# Q about Daylight Savings Time...



## kristym (Nov 14, 2006)

Q about the Daylight Savings Time and the DVR System (any, really, but I believe I have the 510). 

I did notice that as of 3/11, all my timers are an hour earlier. Is DISH going to fix this or do I manually need to fix this? Or do I do nothing?


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Do nothing...the receivers will automatically adjust everything accordingly on Saturday night when the time change happens.


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## jarvantgroup (Mar 24, 2006)

kristym said:


> Q about the Daylight Savings Time and the DVR System (any, really, but I believe I have the 510).
> 
> I did notice that as of 3/11, all my timers are an hour earlier. Is DISH going to fix this or do I manually need to fix this? Or do I do nothing?


Your timers will continue as usual when the new time is updated to your rcvr. :icon_cool


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## jsk (Dec 27, 2006)

I thought we just received an update so this wouldn't happen. Why doesn't the guide just show 1:00 AM and then 3:00 AM when the change happens? Also, when we set our clocks back in the fall, it should show 1:00 AM, 2:00 AM, 2:00 AM and 3:00 AM.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

jsk said:


> I thought we just received an update so this wouldn't happen. Why doesn't the guide just show 1:00 AM and then 3:00 AM when the change happens? Also, when we set our clocks back in the fall, it should show 1:00 AM, 2:00 AM, 2:00 AM and 3:00 AM.


What you see is what is shown EVERY YEAR regardless of when the change occurs.

There are 24 hours in every day. E* cannot just magically skip one or repeat one in their EPG. They have to account for that hour - especially since the time change is not simultaneous across the entire US.

For example, on Sci-Fi tonight they are playing the following:
Movie: Avalanche (11pm ET/10pm CT/9pm MT/8pm PT)
Movie: Earthstorm (1am ET/12m CT/11pm MT/10pm PT)
Movie: Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies (4am ET/3am CT/2am MT/1am PT)

Which hour should be missing in the guide? SciFi's online schedule added the hour to the end of Earthstorm (in reality the show will be at 1am MT/12m PT since their clocks won't advance until after the show begins). For accuracy it is better to do what E* has done ... show Wishmaster 2 as 3am/2am/1am/12m in the guide (as seen today) and move the EPG forward as the time changes across the country.

In effect, Wishmaster 2 starts at 3am CDT (one minute after 1:59 CST), 1am MST (clocks not advancing until 2am local) and 12m PST (clocks not advancing until 2am local - which happens to be the end of the movie).

(Sci-Fi schedule chosen at random.)


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## robert koerner (Aug 20, 2005)

What makes it even more FUN is that we never change our clocks. So your time changes but ours does not.

Unfortunately, we have to remember what your local time has changed to.

One time, my brother in ALBQ and I decide to split the driving time by meeting in Las Cruces NM. We both left our homes at the same time. He was upset that I was an hour late.

It wasn't until the next day that we remembered that NM had changed their time to an hour ahead of ours.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Yep, we did the "no time change" thing in most of Indiana until last April.
Now we are flipping the clocks with most of the USA.
I forgot to mention those areas not changing (IIRC, PR, HI and parts of AK do not advance, as well as AZ). You need a stable (no hours skipped) EPG more than the rest of us!


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## click (Aug 13, 2004)

Seems like it would be more accurate to store the information in UTC and convert it to local time when displaying it in the guide. The receiver would know to switch from EST to EDT at 2:00am. The guide would just show 1:00am EST followed by 3:00am EDT. The receivers in CST know to change to CDT at 2:00am, etc.

The way it works now feels like someone wrote the guide code and then suddenly realized they forgot about daylight saving time and rigged something up.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

The "problem" here as James was alluding to... is the episode guide is a 24 hour guide. It isn't a 25 or a 23 hour guide... so on either side of the time change, the guide has to display something during the magickal 2am hour.

It would either have to have a gap with no entry, which I don't think is possible the way the guide is constructed... or, on the other side of the time change, duplicate 2am info which again I don't think is possible since info in the guide is expected to take time to air and thus incremental left-to-right time increases.

