End of Daylight Saving Time screws up record times!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ronzie009]

All of the record times of the shows scheduled to record in Replay AV 8.83 are now one hour too early! The clock on my computer is correct, it's the times in the schedule that have all changed! Is there any way to fix this without having to go in and do it manually, as I have a LOT of shows scheduled?

[Cheryl Wester]

I'm sorry you are having this issue. A lot of times it is due to different countries changing times at different times or not changing at all. The only way to corrrect this is to manually change the times.

[Cammo]

HA! It happened to me too, several times, pretty darn irritating! Can't understand why the schedule would ever be touched...

[Goattee]

I have been using Replay A/V for about 10 years. I have found this problem to be consistent at every change to and away from daylight saving time (DST). And when I reported it, Applian support has insisted they have never heard of any such problem. It has nothing to do with some country implementing an odd schedule because this has happened after updating the current version of Windows with patches and fixes for time changes. And my machine is in the US, not upper Slobovia. It has happened whether I kept a couple different machines running before and after the time change (on a US machine). Or turned them off before the change and then on again after the change. In either case, Windows correctly changed the system time. But Replay A/V doesn't seem to properly respond.

My guess: the software internally uses UTC (or GMT) for internal notation. (So it would not be "hard coding" the times you put in when running its internal timer events.) This is a legitimate way to program time-based events. But because Replay A/V does not know anything about time changes it just displays (incorrect word) handles (correct word) the scheduled times as offsets from GMT as of the first time the user inputs stop and start times. So if the time change happens, Replay slides off the ABSOLUTE LOCAL TIME we originally programmed in.


Less Desirable Solution: Manual user data input
I suppose Replay A/V should have some kind of feature allowing the user to specify:

the date/time for start of daylight savings time
the date time for end of daylight savings time
the local time zone relative to GMT

More Desirable Solution: Transparent sync with Windows
Replay A/V needs a better way to synchronize the time zone information that Windows maintains. After all (and unfortunately), Replay A/V is not a cross-platform product. So Applian really would have no reason not to better integrate with Windows time zone information. This would entail noting the OS information for your local time zone when you first install Replay A/V. It could optionally ask you to confirm that you are operating in that time zone. And then the internal GMT information could check at least every day to confirm whether Windows has changed the clock. (Perhaps asking the user what time or times to perform that check. US users would specify 2:00am (or 2:01am). Maybe the Windows API sends out a DST alert but Replay A/V was never programmed to catch the alert and process it accordingly.

[Cheryl Wester]

The developers do read this. Thanks for the input.

[JohnA]

I have all your software, love it, and use it daily.

That being said, why not just admit you have a real problem with the daylight savings time changes? It's FUBAR.
You have to monkey around with every timed show to get it to reset. Sometimes it takes several tries to get it to correct when it keeps going back to the wrong time.

If it's an unsolvable problem, just say so. It's irritating to be told "nothing to see here - move on." Obviously there's a problem when people post.

Again, your software's great - the disingenuous answer isn't.

[Cheryl Wester]

Not everyone does have this issue. As an example on all of my systems the schedule stayed where it was supposed to. The issue, in some cases, is that people don't have the clock set for daylight on the computer, on others it is due to different locations changing to daylight on different dates, on others it just happens. We are aware that it does happen in some cases and I'm sorry it is happening to you. A suggestion is to make a backup copy of your schedule8.dat file in the event it does happen to you again. Thanks.

[CharlieSummers]

I suspect, and this is anecdotal only, that the problem occurs when the computer is on and Replay A/V is running at the moment of time change. Having the schedule run off by an hour happened to me every time daylight savings time came or went, until last fall; I didn't have to adjust any of my schedules, and wondered if it was because the machine had been shut down overnight (something rare for my audio recording machine, which pretty much runs 24/7).

So this past weekend, I made sure I shut the computer down Saturday evening, and sure enough when I started it up this morning all of the schedules were fine; nothing needed to be changed at all.

I have no evidence other than my own experience over only two time changes, so as always YMMV - for all I know it was gremlins preventing the schedules going hinky. I also don't know what would happen should I recover a pre-DST Schedule8.dat file to now, so bet'cha I made another backup this afternoon to be safe.

[Flat_Timmy]

I've seen this as well. But it doesn't happen to all of my programs. It just happens (but not always) when I change one of my existing programs to another time. I'll set it to run from 6-7. When I save it and go back to main screen, I notice that it shows the next scheduled show is 7-8. I haven't noticed whether this happens around the beginning or end of the old or new DST.