Magnavox 537, 535, 533, 515, 513, 2160A, 2160, 2080 & Philips 3576, 3575 - Page 585

A smart move. My PBS is bad Mon-Fri, and my Fox is bad Sat-Sun. My 515H is slow 5 seconds per week. I would tweek it if I could, but that's not in Post #1. Maybe there will be an option to turn it off someday. I have enough clocks.

My fault. Poorly phrased. I want the front panel display blank when the unit is off. Same as the ECO mode on my Toshiba equipment.

But since you asked, what happens if all analog channels disappear? No more channels to scan on auto. I am cable, so I have analog, but how does an OTA only 515H find the clock?

OTA users with only digital channels must set Auto Clock to "Manual", and set a DTV channel number to get automatic clock updates. Auto Clock set to "Auto" will not work.

Yes, 109.2 is is now the "Live Well Network" channel, which took the place of "ABC Action News-Weather." But the intermittant problem began months ago, before that channel change. I recently re-scanned to get any updated assignments from BHN, but only 3 channels had changed (out of ~117 captured).
I could try using different major nets on digital (ABC/NBC/CBS) for time signals, but I'm just not gonna bother...

I just think 515 users should be warned that if they experience a problem similar to mine, they should either try a different channel or, better yet, not use Manual Clock Set ON at all. The time drift on the 515's clock seems to be <1 minute a month.

Wow. Too bad a clock check couldn't be done with the display button.

J&R has a $15.00 off coupon code valid on purchases of $150.00 or more.

The coupon code is JR2012, and is valid from Thurs, Dec. 29, 2011 thru
Tues, Jan. 3, 2012. (Details HERE)

Happy New Year

Thanks for the tip!

Brings the price for the 515 down to $184.99 with free shipping to my location.

So......are these "refurbs" really reliable? I'm not seeing any negative posts regarding them. The idea of a "refurb" just scares me a little.

Then again, watching the sun come up scares me too. You know, what happens if it gets stuck?!

Happy New Year everybody and especially Wajo, JoeKustra and the other regulars who spend so much time and effort helping others - including moi.

I'm happy with my 515 refurb from J&R. It had 125 hours on it when I got it. It has 3,381 hours on it now and is still going strong. The only trouble I ever had with it was the cooling fan got loud after I put it on top of a hot receiver. I bought a replacement fan from Funai for about $10 including shipping and spent less than an hour replacing it.

I have mine split before the box because I use on demand on occasion. So one leg feeds the beast (the cable box) and the other feeds the 2160. The cable box ALSO feeds the 2160 via Line 1 input .... mostly I use the L1 input and set the cable box to the channel I want to record, but there are a few stations that I prefer recording via the internal tuner (and it also comes in handy if you have a preset timer recording on a cable box station + you want to record something else at a different time /different channel using the tuner. It's sometimes easier to mix & match, so you don't lose the cable box 's channel setting. (Mine supposedly will change channels, but one is a little unpredictable._ The tv can use the antenna ( boosted signal ) out from the 2160 RF now , but if Comcast does what people are saying they are going to (I haven't heard that they're canceling local access in DC, but that's not to say that they wont!) then this set up wont work any longer. I will not pay for another box -- Im already having qualms about the two currently on my bill. I have another indoor antenna ready to plug in, which will bring in the same limited line up of regular network and PBS stations -- with the added inconvenience of having to jiggle the direction for one (ABC) channel, which wont come in unless it's aimed in the opposite direction to all the other stations. Not as easy as it used to be!

My refurbs were 2160As (I bought the 515 new, and one 2160A, back when I was young and foolish). Frankly, there's not much difference (except the cardboard box). One refurb had better coax cabling included in the plain brown box than the 'new' one. I've been very happy with mine -- only one had what I considered to be a lot of hours on (not recording time) - but that's only because my first refurb was barely used, and you do have a warranty, so ... if anything is going to go wrong, chances are, it'll happen right away.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Since the 90 day warranty is allegedly from Magnavox, I guess it would be handled the same way as a problem with a new 515.

Tuner issues with cable and 515.

I have one or two digital channels that I watch infrequently. They are digital channels (local broadcasts, Fox and KTLA in Southern California). If I arrange the coax to go straight to the 515, I get strong signal strength 94 and five bars, but no picture. If I put a splitter in before the 515, I get 0 signal strength and no bars and obviously no picture. I've tried the hanging cable trick with no luck. All the other channels work fine.

Thanks. There is no promise you will get a virgin unit, but I have several used Sony DRVs from 2005 that have 20 to 30 thousand hours on their hard drives. Cars used to have a shorter lifespan too. Things are better now.

I'd buy a refurb in a NY minute.

Geeze, having made the above pronouncement, I may have to re-think already. In the 17 hours since midnight (the apparent last Manual Clock Set sync with the troublesome Fox affiliate time signal) my bedroom unit is approximately 25 seconds slow (when compared with the BH STB time, which may or may not be exact...). That is going to be unacceptable for timer recordings, especially at that time drift rate. I'm going to wait a day or two and check the drift velocity, and then maybe I'll try the CBS affiliate next.....

