Wannabe question

[harsh]

Regarding slightly delayed start times for programs (not the "in progress" kind), if you set a PVR to record something that starts after two minutes of promos, will you miss the last two minutes of the program?

Many of the movie type channels seem to like stuffing in a bunch of teasers.

Seems like it invalidates a lot of the click and record promise of PVR unless they somehow compensate for this malfeasance.

[dbronstein]

You can pad the start and end of your recordings when you set the timers. So if you are afraid you'll miss the end of a movie/show, you can just add an extra 5 or 10 minutes (or however long you want) onto the end of it.

Dennis

[UpOnTheMountain]

harsh,
It depends on which type of PVR you are talking about.
In general Dish PVRs work on timers. This means that if set to record from 9:00 to 11:00, then that is all you get.
However, the PVR software allows you to "pad" the times and even change them to be certain you get the whole event.
For example, on the 721, the default recording is padded so that it starts 1 minute early and ends the recording three minutes late. The dialogs that come up when you select something for recording, allow you to change/pad the times during the timer setup.

[John Walsh]

Isn't that what the little arrow button above the fast forward is for

[Jacob S]

If you are watching a current show you can rewind it back 2 minutes and start the recording from there to the current time in which you press stop.

[TomCat]

Dish PVR or not, even the mighty Tivo will choke if what is broadcast differs slightly from what is specified in the program grid. It's simply doing exactly what it was told to do. You can thank creeping automation for much of the offset start and end times, a process that doesn't depend upon "straight up" clock times the way manual master control operations do.

OK, I will float this idea one last time (just in case anyone in power is listening). If a PVR is designed with the ability to "listen" for the vertical interval rating codes that virtually every non-news broadcast imprints within the first 15 seconds of each broadcast, that info can be used to do a number of things:

You can program a tuner to go to a program two minutes early and sit in record-pause, waiting for either the scheduled start time or this ratings code, whichever comes first, whereupon if the program starts 2 minutes early, you will still catch all but the first few seconds of it. If the program is significantly delayed, you can also ask the PVR to not stop recording until 30 or 60 minutes AFTER it sees this information.

Or, you can tell the PVR to "wait" until it sees these codes from the next program before stopping a recording, virtually ensuring that you get the entire program. Imagine that when your Yankees game goes into the 12th inning. You might get a few minutes extra recorded if the next show is "JIP'ed", but that's hardly a problem compared to missing that grand-slam in the bottom of the 13th.

Since PVR's already decode CC from the vertical interval, this addition can't hardly cost anything more than a few lines of code. First PVR to do it wins my allegiance and my money.

[UpOnTheMountain]

Tomcat,
What an excellent "cheat" !
Why wouldn't this be used ? Is there a gotcha on this? Any patents blocking the way? (if not you aught to file for one, by the looks of the way the patent office is behaving, you're sure to get it!)

[Jacob S]

I wish they made it to where you can edit your pvr events so you can at least remove the beginning or end of an event if not the commercials in the middle. That way whether you add on 5 minutes or 60 minutes to the event, you could be more likely to catch the whole event and still be able to take whatever is not part of that event that went into the next show off without worrying about taking up additional hard drive space.

[Big Bob]

Dish PVR or not, even the mighty Tivo will choke if what is broadcast differs slightly from what is specified in the program grid. It's simply doing exactly what it was told to do. You can thank creeping automation for much of the offset start and end times, a process that doesn't depend upon "straight up" clock times the way manual master control operations do.
Even broadcasters who have manual master control are not as precise as the used to be. Even they are slipping now.:)

OK, I will float this idea one last time (just in case anyone in power is listening). If a PVR is designed with the ability to "listen" for the vertical interval rating codes that virtually every non-news broadcast imprints within the first 15 seconds of each broadcast, that info can be used to do a number of things:

You can program a tuner to go to a program two minutes early and sit in record-pause, waiting for either the scheduled start time or this ratings code, whichever comes first, whereupon if the program starts 2 minutes early, you will still catch all but the first few seconds of it. If the program is significantly delayed, you can also ask the PVR to not stop recording until 30 or 60 minutes AFTER it sees this information.

Or, you can tell the PVR to "wait" until it sees these codes from the next program before stopping a recording, virtually ensuring that you get the entire program. Imagine that when your Yankees game goes into the 12th inning. You might get a few minutes extra recorded if the next show is "JIP'ed", but that's hardly a problem compared to missing that grand-slam in the bottom of the 13th.

Since PVR's already decode CC from the vertical interval, this addition can't hardly cost anything more than a few lines of code. First PVR to do it wins my allegiance and my money.

Any idea how Dish (and Direct) pass the information in the vertical interval? Wouldn't surprise me if the CC is stripped out, sent separately then reinserted by receiver. But I don't know for sure, just speculating.

[harsh]

Total speculation on my part, but if they don't expect an "affilliate" to insert a PSA, station ID or commercial downstream, why would they signal at all?

[TomCat]

Because its the law. It's been a requirement for broadcasters and program producers for a couple years or more by now to tag all non-news broadcasts with these codes, which are also where the little ratings bugs you see in the top-left corner originate from (some are physically incorporated in the program, olthers are keyed downstream by devices similar to what I'm speculating that look for the codes and then insert the keys).

I think the original idea was that if you have a "smart" TV or sat receiver, and you've set a ratings ceiling within its software, this can be like a V-Chip censor. In fact, the V-Chip might even be dependent on this and may be where the whole thing originated.

Since (other than PPV, where the DBS provider inserts the codes) your DBS provider is simply passing through programming originated elsewhere, they would have to actually go out of their way to strip this out, and likely would be in violation because of it. If there is some out-of-band carriage of CC (which sounds like an expensive and therefore unlikely prospect), it likely affects the entire vertical interval, not just line 21, meaning it would also be restored before transmission and your PVR wouldn't even care. And actually, I misspoke earlier...your PVR also passes this info through and the decoding happens at your TV, PVR's don't currently contain a decoder (that would have to be added).

But it should still work. Hopefully some smart PVR programmer will take advantage of this. Maybe a Linux hack for the 721 could appear, but that would likely tie up an external PC as the decoder. But, there would be something satisfying about piggy-backing smart, useful technology on top of pointless technology that was originally designed as draconian governmental social engineering. That would be sweet.

[Jacob S]

Is there any type of device that one can get to pick up all of these codes and what they stand for? Or is that not legal to own?

[harsh]

I had forgotten all about V-Chip technology (none of my televisions even has CC, much less V-Chip).

Line 21 eXtended Data Service (XDS) information has a couple of helpful features here that may work nicely with an "extended" program guide that contained exactly what codes to expect.

1. CURRENT program information (name, type, rating, etc.)
2. FUTURE program information

The problem: you have to be tuned in to read the closed caption information and it would be stinky to figure out precisely when the transition happened if you didn't dedicate a tuner to watching the programming. I suppose that since you indicated you wanted to record a program, it would be OK to dedicate a tuner to it and fire the recorder when the new program is detected.

I think the hew and cry of the PVR owners with juvenile offspring is that the PVR should "brand" the program on disc as being adult oriented as opposed to depending on V-Chip (since the kids get then hand-me-down TVs). The IRD could be programmed to ask for a password on marked (via *nix permissions?) programs. This would answer the questions about playback of "sensitive" material on the existing PVR equipment.

But, there would be something satisfying about piggy-backing smart, useful technology on top of pointless technology that was originally designed as draconian governmental social engineering. That would be sweet.

What would be truly sweet is if parents didn't depend on V-Chip and similar devices to control what their children watched.