Frankly, the REAL problem is the whole notion of DST anyway. It causes way more hassle and confusion than the benefit of screwing with what is really somewhat arbitrary time anyway. I mean, why does the workday always have to be 8-5 all year? IF you want more daylight during the summer, then work 7-4 instead of screwing with the clocks.

Besides the places in the US that don't recognize DST, there's the rest of the world too... and with things being international these days... it seems like again more confusion to deal with when folks on the other side of the world aren't on DST like we are.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

A good portion of the world observes DST. It becomes less likely as you approach the equator (since less time is "saved" there) and the poles (where time is arbitrary). I would like to adjust on the same weekend as the rest of the world. This new adjustment date puts the US and Canada together and alone. Kinda silly, IMHO.

More info ...
http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/g.html


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## Amon37 (Mar 5, 2007)

I'm in Arizona. My 510 still has P365. On Sunday morning all my timers were off by 2 hours. This morning I get up after fixing them all yesterday and they are off by an hour again. WTF?


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## Tifftman (Jul 10, 2004)

My timers worked fine Sunday but this morning they were off by one hour(firing one hour too early) on my 508. Everyone should probably check their timers.


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## Amon37 (Mar 5, 2007)

Tifftman said:


> My timers worked fine Sunday but this morning they were off by one hour(firing one hour too early) on my 508. Everyone should probably check their timers.


One too early, that's what happened here too. My wife was pissed to say the least.


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## John_E (Feb 7, 2003)

I have 366 here on a 508. All timers fired fine last evening (Sunday). Checked future timers for this week and they are all fine, so far.

Have not yet been offered 367.


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## euro_boy (Jun 20, 2005)

Both of my recievers 501 and 7200 were recording one hour too early for all day Sunday. I had to manually re-create all the timers on both receivers.


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## Amon37 (Mar 5, 2007)

I still only have 365 on my 510 with the problem, is that why this is happening? I don't know why it won't download 366. My other 510 has had 366 for a while now?


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## kstuart (Apr 25, 2002)

Since Sunday, every time I reset my 501 (P365), it subtracts one hour from all future timers !


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## smith1j (Mar 13, 2007)

I have basically the same problem. We have three 510 dvr's, all of them on p365 software.

The timers on one receiver are fine.

All of the timers on another receiver are four hours off. The timers on the other one are two hours off.

They were fine Sunday after the time change. Happened sometime Sunday night, Monday morning.

Spent about an hour this evening talking to DISH customer support. Never did get it straightened out. Their repsonse was for me to manually edit each timer and correct it.

I can see having some problems with the time change being three weeks early, but i sill don't understand why one receiver was fine, one off by four hours, the other off by two hours. All of them running the same software version.


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## John_E (Feb 7, 2003)

John_E said:


> I have 366 here on a 508. All timers fired fine last evening (Sunday). Checked future timers for this week and they are all fine, so far.
> 
> Have not yet been offered 367.


Sorry, my bad, as my previous post turned out to be incorrect. The recordings that appeared to fire OK and showed as such on the saved recordings menu, turned out to have all recorded one hour early. We found this out last night when we tried to watch one. Sunday morning I checked the timer settings because we're all having problems, and the date/time parameters looked OK.

My future timers still look OK with the first one due tonight. I'll try to stay home and watch it fire to see what happens as I now trust NOTHING!

Just how hard can this be for them to fix?


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## JohnH (Apr 22, 2002)

BTW: The time coming from the satellites is GMT. The offset is set in your receiver when it is authorized.

My DIRECTV receivers had correct column headings in the EPG last Sunday morning. It went 1 AM, 1:30 AM, 3 AM, 3:30 AM. There may be some patent which keeps E* from doing the same thing. It certainly would make things less volatile if all times were stored in GMT within the receivers and the User interface handled the offsets.
.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

JohnH said:


> It certainly would make things less volatile if all times were stored in GMT within the receivers and the User interface handled the offsets.


I thought that was the way it was handled ... except that instead of calculating when DST will start/end in the guide and skipping/adding a display hour it just changes the offset of what is displayed. The receivers have to work in areas that don't spring forward and back as well as in the majority of the US where things do change. It has been a while since I read the standards for the EPG, but I thought it was GMT based.

