kossello, Are you saying you had disabled the TV Guide and then set up a program to record manually, or still had the TV Guide enabled and manually set up a program? If the former, I am not surprised you received a U99. I have not encountered the latter. I would be quite pissed if I set up to record a new series show and found a U99 error and no recording when I got home (or woke up). Not sure why you guys, who aren't restricted like BudinMA, keep taking the chance by having the TV Guide enabled - at least until TV Guide officially notifies the world that their problem has conclusively been fixed. Not trying to sound sanctimonious here, but if you're aware of the problem and you can avoid it, but you don't and then miss a program, well - you really have no one to blame but yourself at this point. kossello - not meaning to pick on you specifically.
dme109, At this point, other than providing your data [i.e. zip code, city/town, cable provider (if any), cable box (if any)], my advice is to disable the TV Guide for the time being, set up timer programs manually, and hang tight.
faure, I hope there is a good operational reason why Panasonic would design their DVR's to disable the Auto Channel Scan (i.e. not permit the TV Guide download to be manually shut off) simply because you use the IR Blaster with a cable box. Perhaps I lack insight because I've never had a cable box. It seems like a bug or design flaw to me. It's a little off topic, but perhaps one of you with a cable box might comment. A cable box transfers the selected channel to channel 2 or 3, right? If it's a coded broadcast, the box also decodes it (if you've subscribed to that event or channel), right? But, don't all the other common, non-encoded channels, pass through the box? And if so, why would Panasonic prohibit Auto Channel Scanning for those with a cable box controlled by the IR blaster??
vulcanusa I still have TVGOS set up and not disabled. This is the first time that I had not recorded a program due to the U99. For me it seemed that the U99 occured after the recording. I was just surprised at how fast I received the U99 from the time I set the recording. But, I harder on myself for putting the unit in standby mode and not just letting it stay on until it was time to record. As stated on page 40 of the owners manual I'm going to set my TIMER OFF from the present 6 hr to off and then leave the unit in the on stage while waiting for a show to record. Someone on the group also said that there was a setting that asks if you want the recorder to turn off after recording. I can not find this listed in the OM so I will have to go through the menu's on the unit when I get home tonight. Hope there is no U99 ??????? Keith
Guys, I received this email from Cheryl late yesterday: I have just been informed that the change that was supposed to go out last night now isn't going until today. We have a separate inserter for Cox's data and that inserter isn't being changed until tonight. So please add 1 day to everything I told you. If you get another U99 after Saturday night, let me know. Personally, I'm going to sit back and see if it clears up this weekend. If not by Sunday, I'm going to to an L1 diagnostic, reset TVGOS firmware code, L1 diagnostic, and give a few more days. Last time I reset the firmware (last week in the middle of this U99 mess), the system behaved better until the second night of TVGOS listing downloads. btw, I did not get a U99 this morning, but in anticipation of this change by TVGOS, I did the channel up/down reset. I will do the same tonight and Saturday should U99 appear. Crossing my fingers.
zipcode for U99 error: 98110 (Washington state) I've had the DMR-E95HS since April. It has had the U99 error for roughly the past 3 weeks. For the entire time I have had the occasional problem with back-to-back recording, which I have avoided by leaving a 1 minute gap between programs.
AKnewbie, Or anyone else in contact with Cheryl or a Gemstar/TV Guide rep. Don't you think Gemstar/TV Guide is obligated as a company to post an official notice of some kind (like on a Support subpage of their homepage) that the problem exists, and commit to a specific schedule or officially announce when the problem is solved - by region or zip code if necessary? It seems the resolution to-date, at least from a level of visibility within scope of this forum, has been a bit too informal given the magnitude of the error. Perhaps Gemstar has been hiding this problem from their advertisers. Gemstar/TV Guide has been having serious financial problems the last several years (i.e. huge drop in subscribership provoking the recent change in the TV Guide magazine after 50 years of prior success).
vulcanusa. i totally agree with you. whoever has cheryl's e-mail address. would it be possible to post it here? please. very difficult to get her on the phone.
