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Topfield Time Issues Why Topfield Auto Time should not be used In most areas of Australia the TV stations can not be relied on to broadcast the correct time and in some cases not even the correct year. This is the number one cause of missed or truncated recordings. Even when the stations are broadcasting close to the correct time you will find that no two stations broadcast the same time. Changing channels can cause the time to skip forward or back by minutes causing missed recordings. If you use Auto Time you will have problems sooner of later TimerExtend What TimerExtend can fix TimerExtend can only guarantee to fix broadcast errors of +/- 5 minutes if you have allowed more than +/- 5 minutes padding on your timers. This is primarily to handle the time differences between stations ( No two stations broadcast the same time to the second). Example If you had a timer set to record at 19:00:00 and the channel you are watching is broadcasting the time as 18:59:45 and then you change channels and the new channel reports the time as 19:01:00 then Topfield will not record the program as the time has passed. TimerExtend will detect this and repair the timer so it will start recording immediately. What TimerExtend can NOT fixIf the station broadcasts the time out by more than +/- 5 minutes you will either miss the start or the end of your program. If they station broadcasts the wrong date your will miss the program altogether. Both of the above broadcast errors have been made by channel nine several times in the last couple of months. You will find more than one post in this Australian Topfield forum by Tony (Author of TimerExtend) complaining that his programs did not record due to channel nine broadcasting the wrong time signal. Problems with using Topfield Manual Time Setting the time to manual creates its own set of problems. The first problem is that the entry of manual time needs to be checked regularly. The second problem is that after a power failure the time needs to be reset. If there is a power failure the Topfield will lose the time setting in both manual and auto time modes. If the Topfield was on when the power failed it will boot to the on state when power is restored. If you have set time to auto then the Topfield will reset it clock to the current broadcast time. If you have the time set to manual the clock will not be reset. If there is a power failure the Topfield will lose the time setting in both manual and auto time modes. If the Topfield was off when the power failed the clock will not be reset and your programs will not be recorded. ProgressBarKeys addresses all above issues with Manual Time Topfield Manual Time and EPG The EPG times and the station broadcast time signal are sent as GMT. When you are using Auto Time you specify in the Topfield the number of hours to add to the station broadcast time signal to produce your local time. When the Topfield displays the EPG data it has to convert the EPG times from GMT to your local time. The conversion from GMT time to your local time is done by comparing the current Topfield time with the station broadcast time signal. If you are on Auto Time then the result of this calculation will always be the GMT offset you specified in the Topfield Time Setup menu as your current time was calculated by adding the GMT offset specified to the station broadcast time signal. If you are on manual time and the station broadcast time signal is accurate then the result of this calculation will be the same as the Auto Time result. However when the station broadcast time signal is wrong then the result of the calculation will not be the actual GMT offset for your region. For example if the station broadcast time signal is 02:00 GMT and is actually two minutes slow (Typical station broadcast time error) and the manual time is correctly showing 10:02 (GMT+8 Perth Time) then the Topfield will calculate the GMT offset as 10:02 - 02:00 = 8:02. As a result 0*:02 will be added the EPG GMT times and the result will be out by 2 minutes. This means you will see EPG times like 08:32 instead of 08:30. The bottom line is that none of this really matters as you should always allow at least 10 minutes either side of the “scheduled” time and duration when setting timers. If you want to see how inaccurate the station broadcast times (Auto Time) are, then set you time to manual and look and the EPG times you will typically see a program that should start at 8:00 displayed as 08:02 or 07:58. Then change channel and look at the EPG times again as they will move based on the difference between the correct time and the broadcast time on each channel. Topfield Manual Time versus Topfield Auto time discussion http://www.topfield-australia.com.au/frm/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3412 |