[vickyg2003]



Quote:
Originally Posted by blueb23 /forum/post/21011351


When I set the DVR to record every Sun it will record the next Sun and then it is erased from timer program menu. When I called the Magnavox help line they told me this was normal. He said if I wanted to record every Sun for a year, I would have to enter the 52 Dates for each Sun. That is stupid! Why have individual days of the week under record if they don't work on a weekly basis? Do I have a defective unit and he didn't want me to know? Any help appreciated.

I record every SAT and it works just fine. It doesn't erase itself. Did this happen more than once? If it happened one time only, perhaps you pressed something wrong and got back onto the DATE option. Choosing a DATE will record once and erase its timer, just like on a VCR.

 

[blueb23]

Thanks for reply. In the timer program menu it was listed as (SUN). Actually it was 2 programs listed to record on Sun. Both were erased after recording on the following Sun. I may try a different day of the week to see if it will work correctly. Looks like I may have a bad unit if yours works correctly.

 

[JoeKustra]



Quote:
Originally Posted by wajo /forum/post/21010607


So, essentially, your situation is not relateable to anyone else that we've heard from so far.

Yeah, but it's a big world. You can never tell what tomorrow will bring.

 

[blueb23]



Quote:
Originally Posted by blueb23 /forum/post/21011506


Thanks for reply. In the timer program menu it was listed as (SUN). Actually it was 2 programs listed to record on Sun. Both were erased after recording on the following Sun. I may try a different day of the week to see if it will work correctly. Looks like I may have a bad unit if yours works correctly.

Is you unit a magnavox MDR515H? I purchased mine online from Walmart.

 

[JoeKustra]



Quote:
Originally Posted by vickyg2003 /forum/post/21010871


I've been complaining about this for months, I guess I should have posted the list earlier. It might have helped you guys visualize it. When my cable company said no STB needed the SD basic cable lineup they meant it. They did it in a really nice fashion for all my other QAM equipment. No . or _ needed and the channel numbers are the same as with the DTA, same channels in every room, and they match up to the TVGuide. That's why I was so disappointed when I bought the maggie. It doesn't use the aliases and that makes it really hard to use. We'll have to see how TWC does after their conversion to all digital. Then maybe you'll hear more. My company is the 11th largest in the US and one of the few to offer a complete lineup in clear QAM after the digital transition. Others like Comcast only offer local channels in clear QAM.

I just installed a really cheap Philips HD 720p TV. It found 70 channels in 720p or 1080i from the same cable company I use, but a different zipcode (headend). Signals from cable are very local. I think my cable company may be one of the smallest. My local feed has probably 4000 users and most use a STB. But being anti-comcast, they display the raw cable channels on their BBS channel. All those four decimal points included. I like being small and hidden. I get two analog TVGOS feeds in my zip code. One is on C-SPAN and one is on KYW. No digital inserter yet. And no PSIP or SCTE-127 conversion. I don't care.

 

[Ken.F]



Quote:
Originally Posted by blueb23 /forum/post/21011351


When I set the DVR to record every Sun it will record the next Sun and then it is erased from timer program menu. When I called the Magnavox help line they told me this was normal. He said if I wanted to record every Sun for a year, I would have to enter the 52 Dates for each Sun. That is stupid! Why have individual days of the week under record if they don't work on a weekly basis? Do I have a defective unit and he didn't want me to know? Any help appreciated.

If you set it for "Sun" it should stay there until you delete it, but there are some conditions that will cause you to lose the timer record schedule. Leaving it unplugged for more than a couple of hours will do it. Running Auto Channel Preset when switching from Antenna to Cable will do it too. For some reason when I run Auto Channel Preset when switching from Cable to Antenna the schedule doesn't get wiped out.

 

[vickyg2003]



Quote:
Originally Posted by blueb23 /forum/post/21011506


Thanks for reply. In the timer program menu it was listed as (SUN). Actually it was 2 programs listed to record on Sun. Both were erased after recording on the following Sun. I may try a different day of the week to see if it will work correctly. Looks like I may have a bad unit if yours works correctly.

