Clock correction on Panny EH60D/ES20D

H

HelenS

Guest
...here's the solution! Apologies if anybody else has given this advice at the end of a long thread - I felt impulsively helpful. (Apologies if this posts twice, the interface went a bit odd on me).

Some of you Panasonic owners may have noticed, like me, that the EH60D or ES20D (and all other Panasonics plus many other makes) failed to notice the time change today, despite being on "auto set" for their clocks. This was because BBC's CEEFAX forgot to change until quite late in the day, and that's where most of the clocks are set from.

However, when CEEFAX did change, most of the models except ours corrected themselves. Ours stayed wrong, along with their EPGs. Even running auto setup for the whole recorder would not correct it - (i.e. as if you were just unpacking a freshly purchased unit and setting it up). What that does do, of course, is jumble up any alterations you'd made to channel order, and lose any profiles you'd set for the EPG. What to do?

The answer: don't do an auto setup; instead, go into functions, setup and disable "Quick Start" under "Others" by setting it to OFF. Switch off the recorder in the usual way with the remote. Wait several minutes and switch it back on. Incidentally that takes *ages* without Quick Start! The clock problem and the EPG then come right. Pop back into Functions and set Quick Start back to ON.

The act of switching off Quick Start temporarily empties the machine's cache, where it was tenaciously hanging on to its wrong-timed EPG and setting the clock from that. Obviously after it's switched on it needs to download all of the new EPG, which takes some minutes - just leave it on a Freeview channel and it should make it.

I hope that helps someone. This step should be useful for getting the EPG updated with the new Sky channel replacing Sky Travel too, as the Panasonic EPG does tend to resist such changes due to its cached nature.
 
I wonder if the problem here isnt just a bit of semantics?

My Pioneer DVR did not 'automatically' change the time. But when I went into setup to change the time, I have two options AUTO and MANUAL.

AUTO will set the time up automatically when I select it and MANUAL will allow me to set the time up if I select that instead .

So AUTO and MANUAL refer, in my case, to the method of acquisition of the time.

I selected AUTO and it went to Channel 2 in my case, and hopla, time was set automatically. :)
 
Thanks HelenS, that did the trick, nothing else had worked, it steadfastly refused to keep to the proper time before, always going back forward an hour automatically - it doesn't now :)

Shame the BBC incompentence forced us into such a move though, how could they screw up such a basic thing :(

Thanks again
 
denbighG said:
I wonder if the problem here isnt just a bit of semantics?

My Pioneer DVR did not 'automatically' change the time. But when I went into setup to change the time, I have two options AUTO and MANUAL.

AUTO will set the time up automatically when I select it and MANUAL will allow me to set the time up if I select that instead .

So AUTO and MANUAL refer, in my case, to the method of acquisition of the time.

I selected AUTO and it went to Channel 2 in my case, and hopla, time was set automatically. :)
This doesn't work on the EH60D, I just tried it (yet again!). The solution that HelenS posted above works a treat however. I'm not sure whether it's a flaw in the Panasonic software or what, but it's a bit of a farce having to go through this sort of rigmarole to correct the time when it should be done without any intervention at all. What about all the thousands of Panasonic owners out who don't read these forums?

Thanks again HelenS :thumbsup:, your fix worked a treat, despite the combined incompetence of Panasonic and the BBC failing to correct the time on my recorder all day!
 
Hi

My Pioneer DVR did not 'automatically' change the time. But when I went into setup to change the time, I have two options AUTO and MANUAL.

Both my Pioneer recorders (different models) reset themselves to the correct time, once the BBC had corrected the Ceefax time of course, without any intervention, and have always changed automatically prior to this for the clock change.

Of course it may be possible the Pioneer's only check once an hour or so to synchronise the time so it could look like it hadn't, but would have caught up eventually. Also I have a feeling the auto clock setting is deactivated if you have power save settings set, as in those cases in standby the tuner is powered down, and so the recorder would not be able to sync to the correct time until turned on later and tuned to the channel you have set for it to sync against.

