Please note that I'm posting this simply out of frustration; I don't
expect any solutions to these problems.

I'm one of the zillions of analog TV owners who ended up with one of
these DTV converter boxes. For the most part, it's worked well. Picture
and sound are fine, and it has decent software to navigate and choose
channels.

But there are definitely some flaky aspects to its behavior. Most
obvious lately has been the way that it "forgets" what time it is, or at
least what the correct hour is. For the last few days it's been
consistently off by exactly one hour, both in its display of the current
time and in the time of "now" and "next" show times.

I actually called Zenith today about this problem. Of course, it wasn't
long into the call that I was told "By the way, we don't support this
product anymore". Not terribly surprising, I guess, given that this was
basically a transitional device at the dawn of DTV.

Other flakiness exists. Many times, while scrolling through the "Simple
Guide" menu, the information given for a given channel is either totally
missing ("No Program Information"), or is wildly inaccurate, for
instance showing a show that aired 5 hours previously.

The software seems pretty badly designed. Anyone else noticed these
problems?


--
Found--the gene that causes belief in genetic determinism

David Nebenzahl wrote:

Please note that I'm posting this simply out of
frustration; I don't expect any solutions to these
problems.

I'm one of the zillions of analog TV owners who ended up
with one of these DTV converter boxes. For the most part,
it's worked well. Picture and sound are fine, and it has
decent software to navigate and choose channels.

But there are definitely some flaky aspects to its
behavior. Most obvious lately has been the way that it
"forgets" what time it is, or at least what the correct
hour is. For the last few days it's been consistently off
by exactly one hour, both in its display of the current
time and in the time of "now" and "next" show times.

I actually called Zenith today about this problem. Of
course, it wasn't long into the call that I was told "By
the way, we don't support this product anymore". Not
terribly surprising, I guess, given that this was
basically a transitional device at the dawn of DTV.

Other flakiness exists. Many times, while scrolling
through the "Simple Guide" menu, the information given for
a given channel is either totally missing ("No Program
Information"), or is wildly inaccurate, for instance
showing a show that aired 5 hours previously.

The software seems pretty badly designed. Anyone else
noticed these problems?

Mine does those things too! I blame the television station:
that's where the converter gets the time and scheduling
info. Otherwise, the Zenith converter does a great job
for me ... far superior to the crummy box I bought from
Walmart.

Bryce

On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:01:25 -0700, David Nebenzahl
wrote:

For the last few days it's been
consistently off by exactly one hour, both in its display of the current
time and in the time of "now" and "next" show times.


Humm, a daylight savings time problem...

Of course Zenith doesn't suppport it, it is a piece of chinese made
crap... (sorry if that insults you, and yes I know you can't buy a
quality one either.)

Hi!

Please note that I'm posting this simply out of frustration; I don't
expect any solutions to these problems.

Well, how about some interesting comments? Would you be interested in
those?

I'm one of the zillions of analog TV owners who ended up with
one of these DTV converter boxes. For the most part, it's worked
well. Picture and sound are fine, and it has decent software to
navigate and choose channels.

I've had good luck with both of mine. (One is an Insignia--Best Buy--
variant.) I've stopped using all of the ones I have, primarily because
digital TV has been a fiasco around these parts, and it culminated in
the coaxial cable breaking off of my antenna about a foot away from
the top of the tower.

I tried very basic analog cable for a while after that, but I finally
said "forget it" when I realized that I hadn't turned the TV on for
more than a month. If I need to watch something, I've got an old 13"
Zenith set with rabbit ears and a converter.

But there are definitely some flaky aspects to its behavior.
Most obvious lately has been the way that it "forgets" what
time it is, or at least what the correct hour is.

There's no hardware real-time clock in this unit. The clock runs as a
process on the system CPU, and so it's probably not very accurate
anyway.

(The CPU is, in case you were wondering, an ARM926EJS clocked at
200MHz.)

However, the firmware resets the clock *every time* you change
channels. And when I was watching over the air digital broadcast TV, I
discovered that most of the stations in this area don't even bother to
broadcast the correct time. Only the PBS affiliate had it right.
Others were off by minutes or hours. This would cause the program
guide to be messed up.

(Why did I explore the Zenith converter so? I think Sam Goldwasser
said it best on the SER FAQ: "It wasn't long before the workings of
the TV were of more interest to me than the mostly stupid shows.")

