Sony DHG-HDD250/500: Official Thread - Page 904

looks like rovi went out in my town in colorado. No warning or ad messages. I will have to try out my new channel master to see how it performs.

I see that the CM7400 works pretty good as long as you have a laptop cooler, buy the subscription guide, power cycle it daily and use it OTA. It has its own thread. Good luck. I had to send mine back because without PSIP data it didn't work with my cable feed.

Where in Colorado are you? West Slope? I'm curious, as there was a KUSA translator in Sterling that my antenna caught "a whiff" of long enough to give me a few listings and a clock set a couple weeks after KCNC went dark.

That will work just fine as long as the program you want to record is named "No Listing"

Thanks. I needed that.

The Springs.

Yeah, I have the cooler, I wont get the guide, just set manual recordings. I plan to power it down a lot because I'm a green nut.

Gone in Portland. : ( Maybe I will take one my 3 units apart and see if it can be converted in some way that allows recording with at least a title. Got nothin' to lose I guess except some time and since I'm retiring soon, I'll have all the time i choose.

Title would be nice. Having the right day of week and time is possible with some of the procedures you can find here from posts over the last two months.

The usb port is active - Sony sent me a usb drive with a f/w update years ago for the digital reception of tvgos. Pehaps you could see if a usb network adapter would work....either wired or wireless. I don't think it would be just a firmware update to enable intenet access, but it would be an interesting hack - since you will have some time available.



There are pins for a network jack and a cutout on the inside rear of the case. Unknown if those pins have connect elsewhere on the mainboard to enable a network connection.

TiVo DHG comparison test:

While watching a recorded PBS Nature show last night on the TiVo– “Wolves and Buffalo” in Canada – we noticed a very unusual occurrence. As the Wolves would be running or turning through that tall grass, the picture was jerking or popping; like there were several frames missing or like there was excessive time compression. The motion of the Wolves was not smooth and fluid.

So with just a couple of days of “Listings” left on the DHG I have noticed that the program repeats itself here in Dallas at 4AM Sunday morning. So I will be recording the show on both boxes at the same time for a direct comparison. If they both record and playback the same way, ok that’s no problem.

If you still have access to both boxes you may want to try a similar test for your area. I will also look for some live sport events, to see if both boxes handle and process fast action the same way. Live sports from both FOX and CBS in their native modes would also be a good test comparison.

^^
After seeing your post I was going to set this show to record on one of my TiVo's to check for the issue that you found. But it doesn't appear to be on PBS area . . .

This discussion got me thinking that I might be able to make a tape. Has anyone used the digital tuner of the DHG and cabled its output to an analog VCR? I'm unclear whether the digital information is encoded in the VBI like the analog information was and would be recorded onto the tape or not. Or even if not, more generally, when the DHG creates analog output from the digital signal does it convert the TV guide stream as well as the picture? I seem to recall there were converter boxes which did this.

I'm about 25 pages behind in reading here, so I apologize if this has already been discussed.

In addition “Nature” show test on PBS, the only live sports I could find before my Listings go away are:

1. NASCAR on FOX in 720p native mode
2. Golf on CBS in 1080i mode (this might be tape?)

So I set both those up too.

I would have like to have football or baseball etc. for a better picture source, but those I did not find. The only other available were College Basketball; but usually the macro blocking on those are so bad it is not worth the bother.

I did have some NBC’s available, but typically they are not of the highest quality on Saturday.

Hopefully with the repeat of the Nature show, the Golf and NASCAR; will be enough of a sampling to tell if there is a difference.

It has. If all you have is digital TVGOS there is no way to make a tape directly. I have no OTA experience. If you or someone you know still gets analog TVGOS from cable you have a chance.

Gotcha, thanks. My DHG did a spontaneous reset after picking up the clock packet from the Sterling station, so I've been working with a clock that's 35 minutes slow. I've been thinking about climbing up in the attic to temporarily point the antenna to the east, but didn't want to go through the hassle if the inserter is already gone...

