Annoying HBO vs. Dish time disparity plus buffer loss problem

[robo45h]

OK, we've been experiencing a simple but really annoying problem -- consistantly for a few weeks (perhaps months) now.

We have PVR Events set up to record weekly shows like Sex and The City or The Wire or Six Feet Under. Now, if we happen to be home and not busy when the show is on, we'll watch it as it's being recorded. And of course, we'll often "Pause" the show if the phone rings, etc.

In theory, all is good. In reality, two separate problems are compounding to drive us nuts.

Problem 1: HBO vs. Dish time disparity
Lately, it seems that HBO shows don't end exactly when Dish things they will. Either the shows are running long, or Dish and HBO are out of synch regarding the time of day. Recorded shows typically are missing the last minute or two -- which for shows like The Wire are often key moments. Now, if we weren't home, that would really be annoying. And that has happened. But if we are home watching the show, in theory when we're finished watching the recorded event, we should be able to continue watching the live TV.

However, since we paused live TV a few times, what we really need is to start watching the "buffer" of live TV. But...

Problem 2: The Buffer is not started when a PVR event ends.
Instead, it acts as if you just switched channels. Thus, if as above, we've been watching a show that was being recorded by a PVR Event, when we reach the end of the event, it pops up the "end of event' screen. We cancel out of this and are returned to "Live TV". Instead of being shown the beginning of non-recorded TV from the buffer which should have started at the end of the recorded event, we're dumped directly into Live TV with no buffer.

Again, this seems like perhaps a minor problem, except for the fact that while we're busy cancelling out of the PVR screen back to live TV, every second is lost. Every second of the very end of a series that does cliff hangers. In fact, if we've paused the playback as I noted, I believe we end up loosing minutes of live TV (as much as we were behind) because live TV was not buffered.

So even if there was no cliff-hanger or even if there was no HBO time synch issue, we've still missed the entire beginning (15 or 20 minutes or more?) of the next program -- which we might have wanted to watch!

Personally, I think not only should the buffer start rolling, but there's no reason to bring up the PVR Event screen at the end of a recording, even if I have paused the darned thing during viewing.

Anyone else seen these two problems? I've gotten to the point now that I manually set the "record until" time to two minutes past the end of the show -- manually emulating the "start 1 minute early" function at the other end.

Let's not talk about the fact that often PVR Events are "back to back" such as Sex and The City currently being followed immediately by The Wire. The end and then the previews of one are constantly attached to another (if they're not lost completely).

[robo45h]

OK, this problem just happened to us again, and it's damned annoying.

We were watching Project Greenlight, and decided to record it. We pressed the "record / once / stop at end" sequence. Then, while watching, we paused it. We continued watching. As usual, the recorded playback ended just before the critical cliff-hanging final moments of this show. Blam! We're presented with the stupid PVR end of playback message.

Unfortunately, since we'd paused it for quite awhile, we're about 40 minutes behind "live" TV. Those last few minutes of the show are long gone. Theoretically, we should have 60 minutes of buffer and we could rewind and watch what happened right after the recording stopped, but PVR recording trashes the live TV buffer (for no good reason, I might add).

Since this was not a timer event, it picked up the "end time" from the Guide automatically, and once again, HBO and Dish seem to be a few critical moments out of synch. We have no idea how this cliff-hanging episode ended.

The last few moments of Project Greenlight are not the end of the world, but this is getting to be really annoying. When a problem is this consistant, it's fixable.

[Jacob S]

It transferred that buffer to a recording on the hard drive and started the buffer over again. Your right this problem is probably fixable with a software upgrade and I have had this issue myself and it can be annoying.

[pbrown]

Here's how we solved the problem after getting burned by this; we just set up a reccurring event to record our Sunday HBO shows, plus 15 minutes. It's pretty easy to do, and guarantees that we will see the whole show. We, like you, are home sometimes and not sometimes, so by just adding 15 minutes to the end of the show we never miss anything. The other thing we do is make one long recording that includes Sex and the City, The Wire, and Project Greenlight, so we don't end up missing anything in between. YES, Dish should be aware of the times shows end, BUT, HBO may very well be running long and not telling Dish. In the TV Biz it's called "Stunting", and the goal is to keep you watching longer by playing with show lengths. NBC does this ALL the time, and if you do an extra 30 seconds of work when you set up your timer, you won't get burned. Good Luck!

