# Official: Black/Grey/Blank Recording Data Submission



## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

Recordings on the DVR that fail to playback, for what ever reason...
Are obviously one of the worst things that can happen for a DVR.

It is also one of the most difficult to track from a bug/issue point of view.
It is also one of the most difficult to identify the cause/reason for, because that data gathering is difficult.

So... Similar to the Signal Strength tracking... I have created a targetted data collection page, to gather the information about the "blank" recordings.

If you have a blank/bad recording, please report it here:

http://www.iamanedgecutter.com/Projects/BGRecordings

All the data that is received will be shared with DirecTV.
You do not have to add your user name, or email address if you don't want to... but it is recommend in case DirecTV wants to get more information from you.

Please report each recording individually, and report everyone that you have.

This is for all DVR+ systems, TiVos and UltimateTV are not included in this datacollection.


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## Indiana627 (Nov 18, 2005)

There's no guide data changes that D* made that coincides with the time frame of when all these black/grey/blank recordings started? Seems logical to start looking for the problem there. If there's no change that D* made and all of these problem recordings are just happening on their own, then that's really scary.


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## Greg Alsobrook (Apr 2, 2007)

wow... very nice page earl...


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## Lee L (Aug 15, 2002)

Earl and DirecTV, thanks for this. :icon_cool

FYI, I entered some data and there is some weird logic on the last few questions.

Y ou cannot have an answer in "If program is still recording, can this program be viewed live by tuning the channel?" and also have an answer in "After a reboot, is the recording still in the playlist?" .

Also, teh last question is greyed out all the time for me.


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## jgriffin7 (Feb 16, 2007)

Thanks, Earl. You have no idea how much better this makes me feel knowing that something is being done about it!


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## JambaJuice (Oct 13, 2006)

This ticked me off too. I had Grey's and Lost going along with The Office and something else going on after that. I went to watch Lost and I couldnt do it, but I could watch it live- it was half way over........

All the symptoms were there. Couldnt wtch it from list it was a grey screen and I could rewind it a few minutes but not past about 5 minutes or it would freeze up. 
Went to watch grey's and it was grey screen.

I am testing this out now by recording two HD proms in the next hour or so on channels that neither tuner is currently on. I'll check later today to see what happens. Then I have two different things ready to record later tonight on the locals to test that out.

I hope ths fix this bug, its the first time I hae noticed it did this. I filled out Earl's form and hope that helps.


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## Annihilator31 (Nov 21, 2006)

This has been happening to me alot. Differant shows differant channels differant time slots. Still random blank black screen recorded.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

any idea on an ETA for this... I mean, it's a pretty recent occurrence... Was it happening since the latest National Release? I don't recall this happening the past 6 months as much as it has happened the past 7-10 days? Can't DirecTV roll back the software version? 

Is it limited to HD?

Regardless, the inability of this DVR to perform its most basic function is troubling to put it mildly.


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## Throckmorton (Dec 7, 2007)

I was getting this a lot but it seemed to clear up with the early February NR that went to both my HR-20 and 21. It remained gone on my HR-21 with 0x221 but is back now.

Nice giant step backward!

I was actually beginning to trust these DVRs and not record everything on both of them just so I could be sure to have one decent recording. But as soon as you trust them the start dropping shows again.

Nice.


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## richlife (Dec 4, 2006)

Thanks, Earl and DirecTV. This should help. I'd suggest the first question have an NA or DNT (Did Not Test) added -- maybe others should also. The NA on the last question was greayed out and would have been the right option for my submission just now.

We've been having repeated incidents of black recordings on our HR20-700 across all tested CEs and NRs including 22b (intermitant black recording on CBS Evening News -- as reported) and on our HR21-700 (consistent on Lost across all tested CEs and NRs, but not tested with 22b as Lost got dropped off the Series Link list (more than 50). Strangely, no other shows seem to be affected.


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## mlisowski (Feb 3, 2007)

Tried to go to your link and got an "address not found". Anyway, here's hoping that this gets fixed. I have had no problems over two years with my HR20-700 but these last couple of weeks have been bad missing "The Office" & "30 Rock" and then "Lost".


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## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

richlife said:


> Thanks, Earl and DirecTV. This should help. I'd suggest the first question have an NA or DNT (Did Not Test) added -- maybe others should also. The NA on the last question was greayed out and would have been the right option for my submission just now.
> 
> We've been having repeated incidents of black recordings on our HR20-700 across all tested CEs and NRs including 22b (intermitant black recording on CBS Evening News -- as reported) and on our HR21-700 (consistent on Lost across all tested CEs and NRs, but not tested with 22b as Lost got dropped off the Series Link list (more than 50). Strangely, no other shows seem to be affected.


Why would the first question need an NA?

Either it showed up or it didn't, when you played back the recording?

As for the last question, being greyed out... N/A gets selected, and is greyed out when you answer that the recording was not there when you replayed it.


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## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

mlisowski said:


> Tried to go to your link and got an "address not found". Anyway, here's hoping that this gets fixed. I have had no problems over two years with my HR20-700 but these last couple of weeks have been bad missing "The Office" & "30 Rock" and then "Lost".


Check your DNS... and make sure you are getting a resolution for www.iamanedgecutter.com

I just checked, and it is there.


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## richlife (Dec 4, 2006)

Earl Bonovich said:


> Why would the first question need an NA?
> 
> Either it showed up or it didn't, when you played back the recording?
> 
> ...


Earl, Since the first question is: "If the Access Card is removed and reinserted, is the program playable?" and I never thought to remove the Access Card (and I'm not sure I would want to -- why would I want to?), it seems appropriate that an option for NA (or something) should exist. That's all.


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## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

richlife said:


> Earl, Since the first question is: "If the Access Card is removed and reinserted, is the program playable?" and I never thought to remove the Access Card (and I'm not sure I would want to -- why would I want to?), it seems appropriate that an option for NA (or something) should exist. That's all.


Ah... you mean the first test section, first question... not the first question overall.


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## btmoore (Aug 28, 2006)

For those experiencing Unwatchable aka black or gray recording, or IKD (instant Keep or Delete) and 771 bugs Check out this thread and post.



rainor said:


> I have a HR20 and I also started experiening random errors on some specific channels and the issue was related to a SW download. I actually received a call from Directv from the support center proactively - I did not call in, they called me.
> 
> I spoke to the guy and he informed me there is an issue and walked me through how to fix the problem and I can confirm this DID fix the issue.
> 
> ...


The poster claims he was contacted by D* and that the HR2x gets confused about what kind of dish it has leading to odd behavior causing 771 bugs that come and go. I am also convinced that the 771 bug is what causes IKD and Unwatchable bugs. It might be worth wild reseting your dish configuration to the 5lnb dish again just to see if it helps.

I did it to mine, but right now I am seeing about 1 IKD or unwatchable a week so it will be hard to tell if this is a true fix.

Best of luck


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## alleybj (Sep 29, 2007)

I have to say, I'm reasonably sophisticated in things dvr, and I get a lot of grey recordings, but I couldn't understand a lot of the questions on the form and got too frustrated to complete the form; is it really necessary to use all of those abbreviations? I would imagine I'm not the only one with grey recordings that can't complet that form thanks


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

Folks,

The data entry @ iamanedgecutter.com is the best avenue for communicating the Black/Grey/Blank Recording issues to DIRECTV. It is important to fill out as much information as possible, including the line about removing and reinserting the access card. The more information you provide .. the better for all.


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## bbreal (May 3, 2008)

Re: reset 5 LNB instructions:


I have had all of these variations and it did start only a couple of weeks ago. I will try this fix and report back to the group.

Thank you.


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## Fontano (Feb 7, 2008)

alleybj said:


> I have to say, I'm reasonably sophisticated in things dvr, and I get a lot of grey recordings, but I couldn't understand a lot of the questions on the form and got too frustrated to complete the form; is it really necessary to use all of those abbreviations? I would imagine I'm not the only one with grey recordings that can't complet that form thanks


The abbriviations are the pretty much standard ones used in this enviornment
SWM - Single Wire Multiswitch; If you are using it, then you will know what it means; you probably are not.
OTA - Over the Air
DoD - DirecTV On Demand
HD - High Definition
SD - Standard Definition
DVR - Digital Video Recorder
FF - Fast Forward
NA - Not Applicable


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## cody21 (Sep 26, 2007)

This was my 1st occurrence of a BLANK recording (Desparate Housewives last Sunday night - on 0x22b) .... sucked. I entered my details in that link you provided. Thanks !!


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## AlexCF (Oct 14, 2006)

Interesting that someone mentioned Lost, I had a blank recording of ER at the same time, but my Lost recording is fine. I lucked out.

I'm disappointed that DirecTV isn't doing this sort of data collection itself. It's their business, they should be more active in making sure it works. I did get a call the other day from them though saying that my unit was complaining that it was having signal strength problems. Perhaps they're trying to be more proactive.

They should think about adding a "report a problem with this recording" option right on the HR20, even if only for a small subset of their subscribers. It could ask right on screen what's wrong with it and record some diagnostic data from the unit.


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

AlexCF .. I'd sure hate for this "Issue submission" feature on the HR20 to cause the other functions to stop working properly. Probably best to keep the observations in a separate place.

DIRECTV is actively looking at the data from the iamanedgecutter site. It is VERY important that you (1) fill out all of the information requested and that you (2) fill out all of the information that is requested. The more reports that are noted, the faster we reach the goal.

Due to the nature of forums, it's tough to get the proper diagnostic data sometimes. The submission site is the place that will be most effective.


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## AlexCF (Oct 14, 2006)

Doug Brott said:


> AlexCF .. I'd sure hate for this "Issue submission" feature on the HR20 to cause the other functions to stop working properly. Probably best to keep the observations in a separate place.


Wow. And I thought I was cynical. :lol:


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

AlexCF said:


> Wow. And I thought I was cynical. :lol:


:grin:


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## -V- (Nov 30, 2007)

alleybj said:


> I have to say, I'm reasonably sophisticated in things dvr, and I get a lot of grey recordings, but I couldn't understand a lot of the questions on the form and got too frustrated to complete the form; is it really necessary to use all of those abbreviations? I would imagine I'm not the only one with grey recordings that can't complet that form thanks


You and me brother...

SWM?


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## jfm (Nov 29, 2006)

Doug Brott said:


> Folks,
> 
> The data entry @ iamanedgecutter.com is the best avenue for communicating the Black/Grey/Blank Recording issues to DIRECTV. It is important to fill out as much information as possible, including the line about removing and reinserting the access card. The more information you provide .. the better for all.


You guys are doing great work. However, as it stands now, the poll will be providing erroneous info for the line about removing and reinserting the access card. From the posts, some of us had already deleted the recording prior to finding this thread, and therefore didn't try removing the Access Card. I left the answer No, but this is misleading since I didn't remove the card. I provided this information in the comments section of the form, but it would help to add a "did not test" option for this question.


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## cody21 (Sep 26, 2007)

ditto


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## -V- (Nov 30, 2007)

When this problem occurs for me I often find that the #2 tuner lost its connection to the satellite dish. Reseting the DVR fixes my problem. Obviously the recording is blank and will never come back since it recorded dead air.

The connector to the DVR is tight. It seems to be a problem where my DVR just stops receiving data on the #2 cable. I don't think it is a cable issue, but rather, I think it is an issue with the tuner inside the DVR.


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## inzane (Oct 26, 2006)

for me it seems to happen when 2 things are recording at the same time, and it's always ABC7 HD in NY that records blanks


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## n-spring (Mar 6, 2007)

-V- said:


> You and me brother...
> 
> SWM?


See post #20.


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## iotp (Aug 13, 2007)

Ok, this is what I am getting.

Wife records a 2 hour dateline program on NBC. Hit's play, then says delete program?

Its like its never recorded.

what gives?


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## larrydavid (Sep 12, 2007)

i was gone on vacation this week. come home to find everything recorded while i was gone,"the bachelor", "30 rock", "ugly betty", "lost" and 4 episodes of "late night with conan o' brien", all of them wont play and just get the "do you want to delete" message. thanks a lot, directv.


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## GBFAN (Nov 13, 2006)

TOP CHEF Chicago BravoHD 5/7/2008 9:00 PM. Black recording for 1 Hour. I could FF, RW whatever but the show was black. HR20-700 022b


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

awesome. another blank recording. This time is was with one channel in HD and the other was SD. The HD showed up fine and the SD did not. Unluckily for me, it was one of my wife's favorite shows. 

I'm beginning to HATE this thing.


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## mrshermanoaks (Aug 27, 2006)

two in a row tonight: Bones and House on Fox 11 LA - both grey.

I want the $2 that it's going to cost to buy the Bones episode from iTunes.


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## ironwood (Sep 20, 2007)

inzane said:


> for me it seems to happen when 2 things are recording at the same time, and it's always ABC7 HD in NY that records blanks


Did you try to record ABC by itself only recording on one tuner?


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## mcl (Aug 17, 2006)

For me, it always seems to be CBS, and always some show at 10pm (and it doesn't matter if anything's being recorded on the other tuner when it happens to me).

I was hoping the problem had disappeared after I did DELETEARCHIVE, and then got 0x22D, but I guess it's back. *sigh*


EDIT: last night, it was NBC (the season finale of Law & Order: SVU), but once again, it was a LIL, and it was a 10pm show.

Even worse, NBC doesn't stream Law and Order: SVU from their website, and full episodes aren't available on hulu.com.


It'd be nice if the developers stopped playing with media sharing unless and until the core functionality of the firmware is once again working. I notice that the greyscreen recording problem is still present in the latest CE release. That's not very encouraging.


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## gp4rts (Aug 19, 2006)

CSI-NY tonight: We record this program but start watching the recording before the program is over. Recording was blank. Went to the live feed, and hoped to go back in the live buffer to pick up the beginning of the program. The timeline indicated that there was recording in the buffer (orange bar going back about 15 min), and we could reverse into that buffer. However, what was in the buffer was a frozen image for the extent of the buffer (not a blank screen). We could watch live from the current time in the program to almost the end, but the image froze about 1 min before the end of the program. I will try to get the relevant information and report this on the site indicated in the first post

HR-20, recording the LIL from D* (not OTA).


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## Lee L (Aug 15, 2002)

Make sure you actually log this at the above site.


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## bbreal (May 3, 2008)

Using Bitmoore's info from 5-6-08 I have gone 9 days with no blank recodings on my R20-700. I was having them every other day at least. No more "do you want to delete" as soon as I play either. Try it if you haven't!!

BBREAL


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## btmoore (Aug 28, 2006)

bbreal said:


> Using Bitmoore's info from 5-6-08 I have gone 9 days with no blank recodings on my R20-700. I was having them every other day at least. No more "do you want to delete" as soon as I play either. Try it if you haven't!!
> 
> BBREAL


Same here, I have gone ~ 2 weeks now with no unwatchables or IKDs since I did the re running of the dish setup. Knowing the history of the HR2X and the nature of some of these bugs, don't think I would call it a fix until I have a few months of solid operation with no IKD, 771 or unwatchable bugs. I would recommend anyone with the issue, try the dish setup reset to see if they have positive results.


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## bbreal (May 3, 2008)

btmoore said:


> Same here, I have gone ~ 2 weeks now with no unwatchables or IKDs since I did the re running of the dish setup. Knowing the history of the HR2X and the nature of some of these bugs, don't think I would call it a fix until I have a few months of solid operation with no IKD, 771 or unwatchable bugs. I would recommend anyone with the issue, try the dish setup reset to see if they have positive results.


thanks for posting this, even if not completely fixed, its a big improvement


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## sammib (Jun 13, 2007)

inzane said:


> for me it seems to happen when 2 things are recording at the same time, and it's always ABC7 HD in NY that records blanks


My issue also. Two shows recording at the same time and one is OK and the other one blank. And here is another kicker. My wife and I each have an HR20-700 working off the same 5 LMB dish, and she is not having the blank issue, but I am.


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## gp4rts (Aug 19, 2006)

inzane said:


> for me it seems to happen when 2 things are recording at the same time, and it's always ABC7 HD in NY that records blanks


I had black-screen recording on ABC with only one thing being recorded at the time.


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## SeptemberBaby (Jul 8, 2005)

No Boston Legal for me last night.  
And no BL available on ABC.com either.
I hope I can get it on Itunes.

ETA: Nope.. not available on Itunes.


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## ajc68 (Jan 23, 2008)

It figures, I give my two HR20-700's good reviews and then I get dumped on. I've had both units for over a year with no major problems until now. It started happening right after the 0x22d update last Wednesday (5/7). 

The next day (5/8) LOST recorded blank. Then on Tuesday (5/13) American Idol was blank. I tried watching it from the beginning at the halfway point live. It was not recording on the primary tuner as I was watching the basketball playoffs. Once I physically changed the channel to FOX it started recording picture and sound at that point. 

The same thing happened tonight with LOST (5/15) that happened with AI. I've never had any 771 issues and I wasn't taping two shows at once. The available space with the original hard drive was aprx 8% on (5/7) and about 18% tonight. Btw, I'm recording from the Los Angels locals ABC 7 and FOX 11.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

I finally had a Thursday night without blank recordings after 3-4 weeks in a row of problems. I switched my Season Pass items over to OTA and they recorded without issue.


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## sjsharky (Sep 4, 2007)

I have had numerous lost/blank recordings since 22b came out. I tried 22d and had more blank recordings the day it came out. This was on my hr20-700. D* sent me a hr21-700 last week. It has been running 22d. Last night it did the immediate do you want to delete error on a recording. 

Since recording 2 programs at once is a core value of the box, is it time for me to start looking at other vendors (comcast, dish, ...)?

Does D* know what the problem is? Is there an estimated fix date????


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## jfm (Nov 29, 2006)

Had my second occurance with blank/black recording on 5/13, 10PM channel 4 KNBC. This time I tried removing and reinserting Access Card during playback and before/after playback - recording remained black. This time I did an RBR instead of the menu reset, recording remained in playlist but still not watchable. As in the first occurance, when the recording was deleted, the Available space increase 2 to 3%.

Both times, other tuner was also recording and playback of other recording was good.


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## sjsharky (Sep 4, 2007)

You guys may want to consider that the root this problem may be related to series recording. When the HR-20 first came out I had many lost/blank recording. After trying many replacement units and software fixes I gave up. I deleted all my series recording except 1. All my recording problems went away. Last fall I turned series recording back on (generally 20+ active at one time). I had no recording problems until 22b came out. Now I miss recordings every week. D* even sent me a HR21 replacement unit. It failed in less than a week. I now have all series recording turned off except 1. I still record multiple programs at the same time. So far I have not had a failure. The test has only been running a few days. It would be helpful to know if the others having lost/blank recording problems are also using series recording.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

sjsharky said:


> You guys may want to consider that the root this problem may be related to series recording. When the HR-20 first came out I had many lost/blank recording. After trying many replacement units and software fixes I gave up. I deleted all my series recording except 1. All my recording problems went away. Last fall I turned series recording back on (generally 20+ active at one time). I had no recording problems until 22b came out. Now I miss recordings every week. D* even sent me a HR21 replacement unit. It failed in less than a week. I now have all series recording turned off except 1. I still record multiple programs at the same time. So far I have not had a failure. The test has only been running a few days. It would be helpful to know if the others having lost/blank recording problems are also using series recording.


In my experience the problem ONLY occurs when using a Series Link. If I turn the SL off and do manual recordings I do not have blank recordings. This past thursday, I changed my SL to be OTA and did NOT have the problems either. Not very convenient to do only manual recordings - if the OTA works, then I won't be as adamant about the 'terribleness' of this box.


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## gp4rts (Aug 19, 2006)

sjsharky said:


> You guys may want to consider that the root this problem may be related to series recording. When the HR-20 first came out I had many lost/blank recording. After trying many replacement units and software fixes I gave up. I deleted all my series recording except 1. All my recording problems went away. Last fall I turned series recording back on (generally 20+ active at one time).  I had no recording problems until 22b came out. Now I miss recordings every week. D* even sent me a HR21 replacement unit. It failed in less than a week. I now have all series recording turned off except 1. I still record multiple programs at the same time. So far I have not had a failure. The test has only been running a few days. It would be helpful to know if the others having lost/blank recording problems are also using series recording.


This appears to be new information. Have you reported it here?

http://www.iamanedgecutter.com/Projects/BGRecordings/


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## Redlinetire (Jul 24, 2007)

FWIW, I don't use series links (I only have one line running) and I get blank recordings.


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## sjsharky (Sep 4, 2007)

gp4rts said:


> This appears to be new information. Have you reported it here?
> 
> http://www.iamanedgecutter.com/Projects/BGRecordings/


I reported my idea to D* when I talked to them this past week. I am not sure they really listened. I filled out Earl's form to report lost recordings before I tried turning off series recordings so I had no data to support my theory at that time.

Since there appears to be a few recording issues this may not be the be all and end all of the DVRs issues but it could be a cause of many of the new problems people have seen since 22b was released.


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## mrshermanoaks (Aug 27, 2006)

mcl said:


> For me, it always seems to be CBS, and always some show at 10pm (and it doesn't matter if anything's being recorded on the other tuner when it happens to me).


Hmmm, I seem to get a lot on Fox (ch 11, HD). American Idol finale tonight? Blank.

I've been a DirecTV subscriber since they launched. Now I'm a couple more of these blank recordings away from calling AT&T to install fiber. It's so completely ridiculous to charge me for the programming and the DVR - and then have the DVR not record the programming! It's a spit in the face.

And sorry, but that survey is bad - If there's no "Didn't Try" or "Don't Know" option, it's all misleading. I'm not going to reboot my DVR and do a dozen other troubleshooting options every time I get one of these.


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## btmoore (Aug 28, 2006)

Just an update: Been free of any Unwatchable or IKD for ~3 weeks now after rerunning the dish setup. I still won't call it a fix but worth a try. 

I think that these unwatchable, IKD and 771 bugs can be both caused by physical environment issues and a software defect in the HR2x line.


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## mcl (Aug 17, 2006)

btmoore said:


> Just an update: Been free of any Unwatchable or IKD for ~3 weeks now after rerunning the dish setup. I still won't call it a fix but worth a try.
> 
> I think that these unwatchable, IKD and 771 bugs can be both caused by physical environment issues and a software defect in the HR2x line.


Already done. Twice. Got greyscreen recordings after each.


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## gp4rts (Aug 19, 2006)

I have posted this on iamanedgecutter.com:

Recent black screen recording, Wed 5/31. The following is the sequence.

