Another DST fiasco coming up?

Al,

Unless the devices have a way for the user to configure the start and end of DST or a way of being "upgraded", that is exactly what will happen.

And since Congress decided to change when DST ends, the times will need to corrected in October and November as well.

And all based on 3 decades old data.

Your VCR may actually have that feature, just read the manual.

Most, but not all, PBS stations have the correct time in the vertical-blanking interval, and many VCR's utilize that information.

You just need to designate which channel is PBS (in the set-ups) for it to work.

...Jim Thompson

I manually adjusted my PC's time, but until I read your post, I hadn't even thought about my Win2K PC adjusting the time again in 3 weeks. I just unchecked the "Automatically adjust clock for daylight savings time" box, so I shouldn't have that problem.

-Dave Pollum

Got a ferinstance of a *device* that does this?

Even the most ancient of computer OSes which have a DST feature have patches available.

As Thompson noted, a VCR that auto-sets its time gets the data from the blanking interval.

I heard there is an interesting phenomena where folks who live on the edge of a DST/non-DST area change the channels on their VCR and have the clock change back & forth.

Yes, we realized that yesterday with our VCR. What a mess. If at least the technology would have the smarts to sponge the actual time off some info in the V-sync data packets but AFAIR that got botched pretty good.

Dave,

Check the following site for a Win2K fix that allows you to set when DST begins and ends? Worked great on mine.

Apparently some of the PBS channels broadcast not only this but also program information for all channels.

See the Hauppauge manual on how to configure and get this info on your computer. However the low ball TVs and VCRs in the US won't access this information.

I did. Our Panasonic Omnivision PV-7453 does not have that feature. Oh well, I'll just turn the DST flag to off and it won't auto-change anymore.

I'll have to say, that VCR stuff is one of the things that was more modern in Europe. At least in Germany. There, the remote had a built-in barcode reader. All the movies and pretty much any other important broadcast had a bar code next to it in the papers. Zzzip ... beep and it shows up in the little LCD. Check that you didn't accidentally scan the horror movie below it, hit "send", another beep and ... done. No need to give it an extra half hour in case so-and-so can't stop babbling or some soccer game went into overtime. Because then this bar code would be matched against a movie ID in the V-sync so the VCR won't start recording before that movie really shows up. Of course, if someone wanted to tape that soccer game this technology would make sure that it won't stop recording until the referee blew the whistle for the last time. And all this was 15 years ago.

I wish. And I'll never understand why they can't read time automatically. Why can't it just scan all channels and figure out which is PBS? In this day and age that ain't rocket science no more. Or pick up WWVB. Or whatever. In med electronics they expect a whole lot more creativity out of us consultants, and rightfully so.

Oddly, when I came in this morning, the WWV clock was still on last night's time, but all of the computers in my office had changed their clocks.

But Doze probably got it from home, and I've got the Linux boxen on NTPD. :-)

Cheers! Rich

Which is kind of strange, considering that the 15+ year old Blaupunkt VCR did that and our newer Panasonic doesn't. When I cleaned that Blaupunkt the inside sure looked like Panasonic to me.

My old Panasonic was so heavy it took two people to carry it.

...Jim Thompson

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

My last Sanyo is so small and light I can lift it with a little finger.

Hmm. I'm not sure how Windows works. But with systems that are DST-aware, I'd think that you'd want to change the DST start an end times and not actually monkey with the clock.

Unix systems actually track everything in UTC, which should never be bumped forwards or backwards. The timezone functions only serve to modify the displayed value of time.

From data transmitted in the blanking interval by the local station or network that is. For an example of how well they keep their clocks updated, I started scrolling through the HDTV program guides. The error in station times ranges from 17 minutes slow, through one hour off (those that haven't switched to DST) to 3 days slow. A few months ago, one of the stations displayed a date some time in May as I recall.

If you are counting on the station techs to keep their clocks up to date, good luck. You'd be better off with a VCR blinking "12:00". At least its right twice a day.

DTV broadcasts have this data (mostly).

Doesn't that bug you? My PC's are synced to NIST, yet the TV behind me will start a new program a good two minutes before the hour.

That's what I do. But then I don't use a VCR often enough to care. I started to tape a show the other day only to find that the transport mechanism had frozen up through disuse :-(

...Jim Thompson

Paul Hovnanian P.E. wrote:

This is not a user option in Windoze. You apply the available patches or you reset by hand. The only option is a tickbox for Use/Don't use DST.

I was under the impression that's how everybody does it.

I would sure hope so. Problem is, VCRs don't understand DTV and this whole digital TV is far off for people like us. When I checked a month ago there may be about three digital channels we could possibly receive unless multipath thwarts that. In contrast to a dozen+ analog stations.