If you have more than one page of timers? The scheduled timers may switch position after the recordings are made. If you try to set them up again, you may get a conflict message because they are on a different page.

 

[blueb23]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken.F /forum/post/21011884


If you set it for "Sun" it should stay there until you delete it, but there are some conditions that will cause you to lose the timer record schedule. Leaving it unplugged for more than a couple of hours will do it. Running Auto Channel Preset when switching from Antenna to Cable will do it too. For some reason when I run Auto Channel Preset when switching from Cable to Antenna the schedule doesn't get wiped out.

Ken I think you got it! I did do the auto preset when switching from ant to cable. It doesn't mention anything about it in the thick manual and the help rep didn't know what he was talking about either. Still don't think that should happen, but at least I know the reason now. Thanks again.

 

[Ken.F]



Quote:
Originally Posted by blueb23 /forum/post/21012148


Ken I think you got it! I did do the auto preset when switching from ant to cable. It doesn't mention anything about it in the thick manual and the help rep didn't know what he was talking about either. Still don't think that should happen, but at least I know the reason now. Thanks again.

I doubt any of the help reps actually use this equipment. They most likely have troubleshooting guides to go by. If there isn't anything in their guide that covers your problem they say it's normal.

 

[JoeKustra]



Quote:
Originally Posted by vickyg2003 /forum/post/21010548


Joe, are you sure it is your magnavox, that displays your numbers like that. That sounds more like an aliasing scheme that I've seen on occasion. The magnavox doesn't use aliases. The aliasing systems make it so hard for the customers of one cable system to talk to cable user's of another system. My cable provider uses 13 as the alias for 60.1. When they are doing maintenance they switch to a different aliasing scheme 60_13 will be the alias for 60.1. So if I do a scan during the maintenance period, which I have done twice when a channel was missing, my TV's that usually don't have decimal numbers in their QAM channels will have it, and some will even have 4 digits after the decimal. The maggie will still be using 60.1. So I do believe the cable feed can effect the number of decimals you see, just not on the maggie.


All of my other QAM tuners, and the Settop boxes use aliases, the MAG uses RAW. RAW numbers make absolutely no sense as far as I can tell. Last month they didn't have a RAW 63.1, so this month they decided to shift all the 63.x numbers down by one. Note the aliases followed by a * are not available on my sets that still use the cable company's set top box.


88 65.8 Nick Toon

101* 93.1 RETRO/LIFE

130* 94.1 THIS

200* 93.2HD ABCHD

208* 106.2HD ION-HD

I understand and give your cable provider great credit for their efforts. On the channels above, could you post the frequency (not from the 515)? It's a sample and I would like to see if it agrees with my cable channels. I'm just curious and there's no rush. Thanks.


I don't have a channel 101 but do have a channel 99 at 117025Khz. It's an NTSC (VSB/analog) channel. I have a channel 135 at 861000Khz, also NTSC.


Your last sentence is what has me curious. What device says channel 200 is ABC in HD, and is it 720p or 1080i?

 

[tvmaster]

is there a HD recorder, blu-ray, that does what a 515 does but in HD resolutions (720/1080)? Or do DRM laws make that an unlikely invention. I have a TiVo Premiere and an HTPC, but a HD version of the 515 series would be great.

 

[Chuck44]



Quote:
Originally Posted by tvmaster /forum/post/21014453


is there a HD recorder, blu-ray, that does what a 515 does but in HD resolutions (720/1080)?

No.

 

[JoeKustra]



Quote:
Originally Posted by tvmaster /forum/post/21014453


is there a HD recorder, blu-ray, that does what a 515 does but in HD resolutions (720/1080)? Or do DRM laws make that an unlikely invention. I have a TiVo Premiere and an HTPC, but a HD version of the 515 series would be great.