8:00PM: Record Ch 2 (Fox) for 2 hrs via series link.
9:00PM: Start watching the the recording, FF thru parts we don't want to see
10:00PM: Series link records Ch 5 and Ch 7 1-hr programs while we are still watching Ch 2.
10:20PM: Reach end of Ch 2 recording, delete it and go to list and select Ch 5 recording to watch. This recording is black screen.
10:21PM Tune to live Ch 5, picture is ok; cannot reverse to before the 10:20 point. Pause play at this time (10:21PM real time, 10:20 program time)
10:30PM Try to play from paused point, plays to 10:21, picture freezes.
10:30PM Switch to live Ch 5 to watch to end of program

After program is done, checked the recording and it is all black screen except for the period 10:48 to 10:50 when the picture & sound come back, but freeze to the end.

Note: While viewing the black recording, the indicator does not advance in normal play mode, but does advance in FF1,2,3,and 4, seemingly the right amount.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

All four of the black screen recordings I have had were of HD locals received through DirecTV, and that seems to be the case for everyone who has posted in this thread. Are there any exceptions to this?

In my case the black screen recordings were on Wednesday or Thursday evening at 8:00 PM and 9:00 PM Central time.

The most recent failure was Wednesday evening on the NBC local (channel 5) recording of Law and Order. The two Thursday evening ones were two weeks ago on the CBS local (channel 11) recording of CSI and Without a Trace. There was also a failure on that Wednesday, but I don't remember whether it was Law and Order (NBC) or something on CBS at 8:00 PM. 

I'm wondering if there's a geographical connection to this, since it's only spot beams that seem to have the issue. I'm in Dallas. Can the survey be parsed to look for geographical similarities?

I also had a problem with the picture freezing on DFW Sports Beat (ch 643) when I caught up to live TV while watching the recording. Probably not connected to this problem, though, as the recording was fine when I exited and returned to it later.


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## Throckmorton (Dec 7, 2007)

mbuser said:


> Are there any exceptions to this?


It was a while ago, but I was getting BBRs on MythBusters on the Discovery Channel pretty consistantly last Winter.

By far though, the vast majority of BBRs I get are on HD locals. But that is also what I mostly watch.


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## btmoore (Aug 28, 2006)

Throckmorton said:


> It was a while ago, but I was getting BBRs on MythBusters on the Discovery Channel pretty consistantly last Winter.
> 
> By far though, the vast majority of BBRs I get are on HD locals. But that is also what I mostly watch.


I think if you go OTA for your locals you unwatchable bugs will go away.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

Could this be an encryption issue? The recordings are taking up the same amount of space on the hard drive as if they were watchable, so there is data out there.


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## gp4rts (Aug 19, 2006)

mbuser said:


> All four of the black screen recordings I have had were of HD locals received through DirecTV, and that seems to be the case for everyone who has posted in this thread. Are there any exceptions to this?


All black-screen and IKD events for us were on LIL channels. We watch a lot of national feeds; HDTV, Bravo, Sci-Fi, etc.


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## gp4rts (Aug 19, 2006)

btmoore said:


> I think if you go OTA for your locals you unwatchable bugs will go away.


We just switched all recordings from OTA to satellite because we were getting many programs unwatchable due to apparent weak signal (macro-blocking, freezing, etc.) However, the signal as indicated on the TV's native tuner looks very strong. I suspect a transient local problem or a defective OTA tuner in the HR-20. Our other DVR is an HR-21 (no OTA). I like to record from satellite because less disc space is used with MPEG-4 compression.

It looks like for programs we really don't want to miss we will have to record both OTA and satellite and hope that the chances of both problems occurring at the same time are slim.


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## gp4rts (Aug 19, 2006)

btmoore said:


> I think if you go OTA for your locals you unwatchable bugs will go away.


My daughter has just informed me that we had an IKD problem on a recording of "Numb3rs" that was OTA. This was a couple of weeks ago; at that time we were recording most programs OTA, but switched to LIL because of the pixellation problem mentioned in my earlier post.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

gp4rts said:


> My daughter has just informed me that we had an IKD problem on a recording of "Numb3rs" that was OTA. This was a couple of weeks ago; at that time we were recording most programs OTA, but switched to LIL because of the pixellation problem mentioned in my earlier post.


I believe IKD and black/grey screen to be two entirely different problems. IKD probably occurs because the scheduler opens the file but no signal is detected from the source so no data is written to the disk, so when you try to play it back you immediately get to end of file and thus get the keep or delete message. It could mean that the tower is temporarily down in case of off-the-air, or that there is no signal from whichever tuner is being used.

If you have a black/grey screen, on the other hand, most likely data is being written to the disk during the entire program, but the data is not playable. It could be an encryption issue, with the data either unencrypted or encrypted incorrectly. In that case there is probably a good signal from the satellite. Several have mentioned that they could see the program live but could only back up to a certain point. That probably means the buffer data is good and only gets corrupted when actually written to the disk.


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## gp4rts (Aug 19, 2006)

mbuser said:


> I believe IKD and black/grey screen to be two entirely different problems. IKD probably occurs because the scheduler opens the file but no signal is detected from the source so no data is written to the disk, so when you try to play it back you immediately get to end of file and thus get the keep or delete message. It could mean that the tower is temporarily down in case of off-the-air, or that there is no signal from whichever tuner is being used.


I don't know if the HR20/21 does this, but the HR10 would indicate how much of the program actually recorded if the recording was not complete. However, in the IKD events I have experienced, the program time in the info screen and the status bar show the full program duration. This seems to me that a signal was available all the time. It is likely, however that black/gray screen and IKD are not related; I get the former much more frequently.


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## schneid (Aug 14, 2007)

I had these issues when using a Cavalry 1TB drive. The drive subsequently crashed booting me back to the internal drive. The good news is that I don't have these issues anymore. Can't record as much but at least I can watch what I record.


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## Poochie (Jun 8, 2004)

I recorded a black screen instead of The Andromeda Strain on A&E HD today. I reported it via the web page.


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## daniyar79 (Feb 7, 2007)

CSI Miami May 5th and 19th were black sreens. I am so pissed I missed season finale. First time it happened to me.


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## Lee L (Aug 15, 2002)

btmoore said:


> I think if you go OTA for your locals you unwatchable bugs will go away.


Actually, since I can tell a slight difference between OTA and the DirecTV MPEG4 locals, I record most things on the OTA channels and I have had them in the past, so that is not it.

Also, hopefully all who are posting in this thread are also reporting using the page that was set up as that is what DirecTV sees.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

You Kill Me, movie recorded on MAXWHD (512) May 23 at 7:30 PM, tried to watch May 27 but got a black screen. It's the first black screen I've gotten on a channel other than MPEG4 local.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

Has anyone heard _anything_ about when a fix will be out? Has it reached any CE releases yet?


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## mcl (Aug 17, 2006)

bradfjoh said:


> Has anyone heard _anything_ about when a fix will be out? Has it reached any CE releases yet?


probably after they're done fixing really critical things, like media share. </sarcasm>


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## btmoore (Aug 28, 2006)

btmoore said:


> Just an update: Been free of any Unwatchable or IKD for ~3 weeks now after rerunning the dish setup. I still won't call it a fix but worth a try.
> 
> I think that these unwatchable, IKD and 771 bugs can be both caused by physical environment issues and a software defect in the HR2x line.


FYI Now on week 4 of no Unwatchable, IKD or 771 bugs since re running the dish setup.


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## mrshermanoaks (Aug 27, 2006)

mbuser said:


> You Kill Me, movie recorded on MAXWHD (512) May 23 at 7:30 PM, tried to watch May 27 but got a black screen. It's the first black screen I've gotten on a channel other than MPEG4 local.


I got a "Top Chef" last night that was gray. It's like this thing knows what my wife wants to watch and has a deathwish.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

Just curious, but whenever anyone gets a grey/black recording are you ALSO creating a ticket with D* support OR are you only going to the form linked above?

I've only been going to the form up above, but I don't know if D* is even working on this issue. Perhaps if we inundated them with tickets about the problem then they might be more aware of it. 

I had to watch Lost live last night because of this POS DVR and the near weekly Grey/Black recordings.


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

DirecTV is still evaluating all the reports to the website.

Opening a CSR ticket will not make any difference to how it is being worked on.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Doug Brott said:


> Opening a CSR ticket will not make any difference to how it is being worked on.


Nor will it cause the CSRs to acknowledge that the problem exists and/or has been reported.


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## SkersR1 (Jul 10, 2007)

Had my first & second blank recordings. I thought originally it was because of all the storms that went through last night, but during 1 of the recordings there was another recording going that was also on an HD channel. 

The 2 shows in question are The First 48 @ midnight central and then Crime 360 @ 1:00 am. Both shows were on A&EHD back to back. 

I have my recordings set to default start 1 minute early. The first 30 seconds (which my HR20 thinks is 1 minute) recorded, but when it got to the actuall starting time of each it went to the would you like to delete this recording?

DVR: HR20-100
Software: 0x22d

Edit: Weirdest thing. I went to the recording of Crime 360 and hit the rewind key x 4 and it rewound to the beginning of the show. The status bar showed 0:-59 when it got to the beginning. I am able to watch it.


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## sjsharky (Sep 4, 2007)

bradfjoh said:


> Just curious, but whenever anyone gets a grey/black recording are you ALSO creating a ticket with D* support OR are you only going to the form linked above?
> 
> I've only been going to the form up above, but I don't know if D* is even working on this issue. Perhaps if we inundated them with tickets about the problem then they might be more aware of it.
> 
> I had to watch Lost live last night because of this POS DVR and the near weekly Grey/Black recordings.


I called a few times on the blank/lost recordings. Every support person I talked to was useless. On my last call I talked to a supervisor and told her I was tired of the run around. She admitted they know of the recording issues. They did not have a date on when a fix would be available. I also told her every time I talked to a support person I would get a different answer to the same questions regarding my problems.

I told her it was nice to get a semi straight story for a change. I also reminded her there is no way for me to know when D* thinks the problems are fixed. Even when a new software release like 0x0230 comes out there is no good way to verify which problems D* thinks are fixed.

Even if I call D*today a couple of times I am sure I would get a different answer from each support person regarding the status on the lost recordings.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

I'd like to know if there was at least a CE release with the "fix" in it. 

I never had this problem prior to 22b, then with the NR of 22b it showed up + now with 22d where it happens on a weekly basis, you'd think this would be in the fastrack to getting fixed... This thread first began about a month ago, the problem was occurring prior to that, so conservatively, this has been known about for 6-8 weeks with ZERO word on if there is a fix in the works or when it can be expected...

How could people possibly be happy with their DVR when they have NO clue if it's actually going to record or not??? Soooooooo frustrating. If this issue persists, I'm seriously considering going to Cable which would kill me during the NFL season. If cable could get the ticket I would have already been gone as this is completely ridiculous.


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## demonstimpy (Jul 29, 2004)

NFL is all that keeps me these days. This is painfull.
If I didn't have a contact still I would be very tempted to go to Dish.



bradfjoh said:


> I'd like to know if there was at least a CE release with the "fix" in it.
> 
> I never had this problem prior to 22b, then with the NR of 22b it showed up + now with 22d where it happens on a weekly basis, you'd think this would be in the fastrack to getting fixed... This thread first began about a month ago, the problem was occurring prior to that, so conservatively, this has been known about for 6-8 weeks with ZERO word on if there is a fix in the works or when it can be expected...
> 
> How could people possibly be happy with their DVR when they have NO clue if it's actually going to record or not??? Soooooooo frustrating. If this issue persists, I'm seriously considering going to Cable which would kill me during the NFL season. If cable could get the ticket I would have already been gone as this is completely ridiculous.


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## Dave-D (Sep 14, 2006)

Long time lurker. Finally decided to pull the trigger on the Diecrtv HDDVRs when Directv said they would be free. Just received 2 new receivers last week. 1 HR20-100, 0x22D & 1 HR21-100, 0x230
Blank recording, sound only, DSCHD, MythBusters, 11:00a-12:00p, 6/1. This happened on the HR20.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

Awesome! Another grey recording. This effing POS. Information added to the site linked at the beginning of this thread. Seriously, what's the point???


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## rrr22777 (Aug 26, 2006)

Any solutions to this problem? I am getting 2-3 blank recordings per day! When I tune to the same channel on live TV everything is fine so I know it is not a satellite reception problem.


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## MattWarner (Feb 11, 2007)

First blank recording: Dirty Jobs on DSCHD 6/2. No audio, no video, just blank for 1 hr and 1 minute (including my pad).


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## btmoore (Aug 28, 2006)

rrr22777 said:


> Any solutions to this problem? I am getting 2-3 blank recordings per day! When I tune to the same channel on live TV everything is fine so I know it is not a satellite reception problem.


try the dish configuration reset. I have and have not had an unwatchable recording for about a month and a half.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

btmoore said:


> try the dish configuration reset. I have and have not had an unwatchable recording for about a month and a half.


It's worth a try... I've done it about 4x all with no success.


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## ecutchins (Jun 1, 2007)

The wife's HR20-700 has been having a lot (2 - 4 per day) KOD recordings. I did a menu reset last week and it worked okay for a couple of days. Tried redoing the SAT setup last night and scheduled a recording for about 30 min. after I completed the SAT setup. When I checked later another KOD recording. However, I did another menu reset and the wife's recordings for today worked.

I also called D* and the CSR in technical support told me they are aware of the problem and have been working on a fix and she hoped it would be ready soon.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

In another thread (http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=130090) about the blank recordings, user veryoldschool wrote :


veryoldschool said:


> [my two cents]
> I'd bet it isn't the software but the updating of the software [that has caused one of the chips to be in the wrong state]. Remember that "your national" was one of "our CEs", and while we normally only have them for a week, if there was something that was truly in the software, we usually find it within that time.
> So [if I'm even close] your problem came with the 0x22B [during the update] and every update, reset, since hasn't "undone" the bad chip state [somewhere there is a hi that should be a low deep inside a chip]. The chips will bleed off voltage [slowly] if they're un-powered for a significant time. I've seen this with my H20 and several computer motherboards that have gone to "never never land".


I'm going to try it out tonight...


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## demonstimpy (Jul 29, 2004)

Did full reset.
Forced update also.
Went through everything.
Recordings and passes gone as expected.
Recorded a 60 minute show, it stopped after 20 mins or so.
Will not play back, instant do you want to delete message.
Amazing. Garbage.



bradfjoh said:


> In another thread (http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=130090) about the blank recordings, user veryoldschool wrote :
> 
> I'm going to try it out tonight...


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

demonstimpy said:


> Did full reset.
> Forced update also.
> Went through everything.
> Recordings and passes gone as expected.
> ...


"If mine did that, I'd get it replaced".


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## jarrodkonner (Sep 27, 2007)

Just fyi, long time reader here - just had my first black screen recording on my HR20-100. When I tried fast forwarding through it, nothing showed up - but then the video froze on a picture we didn't recognize (a truck moving through a scene), and regardless of what channels we changed, the video wouldn't change. Did a reset, and it went back to normal (still no picture on the recording).

Jonathan


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## dhelmet78 (Mar 30, 2007)

Ghost hunters, the last 2 weeks, blank black screen. I could fast forward all the way through but no video or sound at all. Very frustrating! I missed the first 2 new episodes of the season.

Add on the fact that in the last 3 weeks it has been doing random self reboots, what a POS!

Everything has been fine until this last update. Freaking non-elective forced updates to fix problems I don't have and to add features I dont want. If it is working, why do I need to update!!!!????


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

dhelmet78 said:


> Ghost hunters, the last 2 weeks, blank black screen. I could fast forward all the way through but no video or sound at all. Very frustrating! I missed the first 2 new episodes of the season.
> 
> Add on the fact that in the last 3 weeks it has been doing random self reboots, what a POS!
> 
> Everything has been fine until this last update. Freaking non-elective forced updates to fix problems I don't have and to add features I dont want. If it is working, why do I need to update!!!!????


If other shows are recording, but just this one isn't, you might try deleting the series link and creating a new one.


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## jarrodkonner (Sep 27, 2007)

jarrodkonner said:


> Just fyi, long time reader here - just had my first black screen recording on my HR20-100. When I tried fast forwarding through it, nothing showed up - but then the video froze on a picture we didn't recognize (a truck moving through a scene), and regardless of what channels we changed, the video wouldn't change. Did a reset, and it went back to normal (still no picture on the recording).
> 
> Jonathan


For what its worth, about 3 days later, I was going to show a friend the blank screen with the sound on the recording, and lo and behold, the picture was back on the recording!


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

jarrodkonner said:


> For what its worth, about 3 days later, I was going to show a friend the blank screen with the sound on the recording, and lo and behold, the picture was back on the recording!


In your case it looks more like a hardware "glitch" than a software problem.
This is part of what makes this so hard to narrow down the cause(s) as while the "end problem" can/will be the same [no recording], the root cause is varied.
Before Feb/Mar '07, it was software, and it didn't matter how many times you reset/replaced the hardware, it would never go away [for good]. Since that time "most" of this has gone away [myself and many others haven't seen it return]. 
"To me" this suggests the software is no longer the issue, but either the hardware or a corruption of the settings [files] stored on the drive, which "most likely" happens during the rebooting for the update.
Restarting the receiver [menu reset] and then deleting the series link for the recording and making a new one, "may help".


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

Got it Wednesday evening on CSI: NY (CBS LIL). A little bit different this time, though. Heres what I put on the questionnaire:

Recording Men in Trees on channel 8 at the same time, and 8 was the live tuner. Started watching right after started and was watchable, but froze within 2 minutes. Exited program, went back in after couple of minutes and was watchable again, then froze after couple of minutes. Exited again, then returned to it the next day. Entire program was black at that point. When was watchable, audio/video possibly came from the live buffer and froze when the buffer was written to disk.

Previous intances on same day/time were also recording 8 successfully, but 5 was the channel that came up black. 8 was probably the live tuner those times also. Both programs recording off the same transponder?

My theory (guess?) is that you get the black/grey screen when both tuners are on the same transponder. The live tuner is OK, and the other tuner gets recorded incorrectly.


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

mbuser said:


> Got it Wednesday evening on CSI: NY (CBS LIL). A little bit different this time, though. Heres what I put on the questionnaire:
> 
> Recording Men in Trees on channel 8 at the same time, and 8 was the live tuner. Started watching right after started and was watchable, but froze within 2 minutes. Exited program, went back in after couple of minutes and was watchable again, then froze after couple of minutes. Exited again, then returned to it the next day. Entire program was black at that point. When was watchable, audio/video possibly came from the live buffer and froze when the buffer was written to disk.
> 
> ...


"one tuner not working correctly" does make sense. "with some poking around" you could narrow it down to tuner #1 or #2. The live buffer is the drive so it's always writing to the disk, it just doesn't "stop" at the end of the show like the recording does. The timeline on the live buffer is green, while the recording is orange. When I'm in live buffer of a show that is recording, the timeline is orange.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

veryoldschool said:


> "one tuner not working correctly" does make sense. "with some poking around" you could narrow it down to tuner #1 or #2. The live buffer is the drive so it's always writing to the disk, it just doesn't "stop" at the end of the show like the recording does. The timeline on the live buffer is green, while the recording is orange. When I'm in live buffer of a show that is recording, the timeline is orange.


I believe both tuners are working fine, but the problem is with the software writing to disk on the non-live tuner, regardless of whether that's tuner 1 or tuner 2. I'm going to run a test later, make sure the ABC LIL is the live tuner, and set a recording for both ABC and another LIL. That seems to be the case for almost all of my black recordings. I know that the data is written to the disk encrypted, and have been wondering if the encryption key is wrong for the second recording, or maybe the data isn't being encrypted at all. Whatever is being written to the disk is garbage as far as the decoder is concerned.


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## Deftones (Sep 6, 2006)

God this is happening to me on a daily basis and I'm getting freaking pissed! I can record my locals fine, but anything that's above channel 200 gives me this issue. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR


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## MONSTERMAN (Aug 18, 2007)

My HR21-700 is what you would call a fickle piece of S H I T. It seems DIRECTV has jumped into something they have no idea how to make properly. I guess these DVR's are way past their technical knowledge to be able to build correctly. TIVO mastered this DVR technology it is a shame and a crime that DIRECTV feels as if their DVR's even compare to the advanced technology of TIVO.:nono2: :nono2: :nono2: 


I constantly get blank recordings with the HR21-700. Soon, I feel I will have to reside back to cable in order to get my TIVO back with all of it's functionality so desperately lacking in DIRECTV's DVR's.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

just had a blank recording on a PPV of Semi-Pro. ARGH.


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## jp23mc (Mar 10, 2007)

Seems like the frequency of blank recordings is getting worse for me. I had one or two a week before (out of 50 or 60) and in the last three days I've had about 10. It's bad enough that the guide is so screwy with MLB EI, but now when I get lucky enough to have the right channel and it's got the right length in the guide half of them end up blank.


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## Tom_S (Apr 9, 2002)

The last two weeks I have had "The Soup" on E not record properly at 10pm EDT. I have a manual recording set for the timeframe 10:00 to 10:35. I I re-record the next episode at midnight it works fine.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

Silver lining: Maybe with the increased frequencies of these blank recordings, D* will try to stabilize the software they have instead of add "features" ... Let's see if they can get the whole "record a series link" without it being blank first before moving on to some silly feature like media share. 

Then again, I think this is just wishful thinking as even though a number of members on this board have said D* takes these things seriously, I'll believe it when it is fixed - CSRs and Tech Help certainly don't take it very seriously.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

Got an IKD recording yesterday evening, on an SD channel with HD recording on the other tuner. The other tuner was the live tuner. All other error recordings have been MPEG4 HD and were black screen recordings that went the full time.


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## vandergraff (Sep 26, 2007)

Got a blank recording on Battlestar Galactica last friday.......

I guess I need to set my HR10 DIRECTIVO to record SD version as a back up.

Totally agree with the comments above - DIRECTV should focus on getting core functionality rock solid. Mediashare etc should not get any focus until this box reliably records programs.

I have had multiple Directv Tivos (SD and HD) since they came out. Only time I had probelms was 6.x software on the DIRECT HD TIVO - and that was fixed within a few weeks. 

My first HR20 worked fine for the first 6 months. Now I have 3 HR20's and they are all getting less reliable ovcer the last few months (frequent lock ups, stuck on 480P for MPEG4 locals, blank recording).


