# Timers suddenly not firing on 510 w/ P4.05



## plarkinjr (Feb 12, 2008)

OK, so here's a new and weird one:

I've had 4.05 for weeks now, and long before that I setup many timers to record several news-type shows every evening and keep only 1 or 2 copies. Idea being that I can pick any number of programs as my "bedtime" show.

So anyway, tonite, I watch one and noticed it seemed to be about stuff from days ago. So I look closer: no shows recorded with a date later then 4/8. So I check the schedule - 0 upcoming events are listed. But I see there are all my various timers there.... set as I had set them long ago.

Anybody else had that happen? What should I do?


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## CABill (Mar 20, 2005)

I haven't had that on P4.05, but a few times I've seen similar behavior on my 942 with timers set for locals (below ch 100) when "something" happens. If you haven't already, a hard reboot or unplug-replug is worth trying. If that doesn't repopulate coming recordings, try to recreate one. When it happened to me, it was like the old timer was for "some other channel 3" and found no shows, but when deleted and added back all the coming shows appeared in the list for the timer.


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## plarkinjr (Feb 12, 2008)

As it turns out, we had a power failure last nite at 6am (storms rolling thru Dallas area). It lasted till noon-thirty. Now all the scheduled events are back. So I guess a "forced unplug reboot" was the ticket. Thanks!


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## Mr.Gadget (Mar 29, 2004)

I am on P4.02 and this recently started to happen. The system with P4.01 does not have this problem (yet).

It happens if the system is on or off. It also 'forgets' all the set timers and they must be recreated once in awhile. What is going on???


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## Blowgun (May 23, 2008)

Mr.Gadget said:


> I am on P4.02 and this recently started to happen. The system with P4.01 does not have this problem (yet).
> 
> It happens if the system is on or off. It also 'forgets' all the set timers and they must be recreated once in awhile. What is going on???


Just had the same thing happen on my 508 with p4.05, as you said, *all of the timers* disappeared and had to be re-created.

One timer in particular caught my attention when I was putting the timers back. It was a record NEW only timer for "How It's Made" (ch 193). That one currently shows that it will be recording next week about 15 episodes that are old. I checked the timers and, yep, it's set for new only. So, the guide information must be messed up. Hopefully by next week guide updates will correct these mistakes.

One other thing happened the other day, the receiver came on all by itself (the little UHF antenna is not plugged in, nor do we have other Dish subs in the area).

I powered up the TV and there was nothing but a black screen with no audio. The INFO button worked, even going into the events list worked. So, I turned it off with the remote and upon return it still had a black screen.

Even though I could turn it off and on with both the remote and the front power button, I held the power button down to do a soft-reset, which brought it out of it's self induced coma. Really strange stuff.


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## purduepeterson (May 23, 2008)

plarkinjr said:


> OK, so here's a new and weird one:
> 
> I've had 4.05 for weeks now, and long before that I setup many timers to record several news-type shows every evening and keep only 1 or 2 copies. Idea being that I can pick any number of programs as my "bedtime" show.
> 
> ...


I'm having the exact same problem. I can't even record a live show via the record button.


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## AKDishuser (Oct 18, 2006)

I've called Dish about timer problems several times over the past three months. I'm running P4.05 on a 510 DVR with "inactivity power off" enabled. Ever since the Name Based Recording software was installed, I've had multiple timer failures. 

1) The DVR repeatedly deletes new timers. I can add them one day, turn the box off, and the next day they are not there. In some cases I've re-added the timers 3-4 times in a row but they never "take." I've missed recording many shows this way.

2) The DVR missed a whole week of recurring event timers while I was away from home on travel in early May. No power outages. Timers before and after my absence fired normally. When I scrolled back in the timer schedule, the missed days were not even listed.

3) Attempts to override scheduled timers, i.e. to "skip" a show that would otherwise record and to "restore" a timer that otherwise wouldn't fire, have failed. Did this Wednesday 5/28 to record "The Office" instead of "Burn Notice" last night but got "Burn Notice" anyway. This kind of thing has happened multiple times.

4) Despite the timer settings telling the box only to record new shows, I'm getting multiple recording of reruns. E.g. some shows are broadcast on some channels with the same episode playing several times in a 24-hour period. I'm getting all of them. Sometimes the multiple copies are cancelling out other higher priority shows (according to the heirarchy I've tried to establish). It's the DVR version of SPAM.