I actually called Zenith today about this problem. Of course,
it wasn't long into the call that I was told "By the way, we
don't support this product anymore".

I don't know. I find it surprising...but I've been inside mine and
found that it has a flash ROM in place. It stands alone as the only
converter box I've seen with one. I'm not sure how you'd deliver
updated code to it, but they could fix the problem if they really
wanted to. Maybe they'd do it over the air?

The software seems pretty badly designed. Anyone else
noticed these problems?

Yes, but they are definitely caused by stations broadcasting
inaccurate time information. This messes up the program guide. If it
bothers you, I think the only real fix is to complain to the stations
that are broadcasting improper time data.

If I remember things right, there is a manual clock set function on
the DTT-900/DTT-901. You could always try it and see...

After auditioning a lot of converter boxes, I found things that I
didn't like about each one. In the end, I thought the Magnavox CECB
was probably the best of any of them, although its feature set was a
bit thin. The Zenith/LG unit came in second.

I actually drew up some crude designs for one of my own that solved
all the shortcomings I saw in each unit. Of course, given how
perfection is a secondary goal any more (if it even makes the list!),
and how practically everything comes in from overseas, I'd expect that
it wouldn't stand a chance if marketed on quality of experience
alone...and there's so much I don't know how to do anyway.

William

On Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:59:20 -0400, PeterD wrote:

Of course Zenith doesn't suppport it, it is a piece of chinese made
crap... (sorry if that insults you, and yes I know you can't buy a
quality one either.)

What Zenith? There ain't no Zenith.
There _is_ a Korean corporation that's allowed to use the name.

Bryce wrote:
David Nebenzahl wrote:

Please note that I'm posting this simply out of
frustration; I don't expect any solutions to these
problems.

I'm one of the zillions of analog TV owners who ended up
with one of these DTV converter boxes. For the most part,
it's worked well. Picture and sound are fine, and it has
decent software to navigate and choose channels.

But there are definitely some flaky aspects to its
behavior. Most obvious lately has been the way that it
"forgets" what time it is, or at least what the correct
hour is. For the last few days it's been consistently off
by exactly one hour, both in its display of the current
time and in the time of "now" and "next" show times.

I actually called Zenith today about this problem. Of
course, it wasn't long into the call that I was told "By
the way, we don't support this product anymore". Not
terribly surprising, I guess, given that this was
basically a transitional device at the dawn of DTV.

Other flakiness exists. Many times, while scrolling
through the "Simple Guide" menu, the information given for
a given channel is either totally missing ("No Program
Information"), or is wildly inaccurate, for instance
showing a show that aired 5 hours previously.

The software seems pretty badly designed. Anyone else
noticed these problems?

Mine does those things too! I blame the television station:
that's where the converter gets the time and scheduling
info. Otherwise, the Zenith converter does a great job
for me ... far superior to the crummy box I bought from
Walmart.

Bryce

Some stations mess up badly. One around here had the programming on
53-1 with no programming guide, while 53-2 had no program, but did
have the guide.
For about a week the local PBS station had the programs listed as an
hour earlier than they really were, ie a program that actually came on
at say 4pm was listed as 3pm.

Jerry

On 10/17/2009 7:51 AM William R. Walsh spake thus:

[I wrote:]

But there are definitely some flaky aspects to its behavior.
Most obvious lately has been the way that it "forgets" what
time it is, or at least what the correct hour is.

There's no hardware real-time clock in this unit. The clock runs as a
process on the system CPU, and so it's probably not very accurate
anyway.

"Not very accurate" is one thing; off by a whole *hour* is something else.

However, the firmware resets the clock *every time* you change
channels. And when I was watching over the air digital broadcast TV, I
discovered that most of the stations in this area don't even bother to
broadcast the correct time. Only the PBS affiliate had it right.
Others were off by minutes or hours. This would cause the program
guide to be messed up.

I'm sure this is the source of at least some of the problems, but not
all. F'rinstance, one bizarre thing that happens occasionally is that
the *channel* numbers on the Simple Guide are displayed wrong (e.g., Ch.
28-1 becomes Ch. 29-1, etc.). I don't think this is caused by erroneous
info being transmitted by the station, but by the firmware getting confused.

I actually called Zenith today about this problem. Of course,
it wasn't long into the call that I was told "By the way, we
don't support this product anymore".

