# 942 troubleshooting and tips thread



## Jon Spackman (Feb 7, 2005)

I thought it might be helpful to have a troubleshooting thread to help those who have any of the many avoidable causes of their issues:

Overheating: If you place the 942 inside unventilated cabinets, or stack gear on it; it will get very hot and reduce reliability. If you are placing your 942 or any Dish receiver in a cabinet with closed doors, you need to install a/some fan/s to blow air across the receiver. I use small computer fans (12v) and a simple 12v power supply (Radioshack has these). I have my fans blow 24/7 but if you want you could also get a thermostat switch to turn it on and off as cabinet temperature rises. Keeping the 942 cool is very helpful and helps to ensure reliable and stable operation.

Power problems: flaky power can cause reboots, shortened recordings, etc. The best way to make sure your 942 is feed with stable power is to connect it to a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) that has AVR (automatic voltage regulation). This will make sure the small power spike and drops of day to day life do not cause your 942 to reboot. It is a reasonably inexpensive way to prevent power related reboots. A side benefit is that if your power goes out for just a few minutes and you are currently recording a show at the time, you 942 will have the power to finish recording and not truncate your show!

Weak batteries: I know it sounds silly but weak batteries in the remote can make the unit less responsive and cause a lot of fustration to the user.

Weak Sat. signal: Always make sure the signal from the sky is as high as possible. Weak signal can cause you to miss portions of recording.

OTA signal quality: It seems that the OTA tuner is very sensitive to smooth 942 operation. If you live too close to the OTA towers in your area, using an attenuator to drop the signal has solved problems for several users. Also if you have a station that is flaky you might be better off deleting it and using the SD version for more reliable use.



Anyone have any other tips to add (I plan to elaborate on the first few with tips for cooling and power cleanup (UPS) when i have more time?



PLEASE DO NOT POST PROBLEMS IN THIS THREAD! THIS IS FOR ADVICE AND TIPS ONLY. IF YOU WANT TO POST A PROBLEM YOU NEED HELP WITH< START A NEW THREAD. THANK YOU


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## Jon Spackman (Feb 7, 2005)

I saw an interesting thing with my 942 the other night. The wife and I came home and turned on one of our 942's that was recording Grey's Anatomy via OTA and we tried to watch it but only had a black screen with sound ( I think there was sound maybe not). I left it alone and the next day (after the late night auto reboot) the recording was fine. 

So if you turn on your box and have a black screen, just reboot the 942 to restore it.


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## 921tiger (Feb 13, 2005)

During the Super Bowl, I was using my 942 to watch the 6-1 OTA HD digital stream from our local CBS affiliate, KOIN, here in Portland, OR.

Reception was a little rough at times--random pixelization, some picture stutter, etc. I have a line-of-sight view with the transmission towers about six miles away on Portland's West Hills so my signal strengths are near 100%

What corrected the issue for the remainder of the Super Bowl was to _hit "pause" for about ten seconds so that my viewing was from the 942's buffer instead of trying to view the program in real-time_. I'm guessing that there's a timing speed path between the reception of the OTA signal and what's sent out to the HDMI port. Viewing a more buffered version of the programming seems to alleviate the speed path.

Happy viewing!


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## RLMesq (Mar 9, 2003)

I get a whole lot of hard drive activity at night -- almost constantly. Since the 942 is in my bedroom (622 is in the theater room), it's pretty annoying. Any suggestions to quiet things down?


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## Jon Spackman (Feb 7, 2005)

I suppose you could build a "hushbox". basically get a cabinet (maybe with a glass door if you use the IR remote) and put it in there and cut a few holes in the back for cooling. Also place some kind of spacers about 1-2" under the 942 to help it cool better. This cabinet could be like a small enteratinment center. If you have a dvd player then that would be even more useful. Anyhow if you find something with a door that is not air tight it should work great to reduce the noise a lot without cooking the 942.

Jon


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