# ASK DBSTALK: Recording HDTV



## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

Perhaps I don't understand, but I thought that I could record two HD satellite channels and one HD OTA channel at the same time. In setting up timers, I can only get one HD event to record at the same time. The user guide for the 921 has a total lack of information, there are no technical specs. I thought it had two HD tuners. Perhaps one tuner is for SD and the other one is for HD. Any information and/or suggestions would be most helpful.


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## Bogney (Jul 11, 2003)

There are two satellite tuners and one OTA tuner. Any combination of two of them can be recording HD simultaneously.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

In simple terms what Bogney said is the limiting spec- Here is the back-fill of information:

Most user manuals have a Tech specs section, the 921 manual does not.
A vague reference to this limitation is stated on page 58 where it describes- When more than two timers overlap. The conflict screen...


Most people knew about the limitation of the 921 before purchasing because this was listed in the product spec sheets as a bulleted item:
Record any two High definition live satellite channels while watching a third prerecorded high definition channel. (The limitation was also known to extend to one live OTA channel plus one sat channel)
The spec sheet is still published with the above limitation.

FWIW- the HDTIVO has the same limitation record 2, watch a third and it has 4 tuners. Given the additional OTA tuner it can record 2 OTA live channels but then it cannot watch a third sat channel. 

And so you know we all have discovered that the pad times can cause timer overlap that will generate an exceeding of the 2 record simultaneously limits. Later updates to the software were supposed to deal with this conflict by generating a choice screen but this has still been buggy in certain timer scenarios. I avoid these conflicts and remaining bugs by avoiding pad time use and try to set all pads to 0 minutes when creating ANY timer. I also try to avoid a same minute setting for adjacent times such as ending and start time of 09:00 but rather use end of 08:59 and start of 09:00. For me, having same time settings for adjacent timers has resulted in second timer failing to execute. after I began the practice of separating the two adjacent timers by a minute, I have not had any timers fail to fire.


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

Thanks for the information. Two HD programs can be recorded at the same time. I adjusted timer pads to, "0" and adjusted for no overlaps in times. :grin: That should fix it.


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## tahoerob (Mar 22, 2003)

It can only record 2 events at same time regardless of HD or SD.

As mentioned above, you can view any previously recorded content HD or SD during the recordings.

HOWEVER, BEWARE of pressing stop button on viewed DVR item while events recording in background. Sometimes the recording event will STOP.

It is better to fastforward to end of viewed DVR event.


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## David_Levin (Apr 22, 2002)

DonLandis said:


> I avoid these conflicts and remaining bugs by avoiding pad time use and try to set all pads to 0 minutes when creating ANY timer.


Interestingly, Mark now recommends not touching the pads at all. My preference is also to set the pads to 0 then set the program timers and resolve my own conflicts. With manual (OTA) timers, I often set the start/end times with the pads in mind (I'll set an end time to 8:56 + pad gets me 8:59).

I find network shows need to be started 1-2 mins early. Premium sat movies never start early, but sometimes run a few minutes late.

In any case, pads have been troublesome since release. You'd think in 7 months they could have made them work or just forced them to 0.

(just a tought - if the pads were fixed in L186 would we know it? I've gotten pretty used to avoiding the bugs)


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## tahoerob (Mar 22, 2003)

It would be nice that if you have 2 shows starting at 8pm but one ending at 8pm with timers pads, that the timer conflict screen would allow you to simple pick "ignore timer pads" or something similar.


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

tahoerob said:


> It can only record 2 events at same time regardless of HD or SD.
> 
> As mentioned above, you can view any previously recorded content HD or SD during the recordings.
> 
> ...


I have fallen victim to pressing the stop button as you have described. It stops the recording.


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## rjruby (Dec 29, 2002)

tahoerob said:


> It can only record 2 events at same time regardless of HD or SD.
> 
> As mentioned above, you can view any previously recorded content HD or SD during the recordings.


Can you view realtime programming on the third source during the recordings on the other two?

Thanks,

Bob


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## Bogney (Jul 11, 2003)

rjruby said:


> Can you view realtime programming on the third source during the recordings on the other two?


No.


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## jsanders (Jan 21, 2004)

Are you sure about that? Obviously you can't watch an OTA station if you are using it to record, but seems like you might be able to watch a satellite channel. I haven't tried doing it yet. Maybe tonight I will.


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## Eagles (Dec 31, 2003)

jsanders said:


> Are you sure about that?


YES!
!pride


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## dishbacker (Jun 15, 2004)

You can only have 2 live events going at one time (be it watching and/or DVRing)... even though the 921 really has 3 tuners in it (2 SAT and 1 OTA). It won't let you use all 3 tuners at one. Otherwise, I guess it would be called a 931? You can record 2 live events and watch a previously recorded event.

The 942 will have 4 tuners in it (2 OTA and 2 SAT), just like the HDTivo, but who knows if you will be able to use all 4 at once, or if this just gives the ability to watch an OTA while recording an OTA. Don't have an HDTivo (and haven't followed the forum) to know if you can use more than 2 tuners at once.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

It's a chipset limitation, guys, not a tuner limitation. The HDTIVO has the same restriction and it has 4 tuners. I did read somewhere that there is a new chip out that will supoport all four tuners and monitoring. I also recall that the first receiver to use this expanded capability will be from Motorola.