Hi, all. Sorry to run silent for so long. No news from the PBS engineers and will not be back in touch with them for a week or so. I'm not sure that the info would be helpful at this point, anyway. Thanks to RX7 fan, Coyote (sp?), and the rest of you for gathering all of the information. Mine is 53704, Madison, Charter Cable, No box, E500HS On the subject of buying/not buying products that essentially rely on TVGOS: like many folks on this thread, I'm really uncomfortable depending on a company with which I don't have a direct customer relation but at the same time I sure as heck don't want to pay for it. A lot like over the air broadcasting twenty-five years ago. Cheryl at Gemstar seems to have been a great help and hopefully Gemstar will deliver. However, I doubt this will be the last time there is a problem with their data. Clearly we have to put pressure on Panny to ongoingly assure that the data is compatible with their products, but I have another suggestion, should this problem arise again. I think we should make a list of the advertisers on TVGOS, who are paying for the opportunity to expose us to their messages. contanct the advertisers and let them know they are not getting what they are paying for -- i.e. contented eyeballs contemplating the purchase of their goods and services. That might get Gemstar's attention. Edit: didn't see the post above from Vulcanusa before writing this.
That is another interesting issue with this machine, if you are doing back to back recordings, you might lose the end of one recording if it were to say stop at 9pm and another was to start at 9pm. Because it seems like the DVDR preps itself to start exactly at that time, and will shut down the other recording early. Even if you are taping the same channel. So you have to set it to extend the taping of the first show if you want both...then they are under the same title. Probably shouldn't post this on this thread, but everyone here seems very knowledgable. I disabled the TVGOS and have been manually setting the recordings...no U99 errors for about 24 hrs.
I have 4 E85 and 1 E95 all are off air (no cable) in zip code 83706. Problems with U99 started last August. All the machines have failed randomly at some time in the past months. I have never seen all the machines fail at the same time. Each machine is set to only one of the local TV stations with the exception of the PBS station. The Channel 7 (NBC) machine went U99 last night, the others were OK. I hope Gemstar fixes this soon. Terry
[bold] News Flash [/bold] I sent Cheryl an email this morning: Here is her reply (5 hours later) (Sorry, Stan, I would never give out Cheyl's - or anyone's - email address without explicit permission.)
[bold]SECOND OFFER[/bold] If anyone wants to try the Sept. E85 firmware I have you can download it from http://www.savefile.com/files/9523781 It is supposedly only for E85 recorders with serial numbers KU4CAxxxxx - KU4DAxxxxx. If anyone is adventurous you can try it on any serial number. I would think the worst it would do was tell you the disk was unsupported. It appears that it is giving the file a weird filename so remove everything before the 'P' and you should end up with the correct filename of Pana_dvd.frm @
I seem to be back in a cycle of not getting the U99. I haven't gotten it for a few days now. I went two weeks without getting it once though so I'm not holding my breath. This thing seems to run in cycles for me.
I posted the previous quoted message. It came from a good source. I have two units (DMR-E85) hooked up at home, one behind a cable box, the other straight to cable. Both gave the eror this morning, the one without the box, managed to pick up station logos, but no programing before it went U99. Panasonic is STRONGLY addressing this issue as I type this. As somebody wrote before, this is a Gemstar issue, not Panasonic's. It is going to get resolved, I am sure of this. It may take a little while. Let's be patient. Gus.
I'm going to go with what Cheree(At Panasonic) told my wife over phone about the fix might be a couple weeks. After a couple weeks have gone only THEN will I try and reenable the TVGOS feature. Right now I'm taping 24 season 1 on A & E and I don't want to have it screw up since there is only one more 4 hour day left. By the way on a off note, I do have the service manuals for these machines and others if people are interested. I bought a CD from Panasonic that has these units as well as other Panasonic electronic equipment on it for around $10-15US. You need their(Panasonics) viewer which comes with the cd to view the manuals.
To gdoggy Sure but the file size will probably be 30-50MB. Do you have a cap on your email account? If someone could dedicate some web space, I could simply upload the whole cd to there and do it like that.
If it's 60MB or less you can create an .iso file of the disk and store it for free at http://www.savefile.com Thanks
Ok kool, I didn't know about that. Well I can include the viewers in one file then the models in another on that site tonight when I get home. I'll just do 85-500 models unless anyone wants another added on.
