All this is very interesting, though useless to me.
Dee-Ann, I hate to bring this up, but you read a LOT here on Satguys, and the "problems" with the clock have been posted over and over and over. You were aware of this BEFORE you bought your OpenBox S10, so ... why are you complaining? I've had my OpenBox S9 since right around Thanksgiving last year, and still think it's the VERY best receiver (not withstanding the price) that can be had, regardless of clocks working or not.
You keep giving, over and over and over, your demands that ONE receiver do OTA, HD, S2, Timed recordings, plug in the coffee pot AND make the bed. Let's be reasonable here, it is what it is, an HD receiver that also does S2 AND is a PVR. There are a couple of programs that I enjoy that come on at night just as I am going to bed. I wait for them to come on, then set the recorder to record two hours, then go to sleep.
I DO 'feel for you' that this isn't your perfect receiver, but then again, this only cost around $100.
Find the remote that turbosat mentioned, either the old one (if they are still around) or get the newer version that I have seen advertised around.
Also, set the timer on your remote to come on a minute or two early giving your dish a chance to move, then fast forward the first part of the programming that you don't want to watch. This sounds like a delicious alternative to missing out on something that you can't live without.
BTW, at my last check of time, there are still only 24 hours to a day, where are you finding the time to watch all that you record? (smile)
Photto
Yeah, it is what it is. It is a $100 gadget from China. My bad for expecting a quality item from that country.
My dad cut the Euro power cord off his and replaced it with a US cord. I'm taking mine over to have him do the same for me this afternoon.
I put a little personal desk fan from Walmart aka "China Direct" near the tuner and disk so it stays cool now.
I guess I want too much for my money.
I still want a single machine that does everything. I ~want~ one. I can't afford one at the moment and I can't find one yet but I'm going to keep looking and hoping.
The motor. This is the first time I've really dealt with one that belonged to me. I had my folks' system here for a few days but I never tried recordings and such with theirs. So it didn't occur to me to have the thing move the dish early, your suggestion makes complete sense and I will definitely redo the schedule I had made for it to take this into account. Having a little extra padding at the beginning isn't a deal breaker at all.
I have just been used to the PC which is using a switch only. When I change channels it's not exactly instant but it's very quick, like maybe a 1 or 2 second transition from one channel to another. The PC stays running 24/7 so there's no boot/wakeup issues.
So this new tuner behaves in a very, very different way than what I am used to. There's going to be an adjustment phase of getting used to it.
As to the clock, I had read on here that people had given up on the S9 clock, that it was a lost cause. Another reason I bought the S10 is because I have read that the S9 is an abandoned tuner, they have discontinued making them and support for it doesn't have long to live.
I had read that the S10 clock worked. That is a big part of why I bought and S10. Perhaps I didn't read deep enough.
I'm trying to figure out how to get around the kooky clock problem by being creative in how I program the thing. I guess I will have to be sure to have it tune to RT before any actual recording for a few minutes before to get the right time then tune over to where it needs to be a minute early to cover the motor issue so that the recording isn't cut off at the start. It's extra BS to have to go through but it seems the only way to deal with it until the manufacturers fix the clock problem (which I doubt will ever happen)..
The other option, the remote control with it's own clock, it seems to me to be a much better solution than "creative programming" and I'm definitely going to be researching that.
This tuner, I had no expectations of it being a "one box does it all" replacement for the PC. I bought it to tune in FSTV and LPBS because the PC can't or won't. I never could figure out if that's the app or the tuner card but that doesn't matter, it doesn't work so I bought a tuner that I knew would get these channels. It would be nice if this thing could record shows from time to time automatically according to a schedule. I'm a documentary junkie and then there's the yoga show that comes on when I'm usually asleep. I no longer have a dish aimed at 83w on the PC system so the only way I get RTV is either by the S2 channels on 87w which are flakey and unreliable or the motorized dish on the S10.
As for finding time to watch everything, there are several times a day when there are gaps that I call the Dead Zone. 1am to 4am is usually one such zone. History is running stupid informercials and MeTV runs two war shows and Rawhide, none of which I am a fan of. So there's three hours I can catch up on shows recorded earlier. During the afternoon I watch The View and The Talk and then the various courtroom shows, Judge Joe Brown, Judge Judge, People's Court, etc.. But the local OTA channels have juggled shows around this past Monday
and some of them have moved to channels I can't get because they are to the West and my antenna points North to pick up the ~majority~ of the local channels. So that leaves some dead spots in the middle of the day. And weekends, there's lots of time to play catch up on recordings. But now with MeTV adding so many new shows on the weekends, it seems there will be lots of stuff to watch now.
I realized that I can put a new LNB on my big dish that has two outputs. One could go to the PC as it does now and the other could be fed into the S10. Because there is soooooo much stuff on 87w this would allow me to watch one thing on 87 and record something else on the same satellite. I would leave control of the dish strictly to the PC. The dish really never moves anyway so it's not a big deal, as far as the S10 would be concerned, 87w would be a fixed dish that doesn't move, I would put it on a discque switch in the same fashion that the dish at 123w is now being used. I can't see any reason why I couldn't do such a thing.
So, the clock and DVR problem, I'm in the process of figuring it out and learning to adapt to it. It's not the end of the world that there are problems with this because this is not my main system for watching TV and was never intended to be. Yes, I am
about the clock being so shabby but I'll live. I bought it, I paid for it, it's mine now and I'm keeping it and will adapt to it.
Oh and another thing I figured out, I can put the disk near enough to the PC where it can be in the middle of the PC and the tuner. They make a USB switch box with A/B buttons on it. So I can plug the PC and the tuner into the switch box then the disk into it. Then I can power off the tuner, press the A/B button and it will connect to the PC. I can get my files off, clean the disk, press the button to reconnect it to the tuner and power the tuner back on. So getting files off of the disk wouldn't be such a nightmare. I'm looking on ebay for one, I saw one at the Dollar Store but it was like $20 (Hey! What happened to the DOLLAR part of that??) and like the cables, I'm sure I can find one cheaper on ebay.
I still haven't figured out why it only sees half the satellites though. But I suspect that's not an issue of the tuner but rather one of the motor and or the dish. I need to keep digging on that. The problem with the search feature here is that when you search for something and enter two words into the search it shows you ALL the posts that contain either word. I can't find an option to search for only posts that contain "both words" only. If I search for "openbox dish arc" it shows me ALL the posts that contain openbox and all the posts that contain the word dish and all the posts that contain the word arc. That gives you thousands of pages to dig through and 99% of them are unrelated. On ebay for instance you can put stuff in quotes and cause it to search for that exact term. I don't know why I'm having trouble with this part of it, I made my folks dish work just fine, twice. Once here and again at their place. I dunno......
Thank you guys for the suggestions, this is all helpful and eventually I'll get it all sorted out and things will go better..
