Dealing with Daylight Saving when you are away

Started by Doddy, September 29, 2016, 11:24:21 PM

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Doddy

So I've been through daylight savings changes many times and used the various guides on the support site with success. Depending on what is scheduled, these tend to involve some resets, or manual edits to recording times, and a reset to daylight saving in the Time settings.

This year I leave on holidays on the Saturday morning that daylight savings starts and I'm away for 3 weeks. I have Saturday PM recordings I want to safeguard, as well as a few through the week (each week).

If I reset the Topfield 2400 to daylight saving time before I go, then I guess my Saturday PM recordings will be an hour out. 
If I don't take any action at all, then I guess my first week's recordings are also an hour out, but since I won't be setting the Time to daylight saving, can I expect the recordings sent after daylight savings start to also be an hour out?

Is there a strategy that can deal with the issue that involves no on-site intervention?  Or, since I do have someone (not tech savvy) housesitting for me, is there a simple step they may be able to perform - eg. delete all recordings, set to daylight savings, turn off/on, and I'll resend recordings from the web app?


Dave at IceTV

Hopefully one of the Topfield owners will reply with a definite answer.

Twice a year I experiment with manually adjusting the clock and reservations before the Sunday (with varying success). Different brand PVRs behave differently. Different model PVRs of each brand behave differently. Different firmware versions behave differently. The results are different between DST starting and DST ending. It really does my head in trying to work it out.

Some people with Topfield PVRs have said they did nothing before they left and when they returned home all their shows had recorded correctly while they were away. But that may only work in March, or only in October. Or maybe only for the first 5 days.

With the last few Topfield firmware versions (for the TMS models) the daylight saving setting seems to work fairly well and automatically adjusts the clock twice a year. So if you do nothing your worst case scenario is that your recordings for the first 5 days will be 1 hour out and all other recordings will be okay.

e.g. Recordings from this Sunday to Thursday the 6th may be an hour out but all recordings from Friday the 7th onwards would be correct.

To combat that you could manually edit the existing reservations for Sunday to Thursday on the Topfield to change their start time by an hour.

Or from the IceTV website (NOT from the Topfield) you could cancel the series of your shows that are on between Sunday and Thursday inclusive, then on Sunday morning or midday recreate those cancel series.

If you don't have a lot of simultaneous recordings you could do the KISS method. Edit the existing reservations that are currently on the Topfield to move their start time forward 1 hour AND extend the duration 2 hours. This works for March and September.
cheers

Dave
Customer Service

prl

Quote from: Dave at IceTV on September 30, 2016, 05:13:25 PM
... Different brand PVRs behave differently. Different model PVRs of each brand behave differently. Different firmware versions behave differently. The results are different between DST starting and DST ending. It really does my head in trying to work it out. ...
Reminds me a little of a cautionary tale I was once told about a program that only crashed, but always crashed, on Wednesdays.
Peter
Beyonwiz T4 in-use
Beyonwiz T2, T3, T4, U4 & V2 for testing

Doddy

Thanks Dave, champion answer.

I reckon I'll switch the recorder to Daylight Savings early,and make the below adjustment to the pre-existing recordings. That really is the magic maths I was trying to get my head around.

Quote from: Dave at IceTV on September 30, 2016, 05:13:25 PM
Edit the existing reservations that are currently on the Topfield to move their start time forward 1 hour AND extend the duration 2 hours. This works for March and September.


JPP

Over the past few years I have also found the procedure below to work every time on my Toppy 2400 for BOTH DLS changeovers. I have DLS setting set to ON on the Toppy. It correctly by itself switches over to the right time on the changeover. Using the July 2102 FW. Not tested it on later FW.

1) With Toppy OFF, disconnect the internet connection. (Pull out Ethernet connection or dongle)
2) Turn Toppy ON now and go to Set-up to disable ICETV
3) Now delete ALL timers on the Toppy
4) Next go to ICTV website (My Recorders) and select Resend all timers
5) Reconnect Internet connection to the Toppy
6) Finally, go to Set-up on the Toppy and enable ICETV

That's it. Nothing else is needed. Forget about all the paraphernalia wrt resetting, rescanning etc etc etc.
Phil.
Beyonwiz T2, DVDO Duo Video Processor

Dave at IceTV

#5
Quote from: JPP on October 02, 2016, 03:31:26 PM
Over the past few years I have also found the procedure below to work every time on my Toppy 2400 for BOTH DLS changeovers. I have DLS setting set to ON on the Toppy. It correctly by itself switches over to the right time on the changeover. Using the July 2102 FW. Not tested it on later FW.

1) With Toppy OFF, disconnect the internet connection. (Pull out Ethernet connection or dongle)
2) Turn Toppy ON now and go to Set-up to disable ICETV
3) Now delete ALL timers on the Toppy
4) Next go to ICTV website (My Recorders) and select Resend all timers
5) Reconnect Internet connection to the Toppy
6) Finally, go to Set-up on the Toppy and enable ICETV

That's it. Nothing else is needed. Forget about all the paraphernalia wrt resetting, rescanning etc etc etc.

Your simple 6 steps when I spell them out one button press per step becomes about 15 steps. And if I don't spell it out step by step some people won't be able to do it.

The various procedures over the years have always been to work around a few quirks in the Topfield PVR's behaviour.

1. Topfield PVRs store IceTV reservations in local time instead of UTC time.
2. When you delete a reservation off a Topfield it will not set that same reservation again when it is resent from IceTV.

Your procedure obviously gets around issue 2 without needing to delete all the channels (or do a factory reset as with old firmware). But I can't stop thinking that it could possibly be refined even more. Maybe skip steps 1 and 5. Or skip steps 2 and 6.

A daylight saving changeover isn't needed to test this as we're only testing for a way to delete existing reservations and then get the Topfield to accept setting the deleted reservations when they are resent from IceTV.
cheers

Dave
Customer Service

JPP

Yes, I agree that it can be simplified  :). But, just to be sure that the Toppy isn't talking to the ICTV server when you set it to disable ICETV, I have found it safer to disconnect the internet before doing anything else. I know that there is an immediate pull on power turn on, but it doesn't always get serviced immediately. Waiting for about 5 min should be safe and well in time before the 15min interval is up, but I have been caught out and lost a lot of my timers  :(.

So, if we keep Step 1 in (for safety sake), you then have to go all the way through the 6 steps.
Phil.
Beyonwiz T2, DVDO Duo Video Processor