Your sentence is a bit unclear. Is there an HDD (new) HD recorder, fee-free, at this time? No.


Is there a Blu-ray recorder for HD recording? Never heard of one.


Is there a combo? Not in this country.


See post #1 wish list items.


Older HD recorders without removable media exist, I have five. Or six if you consider the BV-980H.

 

[Ken.F]



Quote:
Originally Posted by tvmaster /forum/post/21014453


is there a HD recorder, blu-ray, that does what a 515 does but in HD resolutions (720/1080)? Or do DRM laws make that an unlikely invention. I have a TiVo Premiere and an HTPC, but a HD version of the 515 series would be great.

I think sticking with the HTPC is your best bet. I'd love to see a High Def HDD/BD version of the 515 but I'm not holding my breath. 7MC works very well for me in the meantime.

 

[vickyg2003]



Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeKustra /forum/post/21013019


I understand and give your cable provider great credit for their efforts. On the channels above, could you post the frequency (not from the 515)? It's a sample and I would like to see if it agrees with my cable channels. I'm just curious and there's no rush. Thanks.


I don't have a channel 101 but do have a channel 99 at 117025Khz. It's an NTSC (VSB/analog) channel. I have a channel 135 at 861000Khz, also NTSC.

Joe, I'm a consumer, not an engineer. I have access to 2 digital TV's a Magnavox DVR and aftermarket iview STB and cable issued set top boxes, but have no idea where I would get the khz of my channels from any of this. The highest NTSC channel available since the conversion to digital is 22.

When I do a scan I get two channel 2, 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,14,16,17,19,20,22. One is Analog, the other digital. I delete the analog signals because they are blurry when compared to the digital version. So no matter what you may think, I'm not confusing NTSC with digital. Oh and the SD digital is definately blurry when compared to the HD that is coming in on the locals.


The only other observation I've noticed is that earlier you said,

Quote:
My cable has three subchannels when an HD channel is present, 10 subchannels when SD is the only content, and 50 subchannels for music (at 480p). Only whole numbers are the lower 26 NTSC channels. The other 130 are clear QAM. I probably watch about 10.

My cable company has up to 11 SD sub-channels assigned to a channel when there is only SD content. The movement I've seen is where they seem to be trying to lower that to 10. So when they added a new major channel, they removed one channel from each of the channels carrying more than 11, and then sliding all the other channels to another slot. That time they changed 27 channel numbers. This last time they only changed 8. Hopefully things will stablize.

Quote:
Your last sentence is what has me curious. What device says channel 200 is ABC in HD, and is it 720p or 1080i?

TV is 1080i, at 10AM this morning info on channel 200 ABC HD is coming in at 720i, 201 -CBS HD is coming in at 1080i.

 

[Ken.F]



Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeKustra /forum/post/21013019


...could you post the frequency (not from the 515)? It's a sample and I would like to see if it agrees with my cable channels. I'm just curious and there's no rush. Thanks.

I think your cable channel numbers are being determined by frequency. Check out the CATV channel frequency chart (in MHz) here.


It looks like your numbers are very close to the average of the video and sound frequency.

 

[tvmaster]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken.F /forum/post/21015463


I think sticking with the HTPC is your best bet. I'd love to see a High Def HDD/BD version of the 515 but I'm not holding my breath. 7MC works very well for me in the meantime.

would that be windows 7 media center?

 

[JoeKustra]



Quote:
Originally Posted by vickyg2003 /forum/post/21015532


TV is 1080i, at 10AM this morning info on channel 200 ABC HD is coming in at 720i, 201 -CBS HD is coming in at 1080i.

I'm afraid you have a unique situation. I have never seen whole number digital channels without a piece of hardware intervening with the virtualization. I have never heard of 720i, and will put that one on the back burner for now. In fact, I have never seen something using the PSIP to convert a XX.XX channel to a XXX channel. I do hope your cable feed settles down soon. I had the same issue in 2009-2010. Now, no changes since June when they wiped all but 26 NTSC channels so they could make space for the HD encrypted channels.


