As the (maybe not so) proud owner and defender of Zenwells everywhere, I can say with minor authority, you've been Punked, shafted and all those other unpleasant things.
I own four 970As and one newer 950A. All five have displayed the same problem and the only thing that I know for sure is... Periodically, one will mangle its programming by either (1) changing the requested channel to be recorded to THE HIGHEST CHANNEL NUMBER SCANNED AND STORED or (2) totally blanking out the requested channel number/call sign and of course not tuning to anything.
Since the start of this year, I have had no timing issues with any of the five. I would like to think this is because there is now some sort of stability in the local
DTV channel broadcast frequencies. They played musical chairs during most of last year and through June this year (2009). According to Wikipedia and
FCC filings, more than one local channel is still using temporary facilities (and frequencies).
Anyway, I check the stored programming the day before an event and ALWAYS use the remote "EXIT" button rather than "MENU" to back out of any setting change or review. Either I have found the answer or the gods have smiled down on me. In any case, I have had neither of the two problems listed above since... I don't recall when.
crashmore
Zinwell ZAT970A-timer channel drift
Linear Mode
