# L4.03 - Duplicate Channels



## wahoolions (Jul 26, 2006)

Hi all,

I received the 4.03 update about a week ago (although I never had 4.01 or 4.02), but was gone and did not get a chance to really look at it until yesterday. Something weird is going on with my guide. I've got duplicate channels, but some in very odd ways.

A couple of points:


I have done a hard reset of the system
I do not have any channel mapping turned on
I do not have any channels locked

I am now seeing WRC (Washington, D.C. local) as:


004 SD
004 HD
6361
8072

In addition, I am also seeing weirdness such as:


300 - HBO-E
300 - HBOHD

How can two stations be showing up as the same channel number? When I select them from the guide, I'm definitely getting one in HD format and the other in SD.

What should I do to resolve this problem? Should I turn on the channel mapdown as well as locks to remove the duplicates? If I do this, will I need to recreate all of my timers (most of them are recording from the 6000 HD range, and I assume those will go away if I do this)?

Thanks for all your help!

-Gary


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## Hunter Green (May 8, 2006)

This is a "feature" called map-down. I can't remember where you disable it, though. The idea is to make it so that it seems like a single channel which is automatically in HD.

Apparently, and this is almost impossible to believe, many people with HD are still watching the SD channels because they are used to going to the SD channel numbers. This transparently tricks them into going to the HD channels without requiring them to remember the channel number, and that makes them think things are better because suddenly the picture quality is better!

Meanwhile, I'm thinking... people still type in channel numbers? Don't they know they have a DVR?


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## msalvail (Sep 19, 2003)

Hunter Green said:


> Apparently, and this is almost impossible to believe, many people with HD are still watching the SD channels because they are used to going to the SD channel numbers. This transparently tricks them into going to the HD channels without requiring them to remember the channel number, and that makes them think things are better because suddenly the picture quality is better!
> 
> Meanwhile, I'm thinking... people still type in channel numbers? Don't they know they have a DVR?


I love having the HD and SD channels next to each other. Of course, people still type in channel numbers. And in some cases, the programming is different. HGTV and HGTV HD show different things. No one is being 'tricked'. What an odd thing to say.

Just lock out those duplicate channels up in the 9000s and you're good to go.


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## ScottsFJ40 (Feb 27, 2007)

My first thoughts about the mapdown prior to getting 4.03 was that I was going to automatically turn it off when the download happened. To be honest though, it has grown on my very quickly and I really like the feature now.


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## kbuente (Mar 25, 2007)

Yea it is definitely NOT a glitch or a problem but a benefit to have. It doesn't bother me at all to see the same channel, whether SD or HD, listed 4 times. I'm not sure why people go through hoops to disable it but everyone has their own preferences. Perhaps if you always received your local channels in HD maybe you than would want to remove their SD counterparts.

And not to complicate things, if you also had an antennae plugged into the OTA jack, you would than have another location, although in yellow, to view your local station (either in HD or SD but certainly digital).


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

Just go into the locals menu and hit the hd priority and all duplicate hd channels will go back to their high end numbers and the sd ones back to their low numbers. I personaly go into the locks menu and lock out all duplicate channels in the 9000 range and all sd locals in the 8000 range and hd locals in the 6000 range. I only want the low channel numbers in my guide.


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## patmurphey (Dec 21, 2006)

Has anyone ever heard of "Favorites"? Why mess with locks? BTW the duplicate numbers work just fine - type in 110 for Food Network and you get the HD version, down arrow gets you the SD, up arrow back to HD - pretty intuitive if you ask me. Where programming is the same, don't include the SD channel in your favorites list. I leave the SD in the Favorites list because I select my recording from the guide and occasionally I'll record SD on a non-visually important show to save space.

Pat


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## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

Mike D-CO5 said:


> Just go into the locals menu and hit the hd priority and all duplicate hd channels will go back to their high end numbers and the sd ones back to their low numbers. I personaly go into the locks menu and lock out all duplicate channels in the 9000 range and all sd locals in the 8000 range and hd locals in the 6000 range. I only want the low channel numbers in my guide.


