Sony DHG-HDD250/500: Official Thread - Page 898

We can't even count the DHG units in service. At last count, rabbitears had just under 200 stations still sending TVGOS. To paraphrase WS, we never see those people until their TVGOS dies. Like a funeral.

Not so my friend! In my case (Cablevision) the only non encrypted channels (Cable no STB) are the ones mandated by the FCC to be transmitted digitally over cable non encrypted. For instance CBS, NBC, ABC, WOR, WPIX, WNET and a few throw in like Univision, Telemundo PAX and CSPN. But the good channels like TNT, USA SYFY, History you need a cable card or STB rental. While most channels OTA and Cable are HD, I set the SD channels 480i to Full screen while the HD channels are set at wide screen 1080i.
Edited by izzy900 - 2/7/13 at 5:31am

You're in the majority. I have my DHG set to make 480i letterbox. If I don't my TV will do it. I set my TiVo and Mag to always send 1080i also. While the TV will upconvert, there is a hesitation with HDMI while they figure out who's in charge. It would be logical to assume that you can't use the Mag to record TNT from rf also.

Here's something depressing. My clear QAM NBC HD and Fox HD are 107.1 and 107.2 which can't be good for PQ. I just checked and the cable card also has the 1080i and 720p on the same channel physically but different whole numbers. No wonder people say OTA is better.

I use my DHG to record HD cable channels, and my Mag for HD OTA channels. I do notice that SD channels lock better with the cable card or using the HD STB.

Here is something to try, Joe. Since they are clear QAM they are not copy-protected. Record them with your TiVo and run kmtttg on your PC afterwards to get to the display screen that shows what is on your TiVo available for transfer. That screen shows the filesize and average bitrate of the recording, which is the untouched transport stream, as-broadcast. In Philly, NBC and FOX are broadcasting OTA at ~14-15 Mbps. See how the bitrates of your cable transmissions compare.

Very interesting. I installed the program and the results:
NBC/CBS 18.5 Mbps average
ABC 9.96 Mbps for Castle
SyFy HD 12.10 Mbps for Continuum
No Fox shows but I'll record one tonight.
Thanks for the tip.

It has been mentioned before but for those who haven't noticed, the OTA tuner on a new TiVo Premier is seriously inferior to my 6-year old DGH500. This is just a warning for those who have yet to make the leap.

With the antenna in its usual direction ABC breaks up frequently with TiVo due to overload whereas ABC was flawless on the DHG. In this direction CBC was always good on the Sony and nothing on the TiVo.

I put a signal attenuator on the TiVo and spent an hour rotating the antenna, adjusting the attenuator, and checking all the stations I watch. The signal indication on the TiVo is not a signal strength. It seems to be some sort of quality indication. By aiming the antenna at compass 185 when most of my stations are at 85-105 and using minimum attenuation I was able to get reasonable signal quality indications for all but FOX which is useless but I never watch it anyway.

The interface is different enough that it will take quite awhile to become comfortable and decide what is good and what is bad. I prefer the TVGOS guide to anything I have found on the DVR or at TiVo.com but that may change with familiarization. The 30-second skip and 8-second rewind work better than I thought they would based on others comments. One general characteristic is there are too many screens and too much navigation to do things. But this may be necessary for people to use it on smaller displays.

I am keeping weekly recording of my regular shows going on the Sony for awhile as a backstop and comparison. One recurring problem has been a program gets recorded but then week disappears from the schedule and I have to reenter it.

Sounds like you have higher bitrates than for Philly OTA.
ABC = 8 Mbps
NBC = 14.5 Mbps
CBS = 17.5 Mbps
FOX = 14-15 Mbps
Maybe your provider is not so bad after-all.

Very stange since my CBS HD shares a subchannel with my PBS HD. I guess there is something good to say about my cable feed. While it lasts.

Maybe cable sub-channels are just cable assigned numbers and it doesn't necessarily mean that cable sub-channels share the same main-channel bandwidth like for OTA sub-channels.

