Sony DHG-HDD250/500: Official Thread - Page 291

Are you getting the guide data from fios cable or OTA?

Check this out:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6160587.html

Motorola is on top of this whole thing, at least that's what it looks like ot me. Comments?

Wayne

Interesting. I didn't notice Motorola in there but according to those dates that could be what VBI services are presently using?

So purchasing rights to the process makes it even less likely it will be included in some low cost converter unless it is really necessary and/or mandated?

Let us know. Apparently not much documentation for taft but it does look like some utilities will copy any host protected area. If you can comprehensively image the drive and move the board (prom) then the Sony shouldn't have any way to know the difference. A little risky, but those drives are so inexpensive if you start on the new one, you might figure out what is going on before *destroying* the working Sony drive.

Best of Luck... Go for it!

I thought of a clock signal experiment that I plan to perform after I get a weeks worth of daily pbs signals, from 2:59pm to 3:01pm. I plan to use a VCR with auto clock feature for this test, instead of my HDDs since I don't want to disturb the DVRs while the guide is working perfectly. If the signal sets the VCR clock, I am fairly confident that it will also set the HDD. Also, from past history, there will be several guide drop outs and clock loss before 2009. Those events will provide opportunity to see if i can set the HDD clock signal.

My first choice is to use a DVD recording, and if that doesn't set the VCR clock, I will repeat the experiment with VCR taped signal. In that case, I will need to use two of my VCRs. Before I do any of this stuff, I probably will run a test with a real time pbs signal to verify that it sets the VCR clock.

Ray

LOL @ destroying a drive. If I kill it, I can always send back to WD for warranty replacement...

At one of my prior jobs, we had a hardware-based HDD duplicator that would do a bit-for-bit copy of any IDE drive. If I can't get one of these utilities to do it, maybe I'll send it to one of my old buddies there. They owe me a favor or two.

If my DHG-250 loses the correct time, tuning to 28.1 (PBS digital Los Angeles area) and running the 9012 G* Factory Test will get the correct time right away. Only the ATSC test passes for a digital station. By the way, after the four tests are run, pressing a key <1>, <2>, <3>, or <4>, will repeat one of the corresponding four tests.

In the 753159852 info areas, I have seen ATSC packets being received if the DVR is tuned to 28.1. Note that the date and time shown in the upper left corner of the gray info area is GMT. Scroll down to Section VBI Data, and then scroll right to VBIDLSched. There is a list of DLID (Download ID?) , StID (Station ID?) and start times. One this afternoon was due at 1:46 or 1:49 GMT, depending on the StID. Scrolling back left to VBI Info, the entry DLTimer showed "2/23/07 1:46:00". So I suppose that means the DVR would attempt a download then (5:46 pm PST). Now also in the 753159852 menu, scroll up (or down) to Section ATSC/ATSC Slicer and see if the TVG packets number increases. Ordinarily, it increases about once a minute. I have seen this number increase rapidly starting at a download time, with the DVR tuned to 28.1. At 1:47 GMT today, the TVG packets number was increasing at about 50 packets a minute, for about 5 minutes. On other occasions I have seen it continue for some time. (Perhaps it already had this download, so this time it stopped.)

A test I haven't tried yet would be to leave the DVR tuned to 28.1 overnight and see it it gets the next day in the guide.

I am using OTA. I noticed Ads in the Guide window today (LA area).



cablenest

Thanks cablenest. So the only time you see ATSC packets registering over in 753159852 is during ATSC host channel download? No other time or ATSC channel for the Section ATSC/ATSC Slicer? Guess that makes sense, I'm reasonably certain there is no ATSC TVGOS activity in my area at this time. That would explain why that is always dead for me. Guess there is no reason for any other digital data over in those screens, as there seems to be (in others) when tuned to any analog VBI channel.

Perhaps the only way we can really prove it isn't sneaking off to analog somehow to fetch the time may be when analog is no longer? If you have no sure way to deprive it of the analog version of your host channel for a period of time to test? Of course TVGOS may need to tell it when it can use ATSC instead. (besides forced 9012 G*) But you have witnessed time discovery when the front panel showed 28.1 and it was only on the ATSC channel? In otherwords no way it could be somehow mapped to analog.

Do the 9012 G* Factory Tests reset (flush) listings until the next completed download?

Appears to me that the logic board swapping is very nearly foolproof, provided you have an identical drive and the correct torx. Not clear about the need for the precise firmware revision.