If anyone is still seeing timer problems I suggest a reboot of their machine. Always a good first step. It would also be good to see what receivers people are talking about ... many have said their receiver model but some have not. Information is helpful!


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## Amon37 (Mar 5, 2007)

My 510 is also changing timers to an hour back every night but it seems to happen after 2:00am in my case since my wife has timers from 1:00am to 1:30am and 1:30am to 2:00am.

I'm in arizona so we don't ever change the clocks.

I called customer services and they told me it was a known issue. Everything is a known issue nowadays, some results would be appreciated.


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## JohnH (Apr 22, 2002)

James Long said:


> I thought that was the way it was handled ...


From some of the responses above it seems obvious that some of the info is not handled that way.


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## Amon37 (Mar 5, 2007)

I called Customer Service again and they guy gave me a 7-10 day ETA. Not sure how accurate that is. At least I had the refund my DVR fees for the month.


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## AKDishuser (Oct 18, 2006)

Amon37 said:


> I called customer services and they told me it was a known issue. Everything is a known issue nowadays, some results would be appreciated.


I have a known issue, too: I simply don't pay Dish when I don't receive service. That's one of the reasons I'm not on autopay.

There is no excuse for this problem. Congress changed the DST law over two years ago. Two years lead time ought to have been enough for Dish's programmers to plan for a three week move on the semi-annual DST change that's been happening since before we were all born.

I just hope none of these guys goes to work for the airlines, national defense, etc.


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## Amon37 (Mar 5, 2007)

I'm not on autopay either and have received several credits this month alone for what's been going on. Between, missing timers, losing recordings, box rebooting itself, the 59 minute thing and now having to manually set my timers every night. It's just sickening.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

AKDishuser said:


> Congress changed the DST law over two years ago.


Nope. The ENERGY POLICY ACT OF 2005 wasn't law until August (signed into law August 8th).
Please don't exaggerate! 

Most companies have only addressed the change within the past few months.

For those having problems ... make sure that you have reset your receivers. If that didn't work power cycle reset them. Hopefully everyone with problems have done the basic steps.


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## AKDishuser (Oct 18, 2006)

James, what really annoys me is the Dish customer service attitude about this and other Dish glitches. Surely you remember me -- I'm one of the 510 users who was plagued by missed event timers for over six months starting last spring. (And no, I'm not exaggerating.) Due to what Dish later admitted was a known "issue" with software upgrades to 510s, our DVRs would not reliably wake up to record from standby.

When I called Dish CS about this past issue, as when I called about the DST problem last night, the CS rep 1) acted like they've never heard of the problem, 2) tried to shift the blame or responsibility on to me to fix it (I'm smart enough to have tried several hard reboots before picking up the phone), and 3) generally gave me the impression they were being evasive, i.e. lying, in order to string me along. As a result I now have zero confidence in anything anyone working for Dish Network/Echostar says. I believe you are all under orders to pretend nothing is wrong and that you'll do or say just about anything to avoid admitting that Dish has chronic software and hardware issues that result in less than stellar service to paying customers.

I can accept that systems are sometimes flawed. I would have much more respect for a company that came clean with me about things like its failure to anticipate DST and its inability to predict how long a fix will take. This is a classic case of the coverup being worse than the crime: your company's attitude towards the customers who pay your salaries is simply abyssmal.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

FYI: It isn't my company. I'm just a fan and a paying customer.

I am surprised by those having problems since it doesn't seem to be EVERY receiver acting like a POS. It raises the question of why does mine work? Or looking at a statistical minority (with apologies), why doesn't yours work?

I like E* and want to see their equipment working well and their customers happy. It makes my life easier as a volunteer moderator for a website also not owned or controlled by E* (or D* for that matter) when their customers are happy. That is my interest in the problem.


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## Kevin Brown (Sep 4, 2005)

I hate to bring this up, but maybe it's just the older units? 508, 510, etc?

I have a 522, and it recorded BSG fine Sun night.


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## firephoto (Sep 12, 2002)

I fixed all my my timers last night after I rebooted the 508 and saw some had shifted another hour earlier making them set for 2 hours early. Tonight I see it recording something right now and check all my timers and they're all off an hour again!

