No U99's here for 6 days now Hope I've not jinxed myself. FYI adverts and at least one week of TV guide loaded.
Had a one second power outage today, and lost the ads/promotions, but still have all listings. This also happened last Friday with no adverse effects, so hopefully none this time. Guess I need to get a UPS for my setup. Seems as if we're always losing power for extremely brief periods of time. But NO U99s, and as you said, timdf, I hope I haven't jinxed myself.
I am CERTAINLY not doing as well as many of you. I am in NYC (Time Warner Digital Cable box, Painasonic DMR E85). I have had not program listing for several weeks, and ch.up-ch.down with unplugging etc. did absolutely nothing to fix the problem. I have no U99, but no TVGOS either. I reset the machine to its factory defaults, and my reward was that I can no longer get the channel editor and choose which channels should have listings, if they ever return. All the guesswork that is going on this forum reminds me of the blind, deaf etc. finding an elephant and trying to figure out what they have in front of them from very partial information. I guess TVGUIDE and Painasonic learned from Microsoft that it is best to keep the pained customers guessing, rather than to deal with their problems.
faure wrote: I have to take issue with faure and the way he characterizes what has been going on in this forum. I am very grateful for the various comments in this forum. Without these comments, I would never have been able to come up with the conclusion that the U99s are, almost certainly, the result of TV Guide downloading problems, rather than a hardware problem with my DMR-E85H. And sure enough, I have had the U99 problem go away in the past week [bold]without[/bold] any steps (resets, service mode, error pages, etc) on my part.
[bold]sfstan[/bold]: Hopefully that will be the last time we lose data like that. Your listings are populating as expected per the d/l schedule posted earlier by RX7Fan. You should have full or almost fully populated listings on Saturday morning. [bold]compprog[/bold]: I agree that it's not all been for naught, as faure alludes to. However, besides positivley identifying the source of the problem (TVGOS), the download schedule, some generalities about how TVGOS downloads data, and the assurance that "it's being addressed," the rest is guesswork. Then again, that's to be expected when attempting to reverse-engineer someone's program without info or access to the code! We need to find someone who was involved with writing the program to give us insight, like that will happen. Heh. [bold]faure[/bold]: Sorry to hear about your problem--seems like TVGOS is failing to find a signal, if you're not even getting the channel line-up. The only suggestion I can make is to TRY to call Time-Warner and see if they "accidentally" (or purposefully) halted their VBI signal on digital cable. Do you know anyone else there with TVGOS to see if they're gettting listings? I doubt it's a hardware problem but...pretty strange that you're ONLY getting the time-signal (presumably, if your clock sets itself). I seem to remember another forum with digital cable subscribers having problems, TVGOS conflicting with their cable boxes...maybe avsfourm.
Afraid to even say it but I also (in Hawaii) have been U99 free for about 5 days now. Over the weekend, I had a lot of shows to record, both day and night so left the TV and DVD recorder ON the entire day and night.....just in case! This morning I noticed TV Guide is populating my screen again. have not checked how complete it is, but I am opting to manually record now anyway!!! fingers crossed for now!
faure: you were not the only one without channel lineup. I have SC-HT1500, and I had no U99 since Friday morning. I thought that everything was finally OK with TVGOS, because I had channel lineup (old one), but no listings. So I did channel up/down reset on Sunday evening. I haven't got back channel lineup for 2 days. I was not even able to get time!!! "12:00A" was flashing for 2 days everytime when the unit was turned off. And when I turned the unit on, there was message that search for data failed, and I am supposed to check connections. (I did not change any of my connections for last three weeks). Finally, this evening around 8:00PM, I saw correct time on the display. I did not turn the unit on since 4:00PM, because I am waiting 12 hours for initial TVGOS downloads. I will se what will happen tomorrow in the morning.
Sorry, friends-- I did NOT mean to imply that the discussions here were useless. This has been a great support group. It taught me that I am not alone with my plight, and that was great to know. However, because of the limited information available to us poor customers, we have to try and guess the meaning of obscure signals on the information pages, or try and divine the meaning of MIBUs (Mean Interval Between U99s), etc. It's like reading crop signals... All the cures offered here did not solve my problem which might have nothing to do with my Painasonic, but could be due to Time Warner, which, after all, sells a PVR service.
