It's DST time again

[prl]

I got the most recent IceTV What's On In Wollongong This Week OK, so perhaps whatever caused the DST email glitch is fixed.

[mikeathome]

Me too, but still not the DST email.

It seems that the remaining issue now is that the times for reservations on the PVR (ie already received from ICE prior to the changeover) will be an hour out. I'm not across the complexities of it but given that the ICE system knows this, why cannot it be altered to account for the DST time change and get the reservation times so they become correct after the changeover?

[JPP]

Yes, see my post re all of this here.
http://forum.icetv.com.au/iceforum/index.php?topic=3366.msg16642#msg16642

[prl]

Yes, see my post re all of this here.
http://forum.icetv.com.au/iceforum/index.php?topic=3366.msg16642#msg16642

The problem seems to originate in the IceTV EPG and timers being in UTC, and many PVRs preferring to work in local time for their timers. This is probably down to the fact that many PVRs run uClinux, and its libraries don't support the zoneinfo database for time conversion, which does the whole time zone/DST thing properly, so they generally have a whole bunch of horrible time and time zone kludges that make themselves all too evident at DST changeover time.

IMO, it's a mistake to use local time, since in the presence of DST, local time is neither continuous nor unique.  :o

[mikeathome]

There's probably a reason why not that I can't see, but rather than deleting and re-sending the post DST timers and possibly having to worry about setting a view timer, why can't the post DST timers be sent with the correct start time in the first place? There would be a possible issue if a timer straddled the 2am DST time change point but I could live with that in preference to the current arrangement.

[prl]

I think it's because the timers on the PVR have a different timestamp from the timers on IceTV, and they don't get recognised as being the same timer, and the old timer doesn't get deleted. I recall having duplicated timers like that in an earlier DST transition. This is all on Beyonwiz. Details like this probably vary quite a bit between PVRs. As I said before, the whole UTC/local time thing is a messy kludge.

[Dave at IceTV]

We are looking at ways to improve, or solve, the Topfield DST changeover issues before DST starts again. But don't stop discussing your ideas.

[prl]

The mess I've been describing is mostly about the PVRs I know best - Beyonwiz, not Topfield :) However, I suspect the same uClinux issues with time conversion on the Beyonwiz also apply to Topfield.