Skipped recordings and incomplete EPG since DSO

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Skipped recordings and incomplete EPG since DSO

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ianh64

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I am based on Surrey, Hampshire borders and until now have been receiving digital TV from Crystal Palace with little problems.

Since Hampshire have boosted their power, and we have retuned our 9200t, we now get a double dose of channels. I have done a manual retune of the stations that I want.

As our antenna points to London and they are lower in the channel list, our preference has been to stick with Crystal Palace but as we can get a decent signal of BBC South through the rear of our aerial, I have tuned that as our BBC1 as it is more relevant news.

So we basically have:
CH 1 - BBC 1 South via Hants transmitter
Ch 2 - 800 Crystal Palace with 800 being BBC 1 London

I am having two issues

1. Our EPG is incomplete only populating with a few days worth of programmes

2. We are getting some program's that fail to record unless you change to that channel mid program when it starts to record. I would say this is happening maybe 1 in 10 recordings. I did occasionally have similar prior to DSO but this is now oFten enough to be a problem rather than the occasional inconvenience.

Any suggestions? I have seen comments about auto tune and program's being in 800 region but apart from BBC 1 switch of London/South no other channels have populated the 800 region. Also, I see that reformatting may help, but I have seen no firm evidence that this highly inconvenient task will definitely resolve the issue. Not wanting to sound ungreatful, but i would appreciate confirmed fixes rather than just conjecture.

Many thanks

| Fri 20 Apr 2012 19:24:49 #1 |
Martin Liddle

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ianh64 - 58 minutes ago »
As our antenna points to London and they are lower in the channel list, our preference has been to stick with Crystal Palace but as we can get a decent signal of BBC South through the rear of our aerial, I have tuned that as our BBC1 as it is more relevant news.

If you want accurate recording to work then you can only receive from a single transmitter. Your options are to retune to a single transmitter or to use padding instead of accurate recording. Formatting the disk will not help in your case.

| Fri 20 Apr 2012 20:25:33 #2 |
Martin Liddle

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Apologies, duplicate post.

| Fri 20 Apr 2012 20:27:53 #3 |
grahamlthompson

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You need to delete all your existing radio and TV channels before using manual tune. You should have no duplicate channels in the 800's at all.

| Fri 20 Apr 2012 20:28:25 #4 |
ianh64

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What's the reason for that then? It works 90% of the time and some of the failed recordings have been on muxes other than the BBC mux.

I only have BBC 1 London in 800 range. Everything else was tuned in mux by mux on Crystal Palace frequencies (other than initial manual tune for BBC 1 South only ffrom Hannington) to prevent any population in 800 range.

Will it cure the incomplete EPG?

| Fri 20 Apr 2012 20:35:54 #5 |
Martin Liddle

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ianh64 - 1 hour ago »
What's the reason for that then? It works 90% of the time and some of the failed recordings have been on muxes other than the BBC mux.

The EPG data is per transmitter.

I only have BBC 1 London in 800 range. Everything else was tuned in mux by mux on Crystal Palace frequencies (other than initial manual tune for BBC 1 South only ffrom Hannington) to prevent any population in 800 range.

Close but no cigar.

Will it cure the incomplete EPG?

Should do but some people have reported that a reset to default settings before tuning to a single transmitter is necessary to completely fix the problem so you might as well do that before retuning.

| Fri 20 Apr 2012 21:42:27 #6 |
ianh64

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Thanks. Done yet another init/retune. EPG seems to be fully populated again, hopefully I will get reliability back on recordings.

Having slept on this, I think I can see a pattern in why I got 90/10 success/failure:
If I was tuned in to BBC1 on Hannington, but had scheduled record on any of the other channels served by Crystal Palace, the start record signal would be received but ignored as it related to Hannington not Crystal Palace. result - failed recording. If I then changed from BBC1 to channel expecting to be recorded (may even just be changing to any non BBC1 channel), then recording would start as it would pick up flag that program should be recorded then start recording. Result, missed start of recording.
vice versa,
if I was tuned into any station on Crystal Palace and wanted to record a BBC1 program served by Hannington, again it would fail as the start record signal would be ignored as it related to wrong transmitter. Ditto with changing channels.
However...
If I was watching any non BBC 1 on Crystal Palace and wanted to record any non BBC1 program, the start record signal would be acted on and successful recording would result..

Still does not explain why EPG was not fully populated.

Now need to see whether it is worth spinning my aerial 180 degrees to point at Hannington rather than Crystal Palace so I can get good reception on all mux rather than picking up Hannington coming in via rear of aerial. Probably won't other as TV can do BBC 1 London news and BBC 1 South news neither which I would ever need to record on Humax.

| Sat 21 Apr 2012 19:01:57 #7 |
aldaweb

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ianh64 - 20 hours ago »
Still does not explain why EPG was not fully populated.

I would guess that you are receiving a block of EPG data from one transmitter and then picking up a similar but not identical block from the other transmitter which then supercedes the initial block. Then another block from the initial transmitter is received and supercedes the second block, so they perpetually cancel each other out apart from the current data set.
ISTBC

Now need to see whether it is worth spinning my aerial 180 degrees to point at Hannington rather than Crystal Palace so I can get good reception on all mux rather than picking up Hannington coming in via rear of aerial. Probably won't other as TV can do BBC 1 London news and BBC 1 South news neither which I would ever need to record on Humax.

Now CP is full power your choice is between BBC1 and ITV1 London, or BBC south and Meridian.

| Sun 22 Apr 2012 15:12:43 #8 |