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## cartester (Sep 26, 2007)

I have had two blank recording, both the same show, two consecutive weeks. I wonder if someone more paranoid than myself might be concerned there was a more nefarious reason behind this unacceptable behavior beyond a software coding bug.

http://www.eff.org/issues/broadcast-flag


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

I'd like to reiterate that this submission process is still alive and well. Now that a new software version has been released, please continue to utilize this data submission form for reporting specific problems.

Thank You.


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## uteotw (Sep 30, 2006)

Had pixelated/frozen/grey recording on local HD channel last night AND on Spike-HD. Tech came out and replaced dish, removed multiswitch (since I don't need it), and replaced a couple connectors. We'll SEE if this does the trick...

[By the way I couldn't agree more that it'd be great if D* would focus on stability/reliability rather than the 18 times they've changed the layout/added features, etc...


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## grendl2000 (Jun 12, 2008)

Is there a similar thread as this to discuss/report recordings that don't take place at all? I have been plagued lately by shows that simply don't record because the software is canceling them.


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## kramerboy (Mar 10, 2006)

Just had two blank/gray recordings last night. I was watching parts of both of these recordings while they were recording. So, I know that they were on and available when they were recording. It's so frustrating since you don't know when these blank recordings are going to rear their ugly head.


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## cartester (Sep 26, 2007)

kramerboy said:


> Just had two blank/gray recordings last night. I was watching parts of both of these recordings while they were recording. So, I know that they were on and available when they were recording. It's so frustrating since you don't know when these blank recordings are going to rear their ugly head.


Hmmm, so it's not a bad tuner issue, not a multiswitch issue, nor an antenna issue. You have the program properly recorded in the buffer which is, of course, on the hard disk. It's as if there were some sort of, well, let's call it a flag for lack of a better term, which permits you to watch the program and its advertising breaks in real time or even delayed slightly. But, it will not let you permanently store the entire program for later, more controlled, viewing. Instead, the software appears to store an hour of nothing or, it in fact stores it properly but blocks the correct display of it when replay is attempted. This is only for certain programs of course and not everyone is affected by the same program all the time. Other programs recorded at the same time or before and after the blank come out fine. Determining the precise level of outrage this behavior elicits is of no doubt great interest and value to the broadcasters. Where's that tinfoil hat when you need it?


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## Throckmorton (Dec 7, 2007)

cartester said:


> You have the program properly recorded in the buffer which is, of course, on the hard disk.


Actually, no you don't. I've had a few of these "fine while live but not there when played back" shows as well. If you try to back up in the buffer, it goes blank.

However, in a couple of these cases I stopped and deleted the current "recording" and then hit the [Record} button again and the show was captured from the buffer all the way back to the beginning.

It was bizarre.


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## mpshay (Nov 7, 2007)

I've now lost 6 recordings in a row on the "non-live" tuner to the Keep or Delete Bug. The latest missed recording was last night on USA - In Plain Sight. I was watching the local NBC HD feed while this was recording. I then was able to successfully record the same program at midnight by ensuring USA was the live tuner. This was on an HR20-700. I have restarted the receiver 3 times now with no effect.

Directv's answer is to completely reinitialize the drive - but I still have a bunch of series I've saved for the summer doldrums to watch. All of this since the upgrade to 0x0220. Is 0x0235 any more stable?


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## ahatten (May 16, 2007)

I DVRed Jon & Kate Plus 8 last night on TCLHD and when I went to play it back this morning, I had sound, but no picture. Did a system reset and the picture is back. Weird!


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## socal404 (Jun 26, 2007)

I recorded the Vin Scully/John Wooden symposium on FSN Prime Ticket in southern California last Friday. I was excited that it was being televised. When I went to watch my recording, all I got was a blank screen. Darn it!!!!


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## flogduh (Nov 4, 2005)

kramerboy said:


> Just had two blank/gray recordings last night. I was watching parts of both of these recordings while they were recording. So, I know that they were on and available when they were recording. It's so frustrating since you don't know when these blank recordings are going to rear their ugly head.


Same problem here two nights ago on the Food Network HD. Watching Diners, Drive Ins and Dives, hit the record button 10 minutes in, went back in the buffer a couple of times while watching, set up the recording of the next episode immediately following, again went back and forth in the buffer of the second recording. Then my wife went to watch both last evening and both were black (blank recordings).

Now I know it was working OK earlier in the day since I recorded an episode of The Next Food Network Star while I was watching it and it was properly recorded.

I had considered myself fortunate for the first 6 months since I had not experienced a problem during that time. Now it looks as though my *luck* has run out...


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

Anybody know if the new release fixed this problem? I just got it overnight.


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## f150intally (Nov 6, 2007)

I scheduled abunch of recordings on the Premier preview weekend, spider-3, blades of glory, etc. and all i got was blank screens with audio. have not tried the reset but this is so problematic. hr20-100.


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## jackdinla (Jun 3, 2008)

Had 3 blank recordings last night. The 1st was Jeopardy on local L.A. HD channel. I was able to view the last part of it only. From the beginning to about the 20 minute mark, all was black. The next 2 blank recordings were Daily Show and Colbert Report back to back on Comedy Central. I did have a 771 error on one of my tuners for those 2 shows which probably explains the blank recordings. During Jeopardy, both tuners were working. This has happened several times before. A RBR gets my other tuner back, but I wish it would stop happening.....

HR21-200


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## nerbe (Oct 22, 2007)

I recorded (HR20-100, latest software) Family Guy last night (6/22) at 10 PM on channel 296, no sound, no picture for the entire 30 minutes.

This thread has been active since 4/28 and it is painfully apparent the problem hasn't been resolved. Why is it not fixed after two months?


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

Cold Case was black Sunday night, recorded from satellite CBS HD. Law & Order CI, recorded on USAHD at the same time, was fine. I started watching Cold Case 45 minutes into it, exited to live TV when I realized it was black. That channel was the live channel, and I could watch it live but could not rewind past the point that I went live. At the time both programs started recording, local channel 33 HD was the live channel and NBC HD (Olympic trials) had been recording, so the DVR switched off of that to begin recording both programs. The latest national release has definitely not fixed this problem.


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## gp4rts (Aug 19, 2006)

After a couple of weeks with no black-screen or IKD events, I thought the problems were over. No such luck. Got IKD on "Burn Notice" yesterday. I consider this a serious situation. A friend recently asked me whether he should go to D* or Dish for his new HDTV. I told him about the DVR problems, and recommended he go with Dish. If this continues much longer, I will be tempted to do the same.


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## Throckmorton (Dec 7, 2007)

nerbe said:


> Why is it not fixed after two months?


This problem has existed since _at least_ last October.

2 months?

HA!

You have _not yet begun_ to suffer.


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## ptalbot (May 14, 2008)

Throckmorton said:


> This problem has existed since _at least_ last October.
> 
> 2 months?
> 
> ...


Just came back home after over 2 weeks on the road on vacation....virtually all of our scheduled recordings are black....wife is irate, DTV is the devil, etc....not a happy time in our household. Looking forward to a fix where the HR21 actually works reliably, what a concept.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

Had a real weird one yesterday evening. I recorded the NBA draft on ESPNHD, started watching it in the beginning just to make sure it was recording OK, watched something else for a while, then went back in about an hour and a half into the 4 1/2 hour program. I then watched it in my usual skip-the-commercials, skip-the-junk method until I caught up to live at a little past 2 hours.

At that point, I went back to the list (without going out to live TV), selected another program which was underway, watched it to the end, deleted it, went back to the list, and reselected the draft. Black screen, no audio, trick plays didn't work. I exited to live TV, verified that picture was OK, the buffer was full, and I could go back at least a little while. I then went back in. Everything was back to normal except it restarted at 3 minutes into the program instead of 2+ hours. I went 4x to the point I had left off and watched to the end without any more problems. I had had problems before when catching up to live TV, so it looks like a software problem with losing track of where you are in the program.


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## sjsharky (Sep 4, 2007)

I got a blank recording on Sat trying to record 48 hours. This is the first one I have gotten in a couple of months. I have had multiple blank recordings since May. Directv even replaced my DVR at one point and I have always updated to the latest software as soon as it is released. Even with the replacement DVR & latest software the blank recordings keep coming.


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## nerbe (Oct 22, 2007)

It happened again.

I recorded (HR20-100) Family Guy on Sunday (6/29) at 9 and 10 PM. Both 30 minute episodes were blank with no sound. The 2nd episode was still recording when I discovered it. The buffer was black when I went live but worked after the next show came on at 10:30. Why can't D* resolve this issue? In the many years I used my HR10-250 TiVo I don't recall any blank recordings .... the dual buffers worked and the recorder allowed over 100 Season Passes. Not much of an 'upgrade' to the HR20-100 from the TiVo..


----------



## mrshermanoaks (Aug 27, 2006)

I got another one tonight as well. Ugh.

I do seem to get an awful lot on Wednesdays. Not always though.


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## sigma1914 (Sep 5, 2006)

I had my very FIRST blank recording after 20+ months of great recordings on an HR20-700. The weird part was that the last 30ish seconds recorded.

Show: *Outsiders: Crime*
Time/Date: 9:00pm CST on July 2, 08
Channel: WFAA-8 (Dallas' ABC-HD) over the sat.


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## looter (Oct 1, 2007)

Turned on the HR21 last night, Searching for satellite 771.

Blank recording of the Real World (7/2/08) on MTV 331. This is completely ridiculous. This has been going on for months. My wife is not happy and neither am I.

I have an old SD DIRECTIVO HDVR2 in my garage that I watch while I'm on the treadmill. That thing is a few years old, sits in the garage in the heat and the cold, has a thick layer of dirt, hasn't been connected to a phone line or had an update in years and the thing JUST PLAIN works. IT ALWAYS RECORDS the shows I select what a f'ing concept.

I am ready to drop my premium channels get an AppleTV and FIOS.

Am I really paying $1500+ a year for TV service to where my main DVR, HR21-700, doesn't record shows and is ABSOLUTELY horrible at responding to remote control commands?


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## quarrymen1 (Dec 14, 2006)

st enterprise when i go to pb it asks if i want to delete before i even watch it other shows as well tried to record casper for grandson same thing its pissing me off this never happened before...


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## RichardL (Dec 20, 2006)

My first ever IKD recording on my HR20-100, on the Formula 1 practice this morning (607 Speed 7/4 6am pst). I was able to watch the end of the show live with no problem, but the recording was useless.

I upgraded to 024D last weekend


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

Got another one tonight... 
Tuner 1 = Weeds (HD) = No Issues
Tuner 2 = Locked Up Abroad = Blank.

this was my first non-local channel Blank recording. 

I hate this DVR.




eta: what is iamedgecutter diagnostic report.


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## DrummerBoy523 (Jan 9, 2007)

nerbe said:


> It happened again.
> 
> I recorded (HR20-100) Family Guy on Sunday (6/29) at 9 and 10 PM. Both 30 minute episodes were blank with no sound. The 2nd episode was still recording when I discovered it. The buffer was black when I went live but worked after the next show came on at 10:30. Why can't D* resolve this issue? In the many years I used my HR10-250 TiVo I don't recall any blank recordings .... the dual buffers worked and the recorder allowed over 100 Season Passes. Not much of an 'upgrade' to the HR20-100 from the TiVo..


Same thing with THE OFFICE tonight on TBSHD (and the last month for that matter). Buffer black, but when I tune to the channel I can see it but cannot rewind. Wife getting pissed!!


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## EJB (Sep 15, 2006)

Got my first Blank recording in months. The Rescue Me short last night (July 8) was blank on the HR20-700 which attempted to record off FXHD. The old Tivo unit in the bedroom recorded it fine on the SD version of FX.

EJB


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## EricRobins (Feb 9, 2005)

"Designed to Sell" - multiple "blank" recordings (HGTV-HD): HR20-100


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## hasan (Sep 22, 2006)

Got my first blank (GREY) recording(s) ever. Just short of two years of recording and I finally got one (actually 3). This happened on my HR20-700.

Star Trek Enterprise yesterday 3 back to back recordings, all grey screen. I believe they were 7, 8 and 9 a.m. central on SCIFI channel.


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## trdrjeff (Dec 3, 2007)

EJB said:


> Got my first Blank recording in months. The Rescue Me short last night (July 8) was blank on the HR20-700 which attempted to record off FXHD. The old Tivo unit in the bedroom recorded it fine on the SD version of FX.
> 
> EJB


Same thing, but my first ever since I got my HR20-100 in December 08


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## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

trdrjeff said:


> Same thing, but my first ever since I got my HR20-100 in *December 08*


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## smiddy (Apr 5, 2006)

trdrjeff said:


> Same thing, but my first ever since I got my HR20-100 in December 08





veryoldschool said:


>


I'm betting he meant 2007 or he has a time machine too.


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## EricJRW (Jul 6, 2008)

Just did my submission based on this:

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?p=1672853#post1672853

But I noticed that when I select HR21-200 from the pull-down, I cannot select "OTA Connected"... It's not, but it will be, and I suspect this page was set up prior to the release of the AM21. Not sure if it matters, but it might.


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## trdrjeff (Dec 3, 2007)

D'oh!


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## EricJRW (Jul 6, 2008)

Oh, it would also be nice if that page (or even the first post of this thread) told a person how to use the "IAMANEDGECUTTER" reporting tool... I was already in the process of submitting, the TV was off, and I had to come back here to find out how...

Press menu-->search-->keyword-->type "IAMANEDGECUTTER"-->continue-->when it finds nothing press and hold the menu and info button on the front of the unit together for 2 seconds and let go. I hidden menu will pop up. You only have to do the search one time. Next time just press the menu and info button.

Does this affect any others options? Just curious... Have not tried it yet. Thanks.


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## carl6 (Nov 16, 2005)

Diagnostic report: 20080711-183C

HR21-200, software 0x250, Friday July 11 turned unit on (taken out of standby). Live channel (Seattle 7 KIRO mpeg4) had no buffer. Selected a manual recording, Seattle 4 KOMO in progress (started at 6 am, did this at 6:35 am) and it was a blank recording.

Carl


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## jimcummings (Jul 25, 2007)

I emailed tech support saying I wasn't going to call and waste more time resetting the receivers, etc. with the same result and then being told it's a known problem. This problem is at least 4 months old.

They emailed me back and told me to contact tech support!

This is insane. Anything over channel #200 is unlikely to record. I am paying fro a service I am not receiving. Last nigt it happened on USA HD with "Burn Notice. " 

Does anyone know the email or phone of a senior exec (or execs) we can complain to?

Jim Cummings


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## LI-SVT (May 18, 2006)

I reported the following at the blank recording data gathering web site:

Here is what happened. This HR20-700 is a new to me refub to replace an HR10-250. It is connected to a WB68 with two sat feeds. Durring setup I selected satelite only. This box has an external WD 750 GB drive in an Antec MX-1 enclosure. It has been set up for about a week now.

The show that was blanks is Design Star on HGTV HD. It was recorded because I set a series link to it. It was recording on the background tuner. The "watching" tuner was on ESPN HD and was recording soccer. Prior to this the backgound tuner was on ch 622 recording the Yankees game in HD with 1 hour of padding for and end time of 5 pm. The "watching" tuner was on TBS HD until the soccer game recorded.

When selected to play the recording was at eight minutes. There was no sound or video. I used all 4 FF speeds to "find" the recording. I advanced up to about 3 minutes in and gave up.

I came back to it at 25 minutes in. This time if I FFd to within 3 minutes of "live" I had picture and sound. I watched for a few minutes then switched to a different recording. I went back to Design Star at the 35 minute mark. Now where I had left off was blank. Again FFing to within 3 minutes of "live" it was viewable/audible. I switched back to the Yankee game and waited for all recordings to end.

When all recording were over Design Star was bank from begining to end. A re-boot did not recover this recording. I deleted it from the list.


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## greenwave (Oct 23, 2006)

Running the latest national HR20-700 release (235, I think, got it a week or so ago). Had my first ever black/blank recording last month -- a Battlestar Galactica episode from SciFi HD. Had another this past Thursday night -- premiere of Burn Notice on USA-HD, which was particularly strange because I set up the HR20 to manually record the season finale from last summer which aired right before the premiere, and the finale recorded fine but the premiere was black screen and unwatchable.

Also have had 2 lockups in the past 3 days requiring RBR. Not a happy camper.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

fyi... all of my blank recordings have ONLY been on a series link. If I went through and manually setup all of my series link each week, I probably wouldn't have had my 30-40 blank recordings.


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## nowandthen (Nov 19, 2005)

Blank recording s are new to me. Yesterday all my recordings had black screens. Even A program I started watching a few days ago (it was fine then), had a black screen when I went to finish watching it a day or two later. Recent recordings as well as recordings from a month or two ago were black. I reset the HR20-100 and got most but not all video back. All had audio but no picture.

Today came home. Man Made Marvels was recording on Science HD. Screen was black but had audio.

0x235 downloaded to my DVR on 6/12. Haven't had bland recordings until the last couple of days.  

Do I need to call in and get a replacement DVR? Doesn't seem to be software since I've had 0x235 since middle of last month.


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## nowandthen (Nov 19, 2005)

carl6 said:


> Diagnostic report: 20080711-183C
> 
> HR21-200, software 0x250, Friday July 11 turned unit on (taken out of standby). Live channel (Seattle 7 KIRO mpeg4) had no buffer. Selected a manual recording, Seattle 4 KOMO in progress (started at 6 am, did this at 6:35 am) and it was a blank recording.
> 
> Carl


The no buffer issue is most likely the screen saver bug. Many people don't know they are getting hit by this bug because they "turn off" their DVR (put the DVR in to standby). The act of "turning it on" will clear the screen saver, thus you never know it was on. The way to tell is if you have no buffer. I am "one of those" that doesn't "turn off" the DVR. When I turn on my tv, too often the screen saver is on. In that situation you will have no buffer. About 1 time out of 10 the screen saver is running but I still have audio, in that situation you will have a buffer. But I digress...


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## nowandthen (Nov 19, 2005)

carl6 said:


> Diagnostic report: 20080711-183C
> 
> HR21-200, software 0x250, Friday July 11 turned unit on (taken out of standby). Live channel (Seattle 7 KIRO mpeg4) had no buffer. Selected a manual recording, Seattle 4 KOMO in progress (started at 6 am, did this at 6:35 am) and it was a blank recording.
> 
> Carl


The no buffer issue is most likely the screen saver bug. Many people don't know they are getting hit by this bug because they "turn off" their DVR (put the DVR in to standby). The act of "turning it on" will clear the screen saver, thus you never know it was on. The way to tell is if you have no buffer. I am "one of those" that doesn't "turn off" the DVR. When I turn on my tv, too often the screen saver is on. In that situation you will have no buffer. About 1 time out of 10 the screen saver is running but I still have audio, in that situation you will have a buffer. But I digress...


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## kramerboy (Mar 10, 2006)

Diagnostics # 20080716-2517

Back to back recordings of The Office on TBSHD 247 (07/15) were 'blank'. Sent my diagnostics report. Directv... please get a handle on this before the new season starts!

I have had many blank recordings before these...going back to January / February. I can only hope these submissions are doing some good and helping them them figure out the issue.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

Recorded Hopkins on LIL 8 HD at 9:00 PM. Blank recording, FF through whole recording, black screen throughout. Live tuner was LIL 21 HD, NBA Summer League Basketball, recording started at 7:00 PM, stopped at 9:08 PM. Prior recording was on LIL 4 HD, So You Think You Can Dance, started at 8:00 PM and stopped at 9:00 PM. Other recordings besides Hopkins during the evening were all fine.


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## MalibuRacing (Mar 2, 2007)

greenwave said:


> Running the latest national HR20-700 release (235, I think, got it a week or so ago). Had my first ever black/blank recording last month -- a Battlestar Galactica episode from SciFi HD. Had another this past Thursday night -- premiere of Burn Notice on USA-HD, which was particularly strange because I set up the HR20 to manually record the season finale from last summer which aired right before the premiere, and the finale recorded fine but the premiere was black screen and unwatchable.
> 
> Also have had 2 lockups in the past 3 days requiring RBR. Not a happy camper.


Exact same scenario with me. HR20-700. The past week it has locked up 3 times when pausing/fast forwarding recorded show. Then got black screen recording of the "NASA: When We Left Earth" episode. I've never had problems with my HR20 until this last update. Not happy....


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## chlorine (Feb 16, 2008)

Recorded a game last night from MLB EI, went to watch it today, immediately asked me if i want to delete it, tried to rewind but it wouldn't.


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## posterho (Oct 4, 2006)

I was checking through this thread as I am getting repeated IKD's. I am also getting 771's when watching live TV. Through some experimentation, here is what I have found with my HR20-700.

All of my issues deal with one tuner. If I have one of the newer HD channels (like SciFi, USA, FoodTV) on the good tuner (tuner 2 in my case), I do not have any issues. So I record the show with no issues.

If I change to watch another newer HD channel while tuner 2 is recording, I get a 771. If I try to record a newer HD channel on tuner 1, I get an IKD.

I can repeat this scenario at any time.

One difference I have seen since a new software release is that if I am watching TV (no recordings) and am on tuner 2, and attempt to change to a newer HD channel, it puts the channel on tuner 2. There is a noticable pause (like it tries tuner 1 and then puts it the new channel on tuner 2) while the channel change occurs.

Before the new software release, it wouldn't pause, and I would get a 771. I could then change to a different channel once, then twice and then to the channel I wanted to watch. Effectively manually putting it on the other tuner.

My personal opinion is that DirecTV has put in a workaround for this issue until they can fix it. Unfortunately, that doesn't help me if I want to record two HD shows if they are both on one of the channels I listed above.


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## ferule (Feb 12, 2008)

7/24/08 247-TBSHD My Boys 6:30 Pacific
Blank
FF through 30 minutes of black
0x25B HR20-700


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## greenwave (Oct 23, 2006)

7/24/08 USA-HD Burn Notice 10pm EST
Black screen/blank recording
Running 254


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## jfm (Nov 29, 2006)

7/24/08 229 HGTVHD House Hunters 7:30pm PDT
Black screen/blank recording
Running 254; HR20-700


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## jfm (Nov 29, 2006)

7/24/08 229 HGTVHD Rate My Space 10:00pm PDT
Black screen/blank recording
Running 254; HR20-700


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## ldspears (Oct 10, 2007)

Blank Recording
7/24/08 USA-HD Burn Notice 10pm EST
Black screen/blank recording
Atlanta, Georgia is my location

I received the new HD DVR software version 0x0254 last week and since then about 50% of my records are completely blank with a black screen. I have a HR20-700 and a HR20-100 and both have the new 0x0254 DVR software. Both are receiving the blank recordsings. I am pickiup up the telephone now to call DirecTV Tech Support and complain. That won't do my any good but I have to do something.


