[LINK] US going digital TV in 2009

Rick Welykochy rick at praxis.com.au
Mon Mar 5 19:27:25 AEDT 2007


Jan Whitaker wrote:

> Rick, how do you deal with the time fuzzing that the commercial stations 
> do regularly?  I find myself overcompensating by 5 to 10 minutes for 
> everything I record.

Yes, I set it to a 10-minute overtime record.

One problem that has occurred three times in the past year is this:

My toppy's system time is obtained from the DTV signal. (If you opt not
to do that, have fun ... things become a real mess as the clock drifts!)

When a corrupted time packet arrives that says the time is *in the future*,
it sets the system clock to that time, e.g. I have had it set the time to
April 2007, back in July 2006! Then all hell breaks loose: all
Timer Settings for recording are moved way into the future as well,
and thus it "forgets" to record all the programs you have requested.
I talked to IceTV help desk and they advise to live with it :(

The fix would be easy: if the DTV signal indicates a time change of, say, more
than five minutes into the future, the toppy should wait for 10 such
indications (they come in quite often, IIRC), before making the final
decision to set the sys time. This is simple error detection and recovery
that I would expect any software designer to be aware of and handle properly.

I've noticed lots of other annoying "little bugs" in the toppy system, but
aside from the above I am quite happy with it. I expect some glitches in
consumer software like this (which can usually be worked around or just
restart the box), but the setting of an erroneous system time is quite
crippling when it happens.

cheers
rickw


-- 
_________________________________
Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services

Any belief that can't stand up to objective scrutiny is hardly worth having.
      -- LJ McIntyre



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