[dfergie]

After being burned too, I always add a minute before and a few minutes after, on both my 501, and my Panasonic dvd ram. Especially when Survivor, or 6' Under is on. My local CBS is bad about starting early, as being on MST they record, and time shift the programs, rather than get the feed from the network directly.

[dbronstein]

No offense, but the shows getting cut off at the end is your own fault for not padding the timers. For all the faults the PVRs have, this isn't one of them.

I do agree that they need to change how they handle watching a program while it is being recorded. My peeve with this is that if a timer starts and you go to the PVR menu and start watching while it is still recording, it behaves like you are watching live TV delayed, rather than watching a PVR event.

Dennis

[BobMurdoch]

When Band of Brothers was on they adjusted the finish times pretty well. They have since given up this practice and have just been rounding to the nearest half hour.

I tape the Wire as well so it catches any SATC overflow, but definitely learn how to work the padded timer function to add time. The only time it doesn't work is if you have two timers running and a third has to start up.

[Scott Greczkowski]

There was a big discussion about this over at AVS forums in their Tivo area, seems like HBO (AOL/TIME WARNER) is doing this on purpose to be a TIVO Killer.

Looks like you can blame HBO not Dish for this issue.

[robo45h]

There was a big discussion about this over at AVS forums in their Tivo area, seems like HBO (AOL/TIME WARNER) is doing this on purpose to be a TIVO Killer.

Looks like you can blame HBO not Dish for this issue.

Interesting. If true, it really surprises me. HBO seems to be an organization that "gets it", but PVRs and Tivo-like devices are the future. After using one, it wasn't long before I was at a friends house longing to pause live TV. They will not kill Tivo. PVRs are not going away. But again, I think HBO knows that, so I'm baffled as to why they'd do this. I"ll have to jump over to the other board and see what's been said.

[robo45h]

No offense, but the shows getting cut off at the end is your own fault for not padding the timers. For all the faults the PVRs have, this isn't one of them.
...
Dennis

No offense, but I disagree for a number of reasons. Sure, now that I know about this issue, I can try and remember to work around it (and explain to other people in the household how to work around it). Here are the reasons I disagree:

This behavior is "dumb VCR-like" rather than "intelligent PVR-like". With a VCR, you tell it the start and stop times. With the Dish PVR, I did NOT tell it the start and stop times; I selected a show, and it figured out the times. Apparently it did so rather poorly.
I own a Dish PVR; not a Tivo. But the Tivo set the direction for understanding "named shows" rather than simply "times." Admittedly, Dish dropped the ball in designing their PVRs -- I can only imagine it's because of some reason such as a Tivo Patent rather than incompetant designers. Anyway, that said, it's clearly more PVR-like to use the integration of the satellite channel guide to get the correct times. This is part of what the PVR gives you that a non-integrated old VCR doesn't.
If this problem is really HBOs rather than Dish's (as has been re-inforced by another poster), we need to complain to Dish who will complain to HBO. The integrated Guide should have the correct times.

[dbronstein]

No offense, but I disagree for a number of reasons. Sure, now that I know about this issue, I can try and remember to work around it (and explain to other people in the household how to work around it). Here are the reasons I disagree:

This behavior is "dumb VCR-like" rather than "intelligent PVR-like". With a VCR, you tell it the start and stop times. With the Dish PVR, I did NOT tell it the start and stop times; I selected a show, and it figured out the times. Apparently it did so rather poorly.


No, the PVR did it just fine. The problem is HBO doesn't end the show at the time it's listed in the guide. So the fault is either with HBO for not providing the correct end time for the guide, or the guide for not having the end time correct.

Here's a similar example: the networks often add commercials to their most popular shows like Friends and CSI so they end up running a couple of minutes over. No PVR in the world is going to know that a show that is scheduled from 7 to 7:30 is actually ending at 7:32.


I own a Dish PVR; not a Tivo. But the Tivo set the direction for understanding "named shows" rather than simply "times." Admittedly, Dish dropped the ball in designing their PVRs -- I can only imagine it's because of some reason such as a Tivo Patent rather than incompetant designers. Anyway, that said, it's clearly more PVR-like to use the integration of the satellite channel guide to get the correct times. This is part of what the PVR gives you that a non-integrated old VCR doesn't.


