New Daylight Savings law might cause some recorder problems

August 10, 2005

I'm a big fan
of Daylight Savings, anytime we can get more hours of sunlight the better. I was
rather pleased when a new energy bill was presented that gave us here in the
U.S. 4 more weeks by starting Daylight Savings 3 weeks sooner and having it last
a week longer. But I don't think so fast and now I see an article that wonders what the impact will be on our electronic devices that have the old Daylight Savings settings inside. The result could mean among other things, that your recorder will be an hour late for your show. The new law takes effect in 2007 so we have some time to ponder this situation.

"It is unfortunately going to add a little bit of complexity to consumers," said Reid Sullivan, vice president of the entertainment group at Panasonic Consumer Electronics Co. "In some cases, depending on the product, they may have to manually increase or decrease the time."
The upcoming transition evokes memories of Y2K, the year 2000 rollover that forced programmers to adjust software and other systems that, relying on two digits for the year, never took the 21st century into account.
"It wouldn't be a societywide catastrophe, but there would be a problem if nothing's done about it or we try to move too quickly," said Dave Thewlis, executive director of a group that promotes standards for calendar software.
Adding to the complications is the fact that many computer programs now treat U.S. and Canadian time zones as the same. If Canada doesn't adopt the new dates, too, Windows, calendars and other software would have to learn additional zones.
The daylight-saving transition will be at most a mini-Y2K, with the impact of any failure far less reaching.
"We're looking only at a one-hour difference versus setting back (the clock) 99 years," said Randall Palm of the Computing Technology Industry Association.

Ahhh, man made inventions can be a bit trying at times. I think I'm safe with my TiVo and we can be sure that Microsoft, Mac and Linux etc., will provide us an update for our computers. But this is a bit of a mess when you start tinkering with time.

Source: Inside Bay Area