Magnavox 537, 535, 533, 515, 513, 2160A, 2160, 2080 & Philips 3576, 3575 - Page 56

Memo to self: Find someone for next "mission-we-know-nothing-about" who DOESN'T have a DV10!

BURN BEFORE READING!

Dear stressful,

It seems your DV10 doesn't like the file structure of the 3576's +VR system, and this may be the same for those people I found in my search who were saying their DV10 wouldn't read "certain" discs. One person sent his back to factory and they fixed it so it would read all his discs... FW upgrade?

Have you checked to see if there's a FW upgrade... seems to be only hope... at least until I find another "covert team" with a higher mission success rate!

For H2160 users: I emailed Magnavox support re: spare remote controls, and here's their response:

"Thank you for your inquiry,

Remote controls are available for many of our units. All remote control sales are final. Remote control prices vary and will be determined upon your phone call. We accept payment through Visa, Master Card or American Express. If credit card is not available, you may use a money order as alternative payment. To place order with credit card, call 1-800-242-7158 and request for the parts department between the hours of 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM Monday through Fridays.

Drew 1253
Customer Support"

There've been only a few reports of digital tuner problems with the 3576 but one user just got on with a May 19, 2008 Pack Date (on short end of box), and his digital tuner appears to be bad... goes blue-screen and won't tune on timer program start. He's on analog Comcast cable, which has been the service (analog) and provider (Comcast) with a noticeable precentage of people with digital tuner problems. OTA and true digital cable are virtually problem free.

I've got one older model 3575 that goes blue screen in my analog cable system, but only if I "stress-test" it... it's never failed to tune at startup or on timer rec.

I think the "odds" of getting one with a good tuner are pretty good, esp. if you do find dates farther away from its release month of April 2008. If you're OTA or digital cable subscriber, you shouldn't have any such digital tuning problems (sat also, obviously, since the DVDR tuner can't tune that encrypted signal and needs a line feed from the sat receiver).

I think you're asking if you can record a game on the HDD with commercials, then pause the copy (dub) to DVD to remove each commercial. The answer is yes, but the dub will have to be a real-time dub (RTD), a bit by bit transfer that takes as long as the title runs. SOME PQ is supposed to be lost in a real-time dub, so that's another consideration, besides the length of time it takes.

You could also Pause at each commercial WHILE recording the game to the HDD, but that takes "babysitting" the entire game.

Another way to get a commercial-free game is to record (using unattended timer program or press REC and let it run, as described here) in a high-quality rec mode, like 2-hr-SP (you can record up to 12 hours at any one time in any rec mode with the 3575/3576/2160), then EDIT out the commercials, then make a high-speed dub (HSD), which takes 1/4-time if 2-hr-SP or 1/12-time if 6-hr-SLP, and NO loss in PQ.

Here's a post with some ideas on how to record a football game (toughest thing for MPEG2 recorders IMO) in high-quality rec modes and editing down so it can be HSD to a DVD.

Here's a post on the benefits of HSD compared to a RTD.

I'd stay away from anything in Feb, they were still selling 3575's then... might have just "repackaged" a 3575. If you were ONLY OTA or digital cable, it wouldn't matter.

I've heard from many people lately who wanted to combine OTA and cable, but it's a problem not just because there's only one RF input, but you can't scan for Antenna channels then for Cable (Analog/Digital) channels cuz one overwrites the other in memory. So, even a "switch" wouldn't work.

Sketch #1 here shows a typ. OTA or Cable connection, with an outboard digital converter box to supply the tuned OTA signal... not sure about this whole area? Combining sat service is much easier to combine with OTA or cable.

The ony things we KNOW are different in the 3576 are the case shape and color, and new Front-End (FE) Firmware, which I assume is for operating front-end components like the TUNER? They could have just rewritten that FE FW OR they could have installed a different tuner that required a diff. op system... pure speculation on my part for now. A few people have risked their warranties and given us a look inside the 3575 and the 2160, but no inside peeks on the 3576 yet.

They are NOT releasing that FE upgrade for the 3575, even tho their Support web site already has one FW upgrade for the 3575... it'd be a piece of cake to add it to the list, but they're not, so SOMETHING is significantly different in the front-end of the 3576!

On the OTA/cable thing, I think you're saying you'll feed the antenna to a line input on the 3576 thru an outboard tuner, with cable on the 3576's RF input... if so, that's a good idea!

Since the long shots in football are so hard for MPEG2 to capture/record with high PQ, and you never know if the TV network crew will bring its best equipment, you should record in the very best rec mode that can be dubbed later to a single DVD. Since you alread have 300 games, you know what their running time turns out to be after removing commercials, I assume. Using HSD, you can get 2:10:00 on a single DVD from a program recorded at 2-hr-SP rec mode (up to 12 hours max rec time in one session, so should cover a few OT's? ), and SP should give you nice looking std def (SD) recordings of the games.

With the 3575/3576/2160, you can edit out commercials using Scene Delete, which ends up leaving just the original single title/file, w/o the commercials when you go to watch or dub. Editing procedures here.

2-hr-SP mode should be good for a game shot with good equipment and broadcast on a digital channel, esp. if it's ESPN HD. Then, to get on one SL DVD, you have to reduce title time to 2:10:00 max.

COVERT!? You just outed yourself... now you're "overt"... who are you again?

Don't know much about switches but I don't think you can scan for channels in the 3575/3576/2160 on the Preset for Antenna, then do another scan for Cable (Analog/Digital) cuz the 2nd scan will overwrite the 1st. (I played briefly with rabbit ears and a coupon converter box and remember having to re-scan for antenna channels to get anything on the rabbit ears, which wiped out my cable channels, I think???)

I can unserstand Sony's ref. to a A+B switch if the display were a tunerless monitor, which would have to be fed by one or more tunered devices... so, you could scan for cable channels in the DVDR, then use another device like a VCR or digital converter box for the OTA channels???

bill-tb here just mentioned a dual input setup using a converter box, which should work OK.

Satellite users can have multiple sources easier than antenna or cable people cuz the DVDR tuner can't tune the sat signal anyway, so the ANT IN on the DVDR is "wasted"... might as well hook SOMETHING to it!

Altho the 2160 hasn't been out very long, that's the unit I'd get to run side-by-side with the 3575 or 3576 since they operate the same way and the remotes are model-specific. Several people have posted in here, one with FOUR 3575/3576's trying to find ways to operate them all with the same remote (healthy separation is all we could come up with to this point).

I never knew so many people liked that 6-hour autorecord feature the 2160 has to replace the 3575/3576's Pause Live TV.

I downloaded a manual for the KBL 40-46-52 XBR series and see the A-B switch, which refers you to a Channel Settings section, which in turn says you have to select Cable ON for cable or Cable Off for antenna, then says you have to "run Auto Program after changing the Cable setting." Farther down it says, "If you run Auto Program again, previously scanned channels will be overwritten with the newly scanned channels."

Seems to be the same as trying to get two sources into the DVDR thru its single RF input? The A-B switch pictured is just a way to connect two separate sources to the single RF input on the TV, but each has to be channel-scanned separately, overwriting the last scan, and both can't be used at the same time just by flipping the switch. (I thought maybe it had dual tuiners with separate inputs or something like that. Maybe the ones you're looking at do?)