# ASKDBSTalk: OTA/SD/HD timers



## paulcdavis (Jan 22, 2004)

Has the OTA timer bug that required an OTA timer to start before a sat channel timer been fixed?

Is it possible to do sequencial OTA timers on different OTA channels or will the second OTA timer fail if a sat channel timer is recording at the channel change point?

What are the rules for sequencial or simultaneous OTA timers and HD sat channel timers?


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

It's been so long since I was at L188, I can't really answer your question currently, Paul. I do know under the beta that I currently have, I'm having no timer troubles at all, and I'm throwing everything that I can come up with at it, including sequential OTA timers with satellite recording through the change.


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## Eagles (Dec 31, 2003)

Mark Lamutt said:


> It's been so long since I was at L188, I can't really answer your question currently, Paul. I do know under the beta that I currently have, I'm having no timer troubles at all, and I'm throwing everything that I can come up with at it, including sequential OTA timers with satellite recording through the change.


Mark, if what you say is true, and I have no reason to doubt what you are saying, This begs the question. Why aren't they sending out L189?


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Because it's not ready yet. Standard non-answer, I know, but that's really all I have at the moment. I've mentioned a couple of the good things about L189. I haven't mentioned (and won't currently) some of the not-so-good things about it...


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## mwgiii (Jul 19, 2002)

That's disappointing. It sounds like they took a huge leap forward and then fell back a couple of steps.


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## paulcdavis (Jan 22, 2004)

I've set timers that match the posted conditions for tonight. I'll report back what happens under L188.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

mwgiii said:


> That's disappointing. It sounds like they took a huge leap forward and then fell back a couple of steps.


 If every beta were perfect, there'd be no reason to do the betas, would there?

I think being disappointed is an overreaction to my statement. There aren't any steps back being taken here. Just bumps in the road to smooth out.


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

Mark Lamutt said:


> If every beta were perfect, there'd be no reason to do the betas, would there?
> 
> I think being disappointed is an overreaction to my statement. There aren't any steps back being taken here. Just bumps in the road to smooth out.


Betas are a good thing. They don't have to be a step back in the event that, say, new features were having problems. Features are what pave the road. The steam roller (bug fixes), make the road flat!


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## tweaver999 (Jul 9, 2004)

Mark Lamutt said:


> If every beta were perfect, there'd be no reason to do the betas, would there?
> 
> I think being disappointed is an overreaction to my statement. There aren't any steps back being taken here. Just bumps in the road to smooth out.


Mark, how long has the total beta process been going???? I have had my 921 about 6 months and some of the things it does are GREAT... however, some of the problems are beginning to get a bit old.... I worked for a large computer company and participated in many software/hardware alphas and betas... I also was a beta tester for many products including the first RePlayTV boxes... At first there were many problems,, some serious... however after approx. 6 months there were zero major problems recording, with the guide,etc... As the new versions came out they were to improve the speed or to improve the look and feel of the guide and controls... They added the logic for automatic commercial skip with hardly any software problems. While I still think the 921 has the potential of being a fantastic leading DVR.... my Patience is wearing thin. I think you as a beta tester should pass onto upper management of Dish, that the users( we all appear to be beta testers... ) are not going to wait much longer. It appears to me that the management of these releases is being handled very poorly. The competition is catching up. If I do not see real improvement in 1-2 months, I will seriously look at DirectTV/Tivo as a replacement... I have seen it and it looks ok and the complaints do not seem as serious. Please pass this on... Thanks for all your help Matt... and I know the difficult position a beta tester is in when the provider does not run its on web site to accept input....

PS: all the releases I worked on had the requirement that a product could not move from alpha to beta if it had ANY major problems..... I believe the inability to record OTA and the lack of OTA guide are major problems..


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Who knows maybe the magic L189 even fixes THIS:


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

SimpleSimon said:


> Who knows maybe the magic L189 even fixes THIS:


SimpleSimon, there are three timer indicator buttons showing in the same time frame. Do they all work?


