Keith, It sounds like you are getting much better results with yours than I'm getting with mine. My list of problems continues to grow. :(

- missing TVGOS for all Toronto/Hamilton stations, plus 2 Buffalo subchannels
- drifting clock due to bad PSIP times from local broadcasters (which absolutely destroys the ability to record reliably - I've found even deleting the bad channels won't fix this). This is the real deal-breaker.
- audio breakups on WKBW (only happens on the DTVpal, my Sharp and Toshiba HDTV have perfect audio for this station).

Unfortunately it looks like we are going back to a VCR to record :o . My wife said something like "my VCR doesn't need firmware updates to work properly" and "I don't need to call tv stations for them to fix things in order to record shows". Pretty hard to argue with that logic.

El Gran Chico - I have reported the WKBW issue to Echostar and they told me that they are aware of this and are working on fixing it...

Best thing to do is wait until after the 12th - and use the TV Guide online form to report to Macrovision what they should be providing for 14201. If enough of us give them the correct data, then they can code it properly (and set the default state to ON for those channels). This should get the DTVPAL DVR to use the guide data instead of PSIP.

Stu

I will admit that I am not using or trusting the guide info from the stations.
Recordings are made using the "timers" function and an online TV Guide web site.
This is not without it's faults as some of the stations that have come on-line recently are not listed in the Toronto area TV guide.
Not a big deal as most of the recordings I want are major network shows.
Now I'm waiting for the new fall season to start...:)

My DTVPal is currently four hours fast on the clock. The setup screen says that the clock has been set by TVGOS and won't let me manually adjust :mad:

...and yes, my time zone is correct.

Welcome to my nightmare, 99semaj. :(

I installed TSreader on my pc, mainly to research this issue. I found the smoking gun. :cool: It's not TVGoS (although that's what causes the lockdown on the setup screen)

City TV, Omni1, and Omni2 all provide system_time in the PSIP STT based in Toronto time. The ATSC standard stipulates it must be supplied in UTC (also known as Greenwich Mean Time or Zulu time). Eastern Daylight Time is UTC-4. All other Buffalo/Hamilton/Toronto area stations correctly provide system_time as UTC.

Now, that said, one of the bizarre things I've seen on the DTVpal is sometimes it goes 4 hours fast, sometime it goes 4 hours slow. :confused: So for sure there is something a bit screwy in the firmware too. I've also pointed out to Dish/Echostar that there is no point in having the "Set Date Time" screen if it is going to accept time from broadcasters. In my opinion, it should disregard STT data from the broadcasters entirely and use TVGoS time if its present, else use the user's Set Date Time screen setting.

So the solution is either or both of:

- convince City TV, Omni1, and Omni2 (all centrally managed by Rogers Media) to adhere to the ATSC specification (I gather from my research that compliance is mandatory in the US as ordered by the FCC, while there is no such order in Canada by the CRTC). As an aside, the FCC also mandates accuracy of the time data (within 4 seconds I believe) and minimum contents of the Event Information Table (which provides guide listings for non-TVGoS channels). It appears the CRTC has no equivalent standards for Canadian broadcasters.
- convince Dish/Echostar to fix the firmware

Of course, time being crucial to recording television shows, I've pretty much stopped using my DTVpal until 1) or 2) occurs.

ION is also behind 4 hours. Keep an eye on that one as well.

That's interesting about the time problem.
I will check the displayed time more closely from now on but so far, it seems to be correct.

Anyone have an update on resolving the the audio clipping occuring on WKBW (channel 7.1)when using their DTVPal DRV? I heard from a previous post that Echostar is working on the issue. Will there be a firmware upgrade? Is this even fixable since I heard it is an potentially an issue within WKBW's stream. For anyone with the DTVPal DVR you know how absolutely frustrating it is! How do we complain to Dishnet?

I told Echostar a long while ago and they claimed it was a known issue. This led me to believe they could eventually fix it with firmware.

ION is also behind 4 hours. Keep an eye on that one as well.

I checked over the weekened when ION was coming in and it looks quite accurate now.

For anyone with the DTVPal DVR you know how absolutely frustrating it is! How do we complain to Dishnet?

There is an email address on the web page. Not sure how you can speak to a live person.

I sent a message to Dishnetwork to ask if there was a possibility of including TV Guide information for channels

11.01 - CHCH
44.01 - OMNI 2
57.01 - City HD
64.01- OMNI 1

I currently get all the correct guide information including the above channels on my Hitachi TV since it is equipped with TV Guide On Screen with the Buffalo zip code programmed in. However, on my DTVPal Guide I get essentially nothing for the above channels. I figured that somehow they are purposely not including the TV guide info in their code for Buffalo for the Canadian channels and so we only can rely on the PSIP info. I got this weird email response today telling me that the info comes only from the cable provider. I think this person doesn't know what they are talking about since in the DTVPal DVR you have an option of choosing TV Guide as the source for your guide. Anyway, does their response make sense to any of you? If so could someone help interpret it for me.


