EPG; should timer be accurate ??

[shalimar]

Hi
I'am new,
would appreciate if someone would tell me what I should expect from my 3 year old Panasonic DMR EX85. I have its EPG on, all great and working.
I think I understand that the broadcaster puts a time instruction in; My machine picks this up and records to internal HD. the machine does this Fine,never misses. But sometimes out by 10 minutes or worse and if it starts earlier I miss the end.
As I only watch TV off the HD it results in loss of temper when I miss beginning or end.

Is this purely the broadcasters fault [as I beleive; BBC seems to be worst and I pay for that. Grr.. ] or is there anything I can do???

Ofcom and BBC make you dispair; they just think "damn the customer".

Thanks Shalimar

[Funkstar]

Or is it Panasonic's fault for not recording a few minutes before and after the program's designated times.

"Ofcom and BBC Panasonic make you dispair; they just think "damn the customer"."?

Just a thought.

[Funkstar]

I've been thinking about this a little more.

I suspect no one is really "at fault" if the program is off my that amount then there has really been an over or under run of another program that is causing the BBC (or any other channel) to shift their schedule to compensate. If your Panasonic is just using the already stored EPG it is not going to know about a last minute change in the schedule, it would need to use the EPG in combination with the Now and Next data that is also broadcast separately. Or constantly monitor the EPG to watch for any changes that might propagate down.

Then there is the method in which the Panasonic uses for storing which program is to be recorded. When you tell it to record something on BBC 1 at 21:00, it can either save the channel and time and just record that. Or it can remember the actual program that you wanted to record and record that when it is actually broadcast. I suspect is it doing the latter, just like an old VCR would.

Sky+ on the other hand uses a program ID method of recording so it actually knows what you program you want, not just the time slot and records that when it is broadcast. This is also how you can do whole series recording on Sky+ very easily. A series is given an ID by Sky and the box then knows when there is a new episode with the same ID. Invaluable for things like the Formula 1 or other sports that are on at different times, not every week, different lengths, and appear as different names in the program guide.

so in short no, I wouldn't be blaming the BBC or Ofcom (why Ofcom anyway? what do they have to do with it?).

[capt_cornflake]

Does the Panasonic not have an option somewhere to pad the recordings for (x) minutes at start/end?
The quality of the software on freeview PVRs is incredibly variable (a lot of them are pretty awful), and just because it's by a household name doesn't give you any gurantee. I'd be very surprised if any TV channel anywhere manages to stick to it's schedule rigidly 100%, so if the box doesn't work around that then I'd consider it not really up to purpose.

Sky+ on the other hand uses a program ID method of recording so it actually knows what you program you want, not just the time slot and records that when it is broadcast. This is also how you can do whole series recording on Sky+ very easily. A series is given an ID by Sky and the box then knows when there is a new episode with the same ID. Invaluable for things like the Formula 1 or other sports that are on at different times, not every week, different lengths, and appear as different names in the program guide.

Freeview has had a similar ID system since it was rebranded as Freeview Playback (and then again as Freeview+), and ti also includes an "Accurate" program start signal to indicate when the program actually starts (rather than when scheduled). The proiblems with this are though:
1) It's obviously only supported by newer boxes (and even then not always that well)
2) The quality of the data provided by the broadcasters is variable - BBC and CH4 are generally pretty good, but channel 5 in particular is notorious for regularly putting out rubbish data (e.g. duplicate episodes marked as different, incosistent series ID meaning that series searches will only pick up half the series, flagging all there programs on a particular days as Films) they claim it's permanently in "live test"), even though I assume they must be providing similar data to sky to use on their program guide...
And of course whether this is actually used is dependant on the box. I doubt a 3 year old box would support this unless there have been firmware updates to do this.

[Funkstar]

And of course whether this is actually used is dependant on the box. I doubt a 3 year old box would support this unless there have been firmware updates to do this.

Given how poor my parents Sony DVR is (which is a lot newer than the OPs) I wouldn't be surprised to hear the Panasonic unit ignores all this.