No U99's for a week. After last night's download, the listings are complete for 8 days. (There is an odd "no listing" spot that worried me - early Sunday morning. But suddenly I realized that it's because we're exiting daylight savings time.) I think this is the first time since forever that I have full listings. Even before I was getting U99's, they would stop populating at some point before everything was filled in (silent U99's?). Based solely on my Helen Keller view of things, I think Gemstar took their OKC solution global last Wednesday.
Well, Good News and Bad News. I struggled all weekend with even getting a channel lineup after Cheryl told me to do a "factory reset" of my E85. Finally, on Sunday (which I have written here) I got it all, lineup, ads AND program listings. The one odd thing was that it never gave me a choice of channel lineups to choose from (you know that screen that says TBS 35, CNN 68 etc...) Apparently it automaticly knew the correct lineup, and suprisingly it was correct. Anyhow, this morning, Wednesday, I woke up to a U99. As an aside, I had been noticing that when I shut the unit off (standby) it used to switch the cable box to the channel with MSNBC on it. This was weeks ago. Since Sunday, when I shut off the recorder it apparently stayed on the channel that it was on when it was on. (no more scanning the cable box in standby) At least I never noticed it and I would watch the cable box for a few minutes after shutting the recorder down. I guessing that sometime during the night, through the software or whatever, it started a download and did the U99. When I powered on this morning, (going through the usual power on to get rid of the U99, then power on to actually turn it on and getting the "please wait" and then powering on again to actually turn it really on.) I still had listings and it kept the scheduled recording listings. I still live with the fear that if I go out of town it will U99 and I will never get anything I had already preset. I love the idea of panasonic doing something so that the U99 error triggers an automatic reset.
Finally with all of your help I have figured out exactly what caused my U99s and how to fix my E85H when U99s occur. This morning when I got up, my E85H was in standby where I had left it but it had switched channels to Ch 2 Boston Comcast (PBS). Now I know from the couple of weeks that for my zip code my E85H only goes to two channels (4 local CBS and 53 MSNBC). When it goes to other channels, especially WENH (PBS New Hampshire), I can guarantee that U99s will follow. So I turned on my E85H and sure enough the ads were gone and now it has forgotten what channels to go to for Listings data. I looked around the house and realized that sometime yesterday the power went off for 12 minutes. So it looks like when the power goes off to the E85H, it looses ads and looses information on what stations to go to for Listings data and ads download. It however did still have listings but probably would not get any new listings and probably would get a U99 as soon as it gets to WENH for data. It looks like the listings data is saved on the hard drive because some data was still there. I think the fix for future E85H type products is to save all of the data on the hard drive and little if any data to the memory. As I look back it is quite possible that the problems I had in mid Sept to the first week in October could have been caused by a power outage that took all of the data needed to download new information from memory and put me in a constant U99 error mode (had approximately 3 a day for 3 weeks). Thanks to help from this forum, my fix is just the Ch-up Ch-down and then 30 seconds unplugged. Again thanks for all of you help and now except for the need to reset after power outages, I have a fully functional E85H Thanks Bonus2
Well, I guess it was too good to last. 25 days and I just got a U99 in the last 20 minutes. Turn on, the machine, self check, still have listings for the next 6 days, but ads are gone. Sigh. Time Warner, 78154, no cable box. I have a suspicion this will continue the rest of the day. I will see.
Bonus2 I know that this adds expense to the system but I highly recommend installing a UPS to the system. There are many good reasons and I'm sure more than I can list. But below are the main ones. 1. It also acts as a voltage - spike protector. Some units come with $25,000 protection policies. 2. If you are recording to the hard drive, while away (or home) this could destroy the hard drive and the data already saved. 3. This is also true for the DVD drive. If it happens during use it could destroy everything. 4. You do not loose any of the settings in RAM that otherwise would be lost. The cost of UPS supplies have dropped ($50.00 or less)to the point that having one just for the DVD recorder is worth the piece of mind. I do have a dedicated UPS just for the recorder.