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## quarrymen1 (Dec 14, 2006)

blank recording today at 7 pm 8pm 9pm sci fi chan [ would u like to delete ? ] st tng.. btw my record lite is red shouldnt it be orange??


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## bbrookfield (Apr 26, 2008)

Blank Recording
7/28/08 Nashville Star 9:00pm to 10:00pm
Black screen/blank recording


Scheduled Nashville Star to record tonight. Said it was recording when to watch and showed blank screen for 2 seconds then ask if I wanted to Delete.

Rebooted and show no longer shows in record list.

this is 2nd show in last month to have this issue. 

Did cancel a show earlier that was scheduled to record (2 and 1/2 men) so I could watch U571. No sure if relatedm but may be some help. THis is on NR never had a CE.

WAF just dropped a few points....


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## ldspears (Oct 10, 2007)

I would like to comment about the new DirecTV HD DVR's software version 0x0254 and the blank recordings problem. I received this new software last week and since then approximately 50% of my records are completely blank. I have a HR21-700 and a HR21-100. It appears the HR21-700 has the most blank recordings. I read on this Forum that there are a lot of people out there with this blank recordings problem but it appears that no one is calling DirecTV Tech Support about the problem. Yesterday, I called DirecTV Tech Support about the blank recording problem after receiving software version 0x0254. DirecTV said I was the first person to call with the problem. I find that hard to believe but that's what Tech Support told me. Anyway they wanted me to reformat my DVR's hard drives and call them back if that didn't fix the problem. I think this would be a total waste of my time to reformat the DVR's. The problem is the DirecTV DVR software. 

Now lets me hear you comments about the blank recordings problems with their wonderful DVR software version 0x0254.

Please call DirecTV Tech Support if you have the blank recordings problem. That’s the only way it will be fixed. We need to make DirecTV aware of the problem. If enough people call about the problem they will fix. 

Thanks


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## looter (Oct 1, 2007)

That's perfect. I called today because MSNBC was coming up on channel 547 and Flix at 356. First troubleshooting suggestion was to REFORMAT MY HARD DRIVE.

What a joke.


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## DaveC56 (Aug 17, 2006)

Blank Recordings:

Thursday, 7/24/08, 10pm, HD Channel 9 (CBS), Flashpoint
Monday, 7/28/2008, 8pm, HD Channel 4 (NBC), American Gladiator
Monday, 7/28/2008, 9pm, HD Channel 4 (NBC), Nashville Star

HR20-700
0x0254
WB616
AT-9 Dish
Zip 20170


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## gp4rts (Aug 19, 2006)

Flashpoint on 7/24. First one in several weeks. I thought for a moment the problem was fixed! After reading the posts, apparently in some cases it has gotten worse.


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

One of my hr20-100's on 254 made its first blank recording that didnt 'come back' after a reboot. Eureka came up with nothing but black screen throughout. Other HR20-100 upstairs recorded it fine. When I exited out of the blank recording, SCIFIHD was still on and the last few minutes of the show were on, looked fine.

Up until now (pre 254) the occasional blank recording would be watchable after a reboot.

Curiously, when I rebooted it this time, it said it was downloading new software, but 254 was already on the box. Do they ever make changes or force a re-download of the same software version for any reasons?


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## posterho (Oct 4, 2006)

After checking one of the other threads, I found reference to someone who had solved their problem by removing their splitter that merged the OTA antennae signal into the wire.

My HR20 replaced a HR10 that did use an antennae, and sure enough, it was still being split into the wire that goes to the malfunctioning tuner.

I removed it and so far (< 30 minutes), I can watch HD on both tuners.

I don't need the antennae for my locals in HD, so I am cautiously optimistic. After reading this thread and others, I am not overly optimistic. Just cautiously... 



posterho said:


> I was checking through this thread as I am getting repeated IKD's. I am also getting 771's when watching live TV. Through some experimentation, here is what I have found with my HR20-700.
> 
> All of my issues deal with one tuner. If I have one of the newer HD channels (like SciFi, USA, FoodTV) on the good tuner (tuner 2 in my case), I do not have any issues. So I record the show with no issues.
> 
> ...


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## mosoccer (Apr 28, 2008)

Blank recording on:

So You Think You Can Dance
Channel 5 (FOX) HD
7/31/2008 @ 9:00 PM
HR21-100
Diagnostic Report: 20080731-2E16
NR 0x255

Receiver recorded Modern Marvels on HISTHD channel just fine at the same time. Confirmed both tuners working properly afterwards.

After restarting the receiver the recording didn't even appear in the List anymore.


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## greenwave (Oct 23, 2006)

7/31/08 @ 10pm
USA-HD Burn Notice

This is three times in a row I've gotten black screen/blank recording for Burn Notice. It is set as a Series Link. It may overlap with another recording, I can't recall, but strange that this bug is affecting this program at this time slot repeatedly.


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## quarrymen1 (Dec 14, 2006)

8/4/08 12 midnite big brother after dark blank recording,on series link.its hit and miss with this show...


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## kemer (Aug 4, 2008)

chlorine said:


> Recorded a game last night from MLB EI, went to watch it today, immediately asked me if i want to delete it, tried to rewind but it wouldn't.


Had that happen several times the last few weeks went into DVr's history and it said that the original recording was not available because of a blackout. (not true) and taht gamesearch would loook for an alternate. It recorded the alternate but when I try to play I get the same as you do.

Also told me on one game that the recording done two days previously had been deleted because of "recording permissions".

I called D and they claim that a recent MLB directive forces them to delete the EI games from the DVR after 24 hours. The problem has been with HD game recordings on the HR21. Haven't recorded in SD.


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## SPACEMAKER (Dec 11, 2007)

8-3-08 
10:00pm
_NASCAR Now_
ESPN2HD ch.209

Blank for the entire 60 minutes.


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

kemer said:


> a recent MLB directive forces them to delete the EI games from the DVR after 24 hours.


The NFL better not start this. I record a bunch of games and watch them all week.

Seems between the PPV and baseball games only being available for one day that the content providers are determined to shoot themselves in the foot.

I wonder what the ratio of additional income is against the loss of business when people stop buying the product.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

Had a really weird one yesterday evening. Recorded on 5-1 (NBC OTA) for two hours from 8 to 10 PM. From 8 to 9 PM I recorded Eureka on SCIFIHD (244). Both of those recordings were fine, and 244 was the live tuner. The Rescue Me mini-showing (5 to 8 minutes) was scheduled on FXHD (248), and apparently 248 became the live tuner at 9:00 as scheduled. When I tried to watch Rescue Me at approximately 9:15 PM, that recording was black. I switched to live TV and checked the status of the buffer at 9:20 PM. I could go back 2 minutes but there was nothing for the 18 minutes prior to that.

Also, sometime Sunday evening the live tuner (USAHD) went black for about 10 minutes. I believe it was at 10:00 PM, right after the HR20 stopped recording on that channel. At the time, I assumed there had been a problem getting the signal from the signal source. This was the first time I had had a black screen while watching live TV. 

All black screens have been during the evening, 7:00 PM to 10:30 PM. This might not be significant since that is when a large number of my recordings take place.


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

Sounds similar to what happened to me with Eureka last week. I had it as a blank recording so I re-recorded it and only got the last 9 minutes of the show on the second try.

During the course of troubleshooting and after removing the multiswitch, I found the signal levels on tuner 2 to be down in the 50's. I switched the cables and got 96 on both tuners. Switched them back, still 96 on both. All the wires were snug when it was in the 50's.

Since something else was recording in the same slot as Eureka, and that recorded fine I'm guessing the second tuner was trying to get it, had too low of a signal and then later got enough to get the last 9 minutes.

I'd heard some other people post about tuners showing low signal and removing and replacing the cable or rebooting made it go away. Dont remember if I ever saw any outcome to it, if it meant something was broken or if it was "just one of those things".


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## RichardL (Dec 20, 2006)

I had my dish repointed on Monday to improve D10 and D11 reception. As part of that the techie rebooted the HR20-100 (0x254). Last night I went to watch some stuff and every show recorded since that time came up as an IKD.

Including:
Daily Show (Comedy Central) Wednesday 8pm Pacific
Colbert 8:30pm
Top Gear Monday 5pm, BBCA
Later...with Jools Holland Ovation Wednesday

I did a menu reset, and after that I could watch the shows - they were recorded OK


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## alv (Aug 13, 2002)

I have been recording ABC local news followed by the national for years. Changed to NBC national recently (MPEG 4 locals). Blank recordings three days in a row. Changed to OTA NBC and recorded fine.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

Another weird problem, but not quite and IKD. I set Flashpoint to record off-the-air (channel 11-1 in Dallas) yesterday at 9:00 PM. When I went to watch it the listing said 9:59 PM partial, and that's what it was. Failed to record the first 59 minutes. That's the first ever I've had a problem with an off-the-air recording, so it was probably a DVR error. I changed to off-the-air to preclude a black screen problem, since I was recording something else at the same time and have had black screens on that particular time/channel combination before. Oh, well.


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## carl6 (Nov 16, 2005)

R16-300, Seattle 7 (SE7) KIRO 5 pm news. Blank recording on both 8/7 and 8/8. Prior to that recordings were okay. Also noted in R16 thread someplace.

Carl


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

A new type of Black recording for me... I was recording/watching live the olympics on Sunday afternoon. I tried to rewind a play and could not rewind it. I pressed paused and tried to start the recording from the list, but it was blank. Went back to live TV and it was fine. Stopped the recording and pressed record again - and then there was no issues.


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## Throckmorton (Dec 7, 2007)

bradfjoh said:


> A new type of Black recording for me... I was recording/watching live the olympics on Sunday afternoon. I tried to rewind a play and could not rewind it. I pressed paused and tried to start the recording from the list, but it was blank. Went back to live TV and it was fine. Stopped the recording and pressed record again - and then there was no issues.


I've seen this before. If you had tried to play it after it had completed recording, it would have been a classic, unrecoverable BBR.


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## allenn (Nov 19, 2005)

VOD Olympic cauldron ceremony in HD was 14 minutes of blank. I noticed it had been pulled from VOD on 08/12/2008.


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## ft800 (Aug 13, 2007)

I just got back in town after being out of town since 8-7-08. I set my HR20 to record the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. After hearing how spectacular it was I couldn't wait to watch it. Turned it on and it went straight to the "Do you want to delete this recording" screen. It's the first time this has happened to me. It's a little disappointing.


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## skyboysea (Nov 1, 2002)

HR20-700
Seattle 4 KOMO (MPEG4)
KOMO4 News 6:00-7:00 pm 8/12/08
The all hour was black screen and no sound. Trickplay working.
Once again it happened with an almost full disk.


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## mscog (Aug 17, 2006)

HR-21 
Wed Aug. 13 7-7:30 p.m Scare tactics on the Sci-Fi channel was 30 minutes of Grey, as was the 7:30-8:00 p.m recording of Scare Tactics.


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## elove (Aug 17, 2007)

HR20-100
Monday, Aug 18th The Closer and Saving Grace, which are series links both had the searching for authorized content message. Channel recording was 75 TNTHD.
This is the second time, I have received such a message for both of these shows. The first time was August 3rd.

Luckly, I have the HDTivo as a backup and it recorded both shows, go figure.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

elove said:


> HR20-100
> Monday, Aug 18th The Closer and Saving Grace, which are series links both had the searching for authorized content message. Channel recording was 75 TNTHD.
> This is the second time, I have received such a message for both of these shows. The first time was August 3rd.
> 
> Luckly, I have the HDTivo as a backup and it recorded both shows, go figure.


You should switch your series link to channel 245, since that one is MPEG4. 75 is the legacy MPEG2 channel. 75 is going to disappear at some point.


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## kmattoo (Aug 6, 2008)

Weeds, 8/18/08, Showtime HD

HR 21-200


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## quarrymen1 (Dec 14, 2006)

big brother does not will not record series link, otr hit and miss..hr20 700


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## JimV (Feb 3, 2007)

HR21-700 0x255

Recordings come up black screen, and 'keep or delete'
canceling that out and trying another recording results in the same thing.
Rebooting the device has all those previously attempted to play shows disappear from my playlist. Has happened twice now.

The daily show on comedy central this week and a couple weeks ago.


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## EJB (Sep 15, 2006)

I have a HR21-700. The small Rescue Me episode from last night (8/19) gave the instant "Do you want to delete". Just realized that everything recorded since then with a series link (two Junkyard Wars and two WEC Wreckage's) did the same thing. I rebooted and am waiting for the top of the hour to record something manually, not via series link to see if that will work.

Never had this many bad ones come up in a row like that. I also noticed when checking the History that every day at 4:00pm for the last few days there is an entry for the Olympics that says "Cancelled" with information that says "canceled by the viewer" even though no one is home at that time each day and we don't have a series link for that. Very strange!!!

EJB


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## bobbyv (Sep 29, 2007)

I totally wish I would've seen this thread long ago. I've lost track of how many bad recordings I have had to deal with. They seem to occur mainly after a power outage.

The most recent was Burn Notice on USA HD channel 242 from 8/14. Luckily they replayed it a day or two later and that recording was just fine.


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## gdn (Aug 5, 2007)

Guess I didn't search real well about 3 weeks back when I looked for others with this problem. I started having this very same problem - HR20-700. Always blank recording and 771 searching for signal on one tuner when I'd start missing recordings. 

I would check the signal strengths and tuner 1 was always the culprit - there was no variance - it was always tuner 1. I gave up and called D*. They had me trouble shoot, switch cables, the problem always stayed with tuner 1. I would switch the cables, still tuner 1. A RBR would bring both tuners back. 3 or 4 days later the problem would return. D* swore this problem was not documented or known to be wide spread. After my second call they sent a service man who redid the wiring outside at the dish he said wasn't up to snuff and guranteed me that would fix the problem. The next day the problem resurfaced.

A technician was back today with a new HR21-100 to replace the HR20-700.

I've been away from the forums about 6 months (too much work) so I don't know if I'm better off or not with the HR21, but thought I'd post here as it is on topic.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

Reposting this from another thread per request...

Spoke too soon on the HR22 not having any issues so far. I just had to do a reset on it. The live TV show picture froze. I then tried other live TV shows (various SD and HD) and all had gray screens with no show. I then went to the recorded shows, including some I had already watched and knew to have images) and they all had gray screens with no video or sound. The menus continued to work through all this but it couldn't process any video at all it seems. Internal temp was fine, good enough.

After the reset it worked fine again. The box is about 1.5 days old. That's still a better track record than the HR20 when I first got it but not a good start versus the HR20 now. I have software version 0x0255.


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## JohnDG (Aug 16, 2006)

HR21 - 700 x0255

Blank recordings: Sunday night, SpikeHD (241), both showings of "Kung Fu Killer."

Checked the first recording a few minutes in: wouldn't play. changed display channel to 241, channel was coming in fine. Couldn't rewind back past spot where I started to display. Setup to record second running and left it alone.

Next day, neither recording would play. Reset the box, still neither recording would play. Deleted showings the current amount of space was released, so the recording took up space.

No other recordings on Sunday night (242, 501) had any problems.

Logged this on the specified site.

jdg


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## troman (Mar 9, 2007)

I have a series link set up for the Olympics, which is HD local channel 11 in my area (NBC11). The closing ceremonies had been recording for about an hour (actually recording the gold medal men's volleyball at that point). When I selected it from the recorded programs list, I got a blank screen. Fast forward moved the time pointer, but the screen was still blank. When I directly entered the channel number I was able to see the live program. I attemped to rewind but only saw a frozen image. 

I stopped the recording and started it up again manually. The second recording works fine. The original recording is blank until I reach the time that I manually changed the channel, and then the video is fine.

This is on an HR20-700 that I've had for about a year and a half. I've had a few other blank recordings since SW release 0x254. They were all for the series link I have for Hopkins (local channel ABC 7). I thought it was strange that Hopkins was the only program to have a problem, until yesterday.


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## SabresFan29 (Aug 16, 2007)

gdn said:


> Guess I didn't search real well about 3 weeks back when I looked for others with this problem. I started having this very same problem - HR20-700. Always blank recording and 771 searching for signal on one tuner when I'd start missing recordings.
> 
> I would check the signal strengths and tuner 1 was always the culprit - there was no variance - it was always tuner 1. I gave up and called D*. They had me trouble shoot, switch cables, the problem always stayed with tuner 1. I would switch the cables, still tuner 1. A RBR would bring both tuners back. 3 or 4 days later the problem would return. D* swore this problem was not documented or known to be wide spread. After my second call they sent a service man who redid the wiring outside at the dish he said wasn't up to snuff and guranteed me that would fix the problem. The next day the problem resurfaced.
> 
> ...


this is the exact issue that I keep having on HR20-700. It loses tuner 1 pretty much every time it records. I've done all the troubleshooting. What are your thoughts on the HR21-100? I wondering if I'm better off swapping. I keep reading that this is a software issue, so I'm not sure if I should wait for a fix.

Thanks!


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## drewba (Sep 18, 2007)

Monday Night Football failed for me tonight. I tried to start playing it while it was still recording and got a black screen. I could jump to the beginning or end of the recording, but otherwise couldn't fast forward or rewind. Once the recording was done, attempting to play it would result in the 'keep or delete' message appearing immediately.

MNF started at 5P and I added 30 minutes of padding to the end, so the recording would end at 8:30. I already have a manual recording setup from 8-9 for SportsCenter which is on the same channel as MNF. Thus, I had two programs trying to record from the same channel simultaneously. I don't know if that played a part or not. SportsCenter seemed to record just fine as did a show on a different channel during MNF.

For reference, I have a stock HR21-100 and the hard drive is about 80% full.


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## quarrymen1 (Dec 14, 2006)

ive had and issue with this for a long time cant record series link for bb10 if i do one time record when i go watch the show while recording i get searching for satellite771 i then stop the recording and the channel comes back but the record light remains i even reset receiver and record light comes back on again,what the hell is going on?? btw this is happening on only one of 2 hr20 that i have..:nono:


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## jtm1631 (May 18, 2007)

HR21-700 on national release.

All recordings from past three days were blank. Cubs vs. Phillies manual, Bones series link and several other manual recordings.

Reset machine through Menu and all recordings disappeared from list. Went to history and recordings show as recorded with notation "Showing No Longer Available"

I am in the process of waiting for some manual recordings I set up this morning to finish to see if the reboot solved this problem.

That will teach me not to DVR the Cubs on several machines at the same time.


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## Eagle Shadow (Nov 7, 2007)

I have noticed that members are reporting recording problems on HR 700 DVR's. My recording failure experiences are generally the same as others have reported in this thread.

I believe this is a likely a 0255 software issue. Others have noted as have I that Tuner 1 fails when it is assigned a recording. The result is a blank recording with the gray screen and the 771 searching for satellite message. Rebooting restores Tuner 1 for awhile until the next recording failure. This indicates to me that this problem is not a wiring or hardware issue with Tuner 1. It is possible that it is a 700 series manufacturer issue since it occurs on HR 20 and 21 700 DVRs.

DirectTV needs to address this problem. I am not ready to replace the box until I get some feedback that is is indeed a software issue.


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## eileen22 (Mar 24, 2006)

I just had my first blank recording on a HR20-700 today. Did not receive the immediate "delete" prompt upon playback (I could FF through the hour), but the entire hour of the recording was black.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

For what's it's worth, I've had an HR20 since 2006 and I had exactly all these issues for over six months when I first got it as DirecTV rapidly pushed out software revision and revision. I came to the same conclusion at the time about the tuners. About 40 percent of my programs failed and I figured out it was almost always when two things overlapped and that it was likely just one of the tuners. I hated my HR20 with a passion -- it was pretty much useless to me at the time.

I haven't noticed the problem recently but then it has been Summer and we haven't recorded two shows overlapping for a while. If the new firmware release is causing it, that will be a real bummer to re-live when the Fall season kicks in.


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## SteveK2 (Jul 6, 2008)

Same result as in NO RECORDING.

Setup to record "The Invasion" on Sunday, Aug 31 @ 3am HBOWHD.

Went to watch the recording tonight & no recording on my playlist. Checked History. There's an entry saying 'partial' recording, "this showing has passed".

Like I said, not grey or blank -- just not there at all.

My UltimateTV boxes never had screwups like these Directv HD boxes.:nono2:


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## spunkyvision (Oct 12, 2006)

Had 2 grey/blank recordings for the first time in months. Recorded Shows on Thursday Night, 2 football games on on NFL HD 212. Then later that night Cold Case on CBS was ok. Next morning I went to play back the games, both grey/blank. I did a test, recorded whatever was on the current viewable tuner, then changed channels it was grey/blank. I did a reset through the menu and both tuners were ok however I noticed when I changed tuners (after recording on the current one) I saw 771 quickly and then went away.
It as on my HR20-700


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## dsm (Jul 11, 2004)

The last two Amazing Grace episodes on TNT were blank recordings for us. One of them I actually saw the show playing live while the black recording took place. The later showing (1am?) recorded fine in the later time slot. Fortunately I was paranoid and did a manual recording of the second time slot because the primary failed again.

steve


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## markrubi (Oct 12, 2006)

I had two Keep or deletes last night. One was for a recording of The Closer 8pm and the other I don't recall the show. I reset the dvr and the recordings were gone. The closer did re-record at 11pm. I have not tried to watch it yet.


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## sjsharky (Sep 4, 2007)

I got 3 blank recordings on Monday night trying to record Weeds episodes. It was the first blank recording I have received in a few months. I have been having various recording issues since the HR2X has came out. I have performed many many many resets of the box and resets of the hard drive, had service calls, switched out the box many times, swapped the input cables on the back of the unit, and updated the software many times but the problem never seems to go away for more than a few months. 

Given that recording is one of the core values of the box and the box clearly cannot reliably perform the function I think I need to again look at alternate suppliers.

The worst part of the whole experience is when I call Directv and they claim that they are not aware of the issue, then they claim they know of the issue but do not know when it will be fixed, then they claim there is no way for them to notify me when they think the problem is fixed.

I am missing anything here that I need to try before I drop Directv for another supplier?


