Auto switch to SD when signal drops out

[king3pj]

Forgive me if this is old news but I just came across this new feature tonight and haven't seen it posted here. We have been under tornado warnings on and off all night here in Fenton Michigan. Naturally my signal dropped a few times. When it did my HWS would automatically switch to the SD version of the same channel to try and give me a usable signal.

Eventually that signal would drop too and it would switch back to the HD channel to look for signal again. I never had the HD work when the SD didn't but it was nice when it switched from HD to SD and it actually worked.

I can't remember the last time I lost signal so maybe this is nothing new. This is the first time I have seen it or heard about it though.
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[thomasjk]

This something new. Not sure when it was implemented but I see it on my Hopper with S244.

 

[n0qcu]

That explains why i've come home and get blasted by the loud volume of the SD channel when I turn on the TV sometimes. That feature needs to be removed.

Sent from my DROIDX

 

[Barry Erick]

That explains why i've come home and get blasted by the loud volume of the SD channel when I turn on the TV sometimes. That feature needs to be removed.

Sent from my DROIDX

Or enabled/disabled by the user. Maybe a test button and volume setting to make levels nearly equal.

 

[king3pj]

That explains why i've come home and get blasted by the loud volume of the SD channel when I turn on the TV sometimes. That feature needs to be removed.

Sent from my DROIDX

To each his own I guess. I think this is a cool feature. SD channels don't show on my guide so this feature switches to SD much faster than I could manually do it. The switch happened almost instantly so I don't miss any of my programming even during a signal drop.


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[Joe Satellite Fan]

I experienced this same thing last week. We were camping in an area where the trees made reception (especially on 129) very poor. At least when the wind made the reception really poor, it would shift to the SD channel. I thought that was a good thing to have happen.

 

[Scherrman]

This has been a feature for a while now. It happens on all HD receivers as far as know. I've seen it on the Hopper, 211k and 722k.

 

[king3pj]

This has been a feature for a while now. It happens on all HD receivers as far as know. I've seen it on the Hopper, 211k and 722k.

I guess my signal just didn't drop often enough for me to notice. This is the first time I have seen it.

 

[Scherrman]

I've seen it on customer's receivers.

 

[JerryDowning]

I saw it yesterday for the first time while watching the Cubs/White Sox baseball game during a bad storm. It worked fine until the storm got to Chicago and the entire game was rained out.

 

[dare2be]

What if you are chase playing live programming? Will you lose the part of the buffer you haven't watched yet when the auto-switch to SD occurs?

 

[king3pj]

I'm not sure. I was watching live local news when this happened because we were under a tornado warning.

 

[dare2be]

Perhaps the buffer just continues on after the signal loss while you are watching the HD portion of the buffer, and the SD channel starts buffering when the signal loss occurs. Thus, when you reach the part of the buffer where the switch to SD occurred, you wouldn't miss anything. That would be cool.

 

[patmurphey]

What if you are chase playing live programming? Will you lose the part of the buffer you haven't watched yet when the auto-switch to SD occurs?

Do you not lose the buffer anyway with a signal loss and reconnect?

 

[dare2be]

Do you not lose the buffer anyway with a signal loss and reconnect?

No, if you are buffered, you will continue to watch the remaining of the buffer until you get to the point where the signal loss occurred. So it'll look like the signal loss occurred later than it actually did.

/...at least, on the ViPs

 

[3HaloODST]

No, if you are buffered, you will continue to watch the remaining of the buffer until you get to the point where the signal loss occurred. So it'll look like the signal loss occurred later than it actually did.

/...at least, on the ViPs

Hopper also does this. I don't know for sure, but I would guess that if you are buffered it won't switch to SD since it won't "notice" the signal loss until you reach the point where signal loss occurred.

If you are on Live TV, you will lose the buffer if you weren't recording the buffer, but that's nothing new.

Sent from my iPhone 4S using Forum Runner

 

[DishSubLA]

Hopper also does this. I don't know for sure, but I would guess that if you are buffered it won't switch to SD since it won't "notice" the signal loss until you reach the point where signal loss occurred.

If you are on Live TV, you will lose the buffer if you weren't recording the buffer, but that's nothing new.

Sent from my iPhone 4S using Forum Runner

I've found with Dish STB's that it can sometimes make no difference if it is delayed or even playing back a recording some years ago: as soon as the system loses a signal, a pop-up appears or it otherwise does it things.
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