But looks like if you can get *all* the raw sectors lined up on the destination platters, there shouldn't be any surprises from Sony. This may be easier than I was thinking. We're lucky they apparently didn't lock the drive, so we are spared all that white knuckle hotswapping.

Of course with xbox360 M$ hid some signed drive prom info on sector 16 which had to match the correct drive. Swapping the board solves that and getting all sectors including any possible HPA should hopefullly take care most other possible gotchas.

No, it's not just the old stuff. See the "BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION" section for reference to digital television and ATSC.

Also, in the details:
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

"The present invention provides a bandwidth efficient method and apparatus for using a digital television data stream to transport variable amounts of different types of information conventionally carried in the VBI portion of an analog television signal."

Don't let the patent throw you off though; everyone patents their circuits as best they can to keep people from blatantly copying them. When I worked at Alcatel, we patented our circuits, some asic designs, etc., to protect the idea of what we were doing. I don't want to get started on patents though. I am continually enraged at the patents granted for OBVIOUS stuff. I really only meant the link as a reference so that people here will know that the big companies are looking at how to take the data out of the digital streams and output it back into old time analog.

Or, I'm full of s**t. :-)

Wayne

You're welcome, Ken.

First I need to correct the remark about the "four" tests in 9012 G* Factory Test -- it's five tests, each prompted by <1>, <2>, <3>, <4> or <5>, and the Flash test also passes (for all stations, analog and digital).

Doing the the 9012 G* Factory Tests does not flush the current TV Guide listings for me--it does not seem to have any ill effect. But it is important to navigate carefully to only the G* Factory Tests , since the other menu items along the way do things like formatting the hard drive or resetting everything to factory defaults.

Section ATSC/ATSC Slicer always shows the values increasing by 1 about once a minute for TVG, and less often for PAT and PMT (which mean?) if the DVR is tuned to either 28.1 or 28.2, and more rapidly at the start of a download, maybe continuing for the whole download. I have not been checking on this regularly. I do not recall the ATSC Slicer showing changes on other (digital) channels. I posted a while ago, when I was paying attention to all this, that: "If the DVR is tuned to either 28-1 or 28-2 during a download period when I enter the diagnostics menu, and go down 9 times and right 2 times arriving at Section Reception-VBI Stats, any one of these items can be seen increasing the numbers shown: Schedule Pkts, ShowPkts, DescPkts, CastPkts. This does not happen if the tuned station is 28 (PBS analog). Also, for either 28-1 or 28-2 during a download period , go down 3 times to Section ATSC-ATSC Slicer, and I see the entry TVG is updating (increasing)." However, I do recall seeing it get Schedule Pkts, ShowPkts, DescPkts, and CastPkts while tuned to analog 28, at a later date. Then I gave up on trying to figure out what it was doing.

In 753159852 Section Other-Clocks 2 I have seen Failing Clock Chan have "0:28-1" , and the Clock Set Chan have "0:28-1". I understand your point about sneaking off, or otherwise "remapping" to analog ch 28 (which is listed as the host station), but from the above paragraph it seems that it could not have been doing that, since the DVR only has one tuner. Currently the Clock values are both "fffffffd", whatever that means.


These units were made with HDMI and cablecard support, which to me indicates that they were forward looking in design. But then there is the USB port, which was only for firmware upgrades? The ATSC standard was established before 2000, so I can't help but think that Sony and TVGOnline well knew what they were doing -- why else have all the stuff about ATSC in the service menus? It was just today that I started getting ads in the guide area, even though ads were already shown in the pictures in the TVGO manual.

Perhaps in a while I will try leaving it tuned to 28.1 overnight as an experiment. I am wondering: Will the DVR download listings if it is on, but tuned to the right station, whether analog for VBI or digital for ATSC? Has anyone tried this? Possibly it cannot do station timeshift recording and listings downloading at the same time (the instructions say that the unit must be off to download listings).


Thanks for commenting.

cablenest

Quick reply in case you're still up; it will NOT get listings if the unit is turned on.

Wayne

Tonite, I noticed for the first time that Ads have filled the Ads area in the TV Guide. They are static ads but do rotate between 3 of them when you scroll through the TV guide listings. If you move the cursor over to it, the listings area displays more information that pertains to the Ad. My box is hooked up to analog basic cable provided by Time Warner in Fullerton, Southern California.

This baby here:
http://broadband.motorola.com/consum...ducts/dct3400/
Does NOT have an analog tuner, yet has coax out for old style TV's, and supports closed captioning on older tv's. See this:

Problem: No closed captions
display

Solution:
Verify on the User Settings menu that closed captions
are enabled on the cable terminal.
Verify that closed captions are enabled on the TV.