I'm fairly certain these flaws are due to Dish's haste in rolling out software that differs from its previous versions, which the courts found infringed on Tivo's patents. The new NBR Dish software is full of bugs. For a while the company tried to blame the problems on my DVR ("we will replace your 510 for free if you send the old one back"). They totally denied there was any systemic problem with the software. The fact many other people are having the same problem tells me this is a lie.

They now tell me there are "known issues" with P4.05 and that a fix in in progress. Maybe out "in a month." But how can they legally justifycontinuing to charge for service they've acknowledged it's impossible for them to provide?

Last night I finally convinced a CS supervisor to refund a month's worth of Dish's fee ($49.95 for me). I work more than full time and travel extensively and almost all my TV watching is of recorded shows, so if the timers don't work, I'm basically paying for worthless service. I can get all my locals OTA in HD using a USB tuner on my laptop and that's what I've been doing when there's no new content on my DVR.

Any experience or opinions out there about Direct TV's service? Now that I can get local OTA Dish is no longer a must have in my market. Don't have a contract so I think I'll be jumping to cable or DTV soon.


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## Blowgun (May 23, 2008)

AKDishuser said:


> 4) Despite the timer settings telling the box only to record new shows, I'm getting multiple recording of reruns. E.g. some shows are broadcast on some channels with the same episode playing several times in a 24-hour period. I'm getting all of them. Sometimes the multiple copies are cancelling out other higher priority shows (according to the heirarchy I've tried to establish). It's the DVR version of SPAM.


As I mentioned above regarding the record NEW only timer for "How It's Made" (ch 193). Well, the guide didn't update as I had hoped, and we now have 18 old episodes on the hard drive taking up a huge waste of space. Fortunately, there was a lot of free space otherwise it would have prevented something useful from being recorded.

I'm really getting to dislike NBR. With it came more unreliability. It may work great on a 622 (so I'm told), but it sucks on the 5xx receivers thus far.

You said haste to roll out the software, no. NBR was in the planning and development stage for years before it was unleashed on the 5xx receivers. Perhaps incompetents would be a better way to describe it. For example, until recently you couldn't record back-to-back events without having to tweak the timers yourself. No one at DISH bothered to test that before it was released and it took awhile before it was fixed.

CSRs are often quick to blame the receiver first, but then again they don't have a section to mark when they take reports for software bugs, only hardware, and it has to be described in like 150 characters. Is it any wonder why software bugs seem to get underreported.

That's if you're lucky.

More likely you will end up with a poorly trained CSR and/or one located in a different country which doesn't understand, only adding to the frustration for why you called.

I'm not the kind of person that believes in conspiracies, but you have to wonder if DISH wouldn't be better off if all of us 5xx users either went away or upgraded to a newer receiver.

Certainly it would mean more revenue for DISH and less overall complaints of their service. And, I realize that the 5xx receivers will be discontinued when everything, or most everything, goes MPEG4 and it would be in DISH's best interest that subs upgraded before DISH had to do it for them, possibly for free.

I'm not ready to jump to a different provider just yet, but I am keeping my options open if they continue to add useless features over fixing bugs.


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## AKDishuser (Oct 18, 2006)

After many weeks of non-firing NBR timers, I got fed up and deleted them all. Most came back after a hard reboot. Deleted them again and left the DVR on for several days before rebooting, and since then none of the NBR timers have showed up.

Since the mass deletion, in order to record a show, I've resorted to using manual timers, just as we had to in the pre-NBR good old days. I.e. I set the channel, time and date for every show I want. So far (two weeks into the workaround) all timers have fired on time. Doesn't matter whether the DVR is "on" (green light) or off.

I've also successfully recorded shows that I've selected for recording using the program guide and "select" button on the remote. Again, just like the good old days. In order to record anything, you have to know when it's on and hope that the schedule doesn't change between the time you set up the timer and the time the timer is set to fire.

IMHO, Dish's NBR software is akin to Windows ME in terms of stability/reliability. I stuck with Win98 when ME came out -- wish software updates were not foisted on us by Dish. Yes, there are workarounds for that too (see PVRExplorer Yahoo group) but I really don't want to have to work that hard -- I'm paying $600/yr for Dish to work for ME (in theory!).


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