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## Steve Robertson (Jun 7, 2005)

I never had this problem till about a wek ago last night I had another blank recording this is a basic function of a dvr and is unacceptable. I hope they get TIVO rolled out quicker than a year from now


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## oldschoolecw (Jan 25, 2007)

I got my first Black recording in months, the premiere of the Shield is just a black screen I did a system reset and it did not work. I hate these updates they give us that actually bring us back to those days of 2 years ago. I will try to record the Shield once again this weekend


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

First blank recording in about 6 weeks... 

and first time, for me, it was ever a blank recording on a SD channel...

and first time, for me, that it was blank when there wasn't something recordign on the other tuner.

X-Men on Jetix.

Funny that I havne't had to come to the site to log these blank recordings in a while and when I do, I see that Tivo will be working with MPEG4 in a year or so... thank goodness. at least I know when these blank recordings will end for me.


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## Score023 (Aug 22, 2006)

I have a HR20 100 and over the last week I am getting searching for satalite signal 771 on my attempted recordings on Comcast Sports Net Chicago (665) and VH1 (both HD channels). I used to get this all of the time a couple of software updates back and then one of the updates fixed it. It usually only happens when I am attempting to record something and last night it was "I Love Money" amd Sports Nite.

Not sure if there is a coincidence but this started to happen around the same time I installed the Directv kit for VOD. 

Anyone else having this problem? I have done several reboots and all of my other channels are fine.

When it happened in the past in was Comcast Sports Net Chicago that time too, but they were on Ch. 640 at that time.


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## Sully (Dec 5, 2005)

OK - this is getting rediculous! I tried to watch Stargate Atlantis this morning and after about 30 seconds, I got the "do you want to keep or delete" message. I then went back to the "Invasion" that I had started watching a few days earlier. About 1 hour into the show, I received the dreaded Keep or Delete message.

I even used a second HD-DVR as a backup for Atlantis and it had the same problem!

Is it time to get out my VCR?


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Perhaps, but you'll need to be sure that the program is showing on the TV at the time as recordings usually take place on the background tuner.

I would recommend that you post your details to the website indicated in post #1. 

If you call DIRECTV, there is a significant chance that they will tell you that they've not aware of the problem. The other possible answer is that it is a known problem and they're working hard on a solution (pretty much since the introduction of the HR20).


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## captainjrl (Jun 26, 2007)

I had two black recordings on Monday night 9/1. Prison Break and Raising the Bar


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## TrAvELAr (Jan 14, 2007)

In the last week, I've had 2 blank recordings of The Shield, a blank of The Shield 3 minute recap, and a blank on Stargate Atlantis on my HR20-700. I haven't had a blank recording in months. In all cases, I get an immediate keep or delete prompt. Rebooting the unit deletes the shows.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

i'm going to lose my mind if any Sunday ticket games that i have set up don't record.

btw, why isn't this pinned anymore?


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## Sully (Dec 5, 2005)

bradfjoh said:


> i'm going to lose my mind if any Sunday ticket games that i have set up don't record.
> 
> btw, why isn't this pinned anymore?


I'm not sure why this thread isn't "sticky" anymore. It certainly should be as this is a serious issue. I'm now trying to record the same programs I normally do, but on the equivalent standard definition channel. I'm going to test to see if it's only the HD programs that are giving me the instant "keep or delete" prompt.

This is extremely frustrating - especially now that it's happening on 2 of my HD DVRs. The Tivo DVRs can't come soon enough.


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## SeptemberBaby (Jul 8, 2005)

Today's Oprah. The entire hour was blank. :nono2: 

Why is this issue not fixed yet?


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## Tenor (Sep 3, 2007)

Why didn't I think to come here first? I've been having this issue for weeks now and just got off the phone with DirecTV. They say they are aware of the issue and have escalated mine. They also gave me six free months of HD service.


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## Sully (Dec 5, 2005)

OK - since Sunday I have recorded 3 shows from the standard definition equivalent of the HD channels. For example, instead of recording 'Terminator' on the local HD channel, I recorded it from the local non-HD channel. Since doing this, I'm 3 for 3 on good recordings. When recording from any HD channel, it's hit and miss (more miss than hit). I'm usually prompted with the "do you want to delete this recording?" message as soon as I hit play.

I do have a tech scheduled to come out to my house on Friday. I'm not confident a solution will be found, but I can always hope.


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## dkraft (Aug 31, 2007)

Over the last three weeks I have gotten blank recordings. 

They used to be gray video with the full time period. The recording will play gray screen for the length of whatever the recording was to be (hour, 2 hours etc).

Now the most recent blank recordings were BLACK. Same thing, full length recording.

What is going here?


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## looter (Oct 1, 2007)

dkraft said:


> Over the last three weeks I have gotten blank recordings.
> 
> They used to be gray video with the full time period. The recording will play gray screen for the length of whatever the recording was to be (hour, 2 hours etc).
> 
> ...


Did you change the background/pillar bars from grey to black? Early on I think that was the hypothesis of why some people got black and some got grey. This issue has been going on for SOOOO LOOOOONGG, I'm not sure if this is still the theory.


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## SeptemberBaby (Jul 8, 2005)

Okay.. enough is enough!

Yesterday it was Oprah...
Today it was two more.
Good Morning America 
Fox Report 
(don't judge me! ) 
Black screen on all three.

This is starting to really tick me off.


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## Phil21 (Sep 9, 2008)

Figured I'd jump in to pile on too. Mostly to vent 

I've been dealing with this "issue" now for the better part of a year. Both an older HR20, and a new HR21. The HR20 is the only receiver really in use, the HR21 is used in the dining room while I cook - which is uh, rare.

Anyways, it's getting to the point where I'm considering simply dumping DirecTV over this. It's ridiculous at this point, I'm missing recordings every other day (always blank, immediate keep/delete prompt).

Just a very tiny bit of basic troubleshooting shows that this is a "771" issue. If I have a blank recording, I can re-produce 771 every single time by hitting record on some show, then tuning to live tv on another channel (to force a switch to the other tuner). HD Channels of course. The 771 issue might come up more often after rain fade, but there isn't enough data for me to make that correlation. It also simply happens during bright sunny days.

At least in my case, it's when the receiver tries to record on a tuner that as "locked up". Usually this is tuner 1, but I did see a couple tuner 2's here and there I believe.

Multiple friends/family who are on DirecTV also have the same thing happening. This is NOT an install issue, an individual "bad box" issue, or a cabling/multiswitch issue. That DirecTV continues to point to this makes me rather livid.

Getting to the point where dealing with Comcast is almost better, and at least it's cheaper. My monthly DirecTV bill is over $160/mo now (premier, about 6 receivers). I used to be DirecTV's #1 fan, having personally setup 4 households doing free installs for them at no expense to directv (you'd be amazed at how bad DirecTV's installer reputations are - in those situations, the only reason they are now customers is because I offered to do the install myself, after they absolutely refused to let a dtv installer on their premises due to horror stories from others). Now, I simply do not recommend them period.

Other than this issue, the HRX series isn't that horrible. I was pleasantly surprised after giving up my HDTivo's - a step back, but not as big of one as I was expecting. However, if they cannot get recording reliability correct - absolutely NOTHING else matters. Say what you want about the old Tivo units, but they *always* recorded what you told them to when you told them to with almost zero exceptions.

Very upset about this now, I was willing to deal with it for a month or two, but it's been a year. The fact that this isn't their absolute top priority to fix is beyond comprehension to me. Nothing upsets folks more (especially non-technical folks that don't understand why it's happening) than missing their shows - when it "just works" elsewhere.

Maybe the new Tivo boxes will be good - hopefully they do not use the HRX platform and are not crippled like the previous Tivo's. Remains to be seen, but given DirecTV's direction on DVR's lately I am simply not holding my breath.

Ok, done venting 

-Phil


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## SeptemberBaby (Jul 8, 2005)

Now I'm up to 9 black/blank recordings in the last 2 days. 

Unacceptable.

I called them and I basically told the guy on the phone that they have an
epidemic on their hands and I wanted to know what was being done... he never really answered me.. all he said was that it's been a 'national' problem since Sept. 3rd.. I asked him if he meant this year or last Sept. 3rd. He laughed and assured me that it was this Sept. 3rd. I told him that according to the members on this forum it's been happening way before that.
Long story short.. I was 'escalated' as well... meaning the squeaky wheel gets the grease. (not sure exactly what the grease will be) 

He told me that I will get an download and hopefully that will fix it. I asked him if I will be notified somehow when this is done so I know when to use the HD DVR.. he said that I may receive a phone call or a letter.  
I'm off to program my other two Dvr's because I don't trust this one.


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## inchmurrin (Sep 10, 2008)

So where do we sign up for the class action suit?

Just another collector of grey screen program recordings.


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## Steve Robertson (Jun 7, 2005)

I had another black screen recording last night D* needs to get on the stick with this issue


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## CraigT1 (Feb 18, 2008)

I guess it's about time for a "me too".  My first month(April, 08) with my HR20-100 was problem free but I've had a lot of black screen recordings on the NBC evening news(in HD). I record both ABC and NBC at the same time and generally watch NBC until the first commercial and then watch the ABC recording. After I've finished with ABC, I go back to watch the NBC recording and it's black with no audio- even the portion that I had watched while it was recording. I have had ABC do the same thing though. This scenario happens quite a bit. I recently recorded Titanic in HD on TNT- completely black. I have recorded a number of movies problem free using both tuners at the same and any time I check the signal levels they are outstanding on both tuners so it doesn't *appear* to be a tuner issue. It's fairly rare to have bad movie recordings though so I'm not sure what is going on. DirectTV did offer to replace my DVR or send someone out but I didn't really want to risk getting an even worse DVR like it appears many people have.

Craig


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## Sully (Dec 5, 2005)

This is getting ridiculous. I've had so many issues with blank recordings that I've reverted to recording standard definition instead of HD. I have 3 HD DVRs - I paid $200 for 2 of them and $149 for the other. That's $549 for machines that can't reliably perform their basic function. I don't know if I can wait until the Tivo units are released...


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## Throckmorton (Dec 7, 2007)

Do the BBRs ever happen when recording OTA?


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## GBFAN (Nov 13, 2006)

GBFAN said:


> HR20-700
> 
> Grey recording. I attempted to record the Nationwide race on ESPN2HD last night and all I got was a grey screen. You could FF or RW but never get a picture.


Posted in issues thread


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## SeptemberBaby (Jul 8, 2005)

Sully said:


> This is getting ridiculous. I've had so many issues with blank recordings that I've reverted to recording standard definition instead of HD. I have 3 HD DVRs - I paid $200 for 2 of them and $149 for the other. That's $549 for machines that can't reliably perform their basic function. I don't know if I can wait until the Tivo units are released...


I've been recording things randomly for the past 24 hrs... mostly on SD and I would say that out of the 15 things I recorded, only 3 were successful. It's happening on both HD and SD. 
Thank God for my old geezer 40 hr Tivo I have hooked upstairs... It's never failed me.

I would have more respect for Dtv if they sent out a message saying that they're aware of this problem and state exactly what they're doing to try to fix it. Instead of making it seem that I'm the only one that's experiencing this problem. 
Shame on them.


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## Steve Robertson (Jun 7, 2005)

This is the crap about D* that really ticks me off by not coming out and saying we are trying to fix it.


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## SeptemberBaby (Jul 8, 2005)

I've been in an email conversation w/ someone in Tech Support... she wants me to list every single show, time and channel of what shows I've recorded and if they were succussful or not.
What a joke.

I sent her a list and explained that I've been recording things randomly for the past 36 hrs and more than 3/4 of them are not recording... I included my phone number and told her that I would like a phone call to discuss this and I gave her a link to this thread and told her that they have a major problem on their hands and there will be a revolt if this isn't addressed. ASAP! 

Anyway... between my phone call last night and the emails maybe I'll get some satisfaction. 
HA!


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## Sully (Dec 5, 2005)

SeptemberBaby said:


> I've been recording things randomly for the past 24 hrs... mostly on SD and I would say that out of the 15 things I recorded, only 3 were successful. It's happening on both HD and SD.
> Thank God for my old geezer 40 hr Tivo I have hooked upstairs... It's never failed me.
> 
> I would have more respect for Dtv if they sent out a message saying that they're aware of this problem and state exactly what they're doing to try to fix it. Instead of making it seem that I'm the only one that's experiencing this problem.
> Shame on them.


Oh great. I guess I've just been lucky with my SD recordings so far. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before one of my SD recordings gives me the "do you want to delete?" prompt upon hitting 'play'.

I agree that DTV should acknowledge this issue. I've called multiple times and each and every time the CSR claims that my particular issue is unknown. I'm told they know about blank (grey/black) recordings, but not empty recordings (where the "do you want to delete?" message appears right after hitting play).


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## Phil21 (Sep 9, 2008)

Ugh.. I may have spoke too soon. I just checked out my 99(c) levels, and they are rather crappy - mid 60's. Going to peak the dish as soon as I can get someone here to watch the TV for me while I'm on the roof.

I'm 90% certain that this was not the case a few months ago when I got upset enough to actually look into the problem. We had a major hailstorm since, and I'm guessing that may have thrown off alignment.

In any case, going to re-peak and if the problem still happens nearly constantly afterwards.. I'll start raising some hell with DTV and at least get some form of satisfaction in the form of service credits or whatnot. "Just dealing with it" has reached it's breaking point for me. Right now, it's a matter of if I'm going to be able to hold out long enough for the new tivo boxes to see what they are like. We shall see!

-Phil


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## SeptemberBaby (Jul 8, 2005)

Here is the latest email I received:

_Thanks for writing us back.

I'm sorry to hear about the problems you've encountered. I just wanted to let you know that we received your email and I have forwarded it for special handling. A specialist will respond as soon as an agent is available (likely within 24 hours). For immediate assistance, please call us at 1-800-531-5000._

This was after I listed about a dozen missed recordings... (I've been getting both blank recordings PLUS the immediate Delete or not Delete recordings..I didn't know there was a difference. I will bring this up when I'm contacted.)
I won't hold my breath waiting for them to call.. If I don't hear from them by Friday they will get another call from me.

So far, I've been promised that my problem will be 'escalated' and forwarded for 'special handling.'


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## SeptemberBaby (Jul 8, 2005)

Here's the advice I received for fixing this problem: 
I should add that I'm not getting any signal strength on tuner one.. they all come up zeros. I called them back last night thinking that this was a separate problem only to be told that it's the same... it's all linked to the missing recordings.

_I realize how frustrating this must be for you and certainly understand your concern. This problem may be resolved by a full reset. You can reset through the menus by pressing "Menu" on the remote control then selecting "settings" then "setup" then "reset" at the very bottom of the screen. There are multiple options, "Restart Receiver", "Reset Defaults" and "Reset everything".

While "Restart receiver" may correct simple issues, more problematic symptoms may be corrected by choosing "Reset everything". Be aware that selecting this option will erase any favorite's lists, user preferences or recordings that you have.

If you continue to experience problems with the receiver, please call our technical support team at (800) 531-5000 for immediate assistance.

Thank you again for writing and I hope that I was able to help you. As always our goal is to provide you with excellent customer service and world class entertainment.
_

First let me say that I'm not thrilled about doing this... I have stuff on there that I don't want to lose. (GASP! Yeah, Imagine that!) But, if this is the solution and it promises me no more blank recordings.. then I'm willing to try. I can transfer what I don't want to lose. I'm happy this is happening now instead of 3 weeks from now when the fall season will be in full swing.

I guess I need some reinforcement.  
And I also want everyone's opinion as to why if the above is such a simple fix and will bring peace to all that have been experiencing this, then why aren't they shouting it from the rooftops? And why for God's sake did it take 3 days and 3 different techs to tell me this? :nono2: :nono2:
This is why I'm hesitant about doing this.


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## Sully (Dec 5, 2005)

SeptemberBaby said:


> Here's the advice I received for fixing this problem:
> I should add that I'm not getting any signal strength on tuner one.. they all come up zeros. I called them back last night thinking that this was a separate problem only to be told that it's the same... it's all linked to the missing recordings.
> 
> _I realize how frustrating this must be for you and certainly understand your concern. This problem may be resolved by a full reset. You can reset through the menus by pressing "Menu" on the remote control then selecting "settings" then "setup" then "reset" at the very bottom of the screen. There are multiple options, "Restart Receiver", "Reset Defaults" and "Reset everything".
> ...


Don't do it! I have already tried this and have continued to have recording issues.


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## dkraft (Aug 31, 2007)

looter said:


> Did you change the background/pillar bars from grey to black? Early on I think that was the hypothesis of why some people got black and some got grey. This issue has been going on for SOOOO LOOOOONGG, I'm not sure if this is still the theory.


Just for other who are bug tracking, I did not change the background or pillar bars.


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## SeptemberBaby (Jul 8, 2005)

Well.. I did a 'simple' reset.. just pulled the plug and lo and behold, it seemed to fix my zero signal tuner problem. I now have two tuners working at 99%. He said in his email that this is a temp. fix and I need to do the full scale reset.. I'm not willing to do that just yet, I have a few things I need to transfer. But, if I do do it.. it has to be soon, before things start piling up... but if it doesn't work.. I'm going to call them back and tell them to take it out and just give me a basic DVR. HD is just not worth all this hassle.
Dtv needs to concentrate on quality instead of quantity. They're so concerned about being the one with the most HD channels they didn't concentrate on doing it right. :nono2:

I'm still befuddled as to why the 3 other people I've spoken to, didn't tell me to do a reset.


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## Phil21 (Sep 9, 2008)

Alright.. fixed my signal issues. 

I should have double checked the installers work, I knew better than to simply take his word - but the negative 50 degress out with windchill is a slight demotivator 

With just some minor adjustments, went from ~65 on 99/103(c) to about 90 average across the board.


There were other awesomes on the installs like the tripod legs not being secured very well, the grounding wires not actually connected to anything, etc. I would have fixed these, but the dish needs to move soon anyways for a re-roofing job. When it's re-done I'll make sure everything is 100% proper.

So.. I guess we'll see if I get these blank recordings any more. If not, at least there can be somewhat of a correlation to "weak signal" and "blank recordings". Even if this is the case, the units should handle this much more gracefully - and there still is a problem, as the tuners do indeed seem to "lock up" instead of simply re-gaining signal when it returns like the old units did.

I'll report back in a week!


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## demonstimpy (Jul 29, 2004)

Be aware, I did this some months ago because DTV refused to replace the unit as it was a known issue. 
I did wipe the unit. Still the same issues. When I called them back screaming, they sent me a recon unit. Still the same issues.
Now my guide does not populate some channels more that 12 hours.
DTV are a poor excuse now. If I was not under contract they would be gone.



SeptemberBaby said:


> Well.. I did a 'simple' reset.. just pulled the plug and lo and behold, it seemed to fix my zero signal tuner problem. I now have two tuners working at 99%. He said in his email that this is a temp. fix and I need to do the full scale reset.. I'm not willing to do that just yet, I have a few things I need to transfer. But, if I do do it.. it has to be soon, before things start piling up... but if it doesn't work.. I'm going to call them back and tell them to take it out and just give me a basic DVR. HD is just not worth all this hassle.
> Dtv needs to concentrate on quality instead of quantity. They're so concerned about being the one with the most HD channels they didn't concentrate on doing it right. :nono2:
> 
> I'm still befuddled as to why the 3 other people I've spoken to, didn't tell me to do a reset.


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## SeptemberBaby (Jul 8, 2005)

I had a couple of more blank recordings this morning... 
But not with the Delete now or later screen.... 
So I hit the FF button and the show came on.. It's like it's getting stuck in 
that spot right before the show starts. 
Anyone else trying this?


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## PRT940 (Jan 10, 2007)

3 blank recordings in the last 2 days, all on (Twin Cities) Fox 9, KMSP, HD broadcasts:
- Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles - Monday 7:00 PM CST
- House - Tuesday 7:00 PM CST
- Fringe - Tuesday 8:00 PM CST

HR20-700, software version 0x254

With tonight's shows, I could tune to the live shows (as they were being _recorded_) and watch them, and then tune back to the ongoing recordings and see that the recording had seemed to "kick in" after I tuned to the live recording. But after the recordings were complete, playing them resulted in nothing but a black screen from start to finish.

I did create entries for these blank recordings at http://www.iamanedgecutter.com/Projects/BGRecordings/


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## wahooj (Sep 18, 2008)

Every single scheduled recording since Sunday is MIA. All only show up in History as Partial. I just did a restart and if I have this problem again the box is getting swapped, again. I wonder how many they will let me RMA before the new Tivo comes out? Who has the record?



SteveK2 said:


> Same result as in NO RECORDING.
> 
> Setup to record "The Invasion" on Sunday, Aug 31 @ 3am HBOWHD.
> 
> ...


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## jfm (Nov 29, 2006)

PRT940 said:


> HR20-700, software version 0x254
> 
> With tonight's shows, I could tune to the live shows (as they were being _recorded_) and watch them, and then tune back to the ongoing recordings and see that the recording had seemed to "kick in" after I tuned to the live recording. But after the recordings were complete, playing them resulted in nothing but a black screen from start to finish.
> 
> I did create entries for these blank recordings at http://www.iamanedgecutter.com/Projects/BGRecordings/


I have had similar problems twice in last 2 weeks. On September 11, recording on 229, recording was black but could watch live. While live, I could RW live buffer only to where I started watching live. Buffer timebar indicated that data was in live buffer from start of program, but could not see past where I started watching.

Last night (9/18), I had similar problem on Ch 101. The first half hour segment of Californication was being recorded. I was playing back a different show, and also successfully recording another channel on the other tuner. When I checked the Californication recording, it was black; went to live and could watch, but recording stayed black. When next half hour segment started recording, it was also black, although again I could watch live.

I did a menu reset. The Californication recordings were still in the List, but still black.

My black recordings started on May 7 with the release of 0x22d.

I did create an entry for umpteenth time for these blank recordings at http://www.iamanedgecutter.com/Projects/BGRecordings/


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## SeptemberBaby (Jul 8, 2005)

I did the complete reset over the weekend and so far .. so good. 
It's too soon to say that it was a complete success. 

I was having problems w/ tuner one... the signal strength was all at zeros. I would do 
a reset and it would fix it temp. Since the complete wipeout, they've been all in the high 90's and 100.


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## qprhooligan (Dec 5, 2007)

Had the blank recordings yesterday and had to do another red button reset. This is the second reset this month. Come on, this is going on too long.


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## Tom_S (Apr 9, 2002)

First blank recording in a while. Fringe Tuesday 8pm. Recorded on NY Local MPEG4. Actually not all blank, started playing at the 34 minute mark. Could not rewind past that, although time strip on bottom would show movement.