It doesn't say a word about the TV has to be digital. It also specifically mentions RF input only tv's and VCR's. So, the circuitry is all in that box. It also supports TVguide. If they just make a little set top for us, we're home.

Wayne

That has been in place for some time. My ATSC tuners already put closed captions in baseband (VBI) and in HD outputs. They also can put it onscreen, in other words I can have two layers (STB and Display) going simultaneously. So these boxes (including Sony DHG-HDD) are already passing ATSC data to VBI. So why not TVGOS? I believe it would need that extra pipeline also routed to the VBI. Will we see it?

Thanks much cablenest for the very precise observations. You have increased my optimism about the *possibility* of clockset over ATSC if we can just rule out analog 28. If you have watched that happen (clockset apparently can happen with the unit on?) and it never left 28.1 that is very encouraging.

I just can't imagine why both Sony and TVGOS techs would allegedly make claims they aren't compatible in a total vacuum. So perhaps there is still some hitch related to listings. But as long as we can set the clock I'll be happy enough.

If they can transition flawlessly (as was surely planned) why would anyone be telling us anything otherwise? BTW I'd guess all the speculation about converter boxes passing VBI TVGOS probably originated right here in this thread.

Hopefully we can keep with this and come to something definitive.

It seems doing a G* Factory Test on any ATSC channel creates 1,3 or,5 PAT and/or PMT during the test. These show up over in Section ATSC/ATSC Slicer until the next G* Factory Test on another channel. No TVG for me.

Nothing starts moving over in 753159852 until a G* Factory Test on the current channel. The only thing I see keep advancing after the G* Factory Test is on the analog host channel. ATSC are static after the initial G* Test. I did all this before, probably the last time it was discused here. Don't know what made me think 9012/TVGuide/G* Factory Test killed listings.

Anyway cablenest, what do you see in Section Reception-Slicing after a G* Factory Test on 28.1? Do they keep going up (last column) current channel in that section, for instance during a download?

Anyone else with ATSC TVGOS in service: can you set your clock doing a 9012 G* Factory Test on a digital channel?

OTA. I was unable to get valid VBI with TVGOS info off any of the possible (ie PBS) FIOS analog channels. I think the general conclusion is Verizon doesn't pass it along. As to why they couldn't and shouldn't.....

I'm also getting them OTA, so the ads have come to Southern California.

I looked up these acronyms once, and found that they stood for:
Program Association Tables(PAT) and Program Map Tables(PMT)

I don't know what they are, but they seem to be related to the actual decoding of incoming MPEG2 streams.

I googled "pmt pat psip" (without quotes and found a lot of hits).

This was one of the pages I found (with very technical info):
http://www.tvtechnology.com/features..._the_asi.shtml

Gentlemen, thanks for the replies. I'm simply using the remote to turn off the Sony - not disconnecting the AC power cord. Much earlier in this thread I had seen issues such as yours with needing to go through multiple CC's, so I'm hopeful that (or some other problem at Comcast's end) is the problem and I'll call them once again. BTW, Comcast here provides Scientific Atlanta CC's, not Motorola, which of course is no guarantee of being "better quality".

In the meantime, I'll try to find the Recoding History data Spiff72 mentioned.

Thanks again.
Dan Spadoni

Well I guess any and all CableCard comments are not relative.
I know it's a standard - I'm surprised they are using two brands.

GOOD LUCK.

update for Seattle viewers

I spoke to engineers at ION (33) and KBTS (28) yesterday about adding their sub-channel listings to TVGOS. Neither one of them was aware of the TVGOS transmission by the host KCTS. Both seemed eager to do what is necessary to make that happen.

I know this only affects a small number of people on this thread so I'm also posting it to the TVGOS and the Seattle-OTA threads

Handful of plasma/DVR's?

TVGOS has been around for over ten years. It's been included in many models of analog CRT TV's (RCA, G.E., Proscan), and many, many models of VCR's (RCA, G.E., Proscan, Sony, Panasonic, etc.).

While there may be a smaller percentage of people still using those VCR's nowadays (although I wouldn't underestimate that), I'd imagine TONS of those TV's are still in use. In fact, my sister has one in her bedroom right now, and has the cable coax hooked up to it and uses the guide. It's easier to scroll through than many cable guides, especially once you set it up to your preference. I will admit though, that it's probably somewhat less important and depended upon in any TV than it is built-into a recording device.

