# ASK DBSTalk: Should I leave the 921 on this weekend?



## FarNorth (Nov 27, 2003)

I am posting this here since this forum gets the most 921 users. 

I am going to be, as Oprah says, 'totally out of town this weekend.' I have a number of timers set, all for sat recordings. Most are SD but at least one is HD. I can't get any OTA signals at all so that's not a factor. The last time I was gone, Memorial Day, the machine rebooted itself and no timers fired.

My question is, now that 185 has arrived:

1. Should I leave the unit on or off?


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

I'd leave it on if you had problems over Memorial day. But, if you're going to be gone longer than 4 days, you're running the risk of the timers not firing anyway without the reboot...


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## FarNorth (Nov 27, 2003)

Mark Lamutt said:


> I'd leave it on if you had problems over Memorial day. But, if you're going to be gone longer than 4 days, you're running the risk of the timers not firing anyway without the reboot...


I left the unit on. I had a bunch of timers set:

3 different timers for OLN/SD for the Tour de France.
1 for the ABC/SD for the IRL race.
1 for Speed/SD for the Formula One race.
1 for HDNet/HD for the OWRS race.
1 for Disc/HD for the Blue Angels.
1 for HDNetMovies.
1 for CBS/HD for 'Cold Case.'
1 for ?/HD for the Boston Pops July 4th.

EVERY SINGLE ONE FIRED AND RECORDED EXACTLY AS PLANNED. That's the way it should be!


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Glad to hear it.


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## paulcdavis (Jan 22, 2004)

On Monday I changed the PIP window position away from the default to see If I could deternine if my 921 was re-booting overnight. Two days later, with the unit in standy and no overnight timers, the PIP window has not moved back to the default position.

1. Does the L185 auto re-boot not reset the PIP position the way a power cord re-boot does?

2. Is there any other way to confirm that the re-boots are happening overnight other than waiting 10 days to see if the timers start to fail?


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

There's currently no other way that I know that you can tell if it reboots overnight. I tried that myself last week, and the PIP window was back in the default position after being in standby overnight. Not quite sure what to tell you, Paul. Try changing the PIP position and forcing the reboot yourself to see if the location changes.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

I have found the PIP position to be a 100% reliable indication of a reboot.


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## Jason (Aug 8, 2002)

paulcdavis said:


> Is there any other way to confirm that the re-boots are happening overnight other than waiting 10 days to see if the timers start to fail?


Every couple of days my timers will start to get out of order on the timer management screen. If you hit 'Menu', '7' you will see all of your timers that are set and it lists them in the order that they will fire. Last night, I noticed as usual that 5 or so timers that fired earlier in the day did not move down the list. They remained at the top of the list instead just like they usually did when it screwed up in the past.

I know for a fact that my 921 automatically rebooted last night because this morning all the timers were back in the correct firing order. The only way this was corrected in the past was to have to manually reboot my 921. So the automatic reboot in the new software update does indeed work.


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## paulcdavis (Jan 22, 2004)

Jason said:


> Every couple of days my timers will start to get out of order on the timer management screen. If you hit 'Menu', '7' you will see all of your timers that are set and it lists them in the order that they will fire. Last night, I noticed as usual that 5 or so timers that fired earlier in the day did not move down the list. They remained at the top of the list instead just like they usually did when it screwed up in the past.
> 
> I know for a fact that my 921 automatically rebooted last night because this morning all the timers were back in the correct firing order. The only way this was corrected in the past was to have to manually reboot my 921. So the automatic reboot in the new software update does indeed work.


Have you noticed if the PIP window has also moved back to default location (lower right corner) overnight? My timer order screen has stayed correct, but my PIP window has not repositioned itself since I moved it on Monday.


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## paulcdavis (Jan 22, 2004)

SimpleSimon said:


> I have found the PIP position to be a 100% reliable indication of a reboot.


Simon, can you verify for me that your PIP window is moving to default position every morning now?


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

paulcdavis said:


> Simon, can you verify for me that your PIP window is moving to default position every morning now?


Actually, I have not had an auto-reboot occur for a couple of days due to unrelated reasons, but PIP reset it's position when I just did a manual reboot.

Also, I am certain that PIP returned to default position the last time the box auto-rebooted.


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## paulcdavis (Jan 22, 2004)

Mark Lamutt said:


> There's currently no other way that I know that you can tell if it reboots overnight. I tried that myself last week, and the PIP window was back in the default position after being in standby overnight. Not quite sure what to tell you, Paul. Try changing the PIP position and forcing the reboot yourself to see if the location changes.


I waited a few more days to see if it would reboot on its own, but as of this morning (Friday), the PIP window had still not returned to default positon after 4 nights, so I manually rebooted which moved the PIP window back to the default position. I then changed the position and will check each morning to see if I'm getting overnight reboots.


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