721 Thursday Night Timer/clock Issue

[Kosh_5x5]

I have had my 721 for a little over a week and it love it, despite a few minor issues.  Looking for some veteran advice on what happened last Thursday night.

Timers Set:

Friends starting 1 minute early and ending 3 minutes late

Survivor starting 1 minute early and ending 0 minutes late.

CSI starting 0 minutes early and ending 0 minutes late. 

ER starting 1 minute early and ending 0 minutes late.

Actual Results:

Friends recording worked fine.

Survivor - missed some part of the beginning, maybe 20 seconds.  Total record time was 59' 10".  Based on timer I would have expected 61 minutes.  Also the first 37 seconds of CSI appeared at the end of the Survivor recording.

CSI - problem with beginning as discussed.  Total record time as 59' 52", which is about right, but I missed the last 20+ seconds of the show, plus the credits and scenes from next week (probably 3 more minutes of show).

ER - even though the timer started 1 minute early, I still missed 20+ seconds of the beginning. Total record time was 60' 3" versus expected time of 61 minutes.

I know the networks sometimes screw around with start and end times for shows.  For instance ER always starts before 9:00PM CST.  I think Friends usually runs long by a couple of minutes.  Does CSI usually run longer? Is the 721's clock not in sync with the networks clocks? or are these just some minor software glitches I will have to work around when I set timers?

 

Thanks for any responses!

The Vorlon

[Ken Seeber]

I don't have answers to all your questions, but I can confirm CSI was probably a network issue, not the 721. I record CSI on a VCR because I don't get a CBS affiliate with Dish, and the show definitely ran long this week. The VCR switched over to ER right at 9 p.m. (I just reset the clock on the VCR with the time change last weekend and it's exactly in sync with the Dish clock) and I missed the end of CSI by a wide margin.

[Scott Greczkowski]

In these types of situations its the NETWORK that is causing the problems by starting early or running a little late.

In this case nothing is wrong with your 721. :)

Welcome to DBSTalk.COM! :hi:

[Mike123abc]

Gone are the days where network clocks were syncronised exactly with government time. Shows used to start at the top of the hour with less than one second delay... Now they have some spread where if they sell more commercials in a popular show and less in others the adjust the times on the shows.

I always set my vcr times one minute early and 2 minutes late. That usually takes care of things.

[Nightmare]

Did anyone watch Smallville on Sunday night? The show ended almost a full 10 minutes early! I guess they ran out of story. I can't think of the last time I saw something this far off. BTW I think CBS runs Survivor over a min every week just to screw the people where friends comes on right after it.

Nightmare

[Keith]

As most PVR users, we hardly ever watch live TV - but the way the networks have been playing with the start/stop times of shows is starting to really get annoying. We've missed the end of many shows recently and the value of the PVR has taken a hit in our household.

We have a 501 and always check the "1 minute early button" but is the "x minute late button" a 721 feature only, or have I just not seen it on the 501?

And if I understand correctly, Tivo users don't have this problem because they are setup to record the program, not the time slot - are there any plans for Dish to ever implement this sort of feature?

Keith

[dbronstein]

I don't know exactly how Tivo does it, but I had ReplayTV and it has the same problem. Even though it records by show, it only records the time period the show is scheduled in unless you pad it. So it you set it to record ER, it will see that ER is scheduled from 9 to 10 (depending on your time zone) and record from 9 to 10. So if ER runs 2 minutes long because of the network timing, you will still miss the last 2 minutes of it unless you have padded it.

The nice think with Replay is that you can pad as much as you want on either end of the shows, up to 4 hours. I have a 721 now and it lets you pad as much as you want at the end, but you can only start 1 minute early, and even with that the start of some shows are still cut off.

Dennis

[TerryC]

CSI both started early and ran late. I've seen shows routinely do one or the other but not both. It was CBS's fault.

[TomCat]

Originally posted by Mike123abc
Gone are the days where network clocks were syncronised exactly with government time. Shows used to start at the top of the hour with less than one second delay...

It has nothing to do with synchronization of clocks and everything to do with automation. TV master control operations used to try to get in "straight up" not because it was a convenience to the viewer, but made it much easier for the operator to do the math involved to get into the next program "on time".

With automation, all of the math is done internally, so no one, including the operator, is that concerned about being in or out "on time" and it is easy to massage the start times and run times to accomodate extra commercials within the "hot" programs, which CBS and NBC seem to do a lot.

[SteveinDanville]

Why don't you just leave the default of "1 minute early, 3 minutes late"? It seems to me that when the 721 brain-cramps is when you start fooling around with start and end times. If the default works with no problems--as mine seems to--who cares if you have to hit the 30-sec. forward button twice at the beginning of the show, and then just dump out of the show when the show itself is over (and erase if that's what you want to do)? I know that on the 1-minute early portion, "E.R." starts exactly at the beginning of the "Start Over" prompt. No worries...

[TomCat]

Because, if you record all 30 minute programs as 34 minutes long, the 721 will hold 21 fewer programs (159) than it will if you record all programs as 30 minutes (180). Maybe that's where the 21 in 721 comes from. 90 hours is still not a lot of storage for many of us. Not doing this means we can archive shows a couple weeks longer.

[Halfsek]

A little off topic... but 90 hours not enough storage? Dayam! :) I have about 12 hours saved now and I won't be able to catch up on it. Then again, with the 70% success rate my unit has been having, it's actually about 8.5 hours of shows... and hopefully the ones I told it to record. :)

Lessee, 90/24= 3.75 days worth of recorded shows. Granted, I did sit through an 8 hour X files marathon once.

[DmitriA]

90 hours is definitely not a lot of storage - especially if you record a lot of shows and never find the time to actually watch them :D