I agree completely the dish PVRs should have name-based recording, I have never said otherwise. But name-based recording is still not going to get the end of a show that runs 2 minutes longer than its scheduled time unless you pad the end.


If this problem is really HBOs rather than Dish's (as has been re-inforced by another poster), we need to complain to Dish who will complain to HBO. The integrated Guide should have the correct times.


If it bothers you that much, then definitely complain to HBO. I've been padding my recording since I first had a VCR (you never knew if the clock was in sync with the networks') so it's just automatic to me to pad the start and end of timers and I don't even think about it.

Dennis

[BobMurdoch]

Interesting. If true, it really surprises me. HBO seems to be an organization that "gets it", but PVRs and Tivo-like devices are the future. After using one, it wasn't long before I was at a friends house longing to pause live TV. They will not kill Tivo. PVRs are not going away. But again, I think HBO knows that, so I'm baffled as to why they'd do this. I"ll have to jump over to the other board and see what's been said.

And all this after Sex and the City, The Mind of the Married Man, and various other shows on the network have featured the units in various storylines..............

[pbrown]

One other thing to remember about HBO specifically: They often let their producers have a lot more freedom about staying on time then other networks. They also allow their producers to hold onto their product right up until the last minute before airing. So while HBO may have reported to the guide company that The Wire will run 60:00 each week months ago, it may actually be 63:12 one week and 60:53 another. I have a very hard time beliving that HBO is trying to kill Tivo... they don't have commercials to skip! Sure, their parent company seems to be against PVRs, but it seems to conspiratorial. The reality is, if David Simon calls up HBO and says, "I've made the shortest show I can, if I cut one more scene it won't make any sense, this week is going 62 minutes." HBO is more then likely to say OK. That is why you have to pad your PVR yourself. Regardless of whether it's name based or timer based, you're still likely to get burned if you trust the guide.

[rtt2]

Its probably to make their future service Mystro the only one to be able to truely record their shows correctly. If you want to read about Mystro click this link:

http://cableworld.com/ar/mystro_wants_play/index.htm

[robo45h]

No, the PVR did it just fine. The problem is HBO doesn't end the show at the time it's listed in the guide. So the fault is either with HBO for not providing the correct end time for the guide, or the guide for not having the end time correct. ...If it bothers you that much, then definitely complain to HBO.

No, the PVR didn't do it just fine. I'm a technical person by nature (years of programming) but I'm looking at this as a user. I asked it to record a program, and it failed. It chopped off the very imporant end of the story.

As for the fault being with HBO or the Guide, that may very well be, but the Guide is part of the Dish Network service which is integrated with my PVR. There's a dedicated Guide button on the remote control. It's an integrated feature. And it failed me.

I personally have no way of knowing if the problem is with HBO or the Dish Guide. HBO could tell Dish that their program is ending at 9:33 and Dish could round it to 9:30 for all I know.

Besides, if I complained to HBO, I have very little clout. Dish Network, however, is a big HBO partner and has a much louder voice.
I've been padding my recording since I first had a VCR (you never knew if the clock was in sync with the networks') so it's just automatic to me to pad the start and end of timers and I don't even think about it.

Dennis
That's fine, but it's silly. When the VCR was invented, there was no Guide integrated with the TV or the VCR, so you had to go through silly machinations like this. This is not the case here. An integrated service should work better. And it will -- mark my words. If TiVo makes sure it's Guide is updated down to the last HBO extended minute, and people don't loose the last few minutes of their shows, TiVo and Direct TiVo are going to eat Dish Network's lunch over the long run.

People looking for a service would ask each other what they had, and get responses like this, "I used to have Dish. Their stupid PVR would chop off the end of my HBO shows -- I don't know why. When I moved, I switched to Direct TV with TiVo. Doesn't happen anymore. Get DirectTV with TiVo."

[dbronstein]

People looking for a service would ask each other what they had, and get responses like this, "I used to have Dish. Their stupid PVR would chop off the end of my HBO shows -- I don't know why. When I moved, I switched to Direct TV with TiVo. Doesn't happen anymore. Get DirectTV with TiVo."

But it does happen with name-based PVRs, that's the frigging point. I can't speak for Tivo, but I used Replay for 2 years and I always had to pad shows because some of them do run long. I'm quite sure thay when they stick extra commercials into shows like Friends and CSI and they run a minute or two long, they don't tell the guide people that the shows are really ending at 8:02 or whatever.

