 8 fill in pattern. The other thing to remember, no matter how many channels you turn off in the guide, the Sony still has to sort through all of the data to find the data for the channels that are on, so only do this if it is convenient for you, but not because it makes the Sony's work easier.

Mark

The lack of ads lately really concerns me.

I have no problems getting TVGOS data due to my local cable company supporting such on an analog channel. However, for several weeks now, there has only been 1 of the 3 possible ads; and that one is always an ad for a CBS show. Is CBS now the only advertiser left that will spend money on TVGOS?

I don't like those left corner ads either, but without that income/revenue, I don't see much hope of TVGOS continuing to provide us data.

I do it because I only use these boxes for the broadcast networks and usually for recordings that are at the bottom of those to watch. Or when need to record three or more shows at one time

For the encrypted channels, use FIOS's DVR (two tuners, 500GB with a 2TB external attached). Pretty satisfied with the FIOS box except that one time it rebooted and wiped out everything recorded on the internal HD (only). Afraid it might happen again but that fear is mitigated by the fact that nothing is recorded to the internal box until the external is filled. Only if the box goes completely bad is everything lost- the external is tied to the specific box that formated it.

Located in Queens, NY.
I have 2 HDD 500s which I had reset (lost channel listings) and have the latest (i.e.- last) Sony update. Both had no clocks.
Additionally I have a 2009 Pioneer TV that has TVGOS.
Each HDD500 is attached to a digital OTA antenna and cable RF- Time Warner (no cable card). The Pioneer has only OTA.
Before 1/31 the 500s had no clock and no data in guide. The Pioneer just displayed the setup screen for TVGOS. Now both HDD 500s have a correct clock, but no guide data (not even channels). The Pioneer shows the channel grids, all displaying no listings.
My CBS carriers available are 2.1 (OTA), 17.1 (cable) and 2 analog cable.
The Time Warner HD channels have moved. If anyone finds it helpful on the HDD500s CBS HD is 17.1 and NBC HD is 60.1. Since I haven't been using the HDDs I am not sure where the other networks can be found.
I find that NBC (and the CW) are my weakest OTA stations (and heavy weather knocks out DirecTV). At least with the a correct clock I can watch or backup these channels off of cable (less weather dependent). If anyone knows where the CW HD is located on Times Warner Queens I would appreciate you letting me know.
I would like to give a special thanks to Speedlaw for keeping us updated on the situation here in NYC.

[quote=SuperBeta;21593043]Located in Queens, NY.
Additionally I have a 2009 Pioneer TV that has TVGOS.

What's the model number of the 2009 pioneer and the TVGOS version number of same?
Thanks

Pretty much back to normal. Both units (OTA NYC DMA-Line of Sight path) are again working. Clockset, adverts, and listings are mostly complete. The ads have so far been all CBS shows. I'm sure this service will die eventually, but we have to figure, what devices use TVGOS 8 ? Whatever the newest device is, add 5 or so years, as you figure any company using this and making it a "feature" would want some assurance.

The Pioneer is a Kuros PDP-5010FS. I don't know what version of TVGOS it has.
This morning found both HDD 500s asking me to identify my cable company from a list of 4. Now have channels (instead of no data), but no listings
The Pioneer TV is the same.
No adverts, no listing, but a correct clock. Seems that things may be getting better.

Seems that way. What is your host channel? The DHG can tell you that, but if it's blank don't worry. Same with clock set channel.

I just checked and both HDD 500s list the host channel as 0:33-0. I tried tuning to this channel and got no signal. I wonder what it means? Speedlaw, can you tell me what your host channel is? Thanks!

Accoridng to http://www.rabbitears.info/market.php, RF channel 33 OTA is digital channel 2 (CBS).

Mark

Host channel is WCBS, Virtual 2.1 I've never had issue with this. I don't know if my cable co passes this-I've always had the unit(s) hooked to an antenna and my location has ideal reception from NYC. The hill behind me blocks everything else, but as far as nyc goes, line of sight.

I've searched and read a lot of this thread but can't find if my wacky idea is completely wacky or only painful .

I am looking for a way to time shift scrambled QAM. To be specific, I would like to record HD Formula 1 broadcasts (which are in many other time zones) and watch at my convenience, without sending even more money to Charter.

My cable box has Firewire, component, and coaxial outputs. Of course only the coax appears to stand a chance on the DHG. The manual does explicitly say though that taking the cable-box output to the cable- or antenna-in *may* result in degraded picture. And from the guide-centric nature of this device I can't even guess if it would recognize a signal on either of those inputs in this fashion. Since these broadcasts are happening overnight I have no problem tuning my cable box to the proper channel and leaving it running - and presumably unplugging the current HDMI out to the TV. Since I know the time and channel it seems like it might be possible...

Any thoughts?

Thanks and regards,
- Jeff