Magnavox 537, 535, 533, 515, 513, 2160A, 2160, 2080 & Philips 3576, 3575 - Page 690

I'll try to keep this simple. In the past I did have a 3576 connected to my Basic cable service but sold it when I converted to a higher HD tier and a cable DVR STB. The monthly fees have been creeping higher over the years so I opted out of the cable TV all together and picked up a 515 for OTA recording time shifting. With my 3576 I was blaming the cable channel numbering as the main reason I was not able to record certain channels. Now that I have the 515 I find that this still exists with certain OTA channels, and if I can't resolve this then there isn't much of a point for keeping it.

I have read thru the past posts and:
"Sounds as if you have Tuning Interference. See item #4 in the "Specific DVDR Problems..." section here. See also the "Map-Your-Own" solution and the cable and OTA successes there."

I did figure out that there was some head bumping going on between my Virtual channels 5.3 (physical 45.5), 5.45 (45.1), and Virtual 45.5. I Deleted the Virtual 45.5 and now can set the Timer Record to 45.3 and it switches to 5.3 and records, set Timer to 5.45 and it switches/records 5.45. Now there was peace in the land.... but only for a while. I'm finding other channels that I cannot record and cannot find a relationship between them like I did with the 45 channels.

So rather than explaining all I have read and tried doing to get the channels recording (I already took up more space than I planned) could I just say show (tell) me??

I live in the Minneapolis/St.Paul metro area, what do I do to Timer Record: Virtual 2.1 Physical 34.3 TPT2 or Virtual 5.4 Physical 45.2 KSTCDT2

Thanks for any help.

George

I'm not giving up but with the current price for these things I am looking at other options. I had high hopes for the PHD-VRX but that interest is dwindling now that it's out and more is known about it's capabilities.

I am planning on doing just that. Tonight before i go to bed i'll unplug the unit,tomorrow morning i'll plug it back in while pushing the 'power' button. See if that'll help. This seems to be an intermittent problem,i may not know 'for sure' for a little while if the hard reset has worked. I'm also thinking about taking the cover off and doing a visual inspection to see if there's anything unusual looking anywhere. Also am thinking that there could be a connection inside the DVDR that could have come loose somehow.A loose connection could explain the intermittent nature of this problem. I 'll check both to the best of my ability when i remove the cover. Except with my luck,it won't be quite as simple and fixable as a loose connection.
Edited by greaser - 6/10/12 at 6:45pm

Go to tvfool.com and run a report for your address, then post the URL here. The report won't show your address or your location any closer than your city and zip code.

Don't over react, this is a slow time for all CE. It's pretty quiet everywhere. You could say this is a mature product.

Or we could blame the "improved" forum.
Edited by JoeKustra - 6/10/12 at 6:13pm

We currently have something being recorded, but I will give this a test try as soon as it's available.... tnx


Yup, that is the source I have been using, here is the URL for my area:

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d13494418795f9a

Tnx

George

That did it!! I programmed 34.1 into the timer and it switched to 2.1 and started recording, 45.4 recorded 5.4.... What a Deal.

Mama's Happy Again (and when Mama's happy.... well you get the picture )

Thanks much for the suggestion, I must have missed it when I was reading about the remapping.

tnx agn
George

Another round of what? What are you talking about?

You don't mean NEW recorders, do you?

The tuners in DVD recorders can do some odd things when they see channel arrangements that they don't like. It sounds like you have this one figured out.

No not really. I had a 3575 in the past and now the 515. The tuner in the 3575 had me confused and I was using it connected to my "Basic" cable TV package so that just made a bigger mess when ever their channel lineup changed. Now years later I bought the 515 and just use it OTA. I had expected that by now they had changed the tuner or at least rewrote the firmwear so it would be a standard WYSIWYG format. I guess when your the only game in town there is not much incentive to change.