I'll see if I can find an engineering contact for the translator (K49MF-D)...curious to see if they still have their inserter installed.

Signal in Twin Cities seems to be gone this morning. Cablecards in both my units are still tuning channels and grid is still there, but no listings and clocks are wrong. I thought I had read on here that our host, CBS O&O WCCO, would hold on to the bitter end, but I guess not.

Can you find your LastClkSet? Only asking since loss of clock should not happen unless something causes it, like a reset.

I was only interested in the particular Nature show that you had the issue with. I'm sure if the problem you experienced was common on many (or all) recordings, that I would have noticed it over the past 13 months that I've been using my TiVo's. Are you on Cable in Dallas or still OTA like you were in Houston?

No problem with wolves here. Maybe your station was having difficulty.

Signal quality has been increasingly problematic for the past 3 years. Being OTA only, rain, snow, and particularly wind render a lot of things unwatchable. But even during good weather there are problems, particularly PBS during the plant growing season and WDIV (NBC, THIS) periodically and frequently. I do not know if plants and PBS are coincident or cause and effect. Other stations than 56.x and 4.x seem to do fine year around.

I have had a TiVo Premier for about a month. Its tuner is very inferior to the DHG. It has frequent breakups on strong and weaker signals. When comparing TiVo and DHG recordings of the same program I have found the DHG has far fewer issues than the TiVo if the DHG has any issues. And the TiVo frequently has issues when the DHG has none.

^^
If your reception has been getting progressively worse over a number of years, you may want to go out and check your antenna and coax. A little bit of corrosion can ruin your reception.

OTA here.

Yes, the PBS Wolves and Buffalo may have been a broadcast problem at the time.

Just got back to the house, and the Golf game set up to record on both units is actually College Basketball - CBS. I took a quick look at the live game on the TV tuner, and it looked good. Later after both boxes have recorded all three shows, I will take a look to see how they did. Hopefully it is a non issue, etc.

Snipped from the Sony facebook page:

Good morning! I'm Sarah Kepler, the supervisor for Sony Support USA. This is our official statement... We are currently working towards a resolution on this. We understand this is an inconvenience to many of our customers and we most certainly appreciate your patience. When we have more details, we'll be sure to update the eSupport site. Many thanks for your understanding on this.

Supposedly, Rovi started pulling the TVGOS plug before vendors (Sony, Dish, Panasonic, LG and others) were notified. Stay tuned.

I feel it's a gimme that no digital inserters are going to be sent back to the TV stations. The best we can hope for is a manual clock set ability. I can live with that. I sure hope they test it.

Can't I hope for title editing, too?

- Kerry

How about a "personal inserter"? Something that you plug into your internet and into your DHG.

To my understanding, the TVGOS that will continue to exist over the internet is THE SAME TVGOS that is on the internet now for the "V-10 Internet Capable" TV's. That V-10 TVGOS is a totally different animal (24 hours) than the V-8 TVGOS in the DHG (8 days). So even if you spent the (probably) $1000 to buy such a device as you describe, the best you would end up getting is 24 hours of Listings. And even if the box you describe were to be designed and built, the DHG firmware would still require extensive revision in order to be able to read and understand the V-10 data stream. Add to that the DHG's propensity to "miss" certain parts or the data during transmissions and, well, you know, JUST FORGET THAT IDEA!

Ask for it. I did in my email to them (back when all this started).

Well, based on the price of the DTV-Pal adapter, IMHO, your estimate of $1000 would be a bit high by a factor of at least 10x. A price around $75 to $100 would be much more likely. Would owners of a DHG, plus all the other Sony, Toshiba, and other brands of devices that use TVGOS be willing to pay that? I think so. I know I would.

Such a converter would re-create the V-7/V-8 analog data stream (again, just like the DTV-Pal adapter). I thought that was obvious. So, no firmware update would be required for any TVGOS legacy device.

I don't know about anyone else, but having just a day or two of listings, plus a clock, would be better than nothing and a reasonable compromise at this point.