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## EricRobins (Feb 9, 2005)

ALL the recordings on one of my HR20-100's were either black or gray with the Keep/Delete prompt.

A reset cured it all. What a PITA!!!


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## California King (Nov 24, 2007)

I've gotten about 5 in the past week. Should I call DirecTV about this?
All were on HD channels:

3 times on TLC, 1 on USA, and 1 on ABC. Each time I received a blank recording, both tuners were in use.

2 of the 5 blank recordings were recorded at the same time.
*
Signals were:* 98% on tuner 1 / 0% on tuner 2 / 53% on tuner 2, five minutes later.
*
After reset*: 79% on tuner 1 / 98% on tuner 2

Help!


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## Steve Robertson (Jun 7, 2005)

EricRobins said:


> ALL the recordings on one of my HR20-100's were either black or gray with the Keep/Delete prompt.
> 
> A reset cured it all. What a PITA!!!


Totally unacceptable. Why don't D* fix the core competency of the product and stop worrying about all the bells and whistles?


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## Phil21 (Sep 9, 2008)

So far since I've fixed my signal issues I have not had a bad recording. It has only been about 5 days though, so time will indeed tell.

For those of you with a large number of blank recordings on HD channels, I wonder what your signal levels are on 99(c) and 103(c)? Seemingly the problem with mine.. Perhaps won't fix it entirely, but I went from having it happen daily to so far not in 5 days, which is an improvement


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## almccm (Aug 4, 2008)

California King said:


> Should I call DirecTV about this?


Call, you have nothing to lose. I had 5 black recordings about a week ago. Yesterday 6 recordings in a row were black (7 things were scheduled to record in that time). I did an RBR and all the black recordings were deleted from my DVR. I called Directv and they tried some diagnosis over the phone, had me swap the cables on the BBCs then had me do another RBR. The CSR said in her experience that usually fixed the problem. I told her I was skeptical but I hoped she was right (I would probably bet a considerable amount of money that she's not right). At the end she gave me a credit for my DVR service.

We're going on vacation next week and I'm planning to set up everything I want recorded into the Tivo we still have in the upstairs bedroom. I don't have a lot of faith the my HR21 will record everything without failure.


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## jfm (Nov 29, 2006)

Phil21 said:


> So far since I've fixed my signal issues I have not had a bad recording. It has only been about 5 days though, so time will indeed tell.
> 
> For those of you with a large number of blank recordings on HD channels, I wonder what your signal levels are on 99(c) and 103(c)? Seemingly the problem with mine.. Perhaps won't fix it entirely, but I went from having it happen daily to so far not in 5 days, which is an improvement


I hope it fixed it for you, but signal levels are not the problem for me. 99(c) range from 85 to 98, avg ~89. 103(c) range from 80 to 92, avg ~87. Good luck.


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## sammib (Jun 13, 2007)

Earl set this thread up almost five months ago. Five months of complaints and the problem persists. Does D* have anyone working on this? How pathetic.


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## RCY (Nov 17, 2005)

Interesting that there seems to be so little movement on this issue. Very odd.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

sammib said:


> Earl set this thread up almost five months ago. Five months of complaints and the problem persists. Does D* have anyone working on this? How pathetic.


The issue has been around much longer than five months. Five months ago, the problem was almost a memory.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

RCY said:


> Interesting that there seems to be so little movement on this issue. Very odd.


But there's lots of movement on other unfinished features, so it doesn't matter


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## gp4rts (Aug 19, 2006)

SNL recording last night a black screen. RBR deleted the entire SNL folder! (Both recordings in the folder were bad.) These were recorded OTA; have now switched to D* local, but I have lost recordings from satellite also.

This problem has been around for quite some time. I have not seen any mention of this in any publication (Widescreen Review, Sound & Vision or any newspaper article. even though other D* issues are often reported). The only discussion appears to be on the exclusive group in this forum. Nothing seems to be happening, and it is very frustrating. Is there any action we can take to get D* moving on this? At this point, I have no confidence that any program I set up to record will be watchable. What is the purpose of having a DVR if you can't depend on getting the recordings you want? Please, if anyone knows if there is any action on this problem, please post. End of rant.


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## rickeame (Sep 5, 2006)

Well, as detailed in another thread, I have apparently joined this motley crew. I have an HR-21 PRO, and starting last week, had a bad recording that went right to delete when I tried to watch it (Entourage HD), and then later in the week it apparently crashed. All of the recordings it made last week were gray/black.

Fantastic. I've missed premiers, and now we are headed into the fall season and I can't trust the unit at all. 

Comcast had it's faults, but my TivoHD with cable cards worked perfectly.


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## duckyspawn (Oct 20, 2007)

I had my first blank recording in a while tonight. It failed to record Prison Break. I could watch it but the recording was the grey screen. This is ridiculous and needs to be fixed. We have DVR's for a reason.


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## 311Man (Oct 20, 2007)

Wonder if someone can shed some light on issue that I have. I hear many complaining about blank recordings but I have an issue at times where all HD channels are black while trying to view live. 

I did a RBR and the HD channel I was attempting to view was now viewable. As a test i recorded the HD channel (and confirmed the recording was viewable). Then I go to change channels to watch another HD channel again black HD channels (but the original channel I was recording in HD was fine).

Any thoughts?


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## markman07 (Dec 22, 2005)

I have two receivers on my main HD TV. An HR20-700 and the HR10-250 (lots via ota). Lots of shows = lots of recording. Anyways...last night the HR20 is set to record the Monday Night Football game via ESPN 206. Watching ESPN minutes before the game the phone rings and my wife gets it. Important call she has to take. She loves Favre so I press pause so she can watch the game from the kickoff. So after a while the screen saver comes on. 30 minutes later we are able to sit down and start the game from the pause point. Or so I thought. I hit play, nothing. I try the LIST button and select the game from the NPL. The Delete or Keep comes up! UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGg This type of behavior has happened a few times. Pausing messes it up for me it appears sometimes. I check the other program that was recording on the other tuner. Same thing. Stopped 18 minutes in. (basically at the time I pressed pause). 

So I have to start watching the game with just a few minutes left in the first quarter. The unit still acts sluggish and then all of the sudden a few minutes later....reboots on its own. UGGGGGGGGGGGGGG and UGGGGGGGGggg again. Not a happy camper.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

Got my first black screen recording in several weeks yesterday evening. Unfortunately it was on the season opener for Heroes. Fortunately it's being repeated Saturday night so I'll be able to see it. Here's the scenario. It's complicated but I will try to be precise.

Recorded 1 hour from LIL 4 at 7:00 PM, and 1/2 hour from LIL 11 at 7:30, followed by 1/2 hour on LIL 11 at 8:00, plus the recording of Heroes on LIL 5 also at 8:00. Since I also had a recording on LIL 11 at 8:00, I made 4 the live tuner, thinking that the HR20 would switch the live tuner to LIL 5 at 8:00 and Heroes would be live.

At 8:05 I exited from watching a recording to live TV, but LIL 11 was the live tuner, so I switched it to Heroes on LIL 5 with no apparent problems, then returned to the recording I was watching. 15 minutes later, I started watching Heroes but got nothing but black screen *until I had fast forwarded to the live point*, at which point the recording became watchable.

I exited to live TV, and the program was watchable, but could not back up beyond a few seconds, and if I move forward it froze. At that point, I stopped the recording but kept it, and pressed record to restart recording. Same exact results. The net result of this is that image was fine, but the buffer area was unwatchable.

I have only had this problem occur when two HD recordings start at the exact same time, and never on the program that was live at the beginning of the recording. I also believe but cannot confirm that this only occurs when the two recordings are from the same transponder. The data submission form, unfortunately, does not ask enough detailed information to discern if this is the case.


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## RACJ2 (Aug 2, 2008)

I have had 4 recordings that I could not watch over the last few days. Two went immediately to the "Delete" choice and the other two were just gray recordings. Two were on NFLN and the other 2 were on my local NBC affiliate. 

I had a similar experience to others where I checked on one of them while it was actually recording. When I tired to play back the recorded version from the start, I got the gray screen until I caught up to live broadcast. When completed, the whole show was actually gray.

The 4 recordings happened on 2 different occasions. In both instances, if I had a program recording and tried to access the second tuner, I received a 771 error. So I could not view any channel on tuner 2. After the red button reset, everything is back to normal.

I have 2 HR22's and on one of them I've had no issues so far (knocking on wood right now). I replied to someone else post, stating I had never experienced this issue. Later that day, my first gray recording happened.


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## Adam (Dec 5, 2006)

I haven't had any such issues in about a year, until very recently when I've had quite a few blank recordings on my HR21-700. At the same time, I've had no issues with my HR20-700 connected to the same dish. Any thoughts?


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## TedBarrett (Oct 10, 2007)

after losing all of CBS premieres last night I called support. I had a knowledgable CSR. I had about 10 Delete Yes or no blanks in the last month prior. Told about all the trouble shooting I had tried - from posts here in this forum - and she said to try reformatting the disk. I will have I watch the ones that did record.

If that doesn't work she said they will send a different unit.


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## Phil21 (Sep 9, 2008)

jfm said:


> I hope it fixed it for you, but signal levels are not the problem for me. 99(c) range from 85 to 98, avg ~89. 103(c) range from 80 to 92, avg ~87. Good luck.


Oh, I don't expect it to be "fixed" - it was just happening *every* day, which was excessive.

I know I'll still have "a few" blank recordings, everyone with these units that I know does - and I've checked their signal levels which are fine.

I do know that I previously correlated this to rainfade... As in, I'd get rainfade, and afterwards a tuner would not "come back". I never really followed that path, but I'll try to keep tabs on it more. The other issue with this is that I do not watch TV every day, more like twice a week or so to catch up on the recorded shows. So, catching it "in action" takes concerted effort on my part.

I hope others get a fix for this soon...


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## kvandmx (Apr 22, 2008)

I Had several blank recordings tonight. HR21-200 Seems I lost all signals on tuner 1. All transponders on tuner 1 were reading 0. Did a menu reset and signals returned to tuner 1. All blank recordings dissappeared from the list. 3rd time in a month. Always seems to be tuner 1. Signals will not return on their own. Only a menu reset will correct the problem.

Report ID:20080925-18AO


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

AWESOME. They are back for me just in time for the Season Premiere's. 

This POS.

I'll submit the data for this, but of course, it will fall entirely on deaf ears since it's only been about 6 months since this issue first started being recorded in this thread. 

Anytime I have two season passes set to record on the same time in HD, the lower one in the priority list is blank.

Tonight, the Office Season premiere was blank. 

When do the Tivo units arrive again? ARGH

We should probably pin this thread again, since the issue is still prevalent.


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## looter (Oct 1, 2007)

bradfjoh said:


> When do the Tivo units arrive again? ARGH


Not soon enough!!!


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## Throckmorton (Dec 7, 2007)

bradfjoh said:


> I'll submit the data for this, but of course, it will fall entirely on deaf ears since it's only been about *6 months* since this issue first started being recorded in this thread.


I've had this issue since I first got my HR-21 in October 2007. But I must admit it's been better lately.


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## pjsauter (Jan 6, 2008)

kvandmx said:


> I Had several blank recordings tonight. HR21-200 Seems I lost all signals on tuner 1. All transponders on tuner 1 were reading 0. Did a menu reset and signals returned to tuner 1. All blank recordings dissappeared from the list. 3rd time in a month. Always seems to be tuner 1. Signals will not return on their own. Only a menu reset will correct the problem.
> 
> Report ID:20080925-18AO


Had the same thing happen to me last night (on my HR21-700). I went to watch some live TV last night while I was waiting for something to record long enough to make sure I could skip through the commercials. Every channel I went to had the 771 message. Since I was recording something else successfully, I didn't want to interrupt by doing a signal check, but first thing this morning, I had a look and got all 0's on tuner 1, and good readings on tuner 2. Did a software reset, and tuner 1 signals look good again.

Not sure when it happened, but I had a bunch of recordings from Tuesday night that went straight to the "delete" option when I tried to watch, so I'm guessing it was sometime on Tues. This is the first time I've had this problem. Hope it won't become routine.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

well, I updated some posts in the D* Forums and sent an email to DirecTV so that a ticket will be created. I know they will do nothing and suggest that I do a reset everything, but that does zero to correct the issue. I'm just going to set up my seaosn passes for OTA.

Here is my posting at the D* forums.

Surprise surprise. 
Season Premiere of the Office. 
#1 in Priority = Survivor
#2 = The Office.

Both are set up as season passes on the local HD channel. Almost everytime I have two season passes set up for the locals at the same tme, the one with lower priority shows up as a black/grey/blank recording.

If I do this manually, both shows will record fine.

At the conclusion of show one, I could see that the office was fine live, but it was a blank recording.

I am going to start submitting tickets with DirecTV for these items since submitting them here is doing nothing to curb the onslaught of blank recordings.

dbstalk's forums which is the unofficial support for D* DVRs has a thread discussing this issue for quite some time, but there is no resolution: http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=127196

They ask you to submit each instance to this website: 
http://www.iamanedgecutter.com/Projects/BGRecordings - supposedly they go to DirecTV, but who knows.


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## kenmoo (Oct 3, 2006)

Major problems with Sacramento DMA MPEG4 LIL's last night. Ugly Betty on ABC pixelated to the blank screen many times. Next up The Office on NBC showed OK for about 10 minutes and then was blank gray screen for the rest of the hour. ER on NBC went to blank screen for 20 minutes for the final third. For about 10 minutes the screen showed a temporary problem sign from DirecTV saying not to call them but nothing with the other programs. Mostly on HR20-700 but HR21-100 was also blanking but not as bad. SD mirror programming was fine. I have reported before on the blank screen page but not this time. Why bother?


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

My theory was that black/grey recordings occurred on the non-live channel when two channels from the same transponder started recording at the same time. I set up a test using the transponder/conus document, recording two 1/2 hour programs simultaneously from the same transponder, followed by 2 more 1/2 hour programs from a different transponder. All four programs recorded fine, so I guess my theory about the same transponder was bogus. I've never had one fail when only one MPEG4 program was recording, or when the two programs didn't start at the same time, though.


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## mstenbrg (Oct 2, 2006)

Blank Office recording in HD on 9/25. Survivor recording on other tuner was fine.


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## NDSU_Bison (Sep 27, 2008)

Most of our recordings are on HD channels, but we also have the blank recordings on SD networks every once in a while. Even a reset before I go two work every doesn't always help and it's pretty rare that there are 2 shows recording at once during the day.


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## CliffV (Jan 24, 2006)

My wife has diagnosed a way to "relatively" consistently reproduce a blank recording. I've filled out the form and sent a crash dump to DirecTv on this a couple of times. I thought I'd post details here so others can see it.

This is an HR20-700 running the latest national release. She records "The View" (10AM) followed by "Young and Restless" (11 AM). These are two shows that are back-to-back on KIRO-HD. She often goes to "my Playlist" and watches "The View" while it is still recording. When she finishes watching The View, she deletes it. If she finishes watching it (and deletes it) while "Young and Restless" is still recording, there is a corresponding black section in the Young and Restless recording. That is, if she deletes The View at 11:05, there is 5 minutes of black recorded on the Young and the Restless.

This has happened in exactly this way 4 different times. Any thoughts?


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## alwayssleepless (Sep 27, 2008)

Okay, this is direct from a former programmer who actually worked on these receivers. 
News flash! 

Direct TV doesn't even write the software themselves! 

They contract it out to third parties. And not only that - but the contractors are hired to write the initial software but ARE NOT kept on to maintain it. Supposedly Direct TV's in house support department was in charge of that. (We all know what a great job they are doing.) 

The programmer I talked to (a new hire at my husband's company) told me that he worked on the software for the intial HD DVR and that they (his company that was contracted to program them) reported to Direct TV a SLEW of KNOWN software glitches. Direct TV was advised to test the units BEFORE distributing and to correct the bugs. 

SURPRISE!!! They never did. They shipped the units out as is. No testing, no 'fixing' of anything. 

So mystery solved, people. 

They can't fix the software glitches because they didn't even write it themselves and have never bothered to keep the people who DID write it on contract.


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## K4SMX (May 19, 2007)

CliffV said:


> My wife has diagnosed a way to "relatively" consistently reproduce a blank recording. I've filled out the form and sent a crash dump to DirecTv on this a couple of times. I thought I'd post details here so others can see it.
> 
> This is an HR20-700 running the latest national release. She records "The View" (10AM) followed by "Young and Restless" (11 AM). These are two shows that are back-to-back on KIRO-HD. She often goes to "my Playlist" and watches "The View" while it is still recording. When she finishes watching The View, she deletes it. If she finishes watching it (and deletes it) while "Young and Restless" is still recording, there is a corresponding black section in the Young and Restless recording. That is, if she deletes The View at 11:05, there is 5 minutes of black recorded on the Young and the Restless.
> 
> This has happened in exactly this way 4 different times. Any thoughts?


I think this is OT to the _main_ cause of black/gray recordings, whatever it is (!), but it does peripherally involve them in a new and different way. I have noticed other facets of what you describe. There appears to have been a software change which is causing errors such that when recording back to back programs on the same channel, the software is treating both programs as one long recording until the second one has completed. Although I haven't yet deleted the first program while the second one is still recording, I have noticed that while watching the first recording while the second one is still recording, at the end of the first recording, instead of getting a Keep or Delete, it just rolls right on into the second recording. So as you noticed, a Delete at this point deletes everything recorded up to the point of the Delete. They didn't used to work this way, and this is erroneous behavior.


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## CliffV (Jan 24, 2006)

K4SMX said:


> I think this is OT to the _main_ cause of black/gray recordings, whatever it is (!), but it does peripherally involve them in a new and different way. I have noticed other facets of what you describe. There appears to have been a software change which is causing errors such that when recording back to back programs on the same channel, the software is treating both programs as one long recording until the second one has completed. Although I haven't yet deleted the first program while the second one is still recording, I have noticed that while watching the first recording while the second one is still recording, at the end of the first recording, instead of getting a Keep or Delete, it just rolls right on into the second recording. So as you noticed, a Delete at this point deletes everything recorded up to the point of the Delete. They didn't used to work this way, and this is erroneous behavior.


Cool new info. That actually makes sense to me. It sounds as if they were doing some initial coding to support "soft pad" and they blew it. I'll wait patiently until the next software release.


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## seern (Jan 13, 2007)

Had my first no record on Wednesday for the season premier of CSI New York. It actually recorded about a minute of the end of Criminal Minds then gave me the Delete/don't delete message. Program was not set to start early. Report sent. This was on the HR21-700 slimline dish. What I wouldn't give to have a TiVo that works with D*. Only problem I had with them was they kept burning out their modems.


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## Phil21 (Sep 9, 2008)

Sigh...

went out of town for a week, got back home tired and wanting to "chill" in front of the TV and catch up on some shows.

Oh too bad, your DVR decided to not actually record anything. Shows listed, try to play and immediate keep or delete.

I'm trying to stay positive with this crud, but It's really getting to the point of me having a *single week* out of every month that I am getting the service I'm paying for. Why pay for the content when I can't even watch it? $160/mo is not cheap!

Anyways, technical details is about 3/4 of the shows recorded throughout the week (all HD of course) went to IKD. This is with 90+ 99/103 sat signals now.

Also, the unit was under what seemed to be heavy CPU load - front panel LED's slow to do stuff, ff'ing almost impossible, 10-20 second lag to do any form of operations.

Of course, a reboot will "fix it" until it happens next time (tomorrow, or next week! who knows!).


Ah well, just TV right? 

-Phil


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## Phil21 (Sep 9, 2008)

Called customer service, and after a pretty painful conversation with their "technical department" they are sending a replacement receiver out. I doubt it will help any, but at least one thing can be scratched off the list. I have to say the first tech I talked to a few weeks ago knew her stuff, and I was pleased. This one, while nice, certainly left a lot to be desired to say the least. 

If that doesn't help.. I just don't know. I guess I'll go and start replacing connectors on everything in the chain. If this doesn't help, I'll swap out the multiswitch. The fact I need to spend money on parts that were supposed to be done by their "professional" installer is a bit annoying, but I simply do not trust them to resolve this issue themselves. At least this way, I'll know for sure it's all done properly


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

K4SMX said:


> I think this is OT to the _main_ cause of black/gray recordings, whatever it is (!), but it does peripherally involve them in a new and different way. I have noticed other facets of what you describe. There appears to have been a software change which is causing errors such that when recording back to back programs on the same channel, the software is treating both programs as one long recording until the second one has completed. Although I haven't yet deleted the first program while the second one is still recording, I have noticed that while watching the first recording while the second one is still recording, at the end of the first recording, instead of getting a Keep or Delete, it just rolls right on into the second recording. So as you noticed, a Delete at this point deletes everything recorded up to the point of the Delete. They didn't used to work this way, and this is erroneous behavior.


This seemed to be a breakthrough find, so I ran some tests yesterday. Scheduled 2 half-hour programs to record, followed immediately by two more half-hour on the same two stations. I deleted the first show on the live tuner during the recording of the second show. No problems whatsoever. Repeated the process, again with half-hour programs, but deleted the first show on the non-live tuner during the recording of the second show. Again no problems.

Will do this again, now using 1 hour programs. The problem may occur when you overrun the 90 minute buffer, the software might not be handling the delete correctly under those circumstances. Maybe they were working on DLB and some of that code ended up in the general release.

As an aside, I was recording something on the live tuner, nothing on the other tuner. I went to live TV, switched to a different channel, then switched back to the live tuner channel. I expected the buffer to be gone since I had switched tuners, but it wasn't. Maybe data is only being saved to disk when the buffer overflows, and that's why delete is screwing things up.


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## keith_benedict (Jan 12, 2007)

I'm on my second HR20-700. The first was replaced last Thursday due to the black-screen recordings.

Had Sons of Anarchy set to record last night. Went to start watching it about 50 minutes after the show started recording and had nothing but black. Fast forwarded to about the 50 minute point and that's when the recording starts. This is my second box. The first was replaced for the exact same reason.

This thing is a piece of crap and the software developers don't know what they're doing. This has been an ongoing problem for a long, long time with no resolution in sight.

Put simply, this DVR fails on the most basic level: Even when everything is setup properly and the stars are all aligned right, this unit does not record every show that you tell it to record.


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## jdmaxell (Dec 12, 2007)

bradfjoh said:


> AWESOME. They are back for me just in time for the Season Premiere's.
> 
> This POS.
> 
> ...


