...I've heard so many people say that it is critical to turn off your receivers at night if you want to get the latest software downloads and that leaving a tuner on at night prevents the software from being downloaded. By turning off I mean powering off the tuner so that the lights are off on the receiver. Is this true?
Let me try to make sense of this.
IF you have a single tuner receiver (DVR or not) especially an older receiver like a 501, 301, etc, the receiver must be in the standby mode to receive any updates.
Why? Because the receiver must "tune in" to the channel spooling the update to get it. If the receiver is on another channel, it cannot change channels to get the update.
IF you have a dual tuner receiver you do not need to have it in the standby mode. Why? Because there is usually a tuner available to switch to the correct channel for the download.
IF you have a dual tuner DVR, it will reboot at the selected time or after a recording is scheduled even if you leave it on. The nightly reboot is NOT the software check. It is just a reboot to prevent your receiver from acting flaky. When it restarts it will check for software also, but it checks for software whether or not you let it reboot.
If a dual tuner receiver has two recordings going on during the time that it would normally check for an update, it will wait until the recordings are over before it checks. If both tuners are occupied long enough after the scheduled time, it may just delay the check for 24 hours.
See ya
Tony