While I respect everything Mark has told us, I tried his no touch on the pads and began to have same old conflict issues again. I believe he is working with only one 921 and that one is always on some other software than what we have. I would think that would make it difficult to verify much of our reports here. In addition, Mark has hinted that the release is not always the same as the software that he has tested. For some reason it ends up some combination for what we get. Hopefully he is allowed to clarify the above but this is my understanding.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Lemme throw in here.

You can actually watch TWO recorded events at the same time by using PIP. Fire one up. PIP Swap, DVR, start the other one. Swap between them as desired. Seems strange (and I do not find it very useful), but it works just fine.

As for getting out of a DVR event, there's LOTS of ways - DVR & scroll to get back to the current item for example.

As for pads, I like the current 1/3 default, and never have a problem - everything always auto-resolves on-the-fly. My Caveats: No OTA, No manual timers.


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

SimpleSimon said:


> Lemme throw in here.
> 
> You can actually watch TWO recorded events at the same time by using PIP. Fire one up. PIP Swap, DVR, start the other one. Swap between them as desired. Seems strange (and I do not find it very useful), but it works just fine.
> 
> ...


I tried it with OTA and HD , doesn't seem to work but it is interesting that you can get two DVR events to play. There may be some use for this and we just haven't thought of it yet :grin:


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Simple Simon-
Quite possible that the pad overlap warning only works for dual sat tuners. I checked my notes on the tests I did and they did use adjacent AND overlaping pad times with OTA/OTA and sat/OTA as well as SAT/SAT but never with OTA disabled. (as in no OTA antenna and all sat channels deleted from the list) The SAT/SAT was the closest I came and it did not work.
If things don't improve soon with the L186 OTA issues here I plan to disable OTA for the 921 this weekend for awhile. Currently I'm testing the 921 absent my appliance timer once a day reboot. These types of tests take days to run.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Don: Well, again, I'm 100% Sat/Sat, and find the pads very useful on recurring timers during primetime when sometimes I'll add a one-shot event. The padding adjusts on-the-fly.

The algorithms could've been made smarter if Eldon had given it an extra 5 minutes thought, but we know how that goes. It appears that tuner selection is random (it's not - it just looks that way). If they'd bothered to see what the overlapping events were actually doing, there'd be a lot fewer conflicts.

Sigh. There was just SO much that could've been done - and with the 721, too.


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## tahoerob (Mar 22, 2003)

PIP does NOT work for HD or OTA DTV. There is a limit to hard drive buffering or somthing like that!
Thus, can only PIP SD channels


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Actually, it's NOT the HDD buffers, data rate, or anything like that - several of us beat that horse to death and into dog food a few months back. 

There IS a limitation on the video rendering hardware that seems to be the culprit.


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## tahoerob (Mar 22, 2003)

SimpleSimon said:


> Actually, it's NOT the HDD buffers, data rate, or anything like that - several of us beat that horse to death and into dog food a few months back.
> 
> There IS a limitation on the video rendering hardware that seems to be the culprit.


Sounds like a job for Nvidia or ATI then


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## joebird (Sep 15, 2003)

On a related note, I've found that I can't do something which seems basic. Sorry if this has been covered before, I'm a fairly new owner of a 921. So we have 2 tuners with 3 inputs (1 OTA and 2 sat). If I'm watching a sat or OTA channel, and hit the 'record' button (to continue recording until the show is over or else just manually stop it later) the recording starts as expected. But then (with only that 1 program recording), it will not let me change the channel to another tuner (i.e. OTA if I've just started a sat recording, or vice-versa).

If I start an OTA tuner recording, why wouldn't it let me change the channel to watch a sat channel from the other tuner?


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## dishbacker (Jun 15, 2004)

joebird said:


> On a related note, I've found that I can't do something which seems basic. Sorry if this has been covered before, I'm a fairly new owner of a 921. So we have 2 tuners with 3 inputs (1 OTA and 2 sat). If I'm watching a sat or OTA channel, and hit the 'record' button (to continue recording until the show is over or else just manually stop it later) the recording starts as expected. But then (with only that 1 program recording), it will not let me change the channel to another tuner (i.e. OTA if I've just started a sat recording, or vice-versa).
> 
> If I start an OTA tuner recording, why wouldn't it let me change the channel to watch a sat channel from the other tuner?


Known bug. Occurs when you have a timer running that is set with a 'manual stop', which will happen with any manually started OTA recording, or if you do a SAT manual record, select options, and select 'manual stop'. If you go create a timer for your OTA event via menu-7, then you can switch away from it while it still records and watch something else.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

DonLandis said:


> While I respect everything Mark has told us, I tried his no touch on the pads and began to have same old conflict issues again. I believe he is working with only one 921 and that one is always on some other software than what we have. I would think that would make it difficult to verify much of our reports here. In addition, Mark has hinted that the release is not always the same as the software that he has tested. For some reason it ends up some combination for what we get. Hopefully he is allowed to clarify the above but this is my understanding.


The "Don't touch the pad times" statement is meant primarily for weekly timers, although I personally have had better results getting the timers to fire over the various software versions just leaving them alone.

As for the other two points, sometimes both are the case, sometimes they aren't. I'm usually on the same software version you all are on for a week or so after the public release. About features or fixes being in the betas and not in the release versions (so far), this is also sometimes the case, but not always. And that one I can't be more specific about.


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