Kassel, are you using a cable box and IR blaster? If so, then everything I've told you is good. If not, then not so much (about trying to determine the host station, I mean).
Starrig, perhaps you misunderstood. I do NOT have a cable box at all. Are you saying I should lie to the Pana setup and tell it I do have a box? I have never had a box with this one, and have had TVGOS for five or six years in a row.
My system does not even have the blue boxes nowadays. On TV Guide, it is black with white letters saying something like There is No Information for this screen, make sure your cables are connected correctly.
Ah--no. I'm saying that I don't know how, without a cable box, you can determine what channel the Pan looks for when it's turned off. I think there is a way to get it to tell you, in one of the setup screens, but I can't remember the procedure. Maybe someone else can help. Sorry.
That, to me, suggests that there is a problem at the sending end. You might just have to call every network station in your area and ask, "Are you the hosting station for TVGuide Onscreen--aka Gemstar?"
Yeah, I may have to contact every station. What a pain in the neck. However, I did send a note to macrovision, and if they respond, they must KNOW who is the host station. Thanks for your help. K
For the last year or so, my Panny has been the proud possession of my wife. It's hooked up to a spare TV with OTA reception, now with a DTV converter in the mix, and we use it to record her soap each day and other shows she regularly watches off broadcast channels. I haven't worried about the TV Guide problems since the conversion made them moot, to my way of thinking. Anyway, the Panny 85 has been error free for at least two years-no u99, no PLEASE WAIT-until last night. My wife had let the HDD get full and several things had not recorded as a result. The unit was on showing channel 3 on the display without any accompanying HDD info. I opened up the navigator and madly deleted things she really didn't need anymore, opening up about 20 hours space, and turned off the unit. All appeared well. This morning the unit face was blank and it would not power up. It literally appears dead. No display, no fan, no variance between plugged in and not plugged in. No power to the unit at all. I looked things up here and on the internet, and the consensus still seems to be those danged oft-mentioned capacitors have failed. I will find out when I open the unit up. My question is, does it seem logical that the capacitors are the culprit when I had no sign of impending failure? Most of the posts I read show that the unit went through the intermittent PLEASE WAIT problems before total darkness. Why didn't mine? Or is it something else entirely?
Well - there seem to be on-going problems with TVGOS on Comcast here in CT. I had an e-mail address that I was using to communicate with TVGOS - but my recent messages have gone unanswered. Just got back from vacation and I'm going to try a system re-set and see what happens.
howie14w, The issues related to the capacitor failure is the 12 volt supply, which powers the drives. The displays, fans, etc. run off other supplies and should still work. When my caps went bad the front panel still iit up, I could hear the fans spin etc.
After my little rescan experiment, I still don't have TVG in Calif. But I needed to rescan & found a few new channels that I thought it might pick up TVG from but it did not. Panasonic has a $125 (?) set rate to fix, you could ask them howie14w.
If you get an offer to continue the extended warranty (anybody), take it. I just re-upped for 2 more years. My machine had to go in a couple of times during the first extended warranty period, and it far more than paid back my cost. (The service was excellent, and they even reimbursed me for shipping it in.) Re TVGOS in Calif, I'd bet money (well, okay, not a lot of money) that the problem isn't your machine but their signal. At least if you're using a cable box. (If they've gone digital and you don't have a box, that might be a different story.)
As per TVGOS in CA, I stopped getting updates a couple of months ago and have pretty much given up on getting it back. I go through Comcast and was forced to use a cable box for their change to digital. I use one of their older Motorola cable boxes as the Panasonic doesn't support the Pace boxes for the IR blaster. It worked at first through the cable box... I was getting TV Guide updates. But when they cut off the analog signal, the TV Guide stopped getting updates. I tried all of the tricks to reset the box... use a different zip code... etc. Nothing worked. Unlike other times that the TVGOS was out, this time even the clock didn't auto-set. I called Comcast support over a month ago and went up their chain until I found someone who at least understood the problem (didn't keep asking me if their on screen TV guide worked... and if so, what was my problem). I couldn't get the person to give me a support ticket number or anything, so there really isn't any way to get more info other than it didn't seem to help. I resolved to just use the DVR like a VCR and set all recordings by time and channel. Sigh... I miss the fully functional version.
Comcast had a lot of problems when the digital changeover happened. Things didn't work right on many levels. Here's what worked for me to get it fixed: If you know the station that provides your feed (probably the CBS affiliate, probably formerly the PBS affiliate), call the engineering department there and ask them to help you. My station knew exactly who to notify at Comcast to troubleshoot the problem. It took a little while, but they really did care about getting it working again. And it can be something widespread, or something localized to a single town. Changing the zipcode you feed your unit isn't going to change whether the signal is coming to your house.
I opened it up last night and the capacitors at 1260 and 1261 are both leaking. 1270 and 1271 are fine. The fuse has those red and green stripes around it and it's hard to be sure, but it looks operational. Now I have to decide whether to replace the capacitors myself-a first for me-and hope that's my only problem or send the unit to Elgin IL for repair.
Still no TVGOS in the mojave desert. No tv stations and no macrovision types are returning calls or emails either. Makes me want to kick some geek in the caboose. Howie, sounds to me like your who power supply is dead, or perhaps an onboard fuse has melted down. I would check the fuse on your pc board first. Then I would probably put an old computer near the panny, and stretch one of the power supply modules from the computer's cd rom to your panny motherboard. Then turn on the computer, and see if the panny comes back to life. If so, then you probably have a power supply problem, and a wife who needs to remember to turn things off.
Panasonic Repair Center has Changed?? So after repeated attempts to get ahold of the notorious "Kord" at x5288, it appears that road is a dead end. I've been told that I have to send my DMR-E85H into the McAllen TX repair facility for a $140 flat rate fix. Anyone else run into this lately?
Don't know about the price, but I just got my extended warranty contract in the mail, and I saw that the repair facility was changed from Elgin, IL to McAllen, TX.
Regarding TVGOS, as far as I can tell, the people working for macrovision, rovi, and various TV channels are the least responsive, least professional and quite possibly the least competent group of people in AMerica. Not one response from any of them. Collectively, I would not hire a member of that group to sweep my porch. Zero competence, zero percent responsible, probably for anything they are supposed to be doing. But other than that I am sure they are a great bunch of party animals.
New page now that Rovi bought TVGOS: http://www.rovicorp.com/products/ce_manufacturers/guide_ce/tv_guide_on_screen.htm It's a billion dollar company that depends on TVGOS advertising to be successful, certainly they would want their stuff to show up on tvs.
No More? My local CBS said: This was a system that both KION and KCBA participated in with our analog TV chain. With the termination of the analog service the Norpac system is dismantled. Both KION and KCBA offer the same service now know as 'Programming Guide' over our Digital Television systems. It is an on screen TV Guide that is channel specific and not television market specific. So you will find programming content for KION on KION, programming content for KCBA only on KCBA, and likewise with KSBW (NBC), KSMS (Univision), KQET (PBS). Their may be a 'digital' version of the old Norpac system available in some television markets, but KION and KCBA are not participating that endeavor.