Shouldn't the times on the timers be static and the only variable be the actual local time? Anything else, and they do seem to have something else, just seems brain dead.

I'm almost convinced they're trying to make life rough for owning a 508 so I upgrade.


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## LSVLance (Mar 14, 2007)

The timers on my 510 with P368 are shifting back one hour each night as well...

The timers on my 501 with P365 are holding their correct times.

Both DVRs are doing the 59 minute record thing though...

If TWC wasn't FINALLY going to install at my house in the next month, I'd be getting DTV Tivos installed tomorrow...


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## snowman (Nov 1, 2004)

James Long said:


> I am surprised by those having problems since it doesn't seem to be EVERY receiver acting like a POS. It raises the question of why does mine work? Or looking at a statistical minority (with apologies), why doesn't yours work?


Sounds like time for a poll.

I, for one, am curious about how many people are really having problems with 501,508,510. I've had my 508 for 3 years, and it has had none of the current rash of problems, thankfully.

And I'm even happier that I'm not the guy sitting in an office at Echostar trying to figure out why some segment of the 50Xs work, and others don't.


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## meerkat (Mar 14, 2007)

Looking that these messages I would say the 510s are broken. Is it the 368 software alone or other versions as well? I suppose I wil be calling customer support tomorrow. Does no one have a solution for this? All my timers are useless since the times keep shifting. Is there going to be a fix for this?

BTW, the older DVR of my friend in colorado is busted as well. We talked yesterday. He has the same failure mode of slipping timers.


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## kstuart (Apr 25, 2002)

Received New Software Update Version P368 just now, which fixed the problem with the timers being moved one hour earlier each time the receiver was rebooted.
(One will still have to edit the timers to fix them, but after receiving P368, those timers will stay at the same times).


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## Rondo1 (Jan 4, 2003)

So how do we FORCE a download?


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## firephoto (Sep 12, 2002)

I unplugged the 508 this morning for a while after I turned it on and saw it was still on P365 and the timers had shifted 1-2 hours. Plugged it back in later then heard the hard drive spin up a few times over the next hour or so. Checked tonight and had got the P368 update and the timers were 3-6 hours off so I fixed the timers for tonight and I'll check tomorrow if they stay correct.

I thought there was a way to force an update but I searched around and couldn't find anything.


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## bill_mcgonigle (Nov 6, 2005)

I don't pay close daily attention to the DVR (that's why I have one...) but looking at it today it appears all timers since Monday morning (the first since the DST change here) were firing 4 hours early. The timer display shows timers off by four hours. 

I have P368 and no offer for further updates. I have to concur with the others here complaining - my linux machines got timezone updates for this a year ago today, Apple put theirs out in the Fall. On the other hand, Microsoft was still fumbling around with their server patches a week before the DST change and not communicating things well. I got a postcard from Verizon *yesterday* warning me about the upcoming change. I think they had the wrong week on their calendar. :lol: 

So, the range of competence runs the gamut - this 508 has been buggy since I got it; even with current versions certain combinations of Guide and Recording will force it to get stuck in a "Switch to Live" trap and need to be rebooted. Even the hardware is sub-par (I've posted my resoldering story here earlier). This DST bungle is just the latest chapter in a sad story.

The wife and kids are bitter about missing their shows; time to build the MythTV box, I guess.

I'm wondering, if I now fix all of my timers and they do issue a software patch to fix this - will all my new timers be 4 hours ahead? Note to any Dish software devs lurking here - by the Gods, store your timer dates in UTC and do localtime conversion for display purposes only. We learned this lesson decades ago on other systems.


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## Geeke19 (Oct 16, 2004)

doing the same thing to me on my 510 timers are off by 1 to 2 hours. screwing up every freaking timer I have set even a reset or doing it by timer extend does not fix it. getting fed up for paying for this crap. 

set a show to record at 10am I check the timer and it says 9am remove it and try it again it will show up fine. but when I go to recheck to make sure it says 9am again instead of 10am

WTF!!! Dish Network FIX THIS CRAP!


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