July 18th: DSR530 Code CC Fixes, Features & Bugs

Re - Recorder Killer Bug

My 530 has been very solid with CC however I discovered a recorder kill bug over the weekend. I noticed the Victordc reported the same bug that I saw. Here are the specifics of my problem. I have a Mon-Fri timer set for Leno between 11:35 pm and 12:35 am. Last Thursday night I missed a prime time show (can't remember which one) but found it from a west coast feed starting at Midnight and running to 1:00. I just pressed record while I had it highlighted, got the record icon in the guide then went to bed. I had forgotten about the Leno timer however I did not get a timer conflict warning when I pushed the record button for the second show. The next night when I checked my recordings I was surprised to find that it had recorded 25 minutes of Leno, running from 11:35 to midnight. At midnight it stopped recording Leno, and started recording the second show,, however after 35 minutes or 12:35 it stopped recording the second show. It appears that it stopped at 12:35 because that was the time that the original Leno timer was set to stop. So I missed the last 25 minutes of the second show. In the DVR list both recording were shown and neither were shown as broken. Not thinking much more about this on Friday morning I went through the guide for the weekend and set it to record several programs as we were going camping for the weekend. Again record icons were put in the guide and I made sure there were no conflicts. When I returned home on Monday afternoon ready to watch some hockey I was surprised to discover that no recordings were made over the weekend. I tried making a recording on the spot and discovered that no recording function was happening. At this point I suspected that the timer conflict from Thursday night had killed the record function so I went and did a front panel reset, (my 4'th since July 19'th) and all is well again. So it appears it's a bug, however it's minor and now that I know about it I'll be more carefull with my timers and do a reset when I setup a timer conflict. Hope this helps.

My 530 just died

Well, I have had a bad day and felt the need to vent here.

I have quite enjoyed my time with my dsr530, bugs and all, but the last week has been pretty nasty. Simply watching TV without pushing any buttons is locking up the system. After watching for a few minutes any attempt to do ANYTHING is met with the blue dot on the 530 signifying the remote is being pushed, but nothing else happens. I can still keep watching the channel or recording that is going but thats pretty much it.

Front panel resets are only successful 50% of the time and of course 20 minutes of watching requires another reboot.

Starchoice is sending me a replacement unit and charging me the $13 shipping fee. I can live with that, I just hope I get a unit that works better.

Does anyone actually have a unit that NEVER locks up?

DrDave

Very pleased (now) with my 530

I went through three units over the course of a year and eventually returned the last one for a refund from Starchoice in June. Four weeks ago I decided to give it another go with the CC code and so far I’m very pleased. I’ve worked the unit quite strenuously including lots of HD recordings, LOD modes, etc. and I haven’t yet had to reset it even once. The brand new unit came with version A0 and I did nothing with it until it loaded CC the next morning.

The refurbished units that I previously received came with version A4. One could speculate that somewhere between versions A0 and CC there is code that leaves the machine in a state that eventually causes problems, even once new code has been downloaded. This is just complete speculation of course but considering the following:

- Each new code version must be downloaded and presumably "installed" by the previous version. If the previous version doesn’t perform this task perfectly the new version may be corrupted.

- Once a new version is installed it doesn’t completely "erase" the machine and start from scratch. You keep your previous settings, recordings, and who knows what else. So there is a possibility that the previous code could leave things in an error state that the new code was never expected to deal with.

- Even a "factory reset" may not totally clear the machine and start from scratch. For example problems in the flash file system could linger if a factory reset doesn’t truly reset everything.

Anyway, it’s all just speculation but if you get a new unit I think it would certainly be prudent to use it as little as possible until you’ve got the latest code installed.

More Timer Conflict Bugs in CC Code

It seems strange that after several software releases that the programmers of the DSR530 cannot comprehend the differences between the times and the days of the week. Gee whiz, there are 7 days in a week, and each day is made up of 24 hours. Given that fact, explain to me why I'm getting a timer conflict here:


The 1:03 AM on the first entry is for Sunday, not Saturday. However the program seems to think the end time is based on the same day as the start time. Nuts! It's not rocket science, but it is very poor testing, and very unstructured programming going on here.

Is anyone else experiencing a lot of timer conflicts tonight?

First, my 7:00 - 7:30 weekly timer completed.

Then, my 8:00 - 9:00 weekly timer froze up on the "conflict screen" because it said that it conflicted with the 7:00-7:30 weekly timer. Of course, I did not realize this until 8:30 and basically lost the program.

I rebooted the machine.

Then, when it was about to record, my 9:00-10:00 weekly timer said that it conflicted with the 8:00 - 9:00 weekly timer. My gawd!!!

I deleted all of my Monday weekly timers and reprogrammed them.

I had the exact same results again.

Am I the only one?