In the case of the different resolutions on the same physical channels that doesn't really matter as each channel is seperate from each other. A 6 MHz RF cable channel using QAM 256 can carry a payload of 38.8 million bits per second which is 2 6 MHz RF channels that are 19.4 million bits per second each. The cable tv industry uses a term WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), which simply means they retransmit the same payload that the content owners provide them with. The reason you see some of the bit rates real low is because the provider of those channels are stat muxing additional channels on thier feeds. In the case of WPVI in philly they have Live Well HD and a 480i sub channel included with WPVI HD so this leaves about 10 million bits per second for ABC HD. Here in the wilkes barre DMA the CBS and NBC affiliates don't have any sub channels so you will see high bit rates with those channels. WVIA and Wolf have multiple sub channels so their main HD channel will have bit rates as low as 9 million bits per second on thier main HD channel. If your cable operator only has permission to carry ABC HD then they can stick this channel with two other HD channels as they will groom out Live Well HD and the 480i sub channel.

When you deal with the cable/sat channels these channels come from the source mostly compressed in MPEG 4 so the bit rates are quit low for the HD channels, 6 to 10 million bits per second. The cable company can not improve the picture quality of a over compressed channel from the source. When the channels are remodulated to send to the consumer, the average bit rate for these channels will be in the range of 10 to 14 million bits per second using MPEG 2 compression. This explains the 3 HD channels per RF channel. Once cable moves to MPEG 4, which is starting to happen with Cox, then they will be able to put 4 HD channels per RF channel.

Once the move to MPEG 4 takes place with cable any device that has a clear QAM tuner and older cable cards devices, including the DHG, will be rendered useless as these devices can only decode an MPEG 2 stream. The only cablecard device that can decode an MPEG 4 stream and also tune up to 1 GHz is the Tivo Premiers. I do not know if the older Tivos have this capability. This is the main reason why I always suggest to get a Tivo if you have cable. Those of you that are holding onto the DHG will be dealt the final death blow when MPEG 4 comes to your system.

Jed, you're always so bright and cheery!!!

That caused me to check my TV diags which show 107.1 and 107.2 as both using 693003 kHz. Add this to what Jed1 just posted, and we are getting above my mental pay grade. I don't like to look a gift horse in the mouth which is why I never asked Rovi to update my 2007 TVGOS lineup. For now, I'll check my listings every morning and be glad for what I have.

I think all channels are 6MHz. Cable or OTA. Channel 6 is channel 6, OTA or cable. Things change after channel 13, but not the bandwidth per channel.

Yea I am currently being relentlessy harrased by Bank of America morning, noon, and night that there are going to foreclose on my mortgage. The problem is that I do not have a mortgage at all and I never did any business with BOA in my life. They have me confused with the burnt out property across the street from me and no matter how much I tell them that they just keep calling here.

Like you said it is like a funeral here so I figure this information will prevent some users from wasting their time if they are using cable. The MPEG 4 problem won't affect the OTA users though. I see mabuttra lost TVGOS last night. I wonder if Joe and I will go to the bitter end as our devices are in our cable companies headend and are the old analog inserters. I have been using this service since it first started in the mid to late ninties so it would be cool for me to see its final demise in April.

You are correct Joe all channels are 6 MHz in size and begin at 54MHz and continue up too 1 GHz. The frequency from 5MHz to 54 MHz is the return path for cable boxes and cable modems. This is your devices talking back to the headend. Uni directional devices, Tivos, DHGs, and tvs, have no capability to talk back to the headend as they lack the tuning hardware to do so. The Tivo will be able to do this in the future through its internet port when the cable companies get this up and running.