I don't know. I find it surprising...but I've been inside mine and
found that it has a flash ROM in place. It stands alone as the only
converter box I've seen with one. I'm not sure how you'd deliver
updated code to it, but they could fix the problem if they really
wanted to. Maybe they'd do it over the air?

I actually asked the guy specifically if they had any firmware updates
available, and he said no, so it really is totally unsupported (well,
aside from being able to ask the tech support guy questions).

The software seems pretty badly designed. Anyone else
noticed these problems?

Yes, but they are definitely caused by stations broadcasting
inaccurate time information. This messes up the program guide. If it
bothers you, I think the only real fix is to complain to the stations
that are broadcasting improper time data.

If I remember things right, there is a manual clock set function on
the DTT-900/DTT-901. You could always try it and see...

Nope. The only clock function that can be set through the on-screen menu
is whether daylight savings time is automatically set or not. No setting
of the clock time is possible. Turns out that toggling the "auto"
function on and off restores the proper time.


--
Found--the gene that causes belief in genetic determinism

Jerry Peters wrote:

Bryce wrote:
David Nebenzahl wrote:

Please note that I'm posting this simply out of
frustration; I don't expect any solutions to these
problems.

I'm one of the zillions of analog TV owners who ended up
with one of these DTV converter boxes. For the most part,
it's worked well. Picture and sound are fine, and it has
decent software to navigate and choose channels.

But there are definitely some flaky aspects to its
behavior. Most obvious lately has been the way that it
"forgets" what time it is, or at least what the correct
hour is. For the last few days it's been consistently off
by exactly one hour, both in its display of the current
time and in the time of "now" and "next" show times.

I actually called Zenith today about this problem. Of
course, it wasn't long into the call that I was told "By
the way, we don't support this product anymore". Not
terribly surprising, I guess, given that this was
basically a transitional device at the dawn of DTV.

Other flakiness exists. Many times, while scrolling
through the "Simple Guide" menu, the information given for
a given channel is either totally missing ("No Program
Information"), or is wildly inaccurate, for instance
showing a show that aired 5 hours previously.

The software seems pretty badly designed. Anyone else
noticed these problems?

Mine does those things too! I blame the television station:
that's where the converter gets the time and scheduling
info. Otherwise, the Zenith converter does a great job
for me ... far superior to the crummy box I bought from
Walmart.

Bryce

Some stations mess up badly. One around here had the programming on
53-1 with no programming guide, while 53-2 had no program, but did
have the guide.
For about a week the local PBS station had the programs listed as an
hour earlier than they really were, ie a program that actually came on
at say 4pm was listed as 3pm.


What did you expect from a PBS station?


--
The movie 'Deliverance' isn't a documentary!

William R. Walsh wrote:
I actually called Zenith today about this problem. Of course,
it wasn't long into the call that I was told "By the way, we
don't support this product anymore".

I don't know. I find it surprising...but I've been inside mine and
found that it has a flash ROM in place. It stands alone as the only
converter box I've seen with one. I'm not sure how you'd deliver
updated code to it, but they could fix the problem if they really
wanted to. Maybe they'd do it over the air?

The Tivax has an externally accessible port (serial?)
to update the flash it has. Of course, there is no guarantee
that anyone has ever debugged the flash update code (though
I can't believe they would have gone through the expense
of adding the extra connector if the interface didn't at least
APPEAR to work).

I never had any expectation that the manufacturer would
provide new flash images. However, I had hoped that the
presence of the connector might entice someone to hack the
box (since hardware accessibility seems to be the thing
that inhibits most would-be hackers)

The software seems pretty badly designed. Anyone else
noticed these problems?

Yes, but they are definitely caused by stations broadcasting
inaccurate time information. This messes up the program guide. If it
bothers you, I think the only real fix is to complain to the stations
that are broadcasting improper time data.

I suspect there is fault on both sides. I look at the
design of the user interface in most of the converter
boxes I evaluated and found they all seemed to have been
"designed on the back of a napkin". And, often seem like they
*assume* the broadcasts would be perfect, available 100%
of the time, etc.

If I remember things right, there is a manual clock set function on
the DTT-900/DTT-901. You could always try it and see...

After auditioning a lot of converter boxes, I found things that I
didn't like about each one. In the end, I thought the Magnavox CECB
was probably the best of any of them, although its feature set was a
bit thin. The Zenith/LG unit came in second.