"Thank you for your email. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. The DTVPal does not receive guide information from Dish Network the guide information is directly through the channel provider, if the listing is incorrect either for the time of the program or the title of the program we can not correct this issue you will need to contact the channel provider if you have any further concerns."

I'd like to respond back to them but want to make sure "I" know what I'm talking about too.

thanks,

faz68, re-read the message from Dishnetwork. They say the guide information comes from the channel (not cable) provider. This is correct. Your Hitachi TV likely has an NTSC tuner (which your DTVPal does not have) and gets the TVGOS data from CTV. I don't think CTV provides ATSC TVGOS data so it relies on either PSIP data or TVGOS data from an American station (who likely doesn't provide data for those channels).

Your options are:

Convince CTV to start broadcasting ATSC TVGOS data.
Convince those channels to start including program PSIP data.


Neither of these are likely to happen any time soon unfortunately.

faz68, the channel provider (in our case WNED-DT) is only a pass-thru. WNED won't be able to help you. The content is controlled by Macrovision.

No need to bug CTV either. For that, you'd need a Canadian postal code and the DTVpal only accepts US zip codes.

But you're right - a number of channels are in the TVGOS stream that the DTVpal filters out. I asked Dish about how the filter works and they said no filter exists. I then challenged them on why other TVGOS devices could get this data in this area and they never responded.

Earlier in this thread a number of us have speculated why this might be.

roger1818's suggestion "Convince those channels to start including program PSIP data" might be the only recourse, and if my experience is any indication, I don't hold out much hope for this either. (send me a PM if you want my contacts at the various stations - more people asking can't hurt ;) )

Breaking News: Firmware F208 is now available via the ethernet connection. So far I haven't noticed changes/improvements but I can confirm the WKBW audio blip is still there. I hear this version properly handles the bad Omni1, Omni2, and CITY PSIP data (system time table) but time will tell on that front.

I had been using a DTVPal DVR for two weeks, so far so good. There was no reboot yet and the clock is fine. Recordings made via the EPG or the manual timer were fine. But I was not able to see the TV Guide logo in the EPG.

In the set up menu, there is an option to enable the TV Guide Plus. However, when I enabled it, the DVR functions and the EPG were disabled? What is the purpose of this option?

But you're right - a number of channels are in the TVGOS stream that the DTVpal filters out. I asked Dish about how the filter works and they said no filter exists. I then challenged them on why other TVGOS devices could get this data in this area and they never responded.

It is also possible that it isn't a filter but rather it isn't able to map the data to the appropriate channels.

Tenstu and I have been discussing this offline and we are almost certain this is the case for SunTV and the Omnis since it seems to assume everyone remaps to their analog numbers and these 3 don't.

But the rest of the Toronto/Hamilton stations should be ok, although Tenstu noticed these default to OFF on his Sony TV. We are not sure what property in the TVGOS stream determines ON/OFF but this could be the "filter"

Looks like the revenue from the TR-50 is keeping some lawyers very happy:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/13/tivo-asks-court-for-a-billion-dollars-in-echostar-case/

I was looking at getting this PVR buy I'll wait until things clear up before going for it.

As it stands, the current PVR works just fine and I would think the only way to "disable" any functions would be via the LAN connection.(correct?)
As the LAN is not needed to use the PVR, why wait and risk getting one without certain functions?
Also, it may well be that these laws might not apply here in Canada...maybe...:rolleyes:

Hey Keith B - they don't sell the unit in Canada - so - if they send a disabler down the ethernet, it will be for ALL units. FYI

Firmware F208 is now available for download from the dtvpal website. Since I was in a hurry to get it, I got the update over the ethernet connection and I've already had it running for a few days. So far it is promising. :)


it seems to ignore the bad system_time in STT from CITY's and the Omnis' PSIP (worked well in F201 and F202 but no so well in F206 and F207)
it doesn't lockup/reboot (worked well in F206 and F207 but no so well in F201 and F202)


So for this first time since I've owned this thing, it is reliably recording things :cool:

The not so good: :(


WKBW audio blip is still there (mentioned a few posts ago - this was quick and easy to check)
TV guide on-screen is still a problem (missing 7 Buffalo channels and all Canadian channels
F208 seems to have introduced some slowness into channel changing. When you go to a new channel, you first get a frozen image and then about a quarter of a second later, it unfreezes and starts playing - sort of like it is buffering. This behaviour wasn't in the earlier firmware versions.


Another interesting thing to note is that when there is no TVGoS and no PSIP guide data, there used to be a wide expanse of "no information available". Now it is chunked up into 1 hour segments, which makes it a bit easier to set timers as long as you know the station/time of the program you want to record.