Tuning Issue with DISH and Hauppauge IR Blaster

[Severvip]

I've searched the forum for an answer to my problem, but didn't seem to find one, if I missed a thread that answered this I'm sorry.

My problem is the DISH receiver doesn't always change to the correct channel. I've read elsewhere that a USB-UIRT has no problems with this, but I can't afford a USB-UIRT at the moment so I'm sticking with my Hauppauge IR blaster.

When SageTV sends a signal to my DISH 311 using the IR Blaster, the DISH receiver doesn't always change to the correct channel. If I change the channel in SageTV to lets say 138, the DISH receiver won't receive the 1, so it will change to channel 38.

Now after the initial mess up, I can change the channel and it will receive the 1. It does this about every three hours. If I have things constantly recording at least within two hours of the last recording, I don't experience this problem. But if the next recording is more than 3 hours from the previous DISH will again miss the first number sent to it.

Now I've combated this problem by always setting a dumbie recording before the actual show I want recorded. But there has to be another solution.

[sic0048]

I believe it is because the STB goes to sleep and the original "1" in your example is awakening the STB and the "3" is the first thing it responds to.

Many of the Dish boxes have a menu option that allows you to turn off the sleep function.

If you cannot find it in the menus, search the forum for "Dish sleep" or something similar to find other similar experiences.

[wjohn]

Originally Posted by Severvip

My problem is the DISH receiver doesn't always change to the correct channel.

Someone at DishNet told me that besides the 3:00am shut down for update, the units also go to sleep after 4 hours of no activity. My 322 doesn't seem to exhibit the second problem (yet), but to fix the first, I programmed a daily timer on the Dish unit to tune to a channel at 4 in the morning. If this 4 hour thing shows up, I will program some additional timers as appropriate.

[Severvip]

I noticed that sleep was an issue awhile back, but the only way to draw it out of sleep was by hitting select on the DISH remote. I disabled sleep back then but it did nothing to solve my problem.

If I watch a show using SageTV that is longer than 3 hours, and then go to change the channel the DISH Receiver will miss the 1st number sent to it. I discovered this when watching Star Wars a couple weeks ago. When Star Wars ended I went to change the channel and the DISH Receiver didn't catch the 1st number. But the point is it didn't go to sleep.

[wjohn]

Originally Posted by Severvip

If I watch a show using SageTV that is longer than 3 hours, and then go to change the channel the DISH Receiver will miss the 1st number sent to it.

Someone on this forum (I think it was the moderator) mentioned there is a feature that allows to send a pre-command ahead of the actual channel change command. I could not find it, probably because I am still running version 5.4. A pre-command would solve all of those type of problems.

[paulbeers]

Rather than trying the timer option, just set your receiver not to do its 3AM updates automatically.....As soon as it completes its 3AM updates it will reset itself and be asleep. Turning off the auto updates fixed this problem for my 311's and 211.

[sic0048]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

Rather than trying the timer option, just set your receiver not to do its 3AM updates automatically.....As soon as it completes its 3AM updates it will reset itself and be asleep. Turning off the auto updates fixed this problem for my 311's and 211.

I have a 211 and have turned off the updates today. But the menu makes it sound like the STB will not be able to load the Program Guide information. Is this true and if so, how do you make sure the guide information is correct? Or is Dish just trying to scare you into keeping the updates turned on so they can push down firmware updates without any problems?

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by sic0048

I have a 211 and have turned off the updates today. But the menu makes it sound like the STB will not be able to load the Program Guide information. Is this true and if so, how do you make sure the guide information is correct? Or is Dish just trying to scare you into keeping the updates turned on so they can push down firmware updates without any problems?

Since I only have my 211 hooked to Sage, I don't even care what the guide states since Sage is in essence my guide. I can play tonight and see if it still loads the guide information. I do know that when Sage changes the channel, and I see the information at the top of the screen it does still say the show it is currently viewing. I just don't know about the guide.

[sic0048]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

Since I only have my 211 hooked to Sage, I don't even care what the guide states since Sage is in essence my guide. I can play tonight and see if it still loads the guide information. I do know that when Sage changes the channel, and I see the information at the top of the screen it does still say the show it is currently viewing. I just don't know about the guide.

That makes sense. I bet the EPG doesn't update on the 211 properly, but Sage uses another EPG so it wouldn't matter. I didn't check it this morning to see if the EPG was updated or not.

I guess I really need to let Sage handle all this anyway so I don't change the channel on the STB when the HD-PVR is trying to record something. If I do this in Sage, I'll get the popup alert. If I use the STB outside of Sage, I won't know if I'm screwing up a recording or not.

What I really need then is a 2nd HD-100 so I can watch live and recorded TV at the same time on different TVs. As it is, I really want to be able to watch the Dish STB and use the HD-100 to watch recorded shows on another TV. I can still do this with my setup (using a matrix switch), but I need to make sure I use Sage to change the channels which would be a little bit of a pain.

Oh well, whats another $200 right?

[Severvip]

Kind of getting away from my original topic; now again my problem isn't with DISH going to sleep, I turned the feature off a long time ago. I'm positive it's not going to sleep but the Infrared Receiver on the DISH must go to sleep or something, after three hours. I tested somethings last night, I tuned the channel to SciFi Live TV and watched the same station for four hours. After four hours everything appeared to still be on, DISH didn't enter a sleep cycle. But upon trying to change the channel, DISH again missed the first number.

Now somebody just mentioned in here about a pre-command if anyone knows how to get SageTV to send this please tell me, I've looked and I can't find it. I just need DISH to be primed I guess, because DISH misses the first number sent to it.

Now I tried messing around a little today and set some channel numbers to 4 digit physical numbers, that way SageTV will send 0116, and DISH should only miss the first number being 0, but still tune to my channel properly, being 116. I'll report on this tomorrow.

But in the mean time if anyone knows of the Pre-command, please help.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by sic0048

Oh well, whats another $200 right?

That's the spirit!

Actually yes, I would really recommend any STB hooked to Sage to only be used for Sage and not "live" viewing outside of Sage. You just never know when you might inadvertently change channels in the middle of a recording. I didn't have a chance last night to see if the guide was working or not on my 211.

[sic0048]

It appears that my guide was working still on the STB. But it could be for two reasons:

1) The guide surely downloads multiple days, so I may eventually reach a point where it doesn't show any current guide information because it is too far out of date.

2) It is possible that I ended up leaving the automatic updates on. I've been changing so many setting recently (both is Sage and the STB) trying to get my HD-PVR working that I may have turned the updates back on and simply forgotten. I did not check the STB update setting last night. However the EPG was working normally.