Update from OKC (73034). As of Wed evening (10/26), still no U99s on my E85H since the "OKC fix". I have fully populated listings through Wed night (11/2) 11 pm plus eleven promo ads. The number of promo ads seems to vary in number between 9 and 11, and they apparently get updated daily. I noticed a couple of interesting things about the listing updates. I left the power on overnight Monday (10/24), and found that listings for Tues (11/1) had not been filled in as they would have been if power was off; at that point, I had 7 days of listings. Also, the promo ads disappeared overnight. I turned the power off for 12 hours during the daytime Tuesday (10/25) and found that all the listings for the next Tuesday were filled in DURING THE DAYTIME and the promo ads reappeared. I left the power off overnight Tuesday and received the Wed (11/2) listings and new promo ads but the listings STOPPED AT 11 PM CDT. I think this is due to daylight savings time ending. Usually my listings have been filled in up to midnight. From this I conclude that, at least in OKC, once you have full listings with no gaps, you will get the eighth day filled in either during the daytime or during the nighttime depending on when you have power off. Listings show up in 24-hour chunks from midnight to midnight (except for DST changeover). You may also get promo ad updates any time the power is off. daughn: Another good reason to get a UPS is to avoid the “garbled screen” problem, which is the first problem I ever saw with my E85H (my listing on 10/16, pg 26, plus I am sure you have seen UPS comments from lots of others in this forum since you have been contributing for a while). I chose a Belkin 750 VA 400 Watt UPS because the battery can be easily replaced when it wears out. I run my TV, my E85, my cable amplifier, and all VCRs from it so that minor glitches don’t affect viewing or recording. If power goes down for very long, I can switch off my TV and still get lots of time for the recording to continue. I have a second Belkin UPS that runs all my computer equipment, cable modem, and Wireless network.
Update from the NW. I had gone 10 days with no U99. I also had done little 'babying' of the system -- just a 'soft reset' after the last U99 and, since then, I've put it into standby each evening and often during the day. The listings had populated (with the exception of a hole in Friday's) and I had a dozen-plus ads (promotions). When I arrived home yesterday, (6pm) I had a U99. My last recording had ended at 5:15pm (and was complete). Since the next recording was to start at 7pm I had grown to expect that NO download activity would be attempted with that short a gap. (Apparently the system isn't as 'smart' as I had thought.) Nothing was lost except the ads (back to the default TV Guide promos) and the diagnostic data (next DL time, et al, from pg. 1). I still had the Friday gaps and the previously-populated listings were intact. I did a soft reset and am back in operation. I have some questions about the UPS boxes that have been mentioned. Would it be preferred to post this in a new thread? I'd hate to lose the attention of those who have brought up the topic but I also hate to make this thread longer (by creating topic drift). ~ Keri
Kossello Great advice. I just ordered a Ultra/ULT31502/1000 VA 600 Watt UPS from Tiger Direct. Should solve all of my problems with memory loss, at least as far as the E85H is concerned! I had looked at a Belkin 750 VA but some reviewers complaind about the Belkin being noisy. Thanks for your advice Bonus2
Just my opinion, but any discussion in this thread of anything that will help prevent damage to DMR-E85Hs (or other DVRs) or make it less error prone would be appreciated. Of course, it goes without saying that a UPS may help to eliminate the occasional cause of U99s due to power glitches, but it will not cure the more common cause which appears to be totally related to a download problem.
Here's my question about UPS for DVR. To simplify, assume that the DVR is the only device the UPS is supporting and that issues of surge protection (which I understand are important) are not part of this particular question. What spec. should I be looking for in a UPS? From the information given 'on the box' at retail stores (Costco, Office Depot, etc.) the emphasis is on a whole computer system (where a monitor is a large factor) when it talks about the amount of outage time the UPS will support. I assume (correctly?) that the draw on a DVR is less, especially if the outage occurs between recording times and the DVR is in 'standby' mode. We live in an area that typically has outages of 4-8 hrs. (during the windy winter months). What should I be looking for in a UPS to hold my programming over that span of an outage? (And, if a recording was to fire up during an outage, how much would that alter the duration?) Assuming the power is restored before the UPS runs out of juice -- will the DVR be in standby mode when the power comes back on? thanks, ~ Keri
Oops, I knew my post a few days ago saying I had not see U99 for 5 days was too good to last. What I did notice was that TV was populated and then.......woke up to find U99 sitting on the display again and of course NO LISTINGS again. Has anyone who turned off/disabled TV Guide completely found this to be successful?
