Messages

I have had a couple of failed recordings. It was always channel 9 that failed. I found that there were two channel Nines. one for Gold Coast and one for Brisbane. I tried disabling the Gold Coast channel and still had failed recordings. I then disabled channel nine and then re-enabled it and the recordings started working. I then disabled and re-enabled all the channels I wanted just in case there was a similar issue. Everything has worked fine ever since.

An ability to set the place in the playback that a playback plays from is needed. i.e. When watching a playback, my Toppy lets me punch in a percentage using the number keys. The playback then jumps to that position. It doesn't have to be the same, but something like is needed.

I haven't checked the firmware, but it was updated as soon as I started it and its set to auto-update.

Last night I attempted to play a recording and somehow started the wrong one. I have noticed that the Skippa sometimes seems to play the recording above the one selected. I'm not sure if this is just thick fingers or a bug, however on this occasion I stopped the recording and went to My Recordings again to play the intended recording, but I couldn't find it. I played something else and went back to My recordings later and the program I originally wanted had returned.
No great loss, but a little perplexing.

After having a coupled of failed timers, I assumed they would show up Failed Recordings. I had a look and they weren't there. Am I wrong in thinking they should be?

On setting up my Skippa for the first time I scanned the channels and blocked the channels I didn't want. There two channel 9s one for Brisbane and one for the Gold Coast. I then set some timers on my IPhone IceTV App.
The Timers came in OK, but the next morning, the Skippa had a password prompt on the screen and I found that pressing 9 seemed to attempt to change to the Blocked channel (Gold Coast). I also found that an expired timer for Channel 9 was showing in My Week. A little bit of fiddling revealed that I should have Disabled the channel rather than blocked it and I thought everything would be ok. Pressing 9 on the remote now brought up channel Nine ok.
When I got home from work I found another expired timer for channel 9. As an experiment I disabled channel Nine and enabled it again and waited for the next channel Nine timer and it worked fine, and has continued to work ever since.
I decided to do the same on all the channels I wanted just in case. 
I am not sure if it was a bug of a glitch while scanning, but I thought it was at least reporting.

[1. Better prompting is needed when stopping recordings and playbacks.]

I have been using my Skippa for a few days now and I am pretty happy with it, but a few things could be improved.

1. Better prompting is needed when stopping recordings and playbacks.
I haven't sat down and tried it out much, but last night we had several programs being recorded and were watching the playback another recorded program. When the playback finished, my wife hit the Stop button a few times thinking the PVR hadn't responded to the remote. The result was that a couple of the recordings were stopped. It seems that pushing the Stop button twice can stop a recording. I would suggest that when the "Do you want to stop" prompt comes up a different button (e.g. Ok) should be required to be pressed. Anything would be better than using the Stop button.

By the way, a workaround that I have found is to only end a playback with the exit button. I haven't pushed the envelope with it yet, but I would expect the Exit button would exit from the "Do you want to stop" prompt without ending the recording. I haven seen it come up yet, but I have been very careful to press the Exit button only once. 

2. Some indication of the programs currently being recorded is needed.
On finding that several recordings were stopped, the next task was to get them going again. The problem was that it was difficult to work out what was still being recorded. My Toppy shows a list of the programs being recorded when the Info button is presses twice.  It doesn't need to be the same, but something is needed.

3. The TV guide needs to show an indication for programs that are being recorded or have timers on them.
When the Info button didn't give me a list of the programs being recorded, my next action was to bring up the TV Guide the see what was on and what was being recorded. At first I thought that nothing was being recorded, but when I attempted to start a recording with the Red button I didn't see any indication on the guide, my initial thought was that I had failed and I pressed the red button again (Stopping the recording). Later I discovered the Info panel showed the Recording indication and I was able to work out what was going on. However the Recording/Timer indications need to be shown on the main guide so you can quickly scan across the channels to see what is set up for the night. Currently you need to click on each program to see what is happening.

If I read you right.  Using Manual Time on The Toppy means that timers received from Ice can be out because the GMT offset is calculated from the broadcaster sent time.  Using Auto time on the Toppy means that you can miss recordings due to timing errors from the broadcaster.

It would be nice if the broadcasters could get their time right.  All they need is a GPS receiver for a time synch.

The first time it happened the time was out by about 10 minutes.
I realigned the time, but the problem persists.  It doesn't happen on every program, by there are ususlly 3 or 4 every week.

I can fix it by reselecting the program from the EPG. 

I am wondering if there an EPG timing error at the time the timers are sent out.

The main reason I want to get it sorted is that I will be going away for a month soon and I won't be around to check and fix the errors.

I am finding that lately Timers coming in from IceTV are using times that are different to those in the EPG
e.g.  The EPG says that a program is to start at 8:30 PM, but a check of the timer reveals that the recording is scheduled to start at 9:15 PM.

Note: I have been using the Manual Time setting on the PVR, as I have missed a few recordings due to the Auto Time being incorrect.

Any suggestions?