Maybe this is same thing with Panasonic recorders?

Regards

Philip
 
Thanks HelenS at last my DMR-ES20D has the correct time in the display thanks to your fix.

Cheers Graham
 
denbighG said:
I wonder if the problem here isnt just a bit of semantics?

My Pioneer DVR did not 'automatically' change the time. But when I went into setup to change the time, I have two options AUTO and MANUAL.

AUTO will set the time up automatically when I select it and MANUAL will allow me to set the time up if I select that instead .

So AUTO and MANUAL refer, in my case, to the method of acquisition of the time.

I selected AUTO and it went to Channel 2 in my case, and hopla, time was set automatically. :)

Glad to have helped some folks, by the way.

DenbighG: no, this isn't just a case of semantics, but a specific issue with the two new Freeview-equipped Panasonics. Older, non-Freeview Pannys (I also have one) and very likely the current non-Freeview ones too like the EH50, act pretty much like your Pioneer. All the Pannies, including the EH60D and ES20D I mentioned, have an auto and manual option for clock setting, and setting to auto specifically runs the auto clock set routine. It also checks its source every few minutes, I believe. The source itself can't be changed. Analogue Pannies use BBC Ceefax as the source - so once that was corrected, they were too, soon after. Or of course there was also the option of manually setting it and leaving it that way until the matter was sorted.

However, for the EH60D and ES20D, it turns out that they seem to auto-set their clocks from the Freeview EPG, which remained an hour "fast" due to the caching nature of the Panasonic Quick Start system. One could manually set the clock to correct it, but the EPG was still wrong, slightly concerning since Freeview programming is typically done via the EPG (though it doesn't HAVE to be) - still, confusing not to have the clock and EPG "in sync". Leaving both as they were (both clock and EPG an hour fast) was an option, but there was the concern: what happens to a timer event if one auto-corrects before the other?

This turns out to have been a slight glitch in the firmware, perhaps understandable since these models were launched well after the last time change. Hopefully an update will remove it ready for next time, but we now have a relatively simple solution (disable Quick Start for a few minutes, then reinstate it) which only requires the machine to reload a fresh EPG afterwards - transforming this problem from a bit of a worry to a mere annoyance. Quick Start is otherwise very useful, allowing the recorder to begin recording in about a second, from standby.
 
jut checked this morning and the clock and epg on my ES20 is still wrong, thought I would at least allow the overnght update a chance to correct the issue - so i'm off to try the fix above

EDIT:
Perfect, thank you so much for posting that advice, works a treat now.
wow, i cant understand how poor some software is these days.....
 
etaf said:
jut checked this morning and the clock and epg on my ES20 is still wrong, thought I would at least allow the overnght update a chance to correct the issue - so i'm off to try the fix above

EDIT:
Perfect, thank you so much for posting that advice, works a treat now.
wow, i cant understand how poor some software is these days.....

Thanks for that - I had wondered what would happen with the overnight update of the EPG, but suspected it might hold onto the wrong time. As firmware glitches go, though, it's not too bad a one as there is a decent fix for it (once I found it!).

Helen
 
Yes, Thanks Helen.
Just saw your post before Creature Comforts started last night, and managed to record it manually. Saved me some ear-ache off the littl'n.
 
I have a Panasonic DMR-E55 and Sony VTX-D800U Freeview box. The Panasonic will not set it's clock automatically unless an aerial lead from the Sony box is plugged into the Panasonic. It's not really an issue but as I never use the analogue signal it seems a bit odd to have an aerial connection just for the time signal alone. Obviously all other connections are via scarts.
Is this a problem with the recorder or/and the Freeview box? What will happen in the far distant future when the analogue signal is switched off?
 
Hi Helen,

Just read your original post re the clock reset on the EH60, and shot into the lounge to find ............. it's reset itself correctly! Was that because it's happened sometime during the day, 'cos I didn't check it at all yesterday?

Or have I got a weird (but good!) recorder!!

Cheers Jerry
 

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