I am having the same exact problem!!!


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## mstenbrg (Oct 2, 2006)

This DVR has turned into a POS. Another black recording of CSI tonight. I don't know what they did it, but I never had these problems before. Not sure how they can go backwards with the software. I don't want all of the stupid features they can never get to work, I just want it to record shows.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

mstenbrg said:


> This DVR has turned into a POS. Another black recording of CSI tonight. I don't know what they did it, but I never had these problems before. Not sure how they can go backwards with the software. I don't want all of the stupid features they can never get to work, I just want it to record shows.


Be careful about asking to go back versions b/c soon everyone will come in and say how they have no problems whatsoever and this DVR is great. If you call D* they will give you the brilliant suggestion of deleting everything or finally sending out a new box after a good 2-3 hours of explaining to 3-4 people what's going on. They'll say we've never heard of any of these issues, but we'll send you out a new box. After you get the new box, you can set up all your season passes and get ready to repeat.

wash. rinse. repeat.


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## psywzrd (Jul 3, 2008)

I have to agree with the posts here stating what a POS this new HD DVR is. I have already missed more recordings in my short time with the DirecTV HD DVRs than I ever did with my HD Tivos. I have only reported about 5 of my missed recordings but I've probably missed about a dozen so far. This thing is a complete and utter disaster and they should be ashamed of themselves for putting out such a sub-par piece of equipment. Thank God I have my S3 Tivos and cable so I can back up most of my recordings on those machines. The new DirecTV HD Tivos can't get here quick enough...


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## Lee L (Aug 15, 2002)

SO, I had my first blank recording in a while this weekend on True Blood Sunday night. I can;t remember the details but will report them later in case anyone at DirecTV actually still cares about this. I am just glad it was one of the shows that has multiple repeats each week so I do not have to become a dirty pirate.


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## montanaxvi (Oct 2, 2008)

I'm new here to the DBS forums and wanted to chime in on my issues.

I didn't have the problem last year when I signed up with D*(I have only been with them a year, when I bought my house I dumped TWC for D) I got an HR21 with my install when few people were getting them so I was pretty happy with that. I seen on the D* tech forums people complaining of blank recordings but I was fortunate to not have any issues.

Well about 3 weeks ago I had 3 shows all within about a 24-48 hour period all record the full time, but be black screen, I did a red button reset on the DVR thinking that might resolve the problem, especially with me working nights and the new fall season about to start I didn't want to miss my shows. I didn't have any issues recording until last week when I recorded Eureka on Sci-Fi it turned out black, and now this week I had something else on a local HD feed that was a black recording.

I called them on an unrelated issue yesterday and also brought this issue up. The CS rep told me that they were aware of it and were sending people to engineering to troubleshoot. The lady I spoke with in engineering took down my TV model, my DVR model numer as well as software version and update date, if it was HD channels or SD channels and how many times it had done it. She acknowledged that it was an issue and they are trying to gather information for the engineers to troubleshoot it and come up with a solution.

The odd thing I noticed when checking the software version is that it was from July 2008 so odd that I would just now have problems on software that was almost 3 months old instead of right when I got the update back in July.


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## keith_benedict (Jan 12, 2007)

montanaxvi said:


> I'm new here to the DBS forums and wanted to chime in on my issues.
> 
> Well about 3 weeks ago I had 3 shows all within about a 24-48 hour period all record the full time, but be black screen, I did a red button reset on the DVR thinking that might resolve the problem, especially with me working nights and the new fall season about to start I didn't want to miss my shows. I didn't have any issues recording until last week when I recorded Eureka on Sci-Fi it turned out black, and now this week I had something else on a local HD feed that was a black recording.
> 
> ...


I'm in the same boat as you. No problems at all for nearly 2 years until 4 weeks ago. Now I can expect to receive black screen recording at least 15-20% of the time. Although, I haven't had one in the past couple of days. I turned off my Parental Control settings and reactivated my Directv SD Tivo box. I'm kind of wondering if the Parental Controls were messing things up.

Time will tell...


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## SParker (Apr 27, 2002)

My parents have been getting it with their local NBC HD channel via Directv HD locals twice now. I haven't had the problem on my receiver. Could it be a bad BBC? Chuck recorded fine but Heroes was black screen.


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## keith_benedict (Jan 12, 2007)

SParker said:


> My parents have been getting it with their local NBC HD channel via Directv HD locals twice now. I haven't had the problem on my receiver. Could it be a bad BBC? Chuck recorded fine but Heroes was black screen.


Two new BBCs came with my replacement HR20-700. I've had black-screen recordings on my replacement HR20-700. I've started checking each show when they start recording to ensure that they are truly recording.


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## SParker (Apr 27, 2002)

Hmmmm maybe I will need to set those up for them OTA.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

I've had several theories on the black screen issue, none of which have turned out to be valid. (Not the IKD problem, which is caused by loss of signal on one of the two tuners. )

One of the previous posts about getting black screens when you delete a previous program before the current program is finished recording gave me an idea.

I decided to change my viewing and deleting habits to see if if it made a difference. What I've started doing is keeping a recording until after the program has been over for at least 1 1 /2 hours. Since I started doing that I have had no black screen recordings, and I've been reecording two programs at once throughout the evenings to make sure there were plenty of opportunities for failure.

I think what might be happening is a logic error in the delete code for the HR2x. It could be any of several things, but it might be connected to them using a 90-minute buffer to store the images. Maybe the delete logic is starting the delete at the wrong place in the buffer in some cases, and inadvertently deleting data that belongs to a subsequent program. It possibly has to do with overflowing the 90 minute buffer, which is why I chose 1 1/2 hours as the amount of time to keep the recordings.

It's just another wild theory, of course, but I'm hopeful that doing deletes this way will keep working for me until DirecTV can get the code fixed.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

mbuser said:


> I've had several theories on the black screen issue, none of which have turned out to be valid. (Not the IKD problem, which is caused by loss of signal on one of the two tuners. )
> 
> One of the previous posts about getting black screens when you delete a previous program before the current program is finished recording gave me an idea.
> 
> ...


I hope this works for you.. .It does not work for me. Most of the shows I want to watch I watch the following day. There are very few that I watch that evening. AND I get plenty of blank recordings.

I'm hoping to alter my season passes so that when I have two local HD at the same time, I will put one of them on OTA to see how that works. But, I vaguely remember trying that last year.


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## t_h (Mar 7, 2008)

montanaxvi said:


> She acknowledged that it was an issue and they are trying to gather information for the engineers to troubleshoot it and come up with a solution.


Goodie. They told me it was a known problem and would be fixed shortly in the new software release, which if its the one in CE right now appears to be soon out the door.

Sounds like "the fix" isnt in that one if they're still trying to troubleshoot and find a solution.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

t_h said:


> Goodie. They told me it was a known problem and would be fixed shortly in the new software release, which if its the one in CE right now appears to be soon out the door.
> 
> Sounds like "the fix" isnt in that one if they're still trying to troubleshoot and find a solution.


they don't have a clue when it'll be fixed. The last 3 times I called, they were "unaware" of that issue. It totally depends on who you talk to. There is never any consistency in the communications coming from Tech Support. So frustrating.


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## keith_benedict (Jan 12, 2007)

bradfjoh said:


> they don't have a clue when it'll be fixed. The last 3 times I called, they were "unaware" of that issue. It totally depends on who you talk to. There is never any consistency in the communications coming from Tech Support. So frustrating.


When I called they said it was a known issue and that my request had been sent to the "escalation team". Once the "escalation team" figures out what the problem is, they'll fix the software and my DVR will be magically fixed over night with a software upgrade. She had no ETA on the fix. I asked to be transfered to somebody in the "escalation team" and she said she couldn't because there isn't even an extension for the "escalation team". I really felt like it was something I was being told (that she was told to tell people) to placate them. I told her fine, send me to customer retention.


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## montanaxvi (Oct 2, 2008)

keith_benedict said:


> When I called they said it was a known issue and that my request had been sent to the "escalation team". Once the "escalation team" figures out what the problem is, they'll fix the software and my DVR will be magically fixed over night with a software upgrade. She had no ETA on the fix. I asked to be transfered to somebody in the "escalation team" and she said she couldn't because there isn't even an extension for the "escalation team". I really felt like it was something I was being told (that she was told to tell people) to placate them. I told her fine, send me to customer retention.


I do believe mine too was the escalation team, not the engineering team as I previously posted, but they did ask for a lot of information as I noted above like they were actually trying to figure out what was going on and not just reading a scripted reply to get me off the phone.

This was also not the person I got when I first called, customer service took care of my original reason for calling then sent me to the escalation team when I mentioned the recording issues.


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## davahad (Jun 2, 2007)

Had a blank recording last night on NCIS on HR20-700.

Hope they fix this soon as they are going to get a lot of complaints now that the new season has started.


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## jfosut (Dec 10, 2006)

Okay, I posted this in a different thread but decided it might be most appropriate here with the other issues... My HR20-700 has started pretending like it's recording, but doesn't do anything:

My HR20 has blown Knight Rider twice now! Last week, I was watching something else and the DVR changed channels to record Spongebob Squarepants for my son. When I hit previous to go back to whatever game I was watching, it said that both tuners were in use, but it only listed Spongebob where it normally lists what both tuners are doing.

I thought that was odd, but I canceled Spongebob and went back to the game. Then I remembered Knight Rider was supposed to be on, so I went to the list to see if it was in there. Well, it wasn't there, but the red light was on the receiver and the guide had the (R) by it to signal that it would record Knight Rider.

When I pull up history it says 'partial'. If it means anything, under all the partial shows, when I select them and scroll to the bottom of the details screen, under the run time, etc, it says "This showing is over".

The shows never show up in my list of recorded shows, so I can't say if it has the timer bar or is all blank.. They're not getting saved at all! 

The first time this Partial junk seems to be in my history was Wipeout on 9/16. Since then it's been probably close to 50/50 on stuff actually recorded and partial recordings... Some of the partials were showing up, I think, because i do remember a rash of Spongebob episodes that were in the list, but 0 minutes long a couple weeks back


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## Lee L (Aug 15, 2002)

Well, they have been working on the blank rcording issue for the last few national releases, so there are possibly some fixes in the next release. But, in general, you can;t really give much credence to what a CSR is saying.

And I also tend to watch almost everythign on a day or so delayed basis and when I was getting most of the blank recordings, it was not on the few things that I watched the same night or started while still recording. IT was pretty much always on a show being watched days later.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

Lee L said:


> Well, they have been working on the blank rcording issue for the last few national releases, so there are possibly some fixes in the next release. But, in general, you can;t really give much credence to what a CSR is saying.
> 
> And I also tend to watch almost everythign on a day or so delayed basis and when I was getting most of the blank recordings, it was not on the few things that I watched the same night or started while still recording. IT was pretty much always on a show being watched days later.


But do you watch and delete *anything *the same night? If you do that could be the crux of the problem, if you deleted any program at all before 1 1/2 hours after the program completed, you could end up with a black/grey screen recording on one of the subsequent programs, regardless of when you watched it.


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## montanaxvi (Oct 2, 2008)

mbuser said:


> But do you watch and delete *anything *the same night? If you do that could be the crux of the problem, if you deleted any program at all before 1 1/2 hours after the program completed, you could end up with a black/grey screen recording on one of the subsequent programs, regardless of when you watched it.


I have had stuff be black the next day as well as within the 1.5 hour time frame. It has been locals, nationals, movie channels there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to what is causing them.

I did not have problems a year ago when people were having this issue, mine just popped up in the last month.


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## Lee L (Aug 15, 2002)

mbuser said:


> But do you watch and delete *anything *the same night? If you do that could be the crux of the problem, if you deleted any program at all before 1 1/2 hours after the program completed, you could end up with a black/grey screen recording on one of the subsequent programs, regardless of when you watched it.


I am sure I have done that in the past. Not so sure about this latest time, but I will try and check for that.


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## Tenor (Sep 3, 2007)

More blank recordings here.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

Since I only have been posting negative things, thought I'd say this was my first week in many many months where I did not have 1 blank recording. shockingly amazing.


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## RCY (Nov 17, 2005)

Maybe one of our "insiders" could update us on the progress being made on the grey/black/blank recordings?


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## tthunder38 (Apr 24, 2008)

Last week HR21-700 missed the first episode of Til Death but recorded the second one. Last night the Simpsons was just a blank screen all the way through and King of the Hill had "blank" spots intermittently throughout the broadcast.


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## Bobby42 (Apr 18, 2007)

Heroes, twice now. 9/29 and today, 10/6.

Luckily, I decided to check that it was recording today and only missed the first 20-25 minutes of the episode. So as soon as I went to live TV, I could watch the episode, but I can not go back to the beginning of the recording. Watching the last half the show with no issues.

This is on KARE11 in the Minneapolis/St. Paul viewing area.


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## DVDTracker (Mar 30, 2008)

Another frustrated customer checking in. It didn't record the first two episodes of Heroes and the most recent episode The Shield. 

We were watching Terminator this evening, and feeling paranoid, I went to my recording list right at 8pm to make sure it would actually record Heroes. At 8pm, it started recording. I let it run for 15-20 seconds, hit play and saw that it definitely was recording, so we went back and finished Terminator. 

When we went to watch Heroes, we found it only recorded the first couple minutes of it. Everything after that was black. 

It's even more frustrating to read this thread and see that this has been an unresolved issue for several months.


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## mstenbrg (Oct 2, 2006)

mbuser said:


> But do you watch and delete *anything *the same night? If you do that could be the crux of the problem, if you deleted any program at all before 1 1/2 hours after the program completed, you could end up with a black/grey screen recording on one of the subsequent programs, regardless of when you watched it.


This seems to be what is happening for me. I have something recording at 8 and 9. I watch the 8:00 show late and finnish it around 9:30 and delete. I then go to watch the 9:00 show and it is blank. I am going to try not deleting any shows until I watch everything from that day and see if I get any more blanks.


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## fogtownjohn (May 27, 2007)

DVDTracker said:


> Another frustrated customer checking in. It didn't record the first two episodes of Heroes and the most recent episode The Shield.
> 
> We were watching Terminator this evening, and feeling paranoid, I went to my recording list right at 8pm to make sure it would actually record Heroes. At 8pm, it started recording. I let it run for 15-20 seconds, hit play and saw that it definitely was recording, so we went back and finished Terminator.
> 
> ...


Tonight I started watching a recording of Terminator about 20 minutes into the show. I finished watching the recording and deleted the episode. Then I started up a recording of Heroes that was also 20 or so minutes into the show. The Heroes recording was blank but the live show was visible. Rewinding the live show didn't help - it was also blank.

this is just so bogus


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## David MacLeod (Jan 29, 2008)

mbuser said:


> But do you watch and delete *anything *the same night? If you do that could be the crux of the problem, if you deleted any program at all before 1 1/2 hours after the program completed, you could end up with a black/grey screen recording on one of the subsequent programs, regardless of when you watched it.


I don't know if this is useful since I've never had the issue, but I watch and delete many things in the same night, often within 2 hours of being recorded.
its never made any difference on mine, but as I said never having the issue beforehand may make this info worthless.


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## cab2 (Mar 14, 2008)

my first time posting here in this topic, and in general, i've been lucky with regard to not having very many of these, but last night kinda ticked me off

I record the national and local news every night on the local nbc channel. Normally, by the time I get to sit down and watch something, the National news is recorded, and the local may be mostly over or all over. Last night, I saw the recording light, so i knew it was recording the national news and turned on the tv about half way into the local news. My harmony remote would not work for anything on the -100. Hmm, ok, try the real dtv remote. Still nothing. bounced between the 2 remotes a couple times and finally reboot the box. Both recordings are gone! grrrrrr. I'm also finding lately that it seems to take on the order of 10 minutes now to fully reboot the box. I do have a 1tb external drive attached but it's never much more than 35 to 40 percent used. It seems each time I do a reboot, it's taking longer to come back. My TV now sometimes even times out and says there is no signal and will shut off in 1 minute. That never used to happen before. 

Just my .02 :-( DTV really needs to fix this.


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## sjsharky (Sep 4, 2007)

I had lost recordings on 5 different days last month. In all cases I was watching a previously recording event while recording live events. I agree with one of the earlier posts, I think watching and then deleting a previously recorded event while recording live events causes one of the live buffers to be cleared. For the past week I have continued to watch previously recorded events while recording live events. However, I never delete a previously recorded event until all live recording are done. Since I have made that change I have not had any blank recordings.


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## Lee L (Aug 15, 2002)

Now that I think about it, we have been pausing at the end of a show to avoid getting spoiled by the PIG showing a recording in progress. Last Spring I had 4 or 5 grey recordings and none all summer. Maybe pausing and just going to the next show without deleting was keeping that from happening. Do the messages in History tell you what time you deleted something? If so, I can go back and check.




cab2, your issue last night was related to the massive lock up that everyone had, not this particular problem. Hopefully, it will not happen again.


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## VHS or Beta (Feb 22, 2008)

NBC local news failed at 6pm tonight.
NBC Nightly News failed at 6:30.
I was out at the time and obviously not watching anything else at the time.

This, combined with yesterday's repeated lockups, has me seriously P.O'ed. If they don't fix this, right now, that's it, I'm cancelling DirecTV at the end of my commitment. It's ridiculous.


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## newsposter (Nov 13, 2003)

my 1st submission

supernatural on 57 HD philly last thursday...what a bummer


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## Maverickster (Sep 20, 2007)

Just realized I probably should've posted here rather than starting a new thread...whoops. Anyway, here's my situation:

I have had varying levels of success with my HR20-700 (latest NR; no CE ever) over its life, but this last one is particularly worrisome. 

Suddenly, about 2 weeks ago (so it doesn't coincide with either a software update or the recent "glitch"), I am getting blank recordings on everything recorded on the DirecTV feed of our local NBC affilliate (WoodTV 8 in West Michigan, if you're interested). Resets (RBR, via the Menu, and power cycling) occasionally result in the recordings being watchable, but for the most part, they are completely ineffective. This is not "instant keep & delete", it's just a black screen with no audio.

I sent the diagnostic report. Confirmation Key: 20081008-18BB

Any suggestions on what the problem might be or am I going to have to spend 4 hours tonight on the phone with CS?

Thanks in advance!

--Mav


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## bdcottle (Mar 28, 2008)

Had a black screen recording of The Simpsons on sunday. When i tried to play it, the ext drive flashed like crazy and it went thru the recording in about 100 sec. all black screen. Tried restarting and it didn't help. Other recordings that evening on the same channel were fine.


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## tivoreno (Jul 26, 2006)

CSI - Miami on the LA National Feed; all black recording; HR20-700, national release, no ce.


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## beestea (Dec 13, 2006)

Tonight I got a partial grey screen recording....

I was watching mythbusters timeshifted about 45 minutes (it started at 9pm) while my DVR started to record two other programs 15 minutes into it which started at 10pm.

I watched mythbusters recording until at 10:20 when I hit stop... My 2nd program (south park) was on the live buffer so I knew that was recording.

I then went into my playlist to start watching the 1st 10pm program, the ultimate fighter. I started it from the begining and it was grey... i fast forwarded, and finally about 20 minutes in I got the actual recording.

To see if it was a coincidence or not (that it wasn't recording while I was watching the previously recorded program) I went back and started playing mythbusters again (which was obviously fully recorded). I watched for about 5 minutes.... then checked my ultimate fighter recording, and sure enough it caused another 5 minute grey screen in my ultimate fighter recording, which cleared up after I had stopped watching my previously recorded show.


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## mproper (Apr 15, 2008)

Biggest Loser last night was black recording, no sound.

My wife has gone from "I hate DirecTV" to "I hate hate hate HATE HATE DirecTV" now.

I also occassionally have the issue where it won't record anything, and my "To Do" list shows things like "The Simpsons: Yesterday"....because Yesterday's shows should show up in my To Do List. Sure they should. That requires a hard reset to fix, but of course there is no indication that this stuff is going to happen. Maybe I shoujld just a hard reset daily or something.

These issues suck. I can't stand that I can't count on my shows to actually record, and if they do, I can't count on the recordings actually being the show, and not just an hour of black screen. I'd be better off watching Live TV. 

Even though Comcast sucked, I could at least count on my To-Do list recording what it says it will, and then if something recorded I could count on it actually being the show, and not just an hour of blackness. Can't believe I still have 18 months left on my contract. Hopefully FIOS will be available at my house then.

FIX THIS!


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## labatt79 (Jan 16, 2008)

Maverickster said:


> Suddenly, about 2 weeks ago (so it doesn't coincide with either a software update or the recent "glitch"), I am getting blank recordings on everything recorded on the DirecTV feed of our local NBC affilliate (WoodTV 8 in West Michigan, if you're interested). Resets (RBR, via the Menu, and power cycling) occasionally result in the recordings being watchable, but for the most part, they are completely ineffective. This is not "instant keep & delete", it's just a black screen with no audio.


I'm in West Michigan and my local NBC HD has a blank / black screen all the time now. Found out Mon when I went to watch last weeks (9/29) Heroes and it was blank. We had issues during the premier (9/22) of Heroes on the local NBC HD. Started to watch after 30-45 minutes into recording and then screen froze about 2 minutes in. Did RWDs, FWDs, and Jumps, but didn't work. Had to stop and start over and problem didn't show up again. Now the local NBC HD channel doesn't show any live activity, no messages, sound, nothing. I've been forced to record Heroes in SD. Maybe this is a local NBC issue and not D*.


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## woj027 (Sep 3, 2007)

First time posting in the "black / blank recording" It happened 4 times yesterday!!!! All network shows. All Series Links. Nobody home to mess with the DVR!!! ARGH!!!!!!!!!!


just ran a test.... Tuner #1 0% ( i just replaced my BBC's) 

LNB Output = Failed


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## Jewduh (Feb 12, 2007)

Recently I've also been having issues with the DVR that I never had before. Tuesday The First 48 recorded an hour of black and Survivor recorded with video but no audio tonight. And last Friday night a recording of HDNET Fights was totally garbled and unwatchable. It sucks because these specific shows do not have repeats for me to catch so I'm SOL. If the DVR itself is bad then it'll be the 3rd time I've had to replace it. Frustrating!!!!