You can blame Dish all you want for this but it's not their fault. They have provided an easy mechanism to handle it - the 721 even defaults to a 1 minute start page and 3 minute end pad so you don't have to even do anything for it.

Dennis

[Big Bob]

No, the PVR didn't do it just fine. I'm a technical person by nature (years of programming)


Then you should be familiar with the phrase "Garbage in, garbage out"

HBO is sending garbage to Dish (inaccurate show times) so there has to be garbage coming out (missed portions of shows)

This one is HBO's fault.

[harsh]

I have a very hard time beliving that HBO is trying to kill Tivo... they don't have commercials to skip!

Only the older ReplayTV units skip commercials. TiVo (and similarly DirecTiVo) is really no more adept with commercials than DishPVR; they both have a jump ahead a number of seconds button.

I'm not as concerned about the length of the show as I am the start time and these two+ minute advertising blitzes really play havoc with my recording efforts. For now, I can do simple editing on videotape. Trimming (the end at least) would be very high on my PVR wish list.

[robo45h]

But it does happen with name-based PVRs, that's the frigging point. I can't speak for Tivo, but I used Replay for 2 years and I always had to pad shows because some of them do run long. I'm quite sure thay when they stick extra commercials into shows like Friends and CSI and they run a minute or two long, they don't tell the guide people that the shows are really ending at 8:02 or whatever.

You can blame Dish all you want for this but it's not their fault. They have provided an easy mechanism to handle it - the 721 even defaults to a 1 minute start page and 3 minute end pad so you don't have to even do anything for it.

Dennis

Well, the 3 minute end pad would be nice if I had it, but I have a zero minute end pad on my 501.

As for the "frigging point" -- you missed mine. OK, maybe Tivo has the same problem (neither one of us really know, as we don't have Tivo). My point is that now that the Guide is integrated into the whole satellite receiver and PVR system, it needs to be upgraded to the next level of accuracy. And if no-one has done that yet, it's a market opportunity. The one that does it will begin eating up market share. And there are countless ways of accomplishing it. The two most obvious are


Get better program information from broadcasters like HBO
Require broadcasters to put in "end of show" signals in their stream.


The 2nd option has the added benefit of working for shows of unknown length, such as sports games that go into overtime/extra innings, etc.

OK, this thread has been beaten to death.

Now if Dish would only fix the stupid buffer loss problem.

[Scott Greczkowski]

People looking for a service would ask each other what they had, and get responses like this, "I used to have Dish. Their stupid PVR would chop off the end of my HBO shows -- I don't know why. When I moved, I switched to Direct TV with TiVo. Doesn't happen anymore. Get DirectTV with TiVo."Switching to Tivo would have done no good in this instance, Tivo owners reported the same thing on their Tivos.

The blame here is clearly HBO, which is funny because the show that was cut off did a big plug for Tivo on it. :)

[johnsbin]

I really don't think you are going to get HBO or any other channel to support functions that would enable better RECORDING of their programming. Since they are now selling their shows on DVD, things like End Of Program which would enable you to make a painless copy of the show are the last thing HBO and the rest of the industry wants.

I'm glad I can still record whatever I want without having to pay some fee like what I pay to record a song off of Rhapsody. Now THAT is something I unfortunately think they are working very hard to implement for TV.

[dfergie]

I have a 501, and if i record something I absolutly do not want to miss, I go to the edit timer function. It is easy to add minutes to the end (as well as the first of the program).

[dbronstein]

As for the "frigging point" -- you missed mine. OK, maybe Tivo has the same problem (neither one of us really know, as we don't have Tivo). My point is that now that the Guide is integrated into the whole satellite receiver and PVR system, it needs to be upgraded to the next level of accuracy.

If that was your point, it wasn't what you said. You said several times that it was the fault of the PVR, and clearly it isn't. Upgrading the accuracy of the guide is the responsibility of the networks, not Dish, Tivo, Replay or any other guide provider. If HBO says a show ends at 9, how is anyone else supposed to know it really ends at 9:02?

Dennis

[tampa8]

There is no PVR to date that can address this problem. That isn't speculation, it is a fact. If the information coming from the progammer is wrong, then the start/end time will be wrong. It really is as simple as that. In this instance, name-based vs time based makes no difference. The examples of NBC shows are exactly correct, especially Friends. It often goes over one, two, or three minutes. As everyone has pointed out, a little planning can easily overcome this.