My 2160A loses about 2 seconds per month on clock off. My 515H loses about 5 seconds per week last time I checked, also with clock set off.

My reference is several clocks synced with Colorado Springs.

I thought it was Ft. Collins CO
At least that's where WWV used to originate from.

Have not heard about a waiver....maybe artwire can shed some light.

I've read through that more than once and really don't see how it relates to my problem.

So, I was just messing around a while ago. I remembered my tv at one time was getting multiple channel 5s. So, on the 515, I went into the manual preset and added 5.2 (the unit doesn't get a picture for 5.1). The preset came up 5--- and I added it.

Then I tuned in 5.1 again, no picture. I pressed channel up figuring I might see 5.2. Flashing on the screen for a millisecond was channel 7 then immediately 5.1 WITH A PICTURE!. Further channel up hits went to additional channel five subs, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4. Then to channel 7.1. Hitting the channel down button took me through in reverse, concluding finally with the 5.1 without picture. So I now have two channel 5.1s, one with and one without a picture.

This has me at a complete loss. Should I just do a channel scan with the coax removed and then just manually add all the channels I want? I can now live with it the way it is, but I always like things a little cleaner.

You're right. Too much wine. To think I lived in Denver for a year too.

Do you by any chance have cable or FiOS?

If so, it may be that more than one channel on your system has the virtual ID "5.1". One of these is scrambled, the other isn't, but when scanning the recorder apparently ID'd the scrambled one first, so when the useable 5.1 was also ID'd, it listed it after the scrambled one, and made it unavailable for directly tuning by channel number.

This usually happens when an OTA channel carried by a cable system has a virtual ID that the cable company foolishly also gives to an entirely different channel.

There is no fix, except for the cable company changing the ID of the "offending" channel, which they're not at all likely to do.

The only solution for recording the useable 5.1 is to leave the recorder on that channel, set the recording for that channel, and leave the recorder on.

If the machine gets turned off, it'll turn on and try to tune 5.1, and it'll get the unuseable scrambled one, since that'll come up first.

Your recording will be blank.

Again, the solution is to leave the machine turned on and tuned to that channel.

We've found no other fix, except to stop using cable for locals, and hope an antenna gets you a good signal on the recorder.

If the desired channel is also a SDV channel, even that can't be counted on. Here it may start OK (e.g. 38.1/WTTA HD here on BHN), but before the program can finish it will probably have jumped to the first .1 channel, which may get nothing but a black screen, or the first found but perfectly wrong 38.1.

Have a 2160A and a 515, both refurbs that came from JR with approximately 20 HD hours on the 2160A and 32 HD hours on the 515 . Only problem I've had is with the 2160A which will not write to a DVD+R (it will write to a DVD+RW). This problem probably pre-existed but was only discovered after the warranty ran out.

I've been fighting with them about a huge unannounced price hike that they tried to implement retroactively through some hanky panky partial billing of only one half of the services (so I didn't notice the rise in cost until the following month, when it was already a done deal -- and doubled my cost). I was ready to tell them to stuff it - but managed to renegotiate ... so keeping it til after the holidays when I will revisit the pricing issue and shop around. (We only have one other option - but that company offers a three year price guarantee) As for channels, almost everything here is gone via direct coax except the standard network stations, pbs, some local access, and one or two uninteresting channels. They keep sending messages about how people will lose access stations IF you dont have a converter box, but after careful reading, it appears they are trying to imply that the channels will be gone for everyone... when in fact it's just non-digital tvs that wont have access. Then again, I may be surprised. At the moment we have all networks, subchannels, PBS, getting dual channel alignment for both MHZ and MPT so the numbers overlap (which means you have to tune in to the one you want and then leave the recorder ON to make sure you get the correct channel for the timed recorder.) Otherwise, it's the same as it's been for the last six months or so. Who knows what else they have planned ... they keep promoting sports packages and extra movie channels -- no new word about changes in channel line up with the exception of two recent channel numerical reassignments.

Regarding waivers, just saw this from Dec 1


For many years, consumers were able to save some money on their cable bills by simply subscribing to a basic tier of programming. For additional programming, subscribers had to pay for a set-top box provided by the cable company. This worked fine when cable companies transmitted the programming in an analog format. But times, and technology, are changing. Now even the basic tier, like the more expensive ones, is going digital, and that means consumers will have to pay for a box even if they didn't have one before. In response to these events, the Federal Communications Commission proposed a new rule. Public Knowledge applauds the FCC for proposing the rule in response to digital cable technology and protecting subscribers from being hit too hard as a result of the digital transition.

Read More:
http://www.publicknowledge.org/blog/...llo-new-rule-d


FCC ruling (PDF)

http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Rele...C-11-153A1.pdf

I have no complaints with my TV service but that bill is at the top of the list of monthly expenses I can do without. If they retroactively raised my bill I would retroactively cancel my service. That kind of billing shenanigans would push me over the edge.