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## Shades228 (Mar 18, 2008)

Jewduh said:


> Recently I've also been having issues with the DVR that I never had before. Tuesday The First 48 recorded an hour of black and Survivor recorded with video but no audio tonight. And last Friday night a recording of HDNET Fights was totally garbled and unwatchable. It sucks because these specific shows do not have repeats for me to catch so I'm SOL. If the DVR itself is bad then it'll be the 3rd time I've had to replace it. Frustrating!!!!


If you have HD locals it could be a signal problem. I would read other threads about checking signal strength.


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## perilous (Sep 4, 2006)

I have also had problems recently never experienced before....gray screen meaning need a reset = lost recordings. The big ones for me were Prison Break and Sarah Connor Mon. night. My "old" D*TV/Tivos were fine (although it sucked watching in SD vs. HD!!!)....


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

Had the first one in several weeks Wednesday evening. What I've been doing is waiting until 1 1/2 hours after a program completed to deleted it, and that was working for me. Here's what I did Wednesday:

Made ch 4 HD the live tuner.
Recorded and watched 30 minute SD local program at 6:30.
Recorded Bones (4 HD) and Pushing Daisies (4 HD), both 1 hour, at 7:00. 
Recorded Til Death (4 HD) both episodes and Criminal Minds (11 HD) at 8:00.
Deleted the 20 minute SD program at 8:30, 1 1/2 hours after it ended.
Recorded Dirty Sexy Money (8 HD) at 9:01 and Lipstick Jungle (5 HD) at 9:00. Checked live tuner, and it was on 8.
Recorded O'Reilly Factor (360 SD), 1 hour, at 10:00.
That evening watched Pushing Daisies, Til Death, Lipstick Jungle, and O'Reilly. All were good recordings. Deleted those 1 1/2 hours or more after they ended.
The next evening, watched and deleted Bones. Next, tried to watch Criminal Minds, and it was a full hour black recording. Deleted that one, and watched Dirty Sexy Money, which was fine also.

This seems to shoot down my idea that too much is being deleted if you delete a program less than 1 1/2 hours after it ends.

I have also had a large number of black recordings on programs on 11 HD at 9:00 or 10:00 PM on Wednesday or Thursday. No idea if there's a connection there, but it seems to be too many to be a coincidence.


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## apace (Feb 1, 2007)

I've had a few blank recordings on my HR20-100 over the past several months. All on HD channels. No particular software version. I've deleted some programs right after watching them, and some several days later. I've done a couple of CE downloads and am currently running the national release. I have had the same problem on all versions.
I don't know if this is related, but sometimes when watching live TV, if I change to another channel or use the previous channel button, I get a black screen. This only occurs on mpeg 4 HD channels. The channel banner will display normally and occasionally the affected channel will have audio.
I recently moved this receiver to my bedroom and it is now only connected by one sat in cable with only one tuner in use. I have not seen this problem since moving this receiver five or six weeks ago.
This receiver was replaced in my living room by an HR21-100. I connected the HR21 with some older BBCs because none were sent with it. No changes were made to cabling or the multi-switch. I have not had this problem on the HR21 (although it has other issues) since installing it. 
This would lead me to believe the problem is tuner or BBC related.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

There might be hope. The release notes for the CE release that's a national candidate includes "grey screen recordings." Hopefully that means they finally figured out what the problem was.


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## bradfjoh (Jul 18, 2007)

mbuser said:


> There might be hope. The release notes for the CE release that's a national candidate includes "grey screen recordings." Hopefully that means they finally figured out what the problem was.


wow... that would be GREAT news. thanks for sharing.


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## JeffBowser (Dec 21, 2006)

Got my first blank recording yesterday, several, in fact. What changed on my end was I let my drive get to within 10% of full - coincidence ?


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## ehendrix (Feb 14, 2006)

Had another grey screen recording today. We had 2 recordings going on, the 9News at 9 and The Unit. While The Unit was still recording we started to watch it. No problems there. Once we finished it and deleted it we went agao to watch the news. No go, just a grey screen. It was still on live and I went to it and tried to rewind back, no go. Picture would just freeze after about 2 minutes going back.

I am wondering when this DVR will work like it should be. I did not have these problems with my Tivo!!!!


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## narrod (Jul 26, 2007)

I got blank recordings of Dexter (11PM) and Californication (10:30PM) last night.
It hasn't happened in awhile. Looks likes DirectTv still doesn't know why.


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## SFNSXguy (Apr 17, 2006)

First ever blank recording for me... last night, 60 Minutes -- recorded fine on a second HR20-700.


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## lyradd (Mar 20, 2006)

I got a black recording on 10/9, Supernatural, KTLA 5. I get these frequently and can't pinpoint any pattern. I use an HR10-250 as a back-up for programs I don't want to miss... pretty sad!:nono2:


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## joshjr (Aug 2, 2008)

I recorded Dexter in HD last night and am watching it now with no problems with my HR20-100.


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## dserban (Apr 21, 2008)

I had recordings of the same shows on two DVRs. One was OK, the other one just going straight to the "Delete" option.


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## HuzorDaddy (Feb 10, 2008)

All of my Hogan's Heroes (HDNET) from the weekend were grey today.
As were a few TCM movies (i.e. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). Also Seinfeld from TBS.

I am waiting for my box to reboot right now hoping I can rescue something. My wife will shoot me if her Paul Newman marathon recordings are gone...

UPDATED: after the reboot all the bad recordings had been cleared from the List.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

The latest Sunday Mad Men blanked (the instant do you want to delete when you play). Now everything on tonight on WCBS HD is blank grrey screening...

This is all on my HR22. I haven't checked the HR20 yet...


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## MattWarner (Feb 11, 2007)

Little People, Big World on TLC at 8pm failed.. Listed as partial. Other recording at 8pm recorded normally. HR20 was tuned to The Weather Channel HD at 7:15pm and was on that same channel at 8:05pm.. Appears the HR20 never attempted to change channels.


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## Jewduh (Feb 12, 2007)

New twist today, two standard def shows ask me if I'd "like to delete this recording" immediately up playback. What's going on?


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## Lee L (Aug 15, 2002)

When you get the instant Keep or Delete screen, you can usually reboot and the recordings iwll be fine. Not always, but usually. This is different than the blank recordings which are a full length show of a blank screen and will not come back with a reboot.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

Jewduh said:


> New twist today, two standard def shows ask me if I'd "like to delete this recording" immediately up playback. What's going on?


That's not a new twist -- I've had that happen on and off for two years. Though suddenly it is much worse again since yesterday.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

My "new" HR22 is crashing and burning as of yesterday. I feel like it is 2006 all over again, when the HR20 was the worst peice of CE I ever owned. Since at least Sunday, about 50 percent of my shows are either recording with just a grey screen or are doing the thing where it immediately asks if you want to keep or delete. I have reset the box, used the red key and a forced power plug pull and it has not corrected the problem. It seems to strike randomly and I can't find any pattern to the channel, SD vs. HD, etc.


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## mr.pope (Aug 12, 2008)

How I met your Mother was 30 min of Black last night. good thing I had a tivo recording it as well.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

If you get an immediate Keep or Delete message, check signal strength on both tuners. Most likely either tuner 1 or tuner 2 will have zeros. Resetting the receiver will get your signal back.


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## Citivas (Oct 25, 2006)

mbuser said:


> If you get an immediate Keep or Delete message, check signal strength on both tuners. Most likely either tuner 1 or tuner 2 will have zeros. Resetting the receiver will get your signal back.


Yeah, except it isn't lasting. If I reset the receiver it works briefly but in as little as hours it is getting errors again. The other receiver in the house is not having issues recording the same shows...


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## Sully (Dec 5, 2005)

I had never received a "blank" recording, but I was receiving the immediate "do you want to keep or delete" message quite frequently. DirecTV finally sent a tech to my house and he was there for a few hours. He did all of the following in the order listed. The last item (replace multi-switch) finally solved the problem - at least for me:


Replace 2 of 3 HR2x receivers
Realign the dish
Replace connectors at dish
Replace connectors at wall plate
Replace multi-switch
It appears that the multi-switch was at fault. Since it was replaced, I haven't had a single blank recording or immediate "keep or delete" issue. Let's hope it continues!

There is a good discussion in the "HR21 Searching for Satellite pattern" thread in the "DIRECTV Plus High Definition DVR Discussion" forum.


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## Jewduh (Feb 12, 2007)

Citivas said:


> That's not a new twist -- I've had that happen on and off for two years. Though suddenly it is much worse again since yesterday.


 Yeah, I guess I should have stated that it was a new twist for me. I've read about other people having that issue before... but it wasn't happening to me so I wasn't sweating it. self centered = me.


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## bobbyv (Sep 29, 2007)

I received "Do you want to delete this recording" after trying to record Stargate Atlantis last Friday and then the same thing tonight when I tried to record NCIS.

Monday's Young and the Restless didn't record (for the umpteenth time) for my wife either . . . I'm tempted to move my HR20-700 into another room and just record my network stuff directly from my locals.


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## shanjack (Jul 23, 2007)

I had back to back black recordings on ESPN HD 206 for the 2008 World Series of Poker last night. Very frustrating. I just got a replacement receiver last week.


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## jmf243 (Sep 7, 2004)

Blank recordings of House and Fringe last night on NY 5 HD on HR20-100.


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## astrogirl19 (Jan 2, 2008)

Blank recording of CSI (CBS) on 10/9, Presidential Debate (NBC) on 10/15 (went to live viewing of same thing and I had video and audio, recording was blank), Prison Break (Fox) on 10/6 and 10/13. All of these are on local Tampa stations through DirecTV (no antenna).

The only common thing I can find is that each time there were 2 shows being recorded at the same time. Sometimes both are in HD, but tonight only one was in HD.


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## NtegrA (Apr 1, 2007)

Haven't been watching anything on either of my dvrs (hr20 & hr21) this week . I turn on my hr20, everything is fine. I switch over to my hr21 to watch some recordings and find out that everything I recorded since Monday is black screen. Also, my ability to change channels also has failed and nothing was on the screen. when I first switched over it was showing the news and the info was saying "CH11 news 6am - 7am. this was at 10:40pm. then the screen went black as I tried to watch my recordings and that was the end of that. I am RBRing at the moment to see if I get my dvr back.

Also forgot to mention....my hr21 was powered on when I know it was off all this week and I didn't turn it on.

UPDATE: RBR fixed everything (woo hoo). all my recordings are actually playing now!


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## Score023 (Aug 22, 2006)

I got a black recording tonight on Gary Unmarried.


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## gwade (Aug 31, 2008)

I keep getting blank recordings (not every item) but they only seem to be on HD channel 7 (local SF ABC). Should I be complaining to DirecTV to replace the darn thing?


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## RCY (Nov 17, 2005)

gwade said:


> I keep getting blank recordings (not every item) but they only seem to be on HD channel 7 (local SF ABC). Should I be complaining to DirecTV to replace the darn thing?


I'd suggest you post a seperate thread if you want help on this issue. For some reason, the "regulars" who could give you some guidance don't seem to be active on this particular thread. There is an area that deals with HD locals:

http://www.dbstalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=154

I don't have an HR2x, so can't really help you there. Good luck with your issue.


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## nymart (Oct 23, 2006)

Black recording of Grey's Anatomy last night...was able to watch it on live tv fine though....second week in a row...starting to think it has something to do with two recordings at once...Office and Grey's....


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## mpollack (Feb 11, 2008)

I had my first blank recording ever, after owning my HR20-100 since January 2008. Attempted recording was The Office, at 9pm PDT, on KNTV channel 11. Black screen is all I get on playback in spite of all troubleshooting efforts.

Report submitted at iamanedgecutter.com/Projects/BGRecordings/, but is there really any point to these reports when this reporting mechanism has been in place for 6 months and the problem is still not solved?


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

mpollack said:


> I had my first blank recording ever, after owning my HR20-100 since January 2008. Attempted recording was The Office, at 9pm PDT, on KNTV channel 11. Black screen is all I get on playback in spite of all troubleshooting efforts.
> 
> Report submitted at iamanedgecutter.com/Projects/BGRecordings/, but is there really any point to these reports when this reporting mechanism has been in place for 6 months and the problem is still not solved?


There are a lot of different things that can cause these issues, and everytime you report one of these instances it helps them figure out what caused each one, so yes, there is a point... There will be a new NR firmware released soon, and I believe it will help eliviate some of these instances...


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

Fox Sports Southwest (676) at 10:00 PM Friday, recording of Mavs Insider was black screen. O'Reilly Factor on FNCHD (360) was also recording. Had recorded half-hour at 7:00 PM, 1 hour at 8:00 PM and 1 hour at 9:00 PM with no problems.


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## mdh95070 (Feb 17, 2006)

happened today on the 49er/giants nfl game.


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## Thaedron (Jun 29, 2007)

mdh95070 said:


> happened today on the 49er/giants nfl game.


If you haven't, make sure to read the first post in this thread, there is a link there specifically for reporting problems.


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## mdh95070 (Feb 17, 2006)

Thaedron said:


> If you haven't, make sure to read the first post in this thread, there is a link there specifically for reporting problems.


sorry.... i will report.


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## tthunder38 (Apr 24, 2008)

Recording True Blood & Housewives while watching another recorded program. Switched to True Blood at the seven minute mark to make sure it was recording and had the black screen. Went to HBO so it would be in the buffer and checked the recording of Housewives. Housewives recording fine. Finished watching previously recorded program, went back to HBO and what should have been recording AND in the buffer and both were black. No buffer, no recording. Swithed to my backup Ultimate TV receiver and watched True Blood in SD. Damn shame you have to a backup receiver just to make sure you get all of your recordings. Perhaps D* should issue backup HR's to everyone that has recording issues


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## jcormack (Jan 19, 2007)

I had my first IKD bug in a LOOOOONG time this week. HR21-200, Smallville, Grey's Anat. Sons of Anarchy, ER all we set to record on Thursday 10/16. Smallville showed recorded for 1 hr, but got the IKD.....I tried Grey's it played OK, so I reset the unit to see if Smallville would recover....when the unit came back on both Smallville and Grey's were gone only message in history was "Showing is done"for both. ER played OK after the reset, have not tried SofA.

Two weeks ago a recording of Charlie Jade (I think 3 am tuesdays on SciFi) had blimp in which it had a blank 1 minute recording and then a 59 minute recording (that played OK)


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## rdw6 (Mar 28, 2007)

nymart said:


> Black recording of Grey's Anatomy last night...was able to watch it on live tv fine though....second week in a row...starting to think it has something to do with two recordings at once...Office and Grey's....


Me too... The last 2 weeks have had Grey's Anatomy be blank.


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## farmboy1 (Jan 17, 2007)

Got blank recording on Grays then i was late sunday to watch housewives and it was blank also it seems like it is a ABC recording problem. You can watch it live and everything is ok. This is the first time in over a year with blank recordings.


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## Shades94 (Jan 13, 2008)

I recorded the NASCAR race yesterday on ABC. When I went to watch it last night, I got the dreaded black screen. So I fast forwarded through to see if the whole recording was like. When I hit the 1hr mark, to my surprise the picture came back on. I then backed up the recording all the way to the beginning and watched it just fine. So even though initially the first hour was black, I was able to rewind and watch it just fine.


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## HDinMA (Aug 29, 2008)

I recorded [email protected] today with an extra 1 1/2 hour stop time. To my surprise, I found two instances of the program. The game was from 1-4. The second one starts at 5PM. When I tried to play it, the DVR locked up and would not respond at all so I had to hit the reset button. 

Has anyone ever seen this behavior/know what causes it?


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## mdh95070 (Feb 17, 2006)

i wonder if the new directv software version has fixed the issue?


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## jfm (Nov 29, 2006)

mdh95070 said:


> i wonder if the new directv software version has fixed the issue?


I hate saying it did (its bad luck to be superstitous). I was getting grey recordings about once a week and have not had one since 0x290. And from the lack of activity on this thread, it appears that 0x290 may have fixed this.

If 0x290 really did fix the blank/grey/ black recordings, thank you D*. This was a huge one for me. And now we've even got soft pad. I'm a happy camper again.


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## mdh95070 (Feb 17, 2006)

jfm said:


> I hate saying it did (its bad luck to be superstitous). I was getting grey recordings about once a week and have not had one since 0x290. And from the lack of activity on this thread, it appears that 0x290 may have fixed this.
> 
> If 0x290 really did fix the blank/grey/ black recordings, thank you D*. This was a huge one for me. And now we've even got soft pad. I'm a happy camper again.


LOL. I know exactly what you mean. i find the whole situation rather strange. my HR-20 has been rock solid since day one. i really like it... even over my direct/tivo SD unit. my last sw load was dated July.... something must have happened on the network layer to trigger this nasty bug. The customer support has been horrible on this issue.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

jfm said:


> I hate saying it did (its bad luck to be superstitous). I was getting grey recordings about once a week and have not had one since 0x290. And from the lack of activity on this thread, it appears that 0x290 may have fixed this.
> 
> If 0x290 really did fix the blank/grey/ black recordings, thank you D*. This was a huge one for me. And now we've even got soft pad. I'm a happy camper again.


I'm waiting until after Wednesday evening to declare it fixed. That's when my recording/watching habits seemed to bring out the most problems. So far so good, though. A heartfelt thank you from me, also, if the problem really is fixed. And we got Fox News in HD too, so that's even better.


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## Tenor (Sep 3, 2007)

My issue is resolved. A technician cam to my home. It turned out that my dish needed to be realigned and my switch needed to be replaced with a high bandwidth version. The thing that bugs me is that the switch should have been replaced when the high def dish was first installed. I am glad, however that the my issue is finally resolved. No more rebooting for me.


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## newsposter (Nov 13, 2003)

Tenor said:


> My issue is resolved. A technician cam to my home. It turned out that my dish needed to be realigned and my switch needed to be replaced with a high bandwidth version. The thing that bugs me is that the switch should have been replaced when the high def dish was first installed. I am glad, however that the my issue is finally resolved. No more rebooting for me.


do you know the model of new switch you got?


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## GBFAN (Nov 13, 2006)

HR20-700

Little People Big World recording from Monday night 7:00 Central. Tried to play recording and got the dreaded gray screen. I could fast forward but never get the show to play. After fast forwarding I could see a snowy picture of My own Worst enemy which was being recorded on NBC. The other tuner was also busy recording Raising the Bar on TNT.


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## joesigg (Feb 22, 2007)

HR20-100

Last night, discovered all recordings from food channel (3) in last three days were blank picture, (black screen) but with OK sound. Only Food channel HD - all other recordings OK.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

mbuser said:


> I'm waiting until after Wednesday evening to declare it fixed. That's when my recording/watching habits seemed to bring out the most problems. So far so good, though. A heartfelt thank you from me, also, if the problem really is fixed. And we got Fox News in HD too, so that's even better.


Made it all the way through the Wednesday recordings without a single black screen. I think this can be declared fixed.


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## jfm (Nov 29, 2006)

mbuser said:


> Made it all the way through the Wednesday recordings without a single black screen. I think this can be declared fixed.


+1


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## GBFAN (Nov 13, 2006)

jfm said:


> +1





mbuser said:


> Made it all the way through the Wednesday recordings without a single black screen. I think this can be declared fixed.


This crap is far from fixed. It has gotten worse. I rescheduled Little People Big World on Saturday since the previous recordings got fubar'd. When I turned on my HR20-700 It was on channel 280 and the screen was just gray.


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## mbuser (Jul 6, 2006)

GBFAN said:


> This crap is far from fixed. It has gotten worse. I rescheduled Little People Big World on Saturday since the previous recordings got fubar'd. When I turned on my HR20-700 It was on channel 280 and the screen was just gray.


Sounds like you might have a different problem than the one that was resolved with a software change. You might want to call DirecTV and ask for inhouse service.


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## bdcottle (Mar 28, 2008)

I was really hoping that 29b had fixed this problem but the Monday night 8 December showing of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was a black screen recording for me. When trying to play this show I got a black screen, the ext hd light was flashing fast and the progress bar was moving thru the show fast (whole hour in about 4 min.) didn’t get picture or sound until the last 15 sec which with padding was the next show.


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## Tonedeaf (Jun 13, 2006)

I have been having this issue for quite some time now and just not getting extremely frustrated with it. I have had a few calls to DirecTV which gets me nowhere execpt a Red button reboot. 

Running current release confimed with DirecTV tech on phone. For last 2 weeks including 2 recordings last night, I was met with an immediate Delete message.


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## danmcmartin (Feb 3, 2009)

We have been having the black recording problem for a few months. No big deal until Lost started a few weeks back. We called D* and the first guy told us to unplug a few times a week and that would take care of it. An obvious short term (and ineffective) fix. Tonight we spoke to a woman that immediately told us she would send a technician out to fix the problem at our expense and who was quite condescending and no help at all. An hour later we called back and spoke to a great lady that helped us diagnose the problem and she told us it was a D* problem and had found other similar complaints and would send our particular recording issues/channels/shows up the chain to help resolve the problem.

We experience the problem on about 50% of our recordings, some HD some SD, local channels and national networks, season pass and one time recordings. No rhyme or reason. We have reset, unplugged, etc. If it is fixed it is very temporary. I have read some of this thread and I have nothing to add that hasn't been said already. Frustrating!

We have decide to just buy lost on DVD next fall and watch it that way. Hoping for a sooner rather than later fix.:nono2:


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## bigds01 (Oct 3, 2008)

All of a sudden in the last week I am getting black on 1/3 of my recordings. What changed? HR21-700


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

bigds01 said:


> All of a sudden in the last week I am getting black on 1/3 of my recordings. What changed? HR21-700


Perhaps you got the latest national release software?

What has your weather been like?


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

harsh said:


> Perhaps you got the latest national release software?
> 
> What has your weather been like?


harsh,

There is no reason to even suggest that it's the new NR software as if that were the case there would have been a lot more reports than this one report. The NR is almost complete at this point and has been rolling out for nearly 3 weeks now. It is likely something other than the software update.


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## bigds01 (Oct 3, 2008)

Literally nothing has changed in my setup and in VA we have had almost no rain for a month. I have audio sync problems on heroes tonight.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Doug Brott said:


> There is no reason to even suggest that it's the new NR software as if that were the case there would have been a lot more reports than this one report.


If nothing else has changed (including the weather), it makes some sense to suspect a problem between the receiver and the new NR as it is the one known change.


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

Folks, I'm closing this thread. This thread and the offsite tracking page it references were created for a particular bug, which has long since been squashed. If you're continuing to have black screen recordings, please start a thread with your particular circumstances so we can help you diagnose it. I have no reason to believe that the new national release is the culprit, so let's deal with it on a case-by-case basis.


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