I actually drew up some crude designs for one of my own that solved
all the shortcomings I saw in each unit. Of course, given how
perfection is a secondary goal any more (if it even makes the list!),
and how practically everything comes in from overseas, I'd expect that
it wouldn't stand a chance if marketed on quality of experience
alone...and there's so much I don't know how to do anyway.

On 10/17/2009 10:55 PM D Yuniskis spake thus:

William R. Walsh wrote:

[I wrote:]

The software seems pretty badly designed. Anyone else
noticed these problems?

Yes, but they are definitely caused by stations broadcasting
inaccurate time information. This messes up the program guide. If it
bothers you, I think the only real fix is to complain to the stations
that are broadcasting improper time data.

I suspect there is fault on both sides. I look at the
design of the user interface in most of the converter
boxes I evaluated and found they all seemed to have been
"designed on the back of a napkin". And, often seem like they
*assume* the broadcasts would be perfect, available 100%
of the time, etc.

Bingo. I think you just answered my questions there.


--
Found--the gene that causes belief in genetic determinism

Hi!

The Tivax has an externally accessible port (serial?)
to update the flash it has.

That's an interesting idea. I've heard mostly good things about the Tivax
converter. I've never happened to get one and try it out. For various
reasons, I stuck to what the retail stores around here were carrying. I
tried all of the readily available Apex Digital, Digital Stream, Insignia,
GE/RCA, Magnavox, and Zenith converters. I finally arrived at the conclusion
that the only real contenders were the Magnavox, Insignia/Zenith and (I
forgot!) Digital Stream units.

(There was very little cost for this. I ordered coupons on the behalf of
family members and got a different converter each time. And I bought one at
list price.)

The GE/RCA unit, built around a Broadcom IC, was very slow to do anything
and the firmware felt stupidly designed at best. Like "we don't care let's
just see if can get this thing to the market". Two different Apex (Zoran
powered) units worked fine for the most part, but I noticed a lot of noise
on the RF output and both units had their remotes go stupid in the same way.
The Zoran IC also gets *hot* in operation.

I never had any expectation that the manufacturer would
provide new flash images. However, I had hoped that the
presence of the connector might entice someone to hack the
box (since hardware accessibility seems to be the thing
that inhibits most would-be hackers)

The DTT-901 has a populated set of header pins on the board. I don't know
what they are for, maybe a JTAG? They sure *could* be.

I suspect there is fault on both sides. I look at the
design of the user interface in most of the converter
boxes I evaluated and found they all seemed to have been
"designed on the back of a napkin". And, often seem like they
*assume* the broadcasts would be perfect, available 100%
of the time, etc.

Agreed 100%.

William

Hi!

"Not very accurate" is one thing; off by a whole *hour* is something else.

Not if the timekeeping routine isn't getting enough CPU time!

Although...I really do think that this is a problem coming from the
broadcasting station. You'd think that the station would care, as knowing
the time is, ahh, kind of important for what they do.

I'm sure this is the source of at least some of the problems, but not all.
F'rinstance, one bizarre thing that happens occasionally is that the
*channel* numbers on the Simple Guide are displayed wrong (e.g., Ch. 28-1
becomes Ch. 29-1, etc.). I don't think this is caused by erroneous info
being transmitted by the station, but by the firmware getting confused.

It seems that there are two "channel numbers" in use here. One is the
actual, real channel that is being broadcast on. The other (displayed by the
DTT-901) is a "vanity" channel number. There's a station here that moved
from their analog VHF channel of three to a digital channel # of 49. Punch
in 49-1 or 49-2 on the DTT-901 and you go to 3-1 or 3-2. Interesting--and
maybe something that the firmware really *does* lose track of!

I actually asked the guy specifically if they had any firmware updates
available, and he said no, so it really is totally unsupported (well,
aside from being able to ask the tech support guy questions).

I really thought they were still selling it, but maybe not. I haven't
verified that. It's still on the Zenith web site.

Perhaps they don't have an easy way to upgrade the firmware and therefore
they tell everyone that no such thing exists? It makes sense to me--and
would keep users who are dangerous because they know words like "firmware"
from bricking their converter.

Those of us who could handle it--or wouldn't mind trying--are left out in
the cold. An unfortunate but understandable position.

Nope. The only clock function that can be set through the on-screen
menu is whether daylight savings time is automatically set or not.