I want to watch ch 2.1 (Physical 34.3) so I push 2.1 on the remote and it goes to ch 2.3 (Physical 23.5) so I push the Down Button and it goes to R2. Stupid me, I should have known that if I want to go from 2.3 to 2.1 I should have pushed the Up Button... yup there it is 2.1. Push Up again and 2.2.. on a roll now. Push Up again and 2.4... oops, no 2.3. Ok, I'll just set the timer to record 2.1. But Wait... I have to program the channel to 34.1 (Physical 34 & Virtual .1) to get 2.1 recorded. Same with 5.4 (Physical 45.2), need to set the recorder to 45.4.

And... I want to record 5.3 (Physical 45.5). It changes the channel to 5.3 but the screen/recording is blank. Same as for 5.45 (Physical 45.1), blank screen and recording. Ah, I should have known that if I want to record 5.3 and 5.45 I have to delete the Virtual 45.5 (Physical 35.2). Gain 2 lose 1. I just hope channel 45.5 doesn't start a program lineup that I want to record.

So out of the box there are 4 channels (that I have found) that can't be timer recorded with out a work-around.

My wife said that if she bought it she would have returned it as being defective because it doesn't work when trying to use it as per the instructions (channels). I'm very thankful for this forum thread because it helped me a lot in the past and once again it came to the rescue with my new unit. But... for the $350 I paid for it (Walmart), one shouldn't need "work-arounds" and compromises.

So no, I don't have this one figured out.

sorry for the rant
George
Edited by George55 - 6/11/12 at 8:16am

All right Wajo...

I was hoping things wouldn't go this far.

You're leaving me no choice.

Give us the info on how you found out about this, or I'll friend you on every social media site I can find.

I'll even create memberships for you if necessary, just so I can do this.

I'm not playing games here.

Tell us what we want to know, or else.

I may even start telling people we're close and attend the same social gatherings.

Yes, yes, cower in horror over the possibility...

Now TALK.

You're good.

Oh, you're good, all right.

You people are SO good.

You fiend!

You and your cohorts won't get away with this!

I have it on the best of authority that as we speak your dastardly plan is being thwarted by a team of Firestone's top electronics people. Their new video tape machines, actually able to record in 720x480, IN COLOR NO LESS, available in a variety of decorator colors, AND with optional whitewalls, will soon flood the market and turn home video recording on its ear.

I hear that next year, they'll release an external TV tuner that will mate with the recorder, possibly with a built in timer.

Yes, you think you're so high and mighty. Well, we'll just see about that.

If it makes you feel any better, it's not just the Funai recorders having these issues with messy channel lineups. I try to avoid making broad claims like "all DVD recorders have this problem", but in this case I believe it would be true. Any other brand DVD recorder with a digital tuner wouldn't handle your OTA channels any better.

Your area has the messiest OTA lineup that I have ever seen. I can help you try to make some sense of what's going on if you like. I'm not an expert at this stuff but I've learned a few things about how these tuners work and what can make them go berserk. I can't guarantee that your virtual channel numbers will be fixed but we can try a few things.

OMG! My Visa card can't take it any more!!

I just might have to take you up on that in the near future. As it looks now it appears that with the two "work-arounds" I noted above I got the recording bugs worked out (so far). That being said, the folks over in the Minneapolis, MN - OTA thread are saying that our THIS TV on 5.4 is going to be moved to 5.7 and ANTENNA TV is going to be in the 5.4 slot on Thursday the 14th, so we'll see in a few days.

I would be interested to know if anyone has a lineup where there are channels that cannot be timer recorded?

tnx for the offer

George

On after thought (I have many of these now that I'm a Senior ) I'm not clear on how this is a tuner issue. The tuner in my 515 tunes in the channels fine via Direct Access or Channel +/-, it's when I program it to record that things go south. I would think that if I'm able to receive and watch my virtual channel 5.3 via DA or +/- why when I set the timer for record on 5.3 does it record a blank channel? Or I can watch 2.1, but when I set the timer for 2.1 it ends up going to 2.3. Obviously the record programming is not communicating the channel number to the tuner the same way as the Direct Access and the Channel +/- is. The tuner is going to go where it's instructed to go, I'd say it's getting the wrong instructions.

??

George

I do agree that the Twin Cities station set-up is a problem for these tuners. The first reports I found were back in Sept of 2009 by jjeff and markj40. I seem to recall a similar issue being reported more recently in New York.