My Sony TV doesn't enable those channels, but does let me know they exist. 50.1 to 50.3 exist but are scrambled. There is no clear QAM channel for BBCAM, but the STB gets me the SD and HD version. It's all a game.


Best of luck. You need more expertise than I have.

 

[vickyg2003]



Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeKustra /forum/post/21016399


I'm afraid you have a unique situation. I have never seen whole number digital channels without a piece of hardware intervening with the virtualization.

Well obviously it was planned for because even my 3 year old LG handles this quite well. My New Samsung handles it much better, because it follows the ALIAS when it moves around, unless it lands on a subchannel that wasn't in use before. Even my cheapie iview 2000 handles this just fine. So what really surprises me is that nobody here has seen it before. Heck everybody thinks I'm loony when I describe it.

Quote:
I have never heard of 720i, and will put that one on the back burner for now. In fact, I have never seen something using the PSIP to convert a XX.XX channel to a XXX channel.

As far as the 720i, I see that in Florida quite often too, and there I am using Comcast. With Comcast I see all the xx.xx type numbers but WOW uses the whole numbering system. Comcast states that you must have a dta even if your TV has a QAM tuner. WOW states you don't need a STB for the level of service I have (no premium, no hd). On my TV's where I use the WOW DTA I don't get the numbers over 88, so I have better service without the DTA.

Quote:
I do hope your cable feed settles down soon. I had the same issue in 2009-2010. Now, no changes since June when they wiped all but 26 NTSC channels so they could make space for the HD encrypted channels.

I do too. I will be gone all winter, and the non-techs in the family will have to deal with the rescanning, and they don't have the temperament.

Quote:
My Sony TV doesn't enable those channels, but does let me know they exist. 50.1 to 50.3 exist but are scrambled. There is no clear QAM channel for BBCAM, but the STB gets me the SD and HD version. It's all a game.

My older LG lists all the scrambled channels, which is quite annoying because if you type something like 23 it will show you 23 and then 23_xxx with all the scrambled channels that occupy the non-aliased 23.

Quote:
Best of luck. You need more expertise than I have.

I am living with it. But I'd sure like to get a DVR that uses the aliases. I like watching TV through the DVR and would have probably bought 3 more of them if the channel numbers were not so screwy. As it is, nobody but me is willing to look up the channel numbers.

 

[Dizzie2]

I was ready to order a 515 from Walmart but I became alarmed when I saw that 36/387 reviews gave it a 1-star. That is almost 10%. Over 10% when you add in the 2-star ratings.


I have owned a 513 for over a year (at least) so I know it is not a perfect machine but it works well for me. It has never frozen. I think the GUI sucks compared to my outdated Panasonic. Many of the low ratings on the Walmart site were for DOA or dead shortly thereafter. That is what scared me. I can understand operator error and frustration but Funai QC seems to be nonexistent if so many units are DOA.


I have skimmed the last 9 pages of this thread and have some ideas and questions. Took me forever. I think you guys added two pages while I was skimming.


Could some of the problems Walmart customers encountered have been solved by unplugging for a couple of hours or soft restart? Are most problems cable TV related or analog channel related? Or is the 515 just unreliable? Reviews on Walmart gave few details--just disgusted DOA or within days/weeks.


As I said, I have a 513 so I know how to make it work. I will only be recording digital channels from an antenna. How concerned should I be? Will I be dodging a lot of bullets by my planned usage? I am ordering from Walmart so I can return it to a local store if I have issues but I don't want a unit that will last just past the 90 day labor warranty since I expect pakying for return shipping and labor to not be cost effective.



I also some references to Funai stopping production but that did not seem clear to me. Is this a done deal or just another rumor? I can see stopping the 513 but continuing the 515. Memory is cheap and just stocking one model seems more cost effective since they are so close in design.