Here is the channel frequency charts for North American cable television:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_cable_television_frequencies

Here is the channel frequency charts for North American Broadcast television:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_broadcast_television_frequencies

Getting rid of any clear channel TX is a long term Cable Co goal. We lost analog, the idea being that it was being reclaimed for broadband usage (and they did juggle the system), and shortly thereafter, the whole thing became encrypted. The cable co wins twice...they monetize all those bedroom and garage and kitchen TV sets, by making you rent a box (our system gave them out "free for a year" to quell any protest), and they eliminate piracy. I don't think that there was much piracy (at least over cable TV) in my area, but lots of cable bills have gone up due to those boxes. Remind me again why it is so hard to find a cablecard device you can buy ???

I don't think it's that easy for the cable companies to monopolize all the channels. I believe they are required by law to pass OTA channels to cable customers STB or not. Bottom line is you can rent 1 cable box and split the line to feed for other digital tuning devices. What surprises me is that Joe has SYFY as an OTA non STB channel.

Sorry I gave that impression. Nobody gets SyFy, TNT, etc. as an OTA channel. Clear QAM yes. For a while I got it in analog and digital too, but now it's just SD cable. My lineup:
http://www.secv.com/cdocs/channel_sun.pdf
"Clasic Cable" is what I call basic cable. The music channels are clear ED. I also get a few other "locals" like KYW, WCAU, WWOR in SD.
Edited by JoeKustra - 2/7/13 at 1:46pm

Yeh for a while last year I was getting SYFY, History, Discovery,TNT, USA in SD over RF non STB. That changed when they encrypted those channels and you need a box to see them like Speedlaw is getting. I still get the non encrypted oTA channels even in HD. Like CBS, NBC Fox ABC Wor WPIX and 13PBS.

TiVo is here and working, so I start posting there. It will take some getting use too. Took about 1.5 hours to set up and get first 24 hour grid data. It is a different world. So for the time being will be able to record 3 shows at once. LOL

It's like buying a new car. Everything is there, you just have to find it. I find the remote the most challenging and the most rewarding. It's fun to visit the TiVo community too. It is a little wilder and I haven't seen any Moderator that has a God complex. Yet.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=67

The FCC just rescinded that requirement, so you can look forward to the day when a cable feed is entirely useless without a STB and TVs' QAM tuners will find 0 channels.

I guess the Mayans were right in their calender! It's the end of the world as we know it! You either get an antenna or a STB cause the day of the free cable unencrypted feeds are coming to an end.
Edited by izzy900 - 2/7/13 at 3:42pm

I occasionally visit the Sony Community site page on the Sony DHG-HDD250/500 and read this post! Anyone familiar with this technique? In my instance I get the clock right after I power up the unit after plugging it back and turning it on.

aretino
Posts: 18
Registered: ‎11-25-2012
Re: dhg-hdd250/dhg-hdd500 Sony DVR's
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yesterday

"Update for me - one(of 2) of my DHGs lost the time "--:--" and now I have no listing on it at all and I can't even record anything at all."



Did you try a hard reset? Unplugging the unit for a while then plugging it back in, letting it reboot, then turning it on, then pressing the record button gets me the date the recorder thinks it is (wrong) and causes a time (also wrong) to appear in the front panel. In theory, you can translate real times into the equivalent wrong times and make recordings that way.

Looks like Las Vegas is gone. Had a power hit on Monday and now no clock update. It was nice of the local CBS to wait until after the Super Bowl before pulling the Rovi.

There is an Excel worksheet available if you're interested in attempting recordings this way . . . (oops) !!!

Link

That's pretty cool, if you have no intention of getting the clock to the correct time. For me unplugging than plugging back on after about a minute seems to work. only because my clocks time seem to be frozen to 4:33 AM! So for me unplug, wait a minute and plug back on, leave alone without powering up (--:--) and wait till 4:33AM to power up! But the point I am referring to is for those that do not have the front panel clock at all just the 4 dashes after power is turned on.

LOL, I for one would NOT get up at 4:33AM to set a clock.

It's a clock thing ya know.
Would ya rather set it during prime time?