Is there a way to get the E85h to not scan a particular channel for t.v. guide info with the unit turned off?
Do you want to remove a single channel from the listing? Or are you trying to change the host channel? You can't change your host channel, but you can turn off channels using the channel editor and they won't be scanned.
I am trying to remove my provider's Video On Demand(VOD) channel from the line-up. When the E85h if powered down and scanning channels, it does fine until it reaches the VOD channel. The E85h gets hung up on this channel because the channel has menus. I have tried using the channel editor to turn off the station, but am having no luck!
I hate this model. I wish I had gotten it from somewhere like Wal-Mart, where I could find a way to return it, but alas I got it from Rex, and it's warranty is long passed. I hate how I can't rely on it to record, even using the manual record function. It did it again on me. I didn't miss anything (re-run of Lost is what it didn't record, and I was able to procure the episode of Alias by other means), but I was frustrated. For 500 bucks, it should at least work! I am thinking about hocking it on Ebay (saw a used one go for 400 bucks, oddly enough) and getting digital cable and using my cable provider's DVR box. Of course, I might change my mind, as I have done many times before.
beckman, I would also hate it if my E85Hs failed to record even a single program. If you disable the TV Guide download, I can pretty much guarantee you that you'll never miss a program as long as it's broadcast in the scheduled time slot, you have battery back-up, you follow the advice on this board (e.g. things like not leaving a DVD-RAM in the tray), and - of course - you program the manual timer properly ;-) One caveat: I don't have a cable box, so if you do, that would need a battery back-up as well. And soju accidentally moved his IR blaster so it did not have line-of-sight to his cable box. Obviously there is no guarantee in the presence of earthquakes, a heavy fog or smoke in your domicile, tsunamis, comets, meteors, theft, grenades, a pissed partner - or an amorous cat or gerbil who decides to mate with an IR blaster.
My E85 worked fine for a while now, but now I get NO LISTING in all channels. When I reset it (ch up-ch down, unplug power), and then tried to reset the setup, I discovered that the autochannel setup and autoclock setup were both grayed out. Is that normal? Do I need to reset the machine for Factory Setup? If so, how do I do that? Thanks,
I just came upon this forum tonight. My E85H is at the repair shop, and after a week of letting the service man deal with the Panasonic service department, they've told me they're not sure what's wrong with it. I've had it over 2 years and loved it - always worked beautifully but after taking a DVD out, it said Please Wait. I waited and waited. After hours, I finally shut it off, called customer service, got through, and started doing all the button things they suggested - every combination imaginable. Nothing. Can't open the disc drive or have it do anything at all except the same messge. Don't want to pay a fortune to rebuild it since the service man doesn't have a clue, and I didn't see anything on this forum about anyone else getting the same Please Wait message. Hate to go out shopping again because I don't know which way to turn, and there may be a way to fix what I call my TV toy. I miss it! Please help if you can. Not a computer geek at all, so I need straight up English.
kmkaty, I had a similar problem on a unit I bought on ebay (see post: "21. September 2005 @ 14:37" way back on pg. 7 of this thread). That unit [bold]never[/bold] exited the Please Wait stage. Never resolved the problem. So, if anyone else has a suggestion or if you discover the solution, please post it. Thanks.
Are you using Comcast? I have the same problem and it seems to be related to a recent change Comcast made where the TV Guide data now comes through on two channels - in my case, the "real" data is on ch 11, but Comcast is also providing it on a "virtual" ch 94. Of course, ch 94 doesn't actually exist. It's just a remapped version of ch 11 for use with their digital cable boxes. If you're connected directly to the cable with no box, you'll never get this channel. For some reason, ch 94 is the default choice and no matter how many times I tell it to use ch 11, the guide data never downloads. I haven't tried a reset yet to see if it will clear it up; I have a bunch of manual recordings set for this week and want to wait until I've got (and seen) all of them.
We had a problem a couple of weeks ago in Adelphia San Fernando Valley - listings disappeared - because Adelphia lost KCET analog signal (containing TVGOS data) - switched over to digital signal (with no TVGOS data) - so TVGOS listings disappeared. Thanks to Cheryl this problem was investigated & fixed so TVGOS works now.
I have the same recording problem to the hard drive. On Wednesday nights and Mondays, it won't turn itself on to record. It does fine on Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Is there a 2nd firmware update?
I had a similar problem but it was limited to certain channels. I found a simple workaround -- try scheduling a manual recording on a different channel and set it to start 1 minute before what you really want to record (and to end at exactly the same time as what you really want). The first/dummy recording turns the DVR on and since it sees another recording immediately afterward, it stays on and records it (and then shuts down). This seems to work best if you set the dummy recording on a channel that you don't ever record anything else from. Granted, you end up with an extra/useless 1 minute recording, but doing that forced the DVR to turn itself on and record the channel I wanted. The other thing that works is to leave the box turned on on the day that you have something scheduled that won't record -- but you have to turn it off that evening so it can download the updated TVGOS data. I recently did the "skip/reverse, time slip, open/close" reset (which I read about elsewhere in this group) and the problem went away -- but that step wipes out all the TVGOS data and all your scheduled recordings (the programs already on the HDD are retained, though).
This will completely wipe out your TV-Guide listings and all of your scheduled recordings. The programs already on your hard drive will *not* be lost. Unplug the DVR, wait about 30 seconds and plug it back in. When you plug it back in, it will probably run a self check and may leave itself powered up, if it does, power it back down. With the power off, press and hold the [skip reverse] [Time Slip] and [Eject] buttons on the front of the DVR. Keep all three buttons held in at the same time for about 10 seconds or longer -- it took me a couple of tries to get this to work. The [skip reverse] button is the one that goes backward a chapter when you're watching a DVD -- not the one that steps through the different "rewind" speeds. When it does work, the unit will go into Self Check Mode and then display L1 TEST. If you don't get the L1 TEST on the display, power it off and try the three buttons again. Once you do get L1 TEST on the display, power it off (you may have to hold it for a few seconds to get it to shut down). Turn power on and intial setup menu will be displayed on TV. Now the DVR thinks it's brand new again and will walk you through the entire setup process (putting in your ZIP code, w/n you have cable, etc...). Remember that after you do the setup, you have to leave the thing off overnight so it will be able to download the guide again.