Ah, yes, you are correct. Memory fade I guess. :-)

Digital TV, it seems, has finally eliminated what little interest I had in
broadcast TV to begin with... (And yes, I know that doesn't mean it did for
everyone.)

William

PeterD wrote:
On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:01:25 -0700, David Nebenzahl
wrote:

For the last few days it's been
consistently off by exactly one hour, both in its display of the current
time and in the time of "now" and "next" show times.


Humm, a daylight savings time problem...

Of course Zenith doesn't suppport it, it is a piece of chinese made
crap... (sorry if that insults you, and yes I know you can't buy a
quality one either.)

Sure you can:

http://www.broadcaststore.com/pdf/mo...20brochure.pdf
http://64.62.223.71/pdf/TAV900A-Datasheet.pdf
http://www.teleview.co.kr/product/do..._new090608.pdf
http://www.dveo.com/pdf/TLV300E_BRO.pdf
http://dveo.com.cn/pdf/TLV300E-8VSB-Datasheet.pdf

William R. Walsh wrote:
The Tivax has an externally accessible port (serial?)
to update the flash it has.

That's an interesting idea. I've heard mostly good things about the Tivax
converter. I've never happened to get one and try it out. For various
reasons, I stuck to what the retail stores around here were carrying. I
tried all of the readily available Apex Digital, Digital Stream, Insignia,
GE/RCA, Magnavox, and Zenith converters. I finally arrived at the conclusion
that the only real contenders were the Magnavox, Insignia/Zenith and (I
forgot!) Digital Stream units.

We ordered a pair of the Tivax boxes. Our "problems" (to date) seem
mostly to be related to antenna choice and/or location. We are
approx 12 miles as the crow flies from the *cluster* of broadcast
towers (almost all of the stations transmit from this one complex).
And, it is *almost* line-of-sight from our house to those towers
(with the exception of a single tree).

Yet, the stations that we receive on one set are not the same
as on the other set. E.g., 9-1 comes in on one set but not
9-3 while 9-3 comes in on the *other* set but not 9-1 (!)

The box runs warm. I'm sure the components inside are quite
toasty! It is left on 24/7 since powering it off would mean having
to turn off *two* devices (silly that the remote didn't learn
how to talk to our TV!).

The remote is also a potential gripe as it is pretty crappy quality
*and* doesn't appear to be documented anyplace (i.e., using a
"universal remote" is problematic as none of these have "codes"
for "Tivax blahblahblah")

(There was very little cost for this. I ordered coupons on the behalf of
family members and got a different converter each time. And I bought one at
list price.)

The GE/RCA unit, built around a Broadcom IC, was very slow to do anything
and the firmware felt stupidly designed at best. Like "we don't care let's
just see if can get this thing to the market". Two different Apex (Zoran
powered) units worked fine for the most part, but I noticed a lot of noise
on the RF output and both units had their remotes go stupid in the same way.
The Zoran IC also gets *hot* in operation.

Most of the noticeable bugs in the Tivax have to do with the on-screen
display (program guide, etc. -- there are two different functions
that provide this information).

For example, you could be stepping through the list of upcoming
programs on a particular station and suddenly the list falls
back to "the current program" (i.e., at 10:12 it shows the 10:00
program followed by the 10:30, then 11:00, then 11:30... until
there ARE NO MORE DATA AVAILABLE. Yet, while you are stepping
through this list, you might find it redisplaying the data for
the 10:00 show instead of the 11:30 show that *was* next in the
list!)

I never had any expectation that the manufacturer would
provide new flash images. However, I had hoped that the
presence of the connector might entice someone to hack the
box (since hardware accessibility seems to be the thing
that inhibits most would-be hackers)

The DTT-901 has a populated set of header pins on the board. I don't know
what they are for, maybe a JTAG? They sure *could* be.

You'd have to trace foils to see where they go. JTAG only needs
a couple of pins...

I suspect there is fault on both sides. I look at the
design of the user interface in most of the converter
boxes I evaluated and found they all seemed to have been
"designed on the back of a napkin". And, often seem like they
*assume* the broadcasts would be perfect, available 100%
of the time, etc.

Agreed 100%.

For the program guide issues I have been seeing, it could simply
be a problem of trying to skimp on resources (in the STB) and simply
*expecting* to be able to grab the data AT ANY TIME off the air
(so why waste resourcces storing that internally?!)