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## Cyclone (Jul 1, 2002)

With only two tuners, there is no way in the world that could work.


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## paulcdavis (Jan 22, 2004)

Last night I had the following timers:
6-8pm KVIE OTA (one time only timer)
8-9pm KXTL OTA (weekly timer)
9-10pm KCRA OTA (weekly timer)

8-9pm KGO LIL sat channel (weekly timer)
9-10pm KNTV LIL sat channel (weekly timer)
10-10:30pm Comedy channel (M-F weekly timer)

All with default pads

All recorded ok except for the last one on Comedy channel. At 10:15 pm I noticed the red light was not on, and when I turned the unit on I got the "77 Unk record" banner on a blank screen. The timer action order list still listed the completed timers, but the overnight re-boot cleared up the timer list.

Tonight I have an OTA timer from 6-8pm and an HDNet timer from 7-8pm, so it will be interesting to see if it can do both timers.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

boylehome said:


> SimpleSimon, there are three timer indicator buttons showing in the same time frame. Do they all work?


Cyclone is rght, there's no way it can work, and, of course, no way it should ever have any chance whatsoever of happening.

The fact that the guide display shows all three, but the conflict resolution routine could not detect the addition of the third one indicates to me that there is inconsistency in the manner of accessing the timers database.

Do I need to say what that means about the software design? :nono2:  :nono:


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

SimpleSimon said:


> Cyclone is rght, there's no way it can work, and, of course, no way it should ever have any chance whatsoever of happening.
> 
> The fact that the guide display shows all three, but the conflict resolution routine could not detect the addition of the third one indicates to me that there is inconsistency in the manner of accessing the timers database.
> 
> Do I need to say what that means about the software design? :nono2:  :nono:


Having computers, I keep one on 24/7. I can't recall any corruption occurring as one could expect. The operating system and the software seem to work very well together all the time. I wonder if the 921 has some hardware quirks that affect the software. My 921 seems to work pretty well after a hard reboot but after several hours it starts faltering.


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## astrotrf (Apr 5, 2004)

boylehome said:


> I wonder if the 921 has some hardware quirks that affect the software. My 921 seems to work pretty well after a hard reboot but after several hours it starts faltering.


This kind of behavior is unsurprising, and doesn't have to have anything to do with hardware. Misbehaving software can scribble over its data structures, etc., and cause exactly the kind of works-after-reboot-but-slowly-degrades behavior that you note. (Of course, it can also cause works-after-reboot-but-then-suddenly-fails-catastrophically problems, too!)

tweaver999: a number of us have complained for a _long_ time that the software design, software development methodology, and code control aspects of the 921 system are all sadly and badly broken. Everything you say is correct, of course, and you're quite justified in your desire to switch.

The 921 software, as released, doesn't deserve to be out of beta test even now (heck, if it was my code, it wouldn't even leave my office to get *to* the beta testers in this state). But the 921 was something like a year late when it was finally released; somebody was forced to say "it has to go out the door; I don't care what state it's in".

That doesn't, of course, excuse the fact that it takes _far too long_ for bugs to get fixed or the fact that fundamental operational problems still exist a year after the product went out the door.

As SimpleSimon has shown, after all of this time, they can't even do a simple thing like checking for timer overlaps correctly. This is something that wouldn't even merit a programming assignment in an intro class - in fact, it's trivial enough that I'd consider making it a pseudocode problem on an exam.

But everything seems to be tremendously difficult for these folks - right down to computing the correct length of a timer event.

Terry


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

astrotrf said:


> This kind of behavior is unsurprising, and doesn't have to have anything to do with hardware. Misbehaving software can scribble over its data structures, etc., and cause exactly the kind of works-after-reboot-but-slowly-degrades behavior that you note. (Of course, it can also cause works-after-reboot-but-then-suddenly-fails-catastrophically problems, too!)
> 
> Terry


Even with computer hardware, the software developers can fix bugs so assorted hardware devices will function. And yes, I experienced a total crash after having deleted all my OTA's and doing a power cord reboot yesterday.


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