Has anyone with Comcast seen this problem? (Since Comcast here changed over to a full digital lineup and left Ch. 94 as the "virtual analog channel" I can't get listings.) + After resetting (CH ^ + CH v) + the time-set scan goes fine (after it gets to Ch. 94) + the host channel scan appears fine + I get 3 linups to choose and one of them is right + But I never get any listings (promos come in fine, though) + The host channel is listed as 97, 98, or 99 (0x61, 0x62, or 0x63) + After 24 hours of no listings, it scans for the host channel again. + Same results
Zed, Thanks for the info. That reset fixed the problem. After years of crashes and then lost programs, it finally works like it's supposed to. The tip is: 1)Do the firmware upgrade 2) Do a reset. It's sad that Panasonic couldn't have been any help with this.
I have a problem that may (or may not) be Comcast-related. We were away for 8 weeks and I left my DVR to record (mostly) a daily (M-F) 1 hr. show. It worked until July 4 when it had what I'll describe below as "the problem." I did a 'soft reset' to clear the error and to resume recording when we arrived home. We've been home for a week now and "the problem" has occurred in the following pattern for these 7 days for this simple schedule (all 'manual' timer recordings - i.e., not using the TVGOS lineup). * The schedule contains 4 'daily' items to record; 2 are on NBC (ch. 5), & 2 are on other channels * The 2 on NBC have not had "the problem"; the other 2 have "the problem" most (but not all) the time. The problem: * The unit appears to begin the record cycle but then stops, with an on-screen message that says, "Error has occurred. Please press enter." At this point, the unit's display only shows the channel number and the little 'HDD' indicator -- no clock, etc. * I press enter and it does the "Please wait" routine, then displays the little rolling ticks for a L-O-N-G time. Then it goes back to the "Error has occurred." point and this continues. I can only do the 'soft reset' to get it going. Seeing the recent note about setting a 'dummy' 1 minute recording, I tried this yesterday: * Before each of the two non-NBC scheduled items I set a 1 minute 'dummy' recording on NBC. And here is what I got for yesterday's sessions: * The two NBC items recorded just fine. * The two 'dummy' NBC 1-minute recordings were fine. * The two non-NBC items that immediately followed the 'dummy' recordings did not have the "Error" problem but they did have a different problem -- one that was discussed some time back in this thread. It is the problem of the unit switching to the recording channel (say, ch. 6) and that displays on the LCD panel. However, there is NO recording happening. Moreover, any access to edit functions for old programs is blocked, just as it is when a recording is happening. (The edit functions become available again once the program's purported recording hour has ended.) Any ideas?
I suggest you execute a "soft reset" of your unit. Read below instruction from Coyote24. I did it last night. It did miracle for me. I am now able to burn again on DVD. It looks like the HDD has hard time when you are recording a lot of shows and then edit them to get rid of ads. This routine is clearing some internal buffer. Also NEVER schedule episodes back to back with overlapping time. The DMR-E85 has 25% chance to randomly forget your episode. Instead, schedule from 10h00 to 10h59, then 11h00 to 11h59... I am doing this for long and I never miss an episode. If you really want to schedule back to back, the only way to make it work is to leave the unit on. It looks like this is working but I would personnaly not trust that trick too much. 19. January 2006 @ 13:22 from Coyote24: 1) Hold down the power button (on the machine, not the remote) until the machine's display shows only the time (no HDD, no little red clock). Hold it down long enough -- i.e., if it was off and starts to turn on, keep your finger down on the button until it is really 'off'. 2) Unplug for 30 seconds. It does NOT erase the listings that have downloaded; it does not lose scheduled recording settings. (It does not lose programs recorded.) What it does lose is come of the 'data' that displays on the 30pages of info behind the MESSAGES panel -- e.g., next DL time, your host ID, etc. However, it does retain your settings such as your zip code (etc.).
Thanks for the reply. Some additional info. * I have been doing the 'soft reset' often. In fact, the 'soft reset' (because I do a lot of edits) has been part of my weekly (or more frequent) routine for the past year -- i.e., even when I've had no machine problems. And, per earlier advice on this Thread, I do a 'soft reset' after ANY kind of failure. However, in this case (past 7 days), in spite of multiple 'soft resets' a day, this has not fixed the situation. (I'm going to try a 'hard reset' later today.) * I know about the back-to-back problems with the E85 (which is my HI unit). Here (WA/Seattle area) I have an E95 and it has never had problems with back-to-back recording. The reason I tried the '1 minute' prior recording was a stab in the dark based on a suggestion made (to a different problem) a few messages up on this page. While it didn't fix anything, it gave a different, interesting variation to the original problem. * One of the NBC programs that did record yesterday was back-to-back following the failed non-NBC recording. IOW, this part of the schedule was, in a back-to-back sequence: ** 1 minute 'dummy' show (recorded) ** 1 hr. non-NBC show (seemed to record, but did not) ** 1 hr. NBC show (recorded) * It does not appear to matter whether I leave the unit off (in standby) or on. The problem still occurs with the non-NBC channels in either mode. I do agree that, as a general rule, I try to avoid back-to-back schedules on both machines when I really care about a recording. However, in this case (troubleshooting), I'm trying different variations to see whether I can gather any new clues.