As a side note, my neighbor has TIVO, and it got confused yesterday. American Idol Junior was in the schedule from 8:30PM to 9:PM and they had it scheduled to record. Fox took it off their schedule for Wednesday sometime Tuesday night to air the following week instead. Their TIVO froze at 8:30PM, and we are guessing this is why. I would have thought it would have either just recorded what was on anyway, or not at all and waited till the following week. Perhaps the freeze was not related to this, not sure. (I do not have a TIVO)

[Mark Holtz]

You are blaming Dish for something that is out of Dish's control... or TiVo for that matter.

I believe Dish, DirecTV, and TiVo get their times from Tribune which supplies the program listings. Tribune, in turn, gets the start/stop times from the program providers. But, there is NOTHING that requires the program provider to stick with their schedule. AMC (Another Movie Channel) was notorious for running shows up to 15 minutes "off schedule", while Cartoon Network has start some of the Toonami/Adult Swim/Saturday night lineup up to 4-5 minutes early. (I screamed about this a month or so ago about .hack//SIGN starting too early.)

There is nothing wrong with their clocks. In fact, they use methods to keep the clocks extremely accurate, including taking the time from a known good source. (Computer clocks are NOTORIOUS for going off-time. Only with Mac OS 8 and Windows XP did they include a internal utility to get the clock via the Internet). Still, for a while, I had set "Survivor/CSI" as a two-hour recording rather that two one-hour recordings BECAUSE of this.

There is one feature in the 721 that I wish the 50x team would implement, and that is the "3 minute late" in addition to the "1 minute early" option for timers.

Orrrr.... you can just wait for the series to come out on DVD. :)

[TomCat]

... if as above, we've been watching a show that was being recorded by a PVR Event, when we reach the end of the event, it pops up the "end of event' screen. We cancel out of this and are returned to "Live TV". Instead of being shown the beginning of non-recorded TV from the buffer which should have started at the end of the recorded event, we're dumped directly into Live TV with no buffer....

I'm not entirely sure I understand your approach, but if I do I see a flaw that can easily be corrected. If I am going to begin watching the very rare program that is simultaneously being recorded either on my 721 or 501, I simply rewind to the beginning and watch it from the buffer, which continues to operate beyond the end time for the recording. If you choose the program from the PVR list and begin watching it that way instead (the same way you would watch a program that had already finished recording) you will indeed lose the buffer, but my way preserves it, so try that next time.

This is the kind of thing that drives PVR owners to never watch "live". Recording is so easy that we just record whatever we might want and sort through it later. Tivo even records extra stuff that most people throw 99% of out, because its to simple to do so. Unless its a sports event its probably not live anyway, and even live shows experience some delay before we can see them, so we eventually just treat everything as recorded, and never watch live.

[shodges]

... so we eventually just treat everything as recorded, and never watch live.

That is the truest statement I have seen. The first week of owning a 721 I watched live TV quite often.... after I had recorded enough programs to keep me busy for an evening, I've never watched live TV since. There are only the programs that I want to see, and no worries about repeats, I just delete them instead of shaking my fists at the TV, then go to the next program. And watching Network television live--NEVER!!! Skipping commercials is the best invention since the VCR (oh yeah, that was one of the features of the VCR)... Anyway I can actually leave the house now when I want to instead of having to be glued to the TV, stuck watching commercials or reruns. The PVR revolution is not just a machine, it is a way of life...

[Lyle_JP]

seems like HBO (AOL/TIME WARNER) is doing this on purpose to be a TIVO Killer.

Your theory makes no sense. Why would HBO try to be a Tivo killer? They air no commercials during their programming (the biggest PVR complaint from programming providers is commercial skipping). PVRs are no threat to them.

[BobMurdoch]

Your theory makes no sense. Why would HBO try to be a Tivo killer? They air no commercials during their programming (the biggest PVR complaint from programming providers is commercial skipping). PVRs are no threat to them.

They DO sell a lot of adds on other channels such as WTBS (and don't forget all those Sports Illustrated ads you're skipping). HBO is just one small part of the empire. I'm sure that all of the big wigs at HBO aren't shooting down the Tivo references since they aren't as vulnerable, but the other network execs do have something to fear.