# On Screen Guide



## THEMUSTANG66 (Mar 2, 2005)

My on screen guide is funky. It worked for about a week. Now all the fonts are small and the top of the guide is past the top of the screen so I can't see title of show that's being described. If I'm reading right, do I have to wait to the next update to have this fixed?


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Yes, and you'll all be happy to know that they have finally identified the bug that causes this.


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## skassan (Jan 10, 2004)

Mark Lamutt said:


> Yes, and you'll all be happy to know that they have finally identified the bug that causes this.


Are there user actions that cause this? It would be nice to know what to avoid until the fix is available.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Not that I'm aware of, skassan.


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## mgs24 (Dec 7, 2002)

My 921 just did this tonight. Reboot did not fix it. I guess I have to wait for next software update.

Mike


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## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

mgs24 said:


> My 921 just did this tonight. Reboot did not fix it. I guess I have to wait for next software update.
> 
> Mike


Errors like this are why a option to FORCE redownload of software and redownload of the Guide should exist.


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

In all honesty, you shouldn't have this bug, and you shouldn't have to force a reload of the current release!

From the first glance at things, the 942 appears to be far more bug free than the 921 a year after release. This, if true, is itself proof that this 921 project was horribly mismanaged, and used sub-standard resources.

If you saw someone from Eldon send in a resume' to your workplace, would you hire him or her? Tarnished reputation. I would probably invite them in for an interview, but only to try to figure out what went wrong (I would never hire the person). :nono2:


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## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

jsanders said:


> In all honesty, you shouldn't have this bug, and you shouldn't have to force a reload of the current release!
> 
> From the first glance at things, the 942 appears to be far more bug free than the 921 a year after release. This, if true, is itself proof that this 921 project was horribly mismanaged, and used sub-standard resources.
> 
> If you saw someone from Eldon send in a resume' to your workplace, would you hire him or her? Tarnished reputation. I would probably invite them in for an interview, but only to try to figure out what went wrong (I would never hire the person). :nono2:


I cannot agree about not having a reload option. I've been a systems programmer for 35 years. And I've seen to many cases where the software fails to install properly (YES EVEN MY CODE WHICH NEVER, well in my opinion, HAS ANY BUGS). Ability to delete and reinstall code is vital. People fail to understand that it only takes 1 bit installed improperly to destroy reliablity of software. And bit errors can occur in transfers even today. And who knows what happens if hardware is not working correctly.


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

tnsprin said:


> I cannot agree about not having a reload option. I've been a systems programmer for 35 years. And I've seen to many cases where the software fails to install properly (YES EVEN MY CODE WHICH NEVER, well in my opinion, HAS ANY BUGS). Ability to delete and reinstall code is vital. People fail to understand that it only takes 1 bit installed improperly to destroy reliablity of software. And bit errors can occur in transfers even today. And who knows what happens if hardware is not working correctly.


I would have expected a better argument than that. However, I guess we can break this one down a bit and see what we come up with.

Here is a question for you.

When Microsoft Windows XP was released a few years ago, there were lots of people that had problems "upgrading". Out of all of the people that called into Microsoft tech support, do you think ever Microsoft told them something like, "The bits on your CD are wrong, go get different CD from the store and try it again"? Unless they opened the box and saw a visibly defective CD, the tech support wouldn't even question the integrity. Most likely, they started with questions like, "Do you have your virus scanner turned off?"

Look at an example with the 921. 
There have been a number of people that have complained that their screen font size gets messed up, most of them see this happen right after downloading new software. Do you think that this is caused by bad bits being downloaded? If bad bits are being downloaded, why do we see lots of people with the same kinds of problems after a download? It isn't random. Are you suggesting that some bits are more likely than others to get corrupted?

Here is a link:
http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=40128

In the 1st reply, 2nd item in the thread, Mark says, "you'll all be happy to know that they have finally identified the bug that causes this". Do you think re-installing the same software will fix that problem? Downloading new software that fixes that problem will fix that problem.

The bug is in the software, not the download. If the machine tries to install new software when it is in certain states, things get overlooked by the developers and stuff like the above happens.

What happens if you were getting zero second recordings, or your whole hard drive got wipped out and you install new software when your file system's table of contents is messed up? Maybe you will get a good install, maybe you won't. It isn't because the bits were downloaded wrong.

If you're computer gets really messed up, people try to save their data, then format the drive and re-install. How does the 921 user do that? If they could indeed go back and re-install, why would anything different happen if the machine was already known to be messed up? The problem has to be fixed or wiped, before you do a re-install.

Bit errors happen all the time, and there are checksums, parity bits, and viterbi decoders that can detect errors, and even correct errors. All of this stuff has been around since the late 1960s and can be used for mission critical applications where the data has to be correct to be used.

It is far more likely that there is a problem with the state of the currently running software than with the new software being downloaded having problems with bit integrity.


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## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

jsanders said:


> I would have expected a better argument than that. However, I guess we can break this one down a bit and see what we come up with.
> 
> ... .


Your argument is incorrect. Almost all software houses support people will, when basics fail, ask you to reinstall. And guess what it tends to fix the problem a huge percent of the time. Sometimes its the install software so, yes thats actually a software bug, but largely independent of the running software. Sometimes sections of code failed to be replaced, perhaps becuase they were in use. There are so many things that can go wrong during the install its not funny. And yes it can be bit errors that are not caught by the normal bit correction techniques.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

35 year programmer here. The last few posts have all made some valid points, although the frequency of each type of problem can certainly be argued.

"Sick bits" is an extremely rare condition nowadays. 25 years ago, I saw it somewhat often - a HUGE bad batch of memory cards for a certain brand of mainframe. More recently, unrecognized read errors on installation floppy disks.

The state of the art in data storage is many magnitudes better nowadays, and such problems simply do not occur on any regular basis. I would think that, given the number of 921's out there, that it's happened as much as once - if that.

It's VERY likely that these issues have to do with what we already know is a poor software design than anything else. We've seen many other bugs having to do with uninitialized data fields and the like, and E*'s attempts at fixing them. 

The most recent example I know of that's hit a lot of people is the ZSR after lost recording problem that reoccurs until you record enough of them to "hit" all the "lost" event slots. That's frelling ridiculous.

How about the recent "fix" when deleting an event? How about the program banner now appearing whenever a recording starts? That last one appears to be due to a hack to try to solve something else. I've got other examples if needed, but why bother?

The problem goes all the back to the beginning of the project, the initial design reviews (if any), and the initial code walkthroughs (if any). It's implicitly obvious to the most casual observer  that we're dealing with a bowl of spaghetti and not a modular, structured system. Why else would deleting an event have to change the currently viewed channel? Those two things could not be more unrelated.


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## John Corn (Mar 21, 2002)

THEMUSTANG66 said:


> My on screen guide is funky. It worked for about a week. Now all the fonts are small and the top of the guide is past the top of the screen so I can't see title of show that's being described. If I'm reading right, do I have to wait to the next update to have this fixed?


It just happened to my guide today!


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