I believe the OTA tuner in our DVDRs only maintains a map between the Major Virtual Channels and the Physical Channel numbers, and does fresh sub-channel scans during tuning. I suspect this makes the tuner more vulnerable to the issues created by the "Really Clever" Twin Cities station arrangements. In my opinion there is some advantage to our DVDRs approach, since the tables don't need to be updated whenever the stations are playing with the sub-channels. On the other hand, my TVs seem to have separate table entries for every sub-channel, which would make it easier to operate in the Twin Cities environment. I suspect the latter to be the more popular approach. Both approaches work fine in Denver Metro, where none of the OTA stations decided to be as clever as the Twin Cities stations. We do have 2 closely linked stations which bill themselves as the Networks of 9 News, but one uses Virtual 9 and the other uses Virtual 20. They cross-advertise each other and the news broadcasts move between the stations at various times, using the same sets and personnel, so the linkage is immediately obvious, but their approach works fine with all of my equipment.

The designers did seem to make some allowance for 2 Physical Channels being associated with one Virtual Channel, since, for example, both Physical Channels associated with Twin Cities Virtual 2 are both found by Channel Up/Down. They are out of sequence because the Higher Sub-channel number is on the Lower Physical Channel, which would have been found 1st during the scan. The designers did not fully anticipate the problems with recording. Apparently they only try the 1st Physical Channel associated with the Virtual Channel, and if the programmed Channel/Sub-Channel is not found, the recording fails. If they did field trials, even in a significant number of areas, there is a good chance they would never have seen the issue.

I don't know whether the sharing of a Virtual Channel Number by 2 Physical Transmitters broadcasting different programs was really intended, but it clearly makes things more complicated for a tuner. I really was surprised to hear that a station would do it, since they should want to make it as easy as possible for every receiver to tune their programming. It is not like cable, where I think they may give out bonuses for finding new ways to mess up the customer owned equipment, so subscribers will wind up paying to rent more equipment from the cable company.

I suspect the DVDR channel storage approach would be hard to change in existing units, so I would be very surprised if Funai could change them to work in the Twin Cities environment. If the Twin Cities stations were more intersested in reaching the maximum number of viewers, rather than using the Channel 2 branding plan that probably came from someone in marketing (not engineering), they could assign different Virtual Channels to the different Physical Channels(Transmitters) like Denver did, and the problem would go away.

I've been trying to jam my spare flux capacitor into my DVR's for years now. I'll be really glad when it's a factory deal.

It is pretty amazing how products across the board require workarounds. And even more workarounds after you get thru the first go around. It is a full time job keeping up with them all. I try to justify by saying "Well I would not have had all this media available to me 20 years ago" but when I am searching hundreds of forums trying to get an answer to an issue and also being concerned about getting a virus from a link I went to for a answer it all becomes very frustrating. I start thinking give me back my 33 1/3 LPS and Stereo amp. And "Maybe" my VCR with wired remote.

This might be a stupid question, but...... is there any difference between the MDR515H and the MDR515H/F7?

My unit says 515H on the front, 515H/F7 on the rear, 515H on the box, and the Owners Manual says 515H/F7.

Any Ideas?

tnx
George

I think the /F7 means it falls under the NAFTA regulations. I'm just speculating since I don't think Japan is part of North America.

If you have free time, do a thread search for /F7.

Nah, I just don't care for the new AVS forums much and also am a bit angry at my Maggies (for the previously reported issues with reception of some channels).

I'm still very glad I could get my hands of 2 of these babies before the prices skyrocketed. Perfect for time-shifting in my case.

Yup, I just did the F7 search and it appears that you are correct.

I should have searched before asking.... sorry

tnx

George

The avsforum droid app has crashed since the latest update, so I haven't been keeping up with avsforum at all for about 2 weeks.
Now there appears to be no app for avsforum on the droid platform.
Not sure why this happened, but I noticed a few others posting reviews that theirs crashed too and can no longer login to avsforum on their droid cells.
I guess it's time to go with the iphone...
Oops...looks like it's affected the iphone app too.

Oh well...