And like myself and others have mentioned in this post in the past- don't forget about TVGOS's dependence on the ad revenue they get from the service - that's just one good incentive right there.

I'm not saying there will or won't be a workaround to keep the service going on all of the existing units out there - I'm just as clueless, and even doubtful at times, as anyone here. But I just like to clarify the misconception that ocassionally someone in this thread has that this only pertains to a "handful" of users.

Heck, I've even got 4 devices myself that have TVGOS - 3 DVR's and one TV. I'm actually only using 1 currently (the Sony DVR - and except for that component, I did not really specifically buy the others just because of the TVGOS), but if I weren't using that I'd surely have it up and running in another. And if I were to upgrade any specific type of component, I'd probably hand a unit down (or sell it) to someone who may very well use the guide, just as was the case with my sister's TV, which her husband got from a co-worker.

While the actual usage of any of those older units, and especially the dependence on the guide, is definitely debatable, it still was included in hundreds of thousands of sold items over the years. We seem to forget that not everyone else can afford to "keep up" with the latest technology and depends a lot on older units - and, even those of us who can still have a lot of these TV's in other rooms. It's not an uncommon occurance at all for a TV to easily last over ten years.

Just wanted to make that clear, as many people seem to only think that the service just sprang up with the advent of DVR/DVD recorders and newer, digital TV's.

(We here have to remember that, sometimes, in our quest to NOT be so "narrow-minded", we actually can come across as being just that, although, many people are often just not aware about the history of TVGOS - and that's really my main point.)

And there were all the earlier versions... and several variations on the theme, came and went.

The only point I'm making is how very few items will be debilitatingly hobbled (even dysfunctional) without TVGOS, after analog shut off.

If we can easily set our clock in 2009, it really doesn't even include us.

[quote=KenL]And there were all the earlier versions... and several variations on the theme, came and [url=http://www.starsight.com/#StarSight equipped [/url]./QUOTE]


Wow, I only vaguely remembered that one. (How did you manage to dig that one up? )

I just remembered the original TVGOS from when it was called "Guide +". That's the one in the older TV's (and VCR's) like my sister's, and I know that they've kept that and all the earliest versions still working.

And they've just updated the version in the Sony, so just showing that much commitment to keeping all the past and existing versions working and as up to date as possible through the years kind of keeps me optimistic that they will at least do as much as they can to keep the older ones going. I do know though, that only the 8th version of the guide (and newer 9th), like the one in the Sony, is the only one they can add channels to without having to delete ones. Jan J in the LG DVR thread got them to add Oxygen to the 3410a's guide, which is V7, in our area, but they had to drop one channel to do it. The newer versions may actually have a finite number of slots to work with (not sure), but at least they've got the capacity in reserve. They just added over 50 OTA channels (easy) to my guide.

I still think that someone will come up with some kind of converter box, if that's really the only way. And probably someone like Radio Shack will have it on their shelves. They always seem to be the ones who carry that kind of "adaptive" stuff.

No matter what the future holds, I just don't even really think about it and I just enjoy my units fully in the present. I'm certainly not gonna worry needlessly and drive myself half-nuts over it .

Hi,

I'm a new HDD250 owner. I was down in Harrisonburg for work and wandered into the Crutchfield store. They had one HDD250 left and I swiped it.

Anyways, I set it up last night and got it working fine. I did the standard set-up with cable and it found all of the channels that my QAM TV has. This morning, the TV Guide filled in and I have a load of listings.

Here's my problem. The display on the unit itself still says "Welcome" and the power indicator is still on. There's an "06" on the display itself.

It doesn't display the time or channel and when recording, the red light doesn't light up.

Also, it seems that I can only turn the unit on/off with the remote as the buttons on the unit don't seem to do anything.

The "Welcome" indicator stays on even when I turn the unit off via the remote.

I bought the unit as a return, so could the previous owner set something on it that makes it behave like this?

Thanks.

ft

Try doing a warm reset. That infomation is in the FAQ at the start of this thread. I do not seem to recall the exact procedure at the moment, otherwise I would tell you how. I had this problem early on with mine, but after trial and error and resets, the problem never came back. I did the cold reset, but that stress the units and should be avoided if can be.
Michael

Those are BOTH Bad Signs.

As AtlantisMichael Says try to do warm reset.

All the info can be found on this webpage.

http://www.spiffspace.com/sonydvr.html

ftaok,

I'm curious, was this unit new or open-box? Hope the warm reset fixes it...