Base control for this is in the local channels (menu 6, 9), channel display
Local sat channels--help screen explains the mapdown options


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

patmurphey said:


> Has anyone ever heard of "Favorites"? Why mess with locks? BTW the duplicate numbers work just fine - type in 110 for Food Network and you get the HD version, down arrow gets you the SD, up arrow back to HD - pretty intuitive if you ask me. Where programming is the same, don't include the SD channel in your favorites list. I leave the SD in the Favorites list because I select my recording from the guide and occasionally I'll record SD on a non-visually important show to save space.
> 
> Pat[/quote
> 
> I like locks because I lock out all hispanic local channels, all shopping channels, all information channels, all freeview - since I already have AEP. I also lock out duplicate locals, duplicate hd stations in the higher range. Eventually I suppose Dish will do this for all sd channels and add their hd equivalents as they become available. I don't intend to watch them in sd if there is an hd equivalent. I also don't want duplicate versions of channels I don't intend on watching in sd anyway.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I always figured the locks were there to prevent tuning to a channel. For instance, if you have young children you might want to lock the adult channels whether you watch them or not to prevent the kids from viewing when you aren't around.

But for my viewing, I just made a favorites list... Seems as easy or easier to do that than locking channels I don't watch, and it provides the same net-effect in that my custom favorites list only has the channels I want to watch.


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## TulsaOK (Feb 24, 2004)

Hunter Green said:


> Meanwhile, I'm thinking... people still type in channel numbers? Don't they know they have a DVR?


I don't get it.


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## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

HDMe said:


> I always figured the locks were there to prevent tuning to a channel. For instance, if you have young children you might want to lock the adult channels whether you watch them or not to prevent the kids from viewing when you aren't around.
> 
> But for my viewing, I just made a favorites list... Seems as easy or easier to do that than locking channels I don't watch, and it provides the same net-effect in that my custom favorites list only has the channels I want to watch.


I'm sure that was the initial reason for the locks, but leave it to people like us to come up with another use.

Personally I like to use the locks, not only for adult channels, but for all the other channels I consider useless and would never watch. This way they don't show up in any of my guide lists. I then use favorites for small subsets of channels I may want to scan through in the guide. i.e. I have one that just has my OTA channels for the major networks so I can quickly scan through primetime for a week on a single screen by just hitting skip forward. I also have another one for all the channels that show HD movies all the time so I can scan for HD movies to watch/record. Stuff like that.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I haven't looked into locks much... but maybe I will now. I hadn't thought about using them in that way, locking out channels I know I will never watch... then using my Favorites list to pare down even further.

I basically have a Favorites with all the channels I might watch sometimes... but maybe I should create a few like one for OTA and one for most-watched... then lock down everything I know I never will watch. That could be useful.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

I use locks basically the same way Rob does.. See locks and favorites as complimentary features for sure. Of course the other use for locks is to protect content from people you don't want to have access to. What would be nice if there was a hide feature and a lock. That way you could remove all the channels you did not care about and then use the lock to truly lock out channels when necessary and have the ability to unlock them without brining back all those channels you do not care about..... Really would be nice to see those feature separated.


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## patmurphey (Dec 21, 2006)

My point about locks being overkill was in reference to the map-down feature. I understand the use of locks to block access to certain programming by children. We are all adults in my household and I believe that Favorites lists are the most elegant way to use the guide for my family. I also want to have the "All Subscribed" list available at any time with no password hassle to guests and to occasionally find unusual (for me) programs when I feel like browsing. If you normally use Favorites to access the guide, locks are an unnecessary waste of time to deal with map-downs.

Pat


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

patmurphey said:


> My point about locks being overkill was in reference to the map-down feature. I understand the use of locks to block access to certain programming by children. We are all adults in my household and I believe that Favorites lists are the most elegant way to use the guide for my family. I also want to have the "All Subscribed" list available at any time with no password hassle to guests and to occasionally find unusual (for me) programs when I feel like browsing. If you normally use Favorites to access the guide, locks are an unnecessary waste of time to deal with map-downs.
> 
> Pat


To each his own Pat. Just be